Dark: A Dark Paranormal Romance (Blood Moon, Texas Shifters Book 1)

by Kat Kinney

  Because I loved her, too.

  Pebbles scattered underfoot as I scrambled under a line of barbed wire fencing. A gust slammed into me, the wind shifting. A savage growl broke through the night hum of cicadas, followed by a quick, sharp whine. Throwing on a burst of speed, I exploded through the trees.

  Shadowed forms writhed in a twisting knot of teeth and fur. The huge brindle male we'd chased out by the highway flashed fangs, eyes wild. West took him to the ground, snapping at his throat. Writhing, the Feral bowled him over. I thundered up a short granite rise, nearly there. Hayden rushed in, fangs bared.

  The larger wolf seized Hayden in iron jaws, flinging her across the clearing. Snarling, I slammed into the side of his head. He yelped. Blood sprayed in a crimson arc. I came away with half an ear in my teeth. Seizing the opening, West lunged, managing to score the Feral’s neck with his front claws. The larger wolf whipped around, driving him back with swift, sharp bites.

  I snarled. Teeth bared, Hayden moved in, getting within inches of the brindle wolf’s ankles before he chased her back with a warning snap. She barked, violet eyes glowing in the dark.

  Guess we forgot to go over the 4-1-1 on that one. Wolves didn’t normally bark past the puppy stage. Or maybe she just didn’t care. It was almost cute. Not that I had time to think about that now. I sent an image of those fat chocolate muffins she loved, a whole line of them forming a gingerbread trail back to Brody and the others where it was safe. And then another mental picture of her tucked in my bed chewing on the remote while Game of Thrones played in the background.

  Snarling, Hayden bared her teeth my way, meaning clear. Quit distracting me.

  Slowly, inexorably, the three of us took up position around the Feral. The edge of Bluff Point loomed, forming a natural cut off point, its impossible drop guaranteed to kill or maim anyone stupid enough to risk the jump, just as it had when West, Dally and I had tried it all those years ago.

  The brindle wolf cowered down in the grass. Right. Like flattening himself on his belly like the world’s ugliest carpet sample would really make us forget he’d just tried to roast Hayden into shish kebabs. A growl rumbled in my throat.

  Whining, the feral wolf bolted for the edge.

  In a flash, West shifted. “Wait, no!”

  The wolf staggered to a stop, ears pinned back. Keeping my eyes on the Feral, I circled around to Hayden, who was hunched and shaking, trying to shift back. I pressed my mouth to my wrist, opening the bond, and with a sharp crack, the small black wolf disappeared.

  “E-Ethan.” Her teeth chattered.

  I swept her up in my arms, brushing her hair off her shoulders. Teeth marks scored the back of her neck. Marks that weren’t mine. Marks he’d forced on her. I bared my teeth, vision swimming with rage.

  “I’m okay.”

  “He took you.”

  “As if. I went after him.” She pushed against my chest until I let her down.

  “Went after him?” Because of course she had. This was Daisy. She drove a Volvo held together with duct tape because Smurf-blue death-traps were her spirit animal. Her breakfast consisted of Mexican Cokes and chocolate muffins. Let me check in with Ethan before going all Slayer on some guy was so not in her vocabulary.

  “Not that this isn’t highly entertaining,” my brother said dryly. “But look.”

  As one, we turned to stare at the man crouched at his feet.

  His faded jeans hung off him in rags, a t-shirt from Chuy’s down in Austin so ripped and crusted in dirt it was barely recognizable. Bite marks and scratches marred two sleeves of badly mangled tats. All self-inflicted. Pretty common among Ferals. A lot of them turned to coping behaviors when there wasn’t anything else around to bite. Long greasy hanks of dark hair looked as if they hadn’t been cut or washed in months, the ends tipped with blue. Best guess put his change nine months back, maybe longer. Dude looked barely older than we were. If he hadn’t been trying to kill Hayden, I could almost have pitied him.

  Almost.

  “Look at his ankles and wrists.”

  Hayden sucked in a breath. “Is that from—?”

  “Silver.”

  West nodded. “Someone’s been holding him prisoner. Question is, who?”

  She caught my arm, frowning when her fingers closed over my wrist. And for one terrible moment before her eyes slid up to mine, they flicked to the Feral. And I wondered if she was picturing me lying there. A wasted sack of bones. Scarred beyond recognition. Beyond saving.

  But we weren’t doing this. Not here. Not now.

  West jerked his chin. “Hey, man—”

  The Feral bared his teeth. “Stay the hell away from me, freak.”

  So much for playing nice.

  West held up both hands. “We just want to talk. You got a name?”

  The Feral bared his teeth. “Blow me.”

  “That Swedish for dickhead?”

  West shot me a look that said not helping.

  Swedish dickhead growled like he wanted to eat my liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. “Topher.”

  West nodded. “You don’t have any pack markings that I can see. Where are you from?”

  Apparently having decided this frat mixer was taking too long to get started, Hayden tossed her hair out of her eyes, half-shouting to be heard over the wind.

  “Were you the one who changed me?”

  Topher flinched, bloody fingertips clawing reflexively at his arms. The clouds shifted overhead, revealing scores of track marks. Wordlessly, he edged towards the cliff. “They’re coming.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” my brother warned. “You won’t make it.”

  Hayden’s breathing picked up. “Who’s coming?”

  West lunged for Topher, the two of them shifting in midair, a snarling, writhing knot of claws.

  “Stay back,” I shouted to Hayden, and let the change pull me from my skin.

  But by then it was too late. Hayden released a strangled cry. And I turned just in time to see Topher drag my brother off Bluff Point.

  10

  Ethan

  NEEDLESS TO SAY, the night didn’t really improve from there. We combed the shoreline for a mile fanning out in either direction from Bluff Point and turned up only a soggy, pissed off West. If Topher survived the fall, he was long gone.

  Finished running the perimeter of the ranch, I shifted back to human and slid through the patio door.

  Hunched over a fat book alongside the travel mug of coffee that went everywhere with him during the week when late night emergencies and long hours had him constantly on the road, Cal leaned over to pour me a cup. “She’s on the phone with Ellie.”

  “That good, huh?”

  “Might need to see if we’ve got anyone on call for twenty-four-hour exorcisms.”

  Scrubbing a hand over my face, I slid onto the neighboring barstool. Between the club and the fire, I smelled like roadkill that had been soaked in beer and deep-fried. “Brody check in?”

  “He’s been combing through the law enforcement databases. Christopher Greer, age twenty-four. Went missing a year ago down in Austin. Was working as an EMT. We’ve got a driver’s license photo.” Cal paused from dumping a desecration of sugar into what had been a perfectly decent dark roast to pass over his cell phone.

  “Yeah, it’s him.”

  “Real lead.”

  “About time.” I took a swallow of coffee, thinking back to those track marks lining the inside of his wrists, to the burns from being kept in silver restraints that had caused scarring to form. “You think someone down in Austin could be picking up users off the street, changing them by force and dumping them in the feral camps?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time some loose cannon Alpha down there tried to raise an army and rewrite boundary lines." Cal’s phone chimed. Frowning, he scrolled through the text. “Dallas.” A beat. “He’s pretty steamed.”

  “Yeah, well, what else is new?”

  “You two should sit down and talk som
etime. Without your fists.”

  The wind stirred, sending the live oaks out over the patio swaying in the moonlight. I tugged at my wrist cuff. “Hays just had to go after that asshole.”

  “On the bright side? Don’t have to worry about her and Mom getting along—"

  “You think this is funny? She scared the crap out of me.”

  “You love her.”

  There was a smile in his voice. A strange knot of hope and despair coiled tight in my chest, the memory of pizza in bed and chocolate-flavored toe-kisses forcing its way up. “How can I know if I’m good for her?”

  “Think probably every guy out there asks himself that at one point or another. Part of being in love.”

  I studied his face. “Have you ever—”

  The room grew quiet but for the sound of cicadas humming out in the warm Texas night.

  “Once.” He stretched out in the chair, lean frame all corners and edges. “A long time ago.”

  Everything came spilling out after that. Brody confronting me. The way I’d been avoiding Hays. My humiliation after nearly passing out when Brody had forced me to submit.

  “What the hell is wrong with me? It’s like I just sort of… switch off.”

  “Without knowing any more details? You experienced a lot of trauma early on. And the thing about our wolves is they’ll do damn near anything to keep us from being vulnerable. You would be more susceptible than most to being triggered whenever you felt out of control. It could cause a host of physical and psychological symptoms—panic attacks, withdrawal from relationships, outbursts, temporary blackouts.”

  “Sounds about right.” I swallowed, suddenly pretty sure I was going to puke.

  “You were a little kid, abandoned by everyone who should have protected you. Your parents died. Your grandparents didn’t or couldn’t step up. Foster care failed you. That’s a lot of trauma for anyone to go through, and it was three years before you came to live with us.”

  Shoving up my glasses, I rubbed my eyes, glad if this had to happen in front of anyone, it was Cal. “So how do I fix it?”

  “You ever talk about any of this in your sessions?”

  “We talk about the silver. And about Dad.” I thought back to the trailer park when Brody had forced me to submit, that sensation of sheer, utter helplessness as I screamed with every cell in my body to get free.

  “A professor I had in college used to say there’s no shortcuts in therapy. You deal with your past shit if you want space for something better to come into your life.” Cal rubbed his beard. “Seems like you’ve got a real chance for that now.”

  Footsteps sounded from down the hall. Hayden padded over to us in a pair of my mom’s yoga pants and one of my old hoodies, arms crossed and eyes red-rimmed.

  Cal rose. “I’m heading out.”

  I nodded, catching Hayden’s hand. She burrowed her face into the crook of my neck, tucking her hands into the back pockets of my jeans. I slid a hand to the small of her back, up under her tank, fitting our bodies together so it was impossible to tell where she ended and I began.

  “Am I gonna have any clothes left by laundry day?”

  She blew out a breath, a few dark tendrils of hair that had escaped the messy knot on top of her head dancing against her cheeks.

  “I don’t know. You. Sumatra. A pair of boxers—”

  “Yeah. You are not naming my wolf.”

  She sighed against my collarbone. “Ellie’s freaking out.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That we don’t know anything yet. Best guess is it was someone Dad owed money to.”

  “It’s not a great cover story. But we don’t have a lot of options.”

  “Ellie isn’t stupid. She’s going to put the pieces together. And we have to figure out what we’re going to do when she does.”

  I watched her pace over to the window, eyes pale as starlight as she gazed out at the still night. “You hungry?”

  Nodding, she followed me into the kitchen, taking a seat at the bar while I pulled out fresh butter, set milk warming in a pan, and filled her in on everything Brody had learned.

  While I talked, Hayden picked at her nails, frowning out at the moonlit yard. “How lucid did he seem to you?”

  “Enough.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  I flipped her toasted bread slices and added cheddar cheese. “Only one I’ve got. With Ferals, it comes and goes. Phase of the moon. Daylight versus night.”

  “Something isn’t right,” she said in a low voice. “You’ve seen the texts I’ve been getting. This whole time we’ve been operating under the assumption Topher wants to abduct me, to take me from you. So why did he barely even glance my way out on Bluff Point?”

  Silently, she passed over her phone.

  Unknown Number: run

  Unknown Number: don’t trust him

  Unknown Number: not much longer and we’ll be together

  Unknown Number: tell him to stop touching what’s mine

  And… wow, she was right.

  “When did these come in?”

  “All in the last hour.”

  I shut down the screen. “If you’re right—”

  “—then these texts aren’t coming from the same person. And they haven’t been, all along.”

  “This guy… whoever he is—”

  “Or she.”

  “—or she. This is personal. Now that we have the connection to Topher, we get Brody to pull every missing persons report, every cold case file from the past eighteen months. Everything since the disappearances started ramping up.”

  She nodded. “Cross check everything for a link to him or me.”

  I slid the grilled cheese in front of her.

  Hayden picked at the edges. “I don’t trust Lacey Blair.”

  “Really? You were pretty subtle about it back when you tried to claw her face off in front of half of Lindley County PD—”

  “And you’ve ruled her out why again? Because your dick is some sort of magical truth wand?”

  Burn. I raised an eyebrow. She stared me down.

  “For a lot of reasons, none of which are my place to tell. But let’s just say arranging a hit on you would get her expelled from the pack, and would mean she’d have to leave Blood Moon and wouldn’t be able to tell her family why.”

  Hayden nibbled of a corner of her sandwich while I turned back to the stove, stirring cocoa and peppermint into the pan of hot milk. “I know the rumors, but what really happened back in high school between her and Dallas?”

  I poured her drink into a cup, topped it with whip and drizzled a chocolate-syrup heart into the foam. She took it, clacking her teeth zombie-style when I flicked a dot of whip onto her nose.

  “Ben kept a pretty tight leash on all of us, at least when it came to human girls. So even though everyone could tell Dallas liked her, it wasn’t going to happen. Pretty sure Lacey thought it was a money thing and he didn’t correct her. They sort of settled for tormenting each other. Senior year there was this huge party south of town. Dallas snuck out. They got wasted and ended up in the back of his truck.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Yeah. Long story short, Dallas never did figure out if he grazed her with his teeth while they were fooling around or the condom broke. It was almost a week before the full moon, which meant either way, he should have been safe. The transmission window is pretty much a day to a day and a half on either side, tops. But by the time Ben found them, Lacey’s fever was already spiking.

  “Dallas got sent away to live with our uncle in Canada, and Lacey had to hide out at the ranch for over a year until she could control her wolf. She’s never been able to tell her family what really happened.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “Yeah.” I stared at her sandwich long enough that she smirked and held it up so I could bite off one of the corners. Chewing, I rubbed my bottom lip. “Things have never been the same between them. When Dally came back, he was different. Ol
der, more jaded. It had been four years. Lacey had moved on with her life. Now they pretty much pretend it never happened.”

  Hayden warmed her fingers on the side of her mug, staring down at her arm as if she was remembering the message that had been scrawled across her skin. HOSPITALS NOT SAFE. “What happened with Dallas and Ben… was that why you stopped the night we started fooling around?"

  “Part of it. But mostly… for Ben, there are no compromises. He isn’t just my father, Hays. Back then he was also Alpha. If he were to discipline me, send me to a different pack—"

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “He did it to Dallas.”

  “So you’re saying—"

  I watched her expression darken as the pieces fell into place. I’d been an idiot to think I’d fooled any of them. Town events where I pretended to stare everywhere but at her. That time I watched, heart kicking in my chest, as she twirled with her sister out under the twinkling lights at the Yule Festival. That open mic night where Ben had shown up and I hadn’t even noticed, the dark rasp of Hayden’s voice, the sharp mint scent of her hair and heat of her skin stirring my wolf until I could scarcely breathe. After, the way Ben had stared me down across the darkened parking lot, neither of us missing the way I’d sweated through my shirt in an effort to keep the monster contained.

  “He told you to stay away from me,” she said, voice flat.

  “Ben could see there was something between us, even back then, something that would grow to be dangerous. And knew that if he told me to back off, there was no chance I would go against his orders. Not when he ultimately controlled my access to August.”

  Hayden went very still, breathing so low it was barely audible in the empty room. “You’re his son.”

  I looked down. “You get what it’s like because of Ellie. When it’s just the two of you against the world. I couldn’t let my brother get separated from me again, not when he was that sick, no matter how much I wanted you.”