Sylvia Frost - Heartbound (Moonfate Serial Book 4)

by Sylvia Frost

  Diane closes her eyes and bears the pain until she can’t anymore. The contractions are coming hard and quick. The blanket is a dark purple, but I can still see the blood seeping out between her legs and onto the sheets. Diane can’t tell what’s wrong, and Apollo can’t either. But I can. Because I know the ending.

  Diane’s last word is his name.

  He watches the light fading from her eyes, and he can’t see it, but the light is leaving his own eyes at the same time. He howls as he scrabbles for the phone and tries to call for an ambulance. Even though I know the sound isn’t real, it still guts me.

  It reminds me of the sound Lola heard, that mother’s cry in the dark, salty night as she held her dying child in her arms. I know the feeling of that cry in your throat, too: the knowledge that you’ve lost everything, and that it’s all your fault. Except that for Apollo it actually is his fault.

  He falls to his knees, his hand still clutching hers.

  The vision recedes, fading into the mist, which has thickened. I shake my head, swearing I can see Orion’s mother’s face in the haze of water, like the afterimage from staring at a picture for too long.

  “It’s okay,” I say to myself. But I don’t sound like myself. My voice is higher, softer and as indistinct as the dream I just left.

  It shouldn’t have any power at all, let alone the ability to stop Apollo. And yet when he hears it, he falls to his knees. His bones crack against the stone and his head hangs against his chest, strands of his thinning hair falling across his cheeks. He doesn’t look up.

  It was her voice I spoke with, I realize. Orion’s mother. Diane. Somehow I was able to pull from the fabric of Apollo’s dreams the memory of what she sounded like. Perhaps there is some bond between us. Not like the one between Orion and me, but the ghost of one. An echo. An echo Apollo has been waiting to hear for twelve years.

  “Diane,” he says, choked.

  “Apollo,” I sigh. Although it isn’t me sighing, exactly. “You need to tell them to stop all of this.”

  “I can’t stop it.” He nods lamely, and his hands scrape at the stone as if he can pull it out of the riverbed and send himself downstream. “I never wanted this. I just wanted you.”

  “I know,” I say. “But you have to do something.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s too late.”

  And he’s right. Behind him, a few of the vampires that haven’t been taken down by the shifters have almost made it to our side of the shore. Others teeter toward him, or perhaps just toward the edge of the waterfall, driven so mad by bloodlust that they’d rather die than continue to live. Lawrence isn’t among either group.

  “Stand up,” I say, some of my own werecall slipping into my imitation of Orion’s mother. “Stand up and use your werecall.”

  It works. Apollo rises, his legs trembling as he faces his oncoming horde, shifters and vampires both. He holds up his hands.

  A thrill of satisfaction sparks through my chest.

  Then something comes springing out the water toward the stone. One of the dark shapes. A vampire. It lunges toward Apollo, white teeth aiming for his throat. Either Apollo is too weak already in his human form, or his werecall weakened him further. Weakened him too much.

  Either way, he can’t fight his attacker, who latches on and plunges a pair of fangs straight into his neck.

  Apollo falls into the water. Without the power of his voice, he is as weak as I was. I stumble back onto the shore in horror, nearly tripping over Orion.

  Orion gives an anguished howl. A real wolf’s howl, not like his father’s, an animal sound that will stay with me until the day I die. Even if that day is today.

  Apollo can’t be dead. Without him, I have no way to control the pack, and the pack needs controlling. The predators have realized that something is wrong, because they’re weaving around the trees, leaving their skirmishes with the vampires.

  The panthers come first, deftly jumping from rock to rock across the stream, followed by the mountain lions and wolves.

  The water where Apollo fell gurgles from the current and I hold my breath, preparing to use my werecall again if I need it. But it’s not Apollo who comes out of the water.

  It’s Lawrence.

  I barely recognize him. His cheeks are puffy from being overfed with blood, although his limbs are just as thin as ever and he’s completely naked.

  “Lawrence.”

  Lawrence bares his teeth, white against dark, his skin mottled with bruises and grime from the bed of the river. He doesn’t shiver, even as the icy water sloughs off of him. He stumbles toward the shore, fighting the current.. Toward me.

  “Lawrence!” I scream. I don’t use my werecall; it only works on someone who has a mind to command. “Please, it’s me.”

  I remember what Lola said about how he killed his brother. About all the things I never knew about him. All the things I’ll never know if I can’t save him now.

  “Please, I love you, Law.”

  Beside me Orion growls, preparing to pounce. But just before he can, Lawrence stops mid-step, one foot on the shore, the other dragging behind him in the river. He tilts his head at me, drool dripping from his chin. I want to wipe it away. I want to make him better.

  Lawrence, immaculately dressed, put-together Lawrence, should not have to look like this.

  “This is not you. This is your disease.”

  He steps out of the river entirely and groans. The low frequency of the sound rocks his emaciated body.

  Orion springs free out of my weak grip, and he bares his teeth at Lawrence. But he doesn’t attack.

  Lawrence groans again, but this time I catch a hint of a word in the moan. “Arrrrtemiiiiis.”

  “Lawrence,” I sigh. I’m smiling and crying at the same time, the utter relief coursing through me making me forget everything else. “I have you.”

  He’s not too far gone. With rest and the pills, he’ll be fine again.

  I stretch a hand out toward him. I wish I could hold him like he held me long ago, when we met at the McDonald’s and he convinced me to run away with him.

  Orion pads between Lawrence and me, still growling low in his throat. But he doesn’t have to worry.

  “Can’t.” Lawrence shifts his shoulder, grimacing. “Too thirsty.”

  I nod, understanding. “We need to get him out of here, Orion.” I reach down to run my fingers through Lawrence’s hair. The texture of it is soothing.

  But the truth is, Lawrence isn’t the only one who needs to leave.

  The panthers have reached our shore now as well, and must have noticed that the rock Apollo once occupied is empty. If I can just subdue the shifters, the FBSI could take care of the vampires.

  Subdue the shifters. What if…

  It’s crazy, but I don’t have any other option.

  “Orion, I need you to change.”

  If the bark of his growl didn’t make his “no” clear, the force of his wolf’s body as it threads its way in between Lawrence and me does. He’s not going to let me be vulnerable.

  “Orion, if you don’t change, we’re all going to die.”

  Lawrence falters, his normally graceful movements turned gangly. One side of his mouth hangs lower than the other, a string of bloody drool trailing onto his naked chest.

  I won’t let him die this way. I won’t let him die at all.

  “Please, Orion. I’ve trusted you. Now I need you to trust me.” I fall to my knees so I can look into wolf Orion’s eyes. Just like his human ones did what seems like long ago, they dance with a kaleidoscope of strange colors. Green, magenta, blue. Magnetic. Like the Northern Lights or some portal to another world.

  I’ve been in that world. I’ve seen it. I’ve shared it. It’s my world too.

  I grab him by the muzzle and bury my face in his fur. The softness envelops me so thoroughly I might forget where I was if not for the growls getting louder and louder around us. “I love you,” I say.

  That does it.


  He changes. Not as fast as when he was using the pain to speed it up, but almost as quickly, and this time I feel no agony in the way his body twists. It’s as if he’s transforming into liquid and then being poured back into the mold of his humanity. Painless and as easy as a river flowing downstream.

  A second later he’s naked, his eyes fluttering open. They look the same. After the shift, the bandage around his middle has disappeared, revealing a jagged scar separating his abdomen from his upper chest. I trace it with my finger.

  “The acoustics will be best there,” Orion says, understanding my plan. Then he bends his knees and swoops me up to his chest. His biceps don’t even twinge at bearing my weight as he walks into the cold river.

  I can feel the mist spraying against my cheek, cold enough that it sends a shiver up my spine, but Orion doesn’t wince. The water is running red from the bodies upstream, though the closer we get to the rock and the edge of the falls, the more diluted the blood becomes.

  Behind us a few of the bears change course to intercept us. The cats are too afraid of the water. I notice Cal lurking among the trees behind Lawrence, snapping at a brown wolf who tries to get close.

  Orion deposits me on the rock, my heart hammering in my chest. Not just because of the predators hot on our tails, but because this close up I can see the edge of the falls, where it bends into nothing but an endless fall.

  I was wrong before. Theodorus wouldn’t have to drown himself. Even a werebeast couldn’t survive a drop that steep.

  Orion’s grip stops me from peering any farther toward the gully as he steps up to join me on the stone.

  The bears barrel through the stream, sending up fonts of water on either side of them like jet skis, roaring as they go. I’d never be able to be heard over all that noise if I spoke by myself.

  But I’m not alone. “Ready?”

  As a response, Orion tugs me against his body, dipping me slightly as he plunders my mouth desperately. This may be our last kiss, and though it lasts only a few seconds, he tries his best to suck every speck of love out of me. Like if he kisses me hard enough, he’ll be able to keep us both safe.

  When we part I should be breathless, but instead I inhale. Unlike all the other times I’ve used my werecall, there’s nothing forced or analytical about this. I breathe the way a baby does before it cries for food. I breathe the way I kiss Orion, instinctual and primal. I can feel the building power of my werecall all the way down to my toes.

  I look at him and nod, then we both open our mouths and command the world to stop for us. To change.

  Together.

  Epilogue

  One Year Later

  There’s a funny thing about life. Even when you’re sure there’s no way it could possibly go on, it does. In fact, it gets better. I have this same revelation every morning when I wake up, spooned by Orion’s shirtless body. My cheeks flush with gratitude, wanting, and—unfortunately—heat. I love Orion, but he runs at about a hundred degrees and likes to sleep under a real blanket of “fur.”

  He loves me too, if the feel of his erection pressing against the small of my back is anything to go by. Delicately, I try to untangle myself from his arm looped around my middle, but he grunts and pulls me closer.

  He has a tendency to be monosyllabic before we have sex. Which usually works just fine for me, but today we have other business to attend to. I twist and kiss his cheek, careful not to tease his hardness too much with my curves. “Rise and shine, alpha.”

  Abruptly he flips me onto my back and pins my hands above my head. The wetness between my thighs is an immediate response, although my reaction to it is no longer angst, but a simple raise of an eyebrow. “Can I help you—”

  Orion finishes my sentence for me with a punishing kiss that doesn’t end at my lips. He trails up my neck, teasing the flesh with his teeth and sucking hard until I moan.

  Damn it. We really don’t have time for this.

  Rising and ending the kiss, he adjusts his grip on my hands so that there’s no weight bearing down on my wrists. But I won’t be moving anytime soon.

  My other eyebrow joins the first. “With the way you’re pinning me down, I’d think you’re terrified I’m going to maul you.”

  “You called me alpha,” he growls, his voice made even lower by his usual morning… irritation.

  I bat my eyelashes. “I’m respectful,” I say.

  He snorts, but lets me go. “Beautiful, smart, powerful.” He pinches my ass and I squeal. “But not respectful.” His eyes narrow. “Not unless you want something.”

  I take the opportunity to free myself from the overly hot furs and grab my phone from the bedside table. Framed above the lamp is a collection of quarters. My dad’s. They make a bittersweet smile tug at my lips before I glance down at my latest text from Lawrence.

  Photography studio is opening at 10 a.m. Look forward to seeing you there. Dress code is no harem pants and t-shirts, please. As hot as the werewolf is, I’m trying to be a professional.

  The time on my phone reads 9:30, and the strip mall where Lawrence is starting his new photography and graphic design business is at least twenty minutes away from Orion’s cabin. I don’t even have time for a persuasive blow job. “Orion, do you remember when I told you how Lawrence has finished his course of meds and is opening a photography studio?”

  “No, Little Mate.” The bed wheezes as Orion stands up. “In fact, I think you forgot to tell me.”

  I wince. I did forget. I meant to tell him yesterday, but then we learned that Stefania was finally going to try walking.

  Orion still hasn’t completely gotten over the fact that she betrayed us to Lola, even though her hacking and persuasion of Cal allowed us to basically save the world. I figure that after being paralyzed from the waist down from the car crash, Stefania had suffered enough.

  “It’s not like we have to work,” I say, padding over to the dresser. Orion doesn’t follow. He seems to have an “as few clothes as possible” policy for his own body, which explains why he likes having the furs everywhere. “We can’t start teaching anyone until we actually have a space to teach in.”

  “We can teach from here until we have a suitable location, purchased with the FBSI settlement money,” Orion says, referring to the settlement the FBSI gave him after the debacle at Letchworth. Because he disobeyed orders he was fired from the agency, but they had to acknowledge that he saved their asses. In exchange for his keeping quiet about the near-massacre, they discharged him with a large severance package.

  Orion and I decided that we’d start a school for weremates, werebeasts and interested humans. If our misconceptions about each other are anything to go by, there’s certainly a lot to be learned on both sides. Not to mention that thanks to Apollo’s rash of bloodbindings, there’s a whole host of new weremates who have no idea how to manage the fact that many of their mates have been locked away in prison by the FBSI.

  Which is a whole other kettle of werepufferfish.

  “We can go visit Lawrence’s studio another day. I have something I’d like to show you,” Orion says.

  I reach for my shirt and jeans and begin to pull them on. “It’s only twenty minutes away, and we only have to spend ten minutes there.”

  Under my pile of clothes, I find one of Orion’s shirts and toss it over my shoulder. “And please. Put on a shirt.”

  Orion’s hard, very much shirtless chest makes contact with my back with a thump, and his big hands cup my ass. He squeezes. “Mm,” he groans. “I really should just fuck you here.”

  My body agrees with him, melting into his embrace.

  His thumbs hook into my underwear and his breath ghosts over the shell of my ear. Even in the morning it smells deliciously fresh. “But then again, that would be rewarding you for being so demanding.” His finger dips toward my center, which is already slick with need for him.

  “Fuck,” I say.

  “Yes, exactly. Unfortunately…” His tongue leaves my skin first, then his hands,
and finally his heat as he bends over and plucks something, probably the shirt, from the floor. “I’m going to be good and do what you like.”

  “Thank you,” I say curtly, holding back an annoyed groan. That’s exactly what he wants, and it might be just the excuse he needs to push me back onto the bed and waste another two hours showing my body who’s boss.

  Just to make sure I don’t “accidentally” end up falling back into bed, I take the stairs down to the first floor two steps at a time, and grab the Camry’s keys. Orion usually drives like a maniac, and there’s no need for a car chase today.

  My doctor said that I’ve had enough whiplash to last a lifetime.

  * * *

  The drive was supposed to take twenty minutes, with me at the wheel. However, unsurprisingly, Orion steals the keys via a combination of strategic making out and grumbling once we’ve gotten into the car, and we get there in ten. When we arrive at the parking lot I realize with a jolt of familiarity that this is the same strip mall I went to a year ago when I purchased the gun. It looks slightly less creepy in the morning light, and there are more cars in the lot this time. Orion takes the last parking spot with a needlessly flashy three-point turn.

  I glare at him. He leans in to kiss me, but I dodge him, rolling my eyes as I shove open the car door with my shoulder.

  The glare of the morning sun is bright enough that I shade my eyes.

  “Artemis!”

  I take the few steps out of the lot and onto the sidewalk. The shade of the awning allows me to see again. Lawrence is standing at the entrance of his shop, smiling at me in that soft way he has. I smile back and rush toward him, grabbing his hand. “Congratulations.”

  “Congrats to you too,” he says.

  “For what?”

  He flicks the fabric of my jeans. “For finally getting rid of those hideous pants of yours.”

  “Shut up. Orion ripped them. I didn’t throw them away.” I laugh and take in the front of Lawrence’s new building. It really is a great build-out. He’s got a sharp logo for his photography business, with a pretty red font as slim and elegant as he is. Although a sexy logo doesn’t explain how he’s got a line of customers reaching out the door. Inside, his graphic design partner and boyfriend, a dapper penguin shifter named Richard, is corralling the groups of attractive men into lines.