Wicked Moon (The Reluctant Werewolf Chronicles Book 2)

by Tori Centanni

  He studied me for a long moment. “I heard about Jean and that other girl. Darn shame. Jean was very hospitable, and we owe your pack a debt of thanks, in part to her.”

  “It’s my fault,” I said before I could stop myself.

  I didn’t know the rules of hospitality in the supernatural world, certainly not when it came to pack-on-pack politics. I didn’t know what I should or shouldn’t say if I wanted to keep the peace. At the moment, I didn’t really care all that much.

  Levi narrowed his eyes. “From what I heard, it was the hunter girl’s fault. But if you ask me, it was your Alpha’s fault.”

  I blinked, unable to follow his logic. “Sasha? She didn’t do anything.”

  “She let your pack keep that girl around, even when it was clear she would never embrace being a werewolf. We have a word for those types in my pack: scraplings. Scraplings are those who are not suited enough to the life of the wolf to keep living it.”

  I shivered, and not just from the cold.

  “Not everyone can handle the gift of being a werewolf,” Levi said when I didn’t respond. “It’s a powerful, strange magic. It takes a pound of flesh for what it gives us.”

  “You can say that again.”

  Being a wolf might be awesome to some people (I still couldn’t remember anything about my transformations) but it took a seriously painful shift to get there, and the magic didn’t care if you had other plans on the full moon or not.

  “The Northern Washington Pack was a great experiment, but I think all it’s proven is that there’s a reason wolf packs have stricter rules.”

  My stomach twisted into knots even though I wasn’t making sense of his words.

  “What?”

  “It’s been a good run. Thirty-some years, I believe. Pretty great for such an experiment.”

  “The pack isn’t—” I stopped abruptly, not even sure what I was trying to say. Or what Levi was trying to tell me. “Is Sasha okay?”

  Levi smiled wolfishly. If you put all of us in a line-up, he was the one you’d pick out as a werewolf almost immediately. There was just something dangerous about him.

  “She’s fine. It’s your pack that’s not so well.”

  I stared blankly at him.

  His smile widened. “Your leader—I am loathe to call her an Alpha when she did not battle her way to the title—has asked me to call for reinforcements from my own pack. Your pack has lost too many vital members too quickly and now is on life-support, so to speak. My own pack is coming to the rescue for now, but it would be a mercy if I were to take over.”

  I sucked in a breath, the full weight of what he was saying slamming into me like an oncoming truck.

  “You want to stage a coup.”

  “Not a coup. More like a merger. You know, like in business.” He patted the bulky bandage beneath his shirt gently. “But for now, we’re merely offering aid to a wounded pack in need. I’m in no position to challenge your Alpha for the time being.”

  “But you plan to,” I said.

  His gaze bore into my like lasers. It made me uncomfortable, but I didn’t dare get up and leave.

  “I may have no choice. It may be in the best interests of your pack. And if I do, I would like to have some support from inside your group.” He looked at me meaningfully.

  I swallowed back a lump in my throat.

  “I’m not really worth this sales pitch,” I said. “I’m new to the pack, and I’m not exactly their favorite member right now.”

  Understatement of the year.

  “You’re a good werewolf,” Levi said.

  I nearly choked. “I’m really, really not.”

  “Sure you are. You’re young. You’ll adapt to it well. You already are.”

  “Why would you possibly think that?” I asked, stunned.

  I was barely coping with being a werewolf, not exactly thriving.

  “You have a fire in you. Like Rayna. Like me. All of the best werewolves have it, even the ones who are less than thrilled about being bitten.”

  “I don’t feel very fiery.”

  In fact, at that moment, I was seriously considering begging Michael for a place on his and Damien’s couch until I could find a new place of my own, one with another secluded room for me to transform in, chained a wall, where I could never hurt anyone again.

  “And I’m pretty sure they’re going to kick me out of the pack, so, like I said, you should go give your Avon pitch to someone whose support might be worth it.”

  Levi waved a hand, unconcerned.

  “If this happens,” he paused, perhaps to gather his thoughts, “I will need lieutenants to help me lead such a large pack. And you are capable.”

  I pictured myself in leather, like Rayna, trying to tell Raff or Zara what to do. Yeah, that’d go over great. Levi was really barking up the wrong tree.

  “Look, I wouldn’t be of any help to you.”

  Levi stood, and relief flooded over me. I’d been scared he was going to ask for some kind of vow or promise to betray Sasha or something.

  “You underestimate yourself. A folly of youth.”

  Before I could argue, he opened the sliding door and went back inside. Heart pounding, I stayed where I was until I was sure Levi was gone.

  I sat there, stunned, the cold air heavy in my lungs. Levi couldn’t be serious, could he? Except the dude did not strike me as the joking type. And he was right about one thing: The Northern Washington Pack had lost too many people in too short a time.

  I forced myself to stand. I had to warn Sasha about his plan to challenge her and take over. Even though I was pretty sure she didn’t want to look at me, she had a right to know.

  Chapter 22

  My cheeks burned as I came inside and dry indoor heat hit them.

  Sasha sat alone in the dark kitchen. The lights were all off, and she was sitting on a stool at the island, staring at the marble counter top. I’d seen Miles outside walking the perimeter, and no doubt Zara or Raff were at the front of the house keeping watch. I didn’t know where Levi and Rayna were.

  Owen, Marianne, and Jean’s bodies were probably laid out in the third garage, which had served as makeshift morgue before. The thought made me feel sick.

  I went to the large fridge and opened it, staring it at its contents as if it held the solution to all of our problems among the slabs of meat, bottles of juice, and drawers of vegetables. All supplies for meals that Jean would never cook. I shut the fridge door and turned to Sasha, who had not looked up.

  “Levi wants to take over the pack,” I said plainly, because there was no reason to beat around the bush.

  “I know,” she said.

  “You do?”

  I was surprised. I figured if she knew he was a threat to her, she’d have kicked him out, not asked him to call more of his guys for backup.

  “He’s in no condition to challenge me right now,” she said, finally glancing in my direction. “And maybe when he is, I should step down. Clearly, I haven’t done enough to protect my pack. I don’t deserve to lead. And if no one else steps up, it might have to be Levi.”

  I stared, stunned. I didn’t have anything against Levi, but the thought of being part of a pack as strict as Portland’s, where you were obligated to spend the full moon with the pack and follow a strict set of rules, set my teeth on edge. I would never thrive in that pack, and I was afraid Levi and his rules wouldn’t give me a choice.

  “You’re a great leader,” I said.

  “Yeah, but sometimes that’s not enough,” Sasha said.

  She slid off the stool and left the kitchen, and I didn’t follow her. She was done talking.

  Despite the heat in the house, I still felt chilled the bone.

  “She was really close to Jean.”

  I recognized Raff’s voice behind me but was almost afraid to turn and look at him. Afraid he wouldn’t look at me.

  “When Sasha was turned, she had a rough time at first, and Jean and Drake really helped her through it.”
>
  “Oh,” I said.

  I knew Jean and Drake had founded the Northern Washington Pack after leaving a stricter pack in Montana, so of course they’d helped countless local werewolves cope with their condition. But Sasha was always so put together and strong, it was hard to picture her having a hard time with anything, let alone being a werewolf. Of course, that had probably been decades ago.

  “I’m ready to go,” Raff said, the edge returning to his voice.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I put the rifle—Jean’s rifle—on the counter.

  “Better take it. In case we’re followed.”

  The acid in my empty stomach bubbled with nerves, both about riding in a car with an angry Raff and the threat of hunters chasing us down. But he was right. I only had a few rounds in my pockets and, despite hitting the old log, little confidence I could aim it at a moving target, but at least it might give an attacker pause.

  I took the gun.

  Despite the damage to his trunk, the car started and drove just fine. Raff was silent, but he wasn’t super tense, and I hoped that meant he was starting to cool off.

  When we pulled from the long driveway onto the road, I kept an eye out for other vehicles, like a truck or van, but no one else was around until we hit the highway. Every time a big car got behind us or got too close, Raff’s knuckles tensed on the wheel, but no one tried to ram us or drive us off the road.

  Less than hour later, we were back home. As far as we could tell, no one had followed us. Either we’d gotten lucky, or the hunters had given up on that particular avenue of attack. For now.

  Raff checked the windows and doors in the house methodically, even stopping to open the closets like there might be an intruder hiding in there. Which might have felt ridiculous to me just a few months ago, but now served to reassure both of us.

  I pulled a frozen pizza out of the freezer and then stared at it, trying to decide if I could eat. I hadn’t eaten since I’d had a muffin, baked by Jean, that morning, and that was almost twelve hours ago. It felt like a lifetime. Normally, I’d be willing to eat cardboard by this point, but I wasn’t very hungry.

  “Pizza?” Raff asked, leaning in the kitchen doorway with his arms folded across his chest.

  I shrugged, unsure. “Don’t have much of an appetite.”

  Raff arched an eyebrow. “You’re not hungry? Isn’t that one of the signs of the apocalypse or something?”

  I didn’t laugh. “Believe it or not, I feel terrible about what happened, okay? I’d never have given Marianne that poison intentionally. I forgot it was even in my purse.”

  I met Raff’s eyes and dared him to argue with me. To fight me. After a silent forty minute car ride and the day of grief, misery, and stress, I was ready to get this fight over and done with. Let him tell him how stupid and careless I’d been and how it was all my fault so I could move on.

  “I know,” Raff said, surprising me. He dropped his arms. “But I don’t understand what you thought that witch in the Underground could tell us. We know it’s just poison.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know anymore. I just thought it would be good to have a sample tested. I don’t know why. In retrospect, it was stupid. I am stupid.”

  “You’re not stupid, Charlie,” Raff said.

  I blinked. That… was not what I’d expected.

  “You’re determined and clever, and when you set your mind on something, you make it happen, almost like magic. It’s pretty impressive.” Raff ran his fingers through his hair. “But you also want easy answers. And sometimes, there aren’t any.”

  The words felt like a mild punch to the gut. “I know that. I wasn’t expecting…”

  “Did you plan to drink the poison?” Raff asked, his expression so totally serious that it caught me off guard, along with his ridiculous question.

  “Of course not,” I said as emphatically as I could. “I don’t want to die.”

  Raff let out a breath and actually looked relieved.

  I was floored. “You really thought I might?”

  Raff shrugged, but there was nothing casual about the gesture. Tension filled his shoulders.

  “When I heard you’d taken one of the jars…”

  “Raff, I would never, ever drink poison on purpose, I promise. I may not always love being a werewolf, but I’m not that desperate to stop being one. In fact, lately I’ve sort of even almost kind of enjoyed it.”

  Raff smiled very tightly, like it was effort to do it. “Really?”

  “Yeah. I mean, it’s not all great, but there are some perks.”

  He huffed out a breath and his muscles relaxed. “You know, you really had me worried there for a minute.”

  “I didn’t mean to.” I stepped toward him, almost without even thinking. “And I’m so, so sorry about Jean. I know it’s my fault and I can never make it up to you or Sasha or Zara or anyone else.”

  Raff stepped closer to me, too, and then we were only a foot or so apart. “It’s not your fault. Marianne was unhinged. She might have come around eventually, given enough time, but she was like her brother: full of hate and determined to hurt as many people as she could. She’d probably been plotting since she arrived at the orchard. She would have a found way.”

  “I didn’t have to make it easy for her,” I said.

  “No—”

  The kitchen window exploded. Raff grabbed me and pushed me to the floor. Bullets rained in through the broken glass. After a moment, the hailstorm stopped. Raff was on top of me, pinning me down, his face just inches from mine.

  “I guess they followed us, after all,” I said, heart pounding for two very different reasons as I looked into Raff’s handsome face.

  His breath was hot against my cheeks as he whispered, “I knew that was too easy.”

  The acrid smell of something burning hit us at the same time. Smoke mixed with lighter fluid. I saw his eyes widen in comprehension. He rolled off of me and told me to keep low. Raff duck-walked to the kitchen sink and opened the cabinet beneath it, where he kept a fire extinguisher in case of kitchen emergencies. With it, he crawled to the back door. Smoke was now coming through the broken window, but I couldn’t see any flames.

  “Wait,” I whispered.

  I got to my knees, doing my best to avoid shards of broken glass, and crawled to the living room. The blinds were blessedly closed, but I kept low because I didn’t want the hunters to see shadows and open fire.

  I grabbed the rifle from where I’d left it near the front door and crawled back to the kitchen. The smoke had gotten thicker, and I could no longer tell if it was only coming through the window or if the house was well and truly on fire.

  Raff met my eyes. His blue eyes were gorgeous but filled with fear. I’d seen him scared a number of times, but now his expression was sheer terror.

  “I don’t know how many of them are out there,” he said, as if in answer my unasked question. “It might be too many for us to take.”

  My pulse raced, and my stomach roiled. I refused to die like this, chased down by hunters who’d already taken so much.

  “If they’re cowardly enough to set the house on fire, there are probably only a couple of them,” I said.

  It was wishful thinking, but at that point, I’d wish for every advantage I could.

  “Hey, if something happens, I just want you to know that…” Raff swallowed, as if unable to finish the sentence.

  “Know what?” I pressed, scared he was going to declare his love.

  I wasn’t sure how to handle that, since I’d been so determined not to date a werewolf. Which, now that we were in a burning building with hunters outside, started to feel a little silly.

  “You mean a lot to me, Charlie,” Raff said. “As a friend and as a pack mate.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  Not exactly the heartfelt declaration of love I’d been expecting. I wanted him to say so much more, but I was being absurd. I’d made it very clear I didn’t want to date a werewolf and even told
him he wasn’t my type. Those words haunted me now, and I wished I’d kept my big mouth shut, but it was too late to fix it.

  All I could do was answer in kind: “You mean a lot to me, too.”

  He smiled and opened his mouth, like he was going to say something else, and my heart squeezed. But then he turned to the door, tested the knob to make sure it wasn’t hot, and shot me a look that seemed to ask if I was ready. I wasn’t, but I nodded.

  He pulled the door open and rose to his feet. Flames were licking up the side of the house near the kitchen window, plainly visible now from outside. Since no one opened fire, Raff began to spray the flames with the extinguisher while I held the rifle out, keeping watch.

  Footsteps rounded the side of the house. While Raff emptied the fire extinguisher at the base of the fire, I steadied the gun in my hands. It was big and unwieldy, not like the pistol I’d used against the hunters last time.

  The smell hit me like a punch to the nose. It was so familiar that it made my insides curdle: a strange mix of musk, sweat, and gunpowder that I’d definitely smelled before. Then Doug, the hunter I’d shot in the leg, came limping around the corner.

  Chapter 23

  Doug startled when he saw me and the rifle (mostly the rifle, the stupid coward) and he fumbled to aim his gun at me, dropping the gas can he’d been carrying. The tip of my rifle was aimed firmly at his chest.

  The bright porch light illuminated the yard. Doug’s cheeks burned red, maybe from the cold, or maybe the idiot was embarrassed. I wouldn’t have been surprised. He wore a camouflage jacket and jeans and had maybe a day’s worth of stubble around his chin. His brown hair was greasy, but otherwise, he seemed to be in good shape. His limp was the only indication he’d been shot and basically left for dead a month before.

  Given that he’d fired a shot into the house and then set it on fire, I wasn’t feeling a whole lot of sympathy for him. Doug’s eyes widened, and after a second’s hesitation, he aimed his gun at Raff instead of me.

  “You even think about shooting and I’ll fill your boyfriend full of silver.”

  I swallowed, the smell of silver assaulting my nostrils at the mere mention of it. Raff had emptied the extinguisher, and now was facing Doug.