by Vaughn, V.
“I like it,” she said politely. “It’s a nice place.”
He gave her a wry look. He didn’t want platitudes—not from anyone, and particularly not from her. “It isn’t a nice place,” he replied. “Freemont isn’t a nice place. You should let some other town call you.”
She blinked, and he realized he had hurt her feelings. Nice going, Alec. You have a way with women. “I’m not leaving,” she said, her voice defensive. “Not now.”
He shook his head, but he tightened the nuts on the new tire and reached for the hubcap.
“Are you this nice to everyone who comes to town?” she asked.
“I’m just trying to give you some advice, that’s all.” He finished the tire and stood. “That’s done.”
“I can pay you.” She looked up at him from her seat on the crate. A few wisps of dark hair trailed out of her ponytail, damp against her skin. “I have a credit card, but the limit—”
“I’ll tell you what,” he cut her off. “I’ll come to Starsky’s sometime, and you buy me a beer. And I’ll consider it paid.”
He’d meant it as a peace offering, to make up for his rudeness, but as the words came out he realized they sounded like a come-on. Like he was asking her on a date. He took a step back, away from her, as her eyes flashed with something he couldn’t read. Anger, maybe, or disgust. She pushed off the crate and stood, grabbing for her rain coat. “No,” she said. “I’ll pay you. As soon as I have the money. I’ll pay.”
Alec scrubbed a hand over his face, feeling the rough scratch of his beard. He truly was an animal, unfit for human interaction. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said. “I don’t always say things right.”
She had shrugged her coat on, but she stopped and looked at him for a long minute, her gaze unreadable. Hell, to Alec all women were unreadable. He never got close enough to any of them to have time to figure them out. He couldn’t; it was too risky.
“Thanks for the help, Alec,” Raine said, picking up her keys and circling to the driver’s door. “I’ll see you around.”
“I hope not,” he said.
She turned to him, a hand on the door handle, her ponytail swinging. “You are a piece of work, you know that?”
She was mad at him again, but it didn’t matter. Panic rose up in his throat, sudden and strong, and he swallowed it, unaccustomed to the feel of it. “You should leave Freemont,” he told her. “I mean it. You should go as soon as you can.”
“Oh, really?” she tossed back at him. “What about my job? What about my place?”
He thought of what was out there in the woods, or what would be in a few days when the moon was full, and he felt like grabbing her, shaking her. He clenched his hands into fists to stop himself. “It isn’t safe for you here,” he managed. “Trust me.”
“I’ll be back when I have your money,” she said, her jaw tight. “Bye, Alec Zachary.” She swung into the truck, slammed the door, and drove off, heading up Main Street toward the two-lane highway that left town.
And Alec stood watching her, helpless, wishing he’d said something different, hoping against hope that his instincts were wrong and she wasn’t in danger, hoping to hell she wouldn’t find out the truth when the moon turned full.
Chapter 4
This isn’t a nice place. Raine heard the voice in her head as she drove, her wipers slashing furiously at the rain. And then: You should go as soon as you can.
Alec Zachary. Big, scruffy, gorgeous Alec Zachary. He’d looked at her like he wanted to pin her down, like he wanted to eat her alive. And then he’d told her to go away and get out of town.
Raine bit her lip in frustration. She had a terrible track record with men. She always picked guys with baggage, guys who talked a good game but treated her like dirt. Tom, her last ex in Seattle, who had actually scared her, was just the lowest point in a history of low points. Going by her history, Alec Zachary was probably just the same.
The fact that just the sight of him turned her on was probably a really, really bad sign.
She gripped the wheel as she drove over a rut, looking for the turnoff to her driveway. Her logical brain told her that Alec didn’t talk like her other boyfriends had talked—paying her compliments, trying to impress her. He’d been awkward, as if words didn’t come easy to him. But it was her body that was shouting the loudest, the blood singing in her veins. She could be logical all she wanted, but the fact was that she’d watched him twist the wrench as if it was nothing, the muscles in his arms like steel, his hands big and competent and a little dirty, and she’d imagined touching him. She’d sat there and pictured what he’d taste like, what he’d smell like, pictured those big hands unbuttoning her jeans and sliding down the front of them, his beard rough on her neck, his fingers touching her—
Stop it, Raine.
She was building a new life here, a new future. She couldn’t afford to lose it over yet another deadbeat guy. She had to keep control.
She drove carefully up her driveway, trying not to spin her wheels in the mud. She’d go inside, into her home, just as she’d planned. She’d heat a can of soup and read a book for a little while and go to bed. She’d get some rest and settle in before she had to start work tomorrow. Alec Zachary did not fit into that picture.
Except for the way he’d looked at her, that first moment when he’d come back with the tire. Even before she’d looked up at him, she’d been able to feel his gaze like a hot touch, between her shoulder blades and down her back, down the throat of her shirt and between her breasts. And for a second, it had felt good. Incredibly, intensely good. No other man had made her feel good like that, just by looking at her.
She parked the truck and ran through the rain to her front door. Alec Zachary might be hot—really hot—but there was something closed off about him. He kept himself to himself and didn’t let anyone in. Raine recognized it, because it was the way she lived, too. You keep the walls up, and you don’t let anyone inside. She did it because it was safer that way. Why Alec did it, she didn’t know. Maybe he had secrets. She had enough of her own problems; she didn’t need to deal with a guy who had secrets on top of everything else.
So that was that. She’d made a decision, and she had to put Alec Zachary out of her mind. She tidied her new house for a while, rearranging her few things and thinking. She’d have to pay him for the tire—she hadn’t forgotten about that. It had startled her at first, when he’d told her to buy him a beer as payment. The words had sounded like a line, and she’d reacted, too surprised to think. But now she knew that he hadn’t meant it that way. He hadn’t been asking her out, though the look in his eyes had said something different.
As soon as she had some money she’d pay him, which meant seeing him again. Which meant she wasn’t leaving, despite his advice. Freemont was quiet and rainy and not very prosperous, but the fact was it did call her somehow. She felt better here than she had in a long time, as if she’d arrived somewhere she knew she belonged. The thought of leaving, of moving somewhere else, bothered her now. She wanted to stay put.
You should go as soon as you can.
Alec Zachary had almost looked afraid when he said the words.
Raine grabbed a book, curled up on her single bed under her thin blanket, and read herself to sleep.
* * *
The lights were on at Brandon’s place when Alec pulled up in the driveway. The garage door was open, and Alec could see Brandon’s old station wagon parked inside. It was the only vehicle here.
He turned the car off and sat in the front seat, listening to the rain pound on his roof. So the others weren’t here yet. Four days to the full moon, and none of them were here. Only Brandon was here, and that was because he owned this house and lived in it.
Some leader you are, Alec.
He shut the voice up. There was no way to control the pack, he knew that. It was the way it worked. Still, as Alpha he had the feeling he was supposed to be the sort of person that drew everyone in, made everyone stick t
ogether, inspired some kind of loyalty. But anyone who knew Flynn, Merrick, Helsing, and Carter knew that they didn’t answer to anyone, particularly him. They answered only to their own call, the instincts that drove all of them.
And then there was Ethan.
The thought of Ethan made Alec feel panicked, as if he was missing something. Ethan had been missing for nineteen days now, since just after the last full moon. The pack might not always get along, but they could always sense each other somewhere in the backs of their minds, as if faintly connected. But Ethan had vanished, and none of them could sense him anymore. If he was dead, the rest of them should feel it. If he was alive, they should feel that too. But no one felt Ethan at all, as if he’d disappeared from existence. Nothing like it had ever happened in the history of the pack.
Alec felt like something important was right in front of his face, and he wasn’t seeing it. He had a tense feeling up the back of his spine, like he’d had when he’d warned Raine Greer to get out of town. Like there was something bad coming and he needed to stop it.
There was something bad coming—the full moon. His senses always heightened in the days beforehand, his hearing sharper, his sense of smell a few notches too high. But this was different. He thought about that old song about the bad moon rising, and right now that song seemed like the story of his life. There was trouble coming, rolling in like rain clouds.
He ran a hand quickly through his hair and pushed open his door, trotting through the downpour to the front door of Brandon’s house. He didn’t bother to knock.
Brandon lived outside of town, on the edge of the woods, in a big old Victorian house with a wraparound porch. It looked like something a rich person would buy, until you noticed the peeling paint and the missing shingles, the weeds in the yard and the missing boards in the porch. Brandon lived alone, and he wasn’t much for upkeep.
Alec let the door bang shut behind him and stood in the dim front hall. He didn’t need to call out; a few seconds later, Brandon himself stomped up the stairs from the basement and came out the basement door. He looked Alec up and down, taking him in.
“You’re late,” he said.
“I’m not,” Alec replied. “We’re still four days out. It’s the others that are late.”
Brandon grunted. “You used to come earlier. All of you.” He turned away and headed back toward the kitchen.
Alec followed. Brandon looked about fifty, though Alec knew he was in fact much older. Werewolves aged much slower than humans did. Brandon wore his light brown hair in the same short ponytail he’d worn for the lifetime Alec had known him. He also wore a heavy old sweater, that probably smelled atrocious if you got too close, and rubber rain boots.
“Why are you wearing rain boots in the basement?” Alec said to Brandon’s back.
Brandon grunted again. “It’s just a little water, not much. It’ll go down when the rain stops.” He entered the kitchen, opened the fridge, and pulled out a bottle of beer.
“This is Washington state,” Alec pointed out. “The rain never stops.”
“Smartass.” Brandon pulled out a second beer and handed it to him. The kitchen was in tune with the rest of the house: yellowed linoleum, peeling at the edges, kitchen counters fresh from the 1970’s, appliances so old they probably had dangerous wiring. Both men wore their wet shoes in the house, since there was no woman living here to tell them to take them off. There never had been a woman here, which explained the lack of edible food and the general odor of the place.
“Four days to the full moon, and the pack’s Alpha finally shows up,” Brandon said, taking a swig of his beer and watching Alec. “Times are changing.”
“It isn’t my idea,” Alec said. He felt stung. He didn’t much like the reminder that the pack was falling apart. “I phoned all of the others. None of them answered.”
“They should be here,” Brandon insisted. “It isn’t just some stupid tradition that we follow for no reason. Everyone gathers five days before the full moon because it’s the only way to stay safe.”
“You think I don’t know?” Alec said. Brandon was right; at five days to the full moon, each member of the pack would start to feel the pull, the sharpening of the senses, the dangerous edge of loss of control that could make their moods and their behavior erratic. In the past, there had been cases of pack members doing damage during the sensitive pre-moon phase, getting into senseless arguments with humans. Hurting people. Only gathered as a group could they keep each other under control; when a pack member was in his group during this phase, he became calmer, less volatile. The gathering five days out was a good idea, put in place decades ago for good reason.
But the pack had started gathering later and later, and nothing Alec did made any difference.
“They’ll come,” Alec said. “Maybe not five days out. But they’ll come.”
“You sound like you’re reassuring yourself,” Brandon said, swigging his beer.
“You sound like a therapist,” Alec shot back.
Brandon gave a low chuckle at that, acknowledging the hit. “Fine. If I’m a therapist, why don’t you tell me what’s really put that stick up your ass tonight? Something’s obviously bothering you.”
Alec drank some of his beer. He hesitated, until he remembered that Brandon was the one he told everything to, even the strange things. Brandon was rough, but he always understood. “You ever heard of a girl called Raine Greer?” he asked.
“Nope. Should I?”
“She just moved into town today.”
“Moved into Freemont?” Brandon said. “She strange in the head or something?”
“That’s what I wondered.” Again Alec hesitated. “She came to the gas station, needed help with her tire. She told me she came here because she felt it called to her.”
For a second Brandon looked surprised, but then he shrugged. “It’s a figure of speech. A lot of people use it.”
“They don’t use it about this place,” Alec said. “Besides, something just felt strange when I talked to her. I can’t put my finger on it.”
“She pretty?” Brandon asked.
Alec drank his beer and said nothing.
“Then that’s why you feel strange,” Brandon said as if Alec had spoken. Humor tinged his voice. “You don’t talk to a whole lot of pretty women, to put it mildly.”
“It isn’t that,” Alec said, then backtracked. “Well, it is. But it’s something else, too. My instincts picked up on it, and they won’t let go.”
“Picked up on what?”
“Danger.” It sounded strange to say the word out loud like that, but at the same time it was a relief. “I think she’s in danger. The feeling was really strong.”
“Well, now, that’s two problems,” Brandon pointed out, after tossing his empty bottle on top of all the others and pulling a second beer from the fridge. “First of all, the fact that she said she was called here just means she has terrible taste in towns. She can’t be one of us, though I wish to God that weren’t true. I’d like nothing more than to have a woman in the pack.”
“So you can try to bully her into cleaning this place?” Alec said.
Brandon rolled his eyes. “Ha ha. I mean sex. Lots and lots of it, if possible. Or do you have any idea what I’m talking about?”
Alec put down his empty bottle. “I have a vague idea.” Though he hadn’t done the actual act in—God, he didn’t even want to think about it. Just thinking the word sex made Raine Greer’s face flash through his mind, the dip of her skin in the vee of her shirt. He dropped his gaze and leaned against the kitchen doorway, his arms crossed over his chest.
“I’m glad,” Brandon said. “I’ve had a whole lot more of it than you have, and I miss it like hell. I had some adventures in the late sixties that would turn your hair white, I can tell you.”
“Please don’t.”
“Suit yourself. My only point is that she can’t possibly be one of us, so your first problem isn’t a problem at all. But your second problem
might have some legs to it.”
“I felt it,” Alec said again. “She’s in danger.”
Brandon casually scratched his armpit through the wool of his sweater, thinking. “She just might be, at that. Did you happen to ask her where she lives?”
“No.” Though now he wondered.
“Well, if she lives anywhere near the woods, and she’s new in town, then she could be in some trouble four days from now.”
Alec felt his blood chill as he remembered. “Old man Petley’s place.”
Brandon nodded; he’d already thought of it, of course. “That old coot never bothered us, but I heard he moved to an old folks’ home and his son was trying to sell the place.” He shrugged. “I thought we were safe, because this is Freemont and no one would want to buy that old shack in the middle of nowhere. We’re hardly in the middle of a real estate gold rush. But your girl could have bought the place and moved in.”
She’s not my girl, Alec nearly protested, but there was no point. Brandon was just trying to needle him. It went without saying that Raine was not his girl; that no girl was his girl. A man who spent the days around every full moon in the state that a werewolf did would have a hard time hiding his true nature from a girlfriend. For secrecy’s sake, it was just better not to get involved. “I need to find some way to warn her,” he said.
“Right,” Brandon said. “Any ideas on how to tell my new neighbor that the woods behind her house are about to be filled with deadly wolves that are top secret and are not supposed to exist?”
“We don’t attack people,” Alec said. “You know that. Not even during the full moon.”
“Doesn’t mean she can’t wander the woods at the wrong time and see something she shouldn’t. We almost had it happen last time, remember? Tourists, of all things. Any human in the wrong place at the wrong time is going to have the skin scared off her, and the next thing you know, word is all over the place. We’ve kept secret for centuries now, but it’s getting harder in the age of Internet and TV.”