Forever Werewolf: Forever WerewolfMoon Kissed (Harlequin Nocturne)

by Michele Hauf

  “You think? That means he didn’t say goodbye to you?”

  He had said goodbye. In a manner. He’d forced her to see him, the true monster he had become. A monster that had come upon him without warning.

  Because of her blood.

  Sitting on the windowsill, Lexi tugged up her legs and nestled her chin on her knees. Had she truly been the catalyst to releasing the hidden vampire within Trystan Hawkes? If so, she’d never forgive herself for that. But if not her, perhaps it would have been someone else. They would never know. And yet, he had released her trapped werewolf, and that was something she would be thankful for always.

  “I love him,” she said, and searched her sister’s eyes. Blue. They were alike now.

  And Lexi had never felt more different. So set aside from the pack and her family, all that she had established about her as safety and home. She wanted to break free, as had her werewolf. But she could not—did not want to—do it without Tryst by her side.

  Lana joined her on the windowsill and pulled her into an embrace. For Lana to offer encouragement meant their worlds had turned a one-eighty. She needed comfort as desperately as did Lexi.

  “I’m sorry about Sven,” Lexi managed.

  “You shouldn’t be. He’s an asshole.”

  The two laughed a bit, then, embracing, allowed their laughter to become tears.

  By morning, the sisters woke to their father’s smiling face. Edmonton Connor reached out for his daughters and they joined him on the bed.

  “How do you feel?” Lana brushed her father’s hair from his cheek and gave him a kiss.

  “Much better. The best I’ve felt in days. I do believe Natalie’s wicked potion is working. Who would have thought the witch doctor would come up with an antidote before the licensed doctor?”

  “Dr. LeTreq assisted Natalie,” Lexi said. “They’re working together to insure you get the best care.”

  “What’s been going on around here?” Edmonton asked. “I thought I heard howls last night.”

  “Sven’s been taken to the dungeon,” Lexi provided. “He’s been poisoning you with small doses of silver, Father.”

  He gave his daughters a pleading look.

  Lana nodded. “It’s true. I found the vial of silver in his room. Forgive me, Daddy, I didn’t know.”

  He cradled her head against his chest, stroking her hair. “I’m just glad you figured things out. This past moon was the first I haven’t shifted in decades. It was the worst feeling. I…now I know how you must feel, Alexis. I’m so sorry.”

  His pity felt wrong and misplaced. She couldn’t not share her good news with him. Be damned that it had been because of an unaligned wolf. From this moment forward she would put out all her energy into the world, and hope it served others as well as it had served her.

  Lifting her head, she looked into her father’s eyes, and a smile was irrepressible. “I’ve shifted, Father. And I can’t lie to you. It was Tryst. We made love, and the shift came upon me.”

  “Well. I really have missed a lot.” Edmonton stared into her eyes, tilting his head in wonder. “My daughter has finally shifted. You feel…okay? Had no problems?”

  “I’ve never felt so good in my life. I’ve shifted to both wolf and werewolf shapes since it happened. Please, don’t be angry with me.”

  “Angry?”

  “Because it happened with Tryst.”

  “Ah. Well.” He sighed and clasped her hand, and pulled Lana in closer. “We’ve much to catch up on, we three. And much to discuss, it seems. But first, I’m a bit peckish this morning.”

  He’d accepted her confession with much more calm that she had expected.

  “I’ll go make you some eggs,” Lexi offered. “And I should call Tryst’s father,” she suddenly said, and tugged out her cell phone.

  “Why call Rhys Hawkes?”

  “He needs to know you’re getting better, and…” She wanted to tell him about Trystan’s discovery that he was half vampire. Surely, he should know what his son was going through right now. “I’ll be right back.”

  * * *

  Tryst had snuck into Wulfsiege while the sun still hid behind the tree line. After shifting to were shape, he had no clothes, and he didn’t like the idea of breaking into someone’s house in the nearby village to steal clothes just because he wanted to avoid looking into her eyes again.

  He couldn’t do that to her, or himself. He had to see Lexi one last time.

  He had no idea how to tell her goodbye. He didn’t want to say goodbye. He wanted to say Hello, I love you, stay by my side forever. But he didn’t belong at Wulfsiege as much as she didn’t belong in Paris, living with a werewolf who didn’t know what he was anymore.

  Hell, he knew what he was. An outsider.

  Sorting out this whole vampire thing was foremost. But where to begin? Shame curved his shoulders down. He’d become some kind of monster that was werewolf and yet he had craved the blood from Lexi’s attackers last night and had eagerly ripped into one wolf’s throat, drinking down his blood because it had tasted good. How sick was that?

  Werewolves did not drink blood for survival. Tryst wasn’t sure if he needed blood now, but he was offended to know he liked the taste of it. Hell, he was treading crazy to even think about liking the taste.

  “Don’t think about it,” he muttered. “You know real crazy, and you’re not it. Yet.”

  Thoughts of his mother shamed him even more. She hadn’t asked for her madness. She was not crazy, but suffered from a brutal injustice that had injured her very sanity.

  He hadn’t been served an injustice but, rather, was being forced to face something that had always been part of him. Had it? Had vampirism flowed through his veins since birth? It made logical sense. His mother was vampire, and his father one by half. The default for his makeup should include a hunger for blood. Yet, he’d denied it all his life, and his parents had played into that denial.

  A knock at the door lifted his head. It was her; he scented the cinnamon that lingered about her as if perfume. Too soon. He needed more time to work up a goodbye story. An I love you so I need to hurt you by leaving excuse.

  “Tryst? Is that you in there?”

  He mumbled, “Uh-huh.”

  “There’s a visitor here to see you.”

  Visitor? Only one he could think of who might care to have a civil conversation with him was Liam, and that wolf would have knocked himself and come in.

  The door opened and in walked Lexi. Dressed in dark gray, she exuded a still menace that disturbed him. She kept her eyes from fixing to his. Her dark hair spilled over her shoulders and she was not wearing her sunglasses. Never again would she have to hide.

  So pretty. He’d bitten her. Hurt her.

  And he could—hell, was that her heartbeat he heard? And what was that tempting smell. It wasn’t— No. Don’t think it.

  She was followed into the room by Vaillant, his half brother.

  “Bro,” Vail said, giving him a mock two-fingered salute.

  Right now, Tryst’s heart ached to draw Lexi against him, but seeing his brother here—the last creature on this earth he’d expect to see at Wulfsiege—he wasn’t sure what was up.

  Lean and long, the vampire was dressed all in black. Platinum and ruby rings glinted on his fingers, and silver studs riveted along the sides of his pants. “Heard you were having a bit of trouble up here, so I thought I’d stop by.”

  Tryst looked to Lexi, who offered a sheepish shrug. “I don’t want you to leave Wulfsiege, like I know you’re planning. I was desperate, so I called the one person I thought you really needed to talk to right now. Well, I called your father, but your brother showed up instead. I’ll be in my room.”

  She closed the door behind her, and before Tryst could rush after her, Vail whistled and said, “She’s one hot number.”

  Tryst sat on the bed and blew out a sigh, too troubled by life to bother with shoving his brother for the rude comment about his woman. Because she wasn’t h
is woman anymore. Couldn’t be. Now that Lexi had become a shiftable werewolf, she could never love a half-breed. It made little sense if she wished to have a family—a normal family.

  Normal. What a crock. He’d been a fool to believe he was a normal werewolf. Look at his family.

  Vail strode about the room, touching the table lamp made from a hunk of carved oak and the plaid lampshade. He tilted his head back, inspecting the overhead light fixture. “Seriously? Is that made from some kind of animal horn?”

  “Elk,” Tryst said of the chandelier his brother looked over with disgust. A half-dozen antler racks had been tied together with wire to form the awful thing. “Can’t believe you came all the way up here.”

  “Alexis was very convincing when she spoke to Rhys. And, the news that my werewolf brother is suddenly drinking blood was too intriguing to ignore.”

  “She told Rhys that? Hell.” Tryst put back his head and shook it.

  “So, is it true? You finally come over to the dark side and join me and your dad?”

  “Hell, Vail, don’t do this.” Tryst jumped up and paced before the bed. His muscles yet ached from the beating he’d taken yesterday. For some reason, when he’d shifted to werewolf, he felt…stronger, and more powerful, yet even sorer this morning. “I’ve lived my whole life thinking I was a werewolf.”

  “And spent the past year beating on me because I’m a longtooth.”

  “Sorry.” The first time he’d met his half brother, Tryst had shoved him against the wall and spit the cruel moniker at him. “We both know those punches were love taps.”

  “Uh-huh. Whatever you say, bro.”

  “We’ve the same mother. I love you, Vail. I have nothing against vampires. I just—”

  “Don’t want to be one yourself. I imagine it’s quite the shocker. You’ve spent your childhood running away from mom when she came at you with fangs. Your dad’s vampire is the nastiest thing this side of the Bay of Biscay. You’ve never been in a pack, and don’t know how pack werewolves live. So, you’re really sucking the red, red wine now? What happened?”

  Rubbing the back of his neck, Tryst didn’t want to get into this. And he did. Lexi had been wise to alert his family. He needed to talk, to figure this out. God, she was so good for him.

  “I found Lexi buried in the snow after another avalanche hit. She was bleeding profusely. As I was digging her out, her blood got in my mouth, and the next thing I know…”

  “Tastes damn good, doesn’t it?” Vail’s grin wasn’t creepy, but right now it was the last thing Tryst wanted to associate with drinking blood—a smile.

  Tryst nodded, and wanted to tear out his duplicitous heart for that small agreement. “One thing I do know—werewolves aren’t supposed to drink blood. It’s unnatural.”

  “Uncle Rhys drinks blood.”

  “But he’s different. He’s like two breeds in one body that struggle against one another constantly.”

  “Thanks to the faeries. Damned faeries.” Vail had a distinct relationship with the sidhe, and it could never be called good, or even amicable.

  “I know I’m wolf,” Tryst said. “I’ve never had that struggle like my father. Hell, I’ve been in plenty of fights that resulted in blood getting spattered about. I’ve never had the urge to drink blood until…her. It’s like Lexi woke up the vampire inside me. Because, just now when she stood in the doorway? I heard her heart beat and I had this craving for— Hell. I can’t do this, Vail. It’s not natural. I hate that your breed has to depend on mortals for your survival. That you steal their life from them!”

  Vail joined Tryst at his side and punched him in the biceps. Hard. “You’re an asshole.”

  “And you’re a longtooth,” Tryst said, but he meant it in the teasing spirit the two had developed over the past year that they’d been getting to know each other.

  Two days after their births, Vail had been taken from the cradle by a faery in payment for Rhys’s blood debt. Rhys had made a deal with a faery centuries earlier to contain his werewolf’s blood hunger, in exchange for his firstborn. Rhys and Viviane had not known at the time that Constantine de Salignac, a vicious vampire who had raped Viviane in the eighteenth century, had fathered Vail; they’d simply thought of him as their son, like Trystan. Viviane had actually been pregnant for over two centuries, her body in stasis while she’d been imprisoned in a glass coffin beneath Paris by Constantine in retaliation against his brother, Rhys. The story of Tryst and Vail’s birth two centuries later was remarkable.

  Vail had only returned to the mortal realm last year on a revenge quest against Constantine. Tryst had met him for the first time in his father’s office at Hawkes Associates, and had instantly disliked him, not because he was a vampire, but because he had a cocky air about him.

  In truth? At the time, Tryst had blamed Vail for making their mother insane. It was the first time in over two decades he’d been given a scapegoat, something tangible on which to blame his fears and troubled upbringing—the vampire. Which he knew now had not been Vail’s fault, but at the time it had been a means for Tryst to take out his anger over the fact that his mother was insane.

  Over the past year they’d mended wounds neither had even acknowledged, and now Tryst loved Vail as the brother he was.

  That still didn’t mean he approved the method vampires needed to survive.

  “So what kind of trouble have you been raising down here in the frozen tundra?” Vail asked. “You know it’s nearing spring in Paris. I didn’t think snow was allowed to fall this time of year. Bet you got the snowboard out.”

  Tryst chucked softly. He’d tried to teach Vail to balance on a skateboard on the driveway of his father’s home but that had ended disastrously. Vail preferred fast, expensive cars. One of these days the vampire should consider taking a driving lesson.

  “I delivered a package to the pack principal, then all hell broke loose. Two avalanches in a week, and Lexi finally shifting for the first time, and now me going longtooth.”

  “Shifting for the first time? The woman who showed me to your room? That sounds interesting.”

  “Yes, she’d never shifted at puberty.”

  “I think Lyric would like her. You know Lyric is pregnant?”

  Lyric was Vail’s vampire wife. They’d married a month after Vail had returned to the mortal realm. They were good for one another.

  “Congratulations, brother. Let’s hope the kid doesn’t look like you.”

  “Hey now, I’m a handsome guy.”

  “Yeah, but lose the black, man.”

  “It’s my tribute to Johnny Cash. And I told you Faery was a wild riot of color. It’ll take me a while to get over the memory. So about this first shift…? Are you and she getting it on? Because she is sexy as hell, and if you’re not, then something more serious than a little vampirism is wrong with you, bro.”

  “We’ve…come together. She had never shifted until, well, until we had sex.”

  “Ah. So you were like the switch that turned her on. My little brother has it in spades!”

  “You could say that.” Tryst allowed a moment of pride to lift his shoulders, but he wasn’t so cocky to believe it anymore. “Her father, the pack principal, won’t let us be together.”

  “Why not? I thought he and Rhys were friends?”

  “They have a mutual business friendship, but I don’t think Edmonton Connor has ever actually shaken hands with my half-breed father.”

  “Ah. I get it. Packs are pretty exclusive, or so I’ve heard.”

  “Principal Connor cannot conceive of allowing a nonpack wolf to hook up with his daughter. And my mixed heritage doesn’t help, either. When he learns it’s confirmed I have vampire in me? I’ll be chained up in the dungeon again, which is why I’m heading out of here.”

  “They have an actual dungeon? You picked the strangest place for a vacation.”

  Tryst smirked at his brother’s attempt to lighten the mood. It was helping. If the situation had been different and he were mer
ely vacationing in the Alps, he’d drag Vail out to the slopes and teach him to shred.

  “So take sexy Lexi back to Paris with you,” Vail suggested. “Does she love you?”

  “Yes. I don’t know. Since I discovered my blood hunger, we haven’t talked. She couldn’t even look at me when she brought you in. I can’t look at her. But I heard her heartbeats, Vail. Am I going to want to drink her blood? How often? If I bite her, she’ll develop a blood hunger, too. I could never do that to her.”

  “Yeah, that’s a bitch. You bite a werewolf, they develop a nasty blood hunger. But wait. You could cut her. That would work. I think. It’s the saliva in your bite that introduces the vampire’s taint. And I suspect you, being only part vamp, might only need blood about once a month, and maybe you’ve not a strong enough taint to actually give someone your hunger, but I’ll have to look into that one for you.”

  “Damn.” Tryst flopped back across the bed. “I don’t want this.”

  “But you got it. So deal with it. Consider it a bonus gift.”

  “I’ve never been keen on gifts. I’d rather spend time with my family.”

  “Yes, yes, cry me a river. If you start pouting I’m going to have to kick your ass.”

  “I can beat you with both arms tied behind my back.”

  “I know, but I think you’ve lost your mojo, bro. Look at those bruises on your face. They should have healed by now.”

  “You haven’t been witness to the beatings I’ve taken this week. Pack wolves do not like omega wolves. I’m just happy to be standing and have all my body parts still attached. Do you know when I shift now, I get these crazy long fangs, like yours, only longer like a wolf’s?”

  “Is Rhys like that when he shifts?”

  “I don’t recall. I’ve never seen his werewolf much. He keeps it under tight control.”

  “Because when his vampire mind rules it likes to make his werewolf drink blood.” Vail shook his head. “I understand the hunger is not like it is for me with you guys. What Rhys feels is an abominable thing. But it should be different with you. Not so compelling, maybe?”