Electric Moon

by Stacey Brutger

  “This is your vacation. The time you use to get away from—”

  If possible, his shoulders hunched further. “Do you think I have a harem waiting for me?” His harsh laugh bit at her ears, and he turned toward her. “My vacation consists of me traveling to a remote cabin in the middle of nowhere where I change into my wolf.”

  Raven blinked in astonishment. “For the full five days? Isn’t that dangerous?”

  His tanned complexion didn’t hide the dark circles under his eyes of too many restless nights. His fists turned white on the door handle, his green eyes brimming with self-loathing.

  This man prided himself on his control. It must drive him insane to be so close to the edge during the full moon that he was forced to concede control and escape into his wolf.

  No thinking.

  No feeling.

  No having to trust anyone else.

  “Dominic—”

  “That man didn’t come here for help, and I’ll be damned if I leave you alone with him.”

  Chapter Two

  SEVEN DAYS UNTIL THE FULL MOON: SUNRISE

  Raven dodged the fist flying toward her face, the speed so incredible, she couldn’t escape completely, and took the glancing blow to her upper shoulder that nearly knocked her flat. The hit numbed the right side of her body, similar to slamming into a wall at thirty miles an hour without the benefit of a car.

  “Slow.”

  She grunted at London’s grumbled reprimand, having no air to do much else. She clenched and unclenched her hands, still not comfortable being without the leather gloves she wore to protect others from an accidental touch of her power. Shifters were programmed for survival. Their fights primal. He wanted her willing and able to use anything at her disposal. The training was to force her instinct to become second nature.

  Attack and win.

  She had no wish to hurt London and refused to call upon anything but her beasts when they sparred. Each blow she received only increased her annoyance. At least she managed to remain upright most of the time now.

  She wanted to blame her irritation on the few hours of sleep she’d managed to eke out, but she wouldn’t lie to herself. She didn’t know what put her on edge more, the house full of strangers or Durant prowling the halls at night after he’d returned from the club.

  When he’d paused outside her door last night, her breath halted in her chest, half-expecting him to enter. Disappointment struck hard when his footsteps continued past her door, revealing just how screwed up her thinking process had become.

  Funny thing to feel lonely with so many people crammed in the house.

  She’d been training for three days. Her body ached, she had bruises on bruises, and no pride left to speak of. Despite all that, she was glad to be fighting, the angst building under her skin needing an outlet that didn’t have anything to do with the moon madness crap.

  They sparred in the entryway, forcing her to learn how to fight in close corners. At least the others had stopped watching them from the balcony. Some had cheered at each small victory. Others had winced in sympathy. The constant rumble of Durant’s tiger was a distraction all on its own, like he would lunge at London if he dared even breathe in her direction.

  The large man who ran security for her dropped, swung his leg out and tried to sweep her legs out from underneath her. Not pulling his punches despite their size difference.

  Swift.

  Determined.

  Deadly.

  With no way to counter, Raven leapt back, surprising herself when she landed lightly on her feet. Using her advantage, she swung out with her own foot. But the big brute had already retreated.

  “Too slow.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Human,” she spit out, panting to catch her breath.

  “Dead if you don’t learn better. Stop thinking. Trust your other senses.”

  Her chest constricted at his words, and she scanned her core. The animals that normally crouched close to the surface when danger threatened were nowhere in evidence. All that answered her call was threads of pure energy, eager to come out and play. She swallowed her unease and forced herself to ask the question.

  “How?”

  “Loosen your hold over them. They're animals. Treat them as such. They’ll become dangerous if you continue to deny them their freedom.”

  Raven instinctively shook her head in denial, sweaty hair sticking to her neck. After three days, her reflexes were already quicker than a normal human. Though that was what London had intended, the subtle change left her shaken.

  Each day, her beasts took over more of her life, consuming what little of her soul that remained. She caught the towel London threw at her head and wiped her face, ignoring the way her muscles quivered.

  “You have the natural instincts. More importantly, you know how to get out of the way. For a human, you’re good.” London lumbered closer on silent feet, surprisingly light despite his bear counterpart, his thick brows drawn down in a straight line. He didn’t bother to towel off his shortly cropped black hair. No need. The big bastard didn’t even break out in a sweat. “But instinct is not enough. Stop thinking human. Until you can harvest your animal, you’re nothing more than dead meat.”

  His words condemned her, but his eyes urged her to push harder. The ringing of the phone interrupted his scrutiny, and frustration bubbled up in her when he strode away. How the hell was she supposed to learn when no one could teach her?

  “For you.” Taggert slipped out of her office, holding a phone in his outstretched hand. Although she rescued him from the slave auction, he technically remained bound under contract until she could officially claim him at the conclave.

  She rubbed her arms as his aura splashed against her body, her skin tightening almost painfully. Snatching up the phone, she backed away as if he were contagious.

  Except distance didn’t help.

  Every nerve in her body was aware of him. She eyed his shaggy, sun-streaked hair and resisted the urge to brush it away from his face. His experience as a slave had jaded him that she sometimes forgot he was close to ten years her junior.

  “Raven.” She spoke into the phone, her clipped tone more abrupt than she’d intended.

  “We have a case.”

  Scotts’ voice rescued her from getting even crankier on everyone’s ass. For a chance at freedom without the scent of shifters driving her batty with the need to touch, murder sounded like heaven.

  “What have you got?”

  “It’s a mess. One of yours. It appears to be a bomb. I need you on this one. Consider this an official request. File the damn papers and get down here.” Those papers were an application to join a national task force for paranormals. Until she filed, she couldn’t officially assist the police as a private consultant as she had in the past, not with the new laws just passed.

  The dial tone answered her before she could put up more of a protest. He sounded frustrated and overworked, much like any cop, except Scotts dealt with all the paranormal dreck that landed on the police’s doorstep that even the paranormals refused to claim as their own.

  It was also their first case on the new squad. They needed to close this one fast.

  She walked in her office and sat. The large desk provided little protection against the future rushing toward her.

  Ignoring the way her fingers persisted in shaking, she grabbed her gloves and busied herself working the leather over her hands. The familiar action did nothing to relax her. “You heard.”

  “Sign these.” Taggert handed her a folder.

  Raven grabbed it automatically. When she saw the application, she hesitated. If she took this final step, there would be no going back. She’d be thrust into the spotlight, her whole life examined. But working with the police to help the paranormals was all she’d ever wanted. All she knew. After all the injustice she’d suffered from both humans and shifters, she never wanted anyone else to feel there was no one out there to help them.

  “If you want to continue to
work with the police, you need to sign the forms.” He didn’t put any emotions in his voice, tidying her desk as if he considered it his new den, taking over the hated paperwork she did for her cases. “Those who voted for you won’t care if you take the job, but they will expect their favors returned whether you are able or not.”

  Stifling a growl of frustration, she flipped through the pages, noting Taggert had dotted every i and crossed every t, everything ever so legal like. No chance later for a loophole to come back and bite her on the ass.

  She watched his hands as he picked up the pen and offered it to her. Those chocolate eyes of his regarded her with complete confidence, never doubting her or her ability to do the right thing.

  The way he’d infiltrated her life scared the crap out of her. If she took one wrong step, they would take him from her. That she bit him, took his blood and claimed him, made little difference until she could prove her alpha status.

  She snatched the blasted pen he held so patiently and scrawled her name on the line, sealing her fate. Tightness gripped her chest at making her position official. She just prayed she hadn’t placed a bigger target on her back.

  Taggert took the pages from her, his hand casually brushing against hers in a way that shifters frequently touched one another. Her heartbeat sped up pathetically at the barely-there brush of skin, and her wolf leapt out of the shadows in her mind so unexpectedly that Raven gasped.

  The wolf was fully-grown, almost completely white except for a few distinguishing marks around the face, back and tail where the tips of her fur were dusted black. Intelligent blue eyes peered back at her.

  Taggert’s eyes went pure yellow in seconds, his wolf rising at the call of hers. And since he couldn’t shift, pulling his wolf so close to the surface had to be extremely painful.

  They both froze.

  Taggert didn’t react overtly. Delicious heat poured off him, all that tempting warmth soaking in her skin. Fur brushed against her mind, and her wolf lifted its head. The smell of woods, Taggert’s scent, lured her closer. Urged her to grab the freedom he offered.

  “Uh...” Very aware of her body and his, the act of pulling her hand away was a physical effort.

  “It’s the call of the moon. As an unmated alpha, you will be hit sooner and harder than the rest of us.” Taggert calmly took the papers and placed them in an envelope, staring at her under his brows. Not a direct challenge, more like he couldn’t take his gaze off her.

  She could see the want in him, feel it tingling against her skin. It was all she could do not to leap across the desk and rub against him as her wolf urged.

  Instead, she gritted her teeth and pushed to her feet. She had to get away from all the shifters that had somehow taken over her house.

  She accepted the envelope, taking care to avoid touching him. Disappointment at her withdrawal didn’t show on his face. It was there in the way his eyes lowered, the subtle stiffening of his body. His silence made her feel petty and frustrated all at once. “I better drop this off.”

  She beat a hasty path to the door, but halted when he breathed her name.

  “It will only get worse. You have to learn how to control your response or you will have every shifter in a mile radius hunting you down to put in their suit.”

  Like the coward she was, Raven slipped out of the room. She leaned against the door and greedily gulped fresh air not tainted with his scent.

  “Where are you running off?”

  Raven nearly squeaked. She turned and pasted a smile on her face. Griffin’s scruffy appearance had a more groomed cast today, but did little to tame the wildness that lingered just under his skin.

  His expression said she didn’t quite succeed in hiding how much even the smallest physical contact had rattled her.

  She couldn’t forget that he was dangerous.

  Always watching.

  She lifted the crumbled envelope clutched in her fists. “Delivering this document. I’m needed on a new case.”

  “Alone?” Griffin cocked his head, studying her like a riddle to be solved.

  It settled her panicked senses, though the effort didn’t go without cost. The door at her back opened. The smell of woods reached her, and every inch of calm she’d gained vanished like a wisp of smoke. She shifted her stance so she wasn’t between the two of them, ashamed at herself for giving way to them.

  If anyone else saw her so weak, they would mistake her for prey, and all her hard work would be shot.

  “He’s right. You shouldn’t go alone. Being near another shifter will help.” Taggert didn’t offer anything else, still tightfisted with his words as if expecting a reprisal for daring to speak.

  “That’s not possible at the moment, and I’m needed at the crime scene.” Though no one left her alone in the last few days, no one dared get close to her, either, for fear she would rip out their throat.

  She couldn’t say they were mistaken.

  So they sat back and watched her like some toddler. “I’ll be fine.”

  Griffin’s brow furrowed over those brilliant eyes of his, slowly crossing his arms. “Take him.”

  Obstinate ass. As if he even got a say in what she did. The suspicion in his eyes let her know she wasn’t going to get away with a pat answer. She understood. If anything happened to her, his meal ticket was gone. Taggert looked willing, but she couldn’t take the chance, not until the conclave got their claws out of his hide.

  Fiddling with the envelope, she blurted out the reason. “He’s technically still a slave.”

  She carefully tugged a small cord of energy teeming in the walls of the house and twined it between her fingers. The energy doused the desire that had been creeping over her. If Griffin so much as lifted a finger against what was hers, she would rip away his consciousness and dump his unattended body on the pack’s doorstep without a hint of remorse.

  Griffin’s start of surprise showed on his face, the first genuine emotion she saw since the hunt that nearly killed them. “But...” He lifted a hand and let it drop. “The collar.”

  Raven pulled more electricity from the house, the sting of it welcome as the last drop of mounting desire washed out of her completely. “I didn’t like it. It caused him pain, and it was my job to protect him.”

  She didn’t blink as she waited for him to process the information. When he just stared at her, all the energy she’d compiled slowly dissipated, and her wolf trotted to the surface in response to the curiosity of his animal. She nearly whimpered when the heat began to build under her skin again.

  “He can’t leave the house, not until we face the conclave. I can’t risk losing him without ever having claimed him.”

  Not like she’d lost Jackson.

  The scent of cedar intensified, drawing her attention back to Griffin.

  His scent.

  Wildness poured off him, a wickedness that urged her not to think, not to fight the demands of her animals. The temptation he presented was a dangerous lure for someone like her, someone who held more than one beast. She concentrated on suppressing her wolf as it fought to refuse her command.

  That’s when she realized Griffin was doing something that riled up her animals, and she didn’t know enough to find out what the hell kind of game he was playing.

  Her animals might be pesky, stubborn beyond belief, but they were hers. She couldn’t allow Griffin to learn she held multiple strands of shifter DNA. The information was too valuable. According to the pack, she was an impossibility.

  Well, she would be but for a little thing of being engineered.

  He could trade her secret to get his pack status back, and she couldn’t allow that to happen.

  The shadows at the center of her core shifted, and all the animals vanished as coldness seeped into her chest. Her lungs felt weighted as crystals formed, her breath freezing her throat. A creature lifted its head, watching from the darkness, sensing something different about Griffin. Something almost feral. She was pathetically grateful when the creature didn�
�t venture any closer.

  Silence rang loud in the hallway, both sets of male eyes locked on her in an uncanny way that felt devouring.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  Raven blinked in surprise at Griffin’s offer, and the spell woven around them snapped. “We already agreed that you should remain hidden.”

  The unwarranted offer only increased her suspicions. He was up to something. She scrambled to think of ways to change his mind. She hated that she had to rely on him and others for answers, not knowing if they had their own agendas.

  She resisted the need to retreat.

  She would not allow her ignorance to weaken her.

  “I lose everything if something happens to you.”

  Something in his words didn’t ring true, but she couldn’t place her finger on it.

  “We’ll begin your lessons in the car.” He grabbed his leather jacket and vanished out the door before she could protest. She had a feeling she wouldn’t be able to pry him out of the car even if she tried.

  She moved to follow when a large black wolf appeared on the doorstep. She stopped short, disconcerted to find such a large beast all but waiting to huff and puff her door down.

  Then she saw the deep green eyes of her friend in the animal’s face. The disorientation left her reeling. “Dominic?”

  It had been three days since they’d spoken. She thought he’d left. Or maybe she shouldn’t be surprised. Dominic was always one to take care of those he considered his.

  She reached out to sink her fingers into the massive fur encased him, and his lips pealed up to flash his fangs. “Right. Not a pet.”

  He prowled inside, seemingly satisfied with her response. She glanced at Taggert and raised a brow.

  Taggert shrugged as if having a wolf inside the house was an everyday occurrence, his gaze still glued to the doorway where Griffin had vanished. “Don’t trust that man. He won’t let anything happen to you, but you can’t let him get close. He has his own schemes. Now that he knows some of what you can do, he’ll be more dangerous.”

  He meant the collar.

  Raven agreed and that’s what terrified her. She couldn’t afford to have anyone snoop into her past and search for answers. Especially not when it was her small pack that would suffer. She stepped outside, not feeling the sunshine as coldness crept through her gut.