To Crave a Blood Moon

by Sharie Kohler

  He cursed and dragged a hand over his face, shoving down the base, dark instincts at war inside him. He couldn’t do that. The one time had been bad enough. But even as he told himself this, he knew he might have to. A lycan fed and fucked. Not always in that order. Right now, he was operating at their level. His state of starvation blinded him to all his long-held principles. To the humanity and morals pounded in him by his mother, and then his brother—a far better man than he.

  He fully intended to survive this. To kill Gunter. And Yusuf. All of them. The entire pack. With great and slow pleasure. And then Ruby would be all right. Her curse would be broken. She would be human again. He would make all this up to her.

  Make it up to her? He dropped his head back to beat against the wall.

  Where the hell had that sentiment come from? His life wasn’t one of sentimentality. There was no room in it for anything besides hunting down the bastards like the ones upstairs. That hadn’t changed. There wasn’t room in his world for her.

  He wasn’t like his brother. He didn’t go for missions of mercy. Didn’t get married and do the whole domestic thing. He hadn’t lost so much of himself that he didn’t remember who he was. And who he would be again when all of this was over.

  Who Ruby Deveraux was would fail to matter to him then. It had to.

  The sound of the door scraping open woke her.

  She lifted herself on limbs that felt surprisingly light and limber given her cotton-stuffed head. Holding a hand against her eyes, she blinked against the light flooding the room through the door, limning several large figures. Lycans.

  She tensed at their arrival, at the strange emptiness they emitted. Now she could identify that bleak gray she felt. Evil. Noxious as toxic gas.

  She pressed fingers to her lips, as if that would stop the rising tide of bile in her throat. She felt sick from it—them—and sicker yet when she remembered she was one of them now. A lycan that would feed on the next moonrise.

  “Sebastian,” she murmured, even as she resented that she should call out to him, that she had come to rely on him. Need him so much. Her lifeline in this frightening new world. Her gaze found him, already standing across from her, his body poised and ready, taut as wire worked tight.

  Then she felt him. Rage. Killing fury. Dark suspicion radiated from him.

  His palms pressed flat against the stone wall as though he might use it for leverage and spring at any moment. His naked body was whipcord-lean, reminding her of a hungry jungle cat. Whatever they had in store for them, he would fight it.

  “Disappointing.” Gunter and the others surveyed them with gleaming eyes. Sighing, the alpha strolled deeper inside the room with his hands clasped behind him. “We’ve trouble coming. We’ve lost contact with our allies to the west. I haven’t the time or patience for this anymore. If you’re with us or not, let it be decided now.”

  “I’m not.”

  Her chest swelled with relief, her heart clenching with emotion. He meant it. She knew… felt that he spoke the truth. He would die first before killing her.

  Gunter cocked his head. “Strange. You hunt and kill lycans.” He waved a hand at Ruby. “Precisely what she now is. Yet you would choose your own death over hers.”

  Her eyes locked on his across the distance, her vision faultless. She saw the light twisting at the centers of his eyes. His voice fell hard. Angry. “It’s what it will do to me. Turn me into one of you fuckers,” he bit out. Ruby flinched. Of course. It had nothing to do with her. He cared nothing for her. He didn’t want to be like them. Her.

  Time suspended. No one spoke, moved, breathed.

  Without turning her head, Ruby’s gaze shifted to stare at Sebastian, the tight set of his lips in his unshaven face, afraid to be the one to upset the eerie stalemate.

  Gunter’s thick accents cracked the silence. “Hold her.”

  Ruby shot to her feet just as they came at her. She tried to break past. Impossible. A lycan flung her back. She struck the wall with bone-jarring force. Stunned, she lolled there, the air left her body in a rush of wind.

  Sebastian lunged off his wall with a sound more animal than man. Three lycans fell on him, holding him back. Restrained, he watched as Yusuf caught her up in his arms and forced her before Gunter. She felt like a helpless kitten in the lycan’s paws.

  The alpha squared off in front of her, unsheathing a fierce-looking knife, the blade glinting like their eyes when caught in light.

  “It won’t kill you, but it will hurt.” He shook his head, as though apologetic over that fact. With a nod at Sebastian, he added, “But there’ll be lots of blood. Precisely what’s needed to get our friend to behave as he ought and stop being so reticent.” The alpha’s mouth thinned into a tight line, his gaze sliding over her in consideration.

  It dawned on her then. Cold horror washed over her.

  He was deciding where to cut.

  “No!” She struggled against the hard hands clamped on her arms.

  Gunter slid a step closer, holding the blade oddly before him, turning it sideways as though taking measure. “Sssh. Don’t struggle,” he murmured, his free hand grabbing a fistful of her hair.

  She fought, kicking in a frenzy. She felt several strands rip from her head, but she still could not break free.

  “He’s turning!” shouted one of the lycans holding Sebastian.

  Ruby stilled, tearing her gaze from the blade’s mesmerizing gleam to watch. Fresh horror filled her as Sebastian twisted and writhed, his skin pulling and… expanding. He hunkered at the waist, his back curving deeply as he bent, turning into the very thing they wanted to use and manipulate so badly.

  Gunter exhaled, the sound reverent, satisified. “Yes. That’s it.”

  Sebastian unfolded into a standing position, throwing the other lycans off him. She forgot about the painful grip on her hair, about Yusuf’s hard hands on her, about the blade pointing in her direction.

  She could only stare at Sebastian. Her eyes felt enormous, dry and unblinking in her face, as she drank in the sight of him, similar to the monstrous lycans, but with sleeker lines, less hair. Muscle and sinew rippled his large frame.

  “Yes,” she echoed, as he broke through the lycans rising up to take him.

  Cool purpose flowed from him; the only anger she felt was controlled, directed at their captors. Not her.

  Relief rolled through her. He wasn’t like them. He would help her, would stop them—

  Pain. Searing force drove deep into her stomach, burning upward through her chest and throat—fire and agony. She opened her mouth on a scream that never came. Blood filled her mouth. Her nose. Choked her.

  She hunched forward against the terrible pressure, gagging and coughing, blood spattering from her lips, fingers digging into the arm that seemed connected to her body, to the handle of a knife buried deep in her. There was a grinding scrape of blade against her bone.

  The hands on her arms loosened, dropping away. She staggered forward, clung to Gunter, clutching him in a parody of a hug, her mouth wide in a silent cry. Blood gurgled at the back of her throat.

  Just when she thought the pain couldn’t get worse, Gunter buried the blade deeper, sliding it higher, ripping upward. Her body jerked. Tears blurred her vision as her body convulsed, dying.

  Gunter slid the blade free from her body. His voice sounded far away, as if he called from under water. “Resist her now, dog.”

  He vanished, moving toward the door in a blur. She fell to the ground, rolling onto her back.

  Sebastian arrived, dropping heavily beside her.

  The bolt slid home, the loud clank reverberating over her harsh breath, each inhalation slowed, slowing, then stilling.

  Was she dead? Cold swept through her. Emptiness. No more pain, at least. Just a strange peace. Ease.

  Blood covered her, sputtering from her lips as she tried to speak. The metallic odor filled her nose.

  Sebastian leaned over her. She stared up into his horribly beautiful face, a creat
ure of nightmares, skin a gleaming bronze where hair did not cover. His lips parted, peeling back from his teeth. Fingers like talons gripped her arms and pulled her toward him.

  As his face neared, descending, she let loose a choked sob. This was it. They had broken him. He would have her now.

  10

  His touch returned her to the pain. To living agony. It forced her head up off the ground with a shrill cry.

  Agony drowned him, swimming with the frothing fury and hunger. It pressed down on her like a great, heavy blanket from which she could not escape. His hard hands flexed around her arms and she hissed, tossing her head. Sebastian stared from her face to her stomach… to the open, blood-gushing wound there.

  It was a strange thing smelling one’s own blood. So much blood. She remembered Gunter’s words. His assurance that this wouldn’t kill her. Only it would. The wound spilled too much blood… the sight, the scent, the copious amount would break the last of Sebatian’s will.

  Clawing hunger ripped through him. Torment. She gasped, struggling against it. She couldn’t take it, couldn’t stand it another moment…

  With every effort left to her, she brushed a hand against his cold cheek and managed to speak. “Make it stop.”

  At least the suffering would end. Ending it for him would end it for her.

  “Go ahead!” The growl of her voice startled her, reminded her that she wasn’t herself anymore—just some monster that the world needed to be rid of.

  At least Sebastian would not die. The thought comforted her more than she would have thought possible. Better that she had known him. Tasted desire with him. Through him. She could have died with Amy and Emily and not known. Instead, she had had this time with him. For maybe the first time, she had well and truly lived.

  A stark, unwelcome realization struck him, sinking through the deluge of dark, twisting hunger. She wanted him to kill her, to feed on her. His anger rose so swiftly, so furiously, it actually beat out the sweet scent of her blood, the temptation that threatened to consume him.

  “Damn you, Ruby,” he bit out, shaking her fiercely. “Talk to me. I need to know you. Tell me who you are.” It was the only way.

  Her eyes stared up at him, confused, glazed, lost.

  Damn her. He couldn’t believe she was giving him permission to feed on her. The hell he would!

  “What are you, Ruby?” He shook her. “There’s more to you. Tell me. I need to know.” He wet his cracked lips, avoiding looking down at all that blood again. Delicious moisture for his tight, parched arteries. He avoided breathing, avoided taking in the aroma that tormented his starved body.

  “No,” her voice rasped.

  “Yes. I knew it the moment I saw you. You’re… different. Special.” A part of him suspected it was why he’d been able to resist her. She was no ordinary girl.

  She laughed then. The dry, brittle sound like crackling leaves on the air. Without humor. Dark. Tormented. “Sure. Why not? It doesn’t matter anymore.” Her head lolled on her shoulders and she smiled a silly, drunken grin.

  “C’mon. Give me something. A reason.” A reason not to kill you. A reason to believe you’re as important as I think you are. Give me the strength to fight the darkness…

  She groaned. The sound tore through him. “I thought I couldn’t be any weirder than I was. A freak my family didn’t even want. And now this.” She paused before saying. “I’m an empath.”

  He thought for a moment, struggling to think as he held down the beast, keeping it pinned. “You mean you know what others are feeling?”

  She laughed that awful laugh again, her eyes fixing on him, glittering cold silver. She looked a bit more lucid. Regenerated. He didn’t dare look at the wound to verify this. The blood would still be there, pushing at the fine edge of his will.

  “I know what others are feeling because I feel it. I live it.” Her voice dropped to a mutter. “I can’t stop it.”

  “Christ.” What hell must she have been through?

  He nearly dropped his hands from her, afraid at all she must feel through him… his torment, the hunger. She must think him a monster. She must know. Her uncanny awareness made sense now.

  This woman possessed power. People weren’t always truthful… even with themselves. Mostly with themselves. They may not think certain thoughts… but the sentiment, the emotion was always there. That couldn’t be denied. She could look inside the heart of anyone and see what hid there. He’d felt she was special. Now he knew.

  Burning determination filled him. He would destroy himself before he destroyed her. His mouth curled in a savage smile. Releasing her, he moved back to the far wall. Away from her. Away from temptation.

  She watched him, her pewter eyes eerie in an entirely different way—different from the lycans he hunted. Different because he cared about her.

  “Sebastian?” she whispered.

  He said nothing, not trusting himself to speak. Closing his eyes, he fought to feel nothing. To empty himself of everything. To spare her and let her heal.

  11

  He turned from her. Like everyone else before. Like her father.

  She closed her eyes against the burning sting of tears. Great. She felt like a little girl again, crying when her dad turned his back on her, left her because he just couldn’t handle what she was.

  Merely another reminder of why she should have stayed home. The world waited with pain for anyone who dared live in it. She had known that. So why had she left her safe haven?

  She peered at him through the darkness, the muscled hulk of him, a brooding shadow in his corner, half-man, half-animal. She should feel threatened, in danger. Instead, she only felt hurt. Unaccountably hurt that when she finally bared herself, revealed herself for what she was, he turned away.

  She thought that maybe on some level he would understand. Because he was different, too.

  Because she let him in her head… in her body.

  But he didn’t understand. Didn’t forgive. Like everyone else.

  Ruby shivered, even though she was starting to feel warm again. Healed. Only her heart ached. Stupidly. Why should she care what he thought of her? Why should she care about him at all?

  She shouldn’t.

  But she did. She did, or she wouldn’t hurt this much.

  The ground shook above them. Ruby opened her eyes from a fitful sleep, alert to Sebastian’s every sound and movement several feet away. He didn’t stir, hardly breathed. Hunger. Craving smoldered inside him, held tightly in check, and she shivered.

  He had not spoken to her since she made her confession. Not looked at her, did not touch her.

  She had lost track of time, sleeping throughout her body’s regeneration. She knew days had passed since she had been stabbed, but she hadn’t a clue how many. At one point, they fed her, lycans standing guard between her and Sebastian. She had gulped down food without tasting, inhaling it, letting it fuel her.

  The sounds from above grew, shaking on the air.

  “What is it?” she whispered, watching as Sebastian rose to his feet. Primal as any wild animal even when he appeared human. Raw and menacing. Desperate for food. Life.

  She eyed the gaunt press of his ribs against his sinewy body and felt the familiar pull. Desire that was all hers. The flexing of muscles in his satiny chest. He gazed up at the ceiling. Every muscle stretched taut as he balanced on the pads of his feet, looking upward as though he could see what went on above.

  “It’s begun.”

  “What?”

  He cocked his head, listening. She could hear the sounds, too. Cries, sudden vibrating movements throughout the building. The faint, creeping odor of blood sifted through the air like growing smoke.

  The image of that room from that first night with its buffet and free-flowing wine flashed through her head. Followed, of course, with the gorging beasts, the blood, the screams. Pain. Ripping agony.

  “Are they feeding again?” she whispered, swallowing.

  “It doesn’t work like
that. They can’t do that right now. Not until the next moonrise.”

  “Then… what is it?”

  “They’re being attacked. By outsiders.” His head cocked deeper to the side and he sniffed the air, so much resembling an animal just then that a chill chased down her spine. “A rival pack, I’m guessing. The one they’ve been worrying over.”

  “What does that mean for us? Is that bad?”

  He frowned and she wondered if it was her question or the us that made him frown.

  “Packs are territorial, but I’ve not heard of them making outright war on each other. Not in generations.” In the shadowed cell, his lips twisted. “They’ve grown too civilized for that and don’t encroach on each other. Unless…”

  “Unless what?”

  His gaze found hers, glittering across the distance like an animal peering out from the brush on a dark night. Light glowed and twisted at the centers like flame.

  One of her many foster families had hunted, relying on game for most of their meat. Not uncommon in their corner of Louisiana. So Ruby knew how to hunt, lay a trap, skin and gut a kill. She also recognized the eyes of an animal watching her. Only before it had always been prey. Frightened. Hiding.

  He was no one’s prey.

  “Unless,” he answered, “the rumors of packs allying themselves and forming a confederation are true. They’ve grown sick of organized hunters, of NODEAL and EFLA.”

  She shook her head. She’d just learned of the existence of preternatural creatures—had become one—and now he was discussing things like lycan confederations and organizations of hunters. “Why are they doing that?”

  “In order to unite, to let mankind know of their existence, defeat the hunters… and then take on the rest of the world.”

  Hot and cold intermittently washed over her at this. She opened her mouth with another question when he waved a hand. “Silence. Someone’s coming.”

  Her heart picked up speed. “What do we—”

  “Stay there.” He sprang into the air like a jungle creature.

  The door swung open and she held her breath, commanding her eyes to stay trained on the door, to not glance up where Sebastian hugged the ceiling like some sort of spider.