Come Out Swinging (Reach for the Moon Book 2)

by Sam Hall

  “She was going to coerce me?”

  Bridge nodded, letting my hand go to trace circles on the sheets.

  “But then she saw it.” Her eyes met mine, still discoloured by bruises, one swollen almost shut. “She figured you were still the gullible little girl that left here. I think your dad knew. I think half the reason why he said no to Mason was what he knew. God knows what would have happened if you’d stayed with Declan.”

  My hands closed down into tight fists.

  Bridge straightened up, some of the old fire returning to her battered face.

  “You didn’t come back that girl, or one beaten down by trying to make it in the city. That guy of yours, Zack, he held you and cherished you and helped shape you into a fucking badass. But, Paige…”

  She was complimenting me, but I didn’t want to hear the next words, knowing what was coming.

  “You’ve come back a threat, and she needs to neutralise you, somehow.”

  “Like she ‘neutralised’ you?” I croaked the words.

  “Worse. She has to remove you entirely, no mistakes. You, your guys, even Aidan, if what’s inside him manages to fight its way free.” She shook her head. “Forget Mum. Get out of town, take your guys, and fuck off back to the city, never to return. That place… I’ll not set foot in it again. It’s a fucking cesspool.”

  For a minute, all I could see was Selma and Aidan, rigid as marionettes, looking down at each other with manufactured passion. “The Spehr stuff is all bullshit, you and I have always agreed on that, but…” I let out a long sigh. “I have a responsibility. How many people has she coerced? Our uncles? The other cousins? How far is she prepared to go with this? Will she bend the whole bloody town to her will? We’ll set you up, keep you safe, find you a harem of your own.”

  I saw her bloodshot eyes grow suspiciously shiny at this.

  “Promise?”

  I watched the bruised muscles in her face struggle to form a smile, and mine was watery in response.

  “Promise.”

  “But then you’re gonna go after her.” She studied my face and got her answer clearly enough. “Then if you’re gonna go after her, you need to get Aidan out. I don’t know how long or how deep her claws are, but she’s had them in him for some time,” Bridget said. “He…” She took a long shuddering breath. “He’s my brother, but he doesn’t know that. He just walked in on Marshall…” Her head shook sharply. “He saw what they were doing, tried to stop them, and then…”

  “And then they wiped him and turned him into their little puppet.”

  I swallowed hard, seeing what she described clear as a bell, and my fingers formed fists.

  I walked down the hallway to where Mason was being kept, feeling like steam was billowing out of my ears as I went. Fucking Nance, fucking Lupindorf, fucking Marshall, fucking Engels. Fuck, just fuck. I shoved through the swinging door with more emphasis than needed, people’s heads jerking around at the sound of it, so I stopped and took a deep breath before opening the door into Mason’s room much more sedately. As I entered, the guys all looked up from where they stood or sat around his bed.

  “Apparently, they don’t usually allow this many people in to visit,” Declan said. “Nor non family, so we’ll need to be quiet.”

  “You pushed your dominance onto them?” He nodded. “Good. How is he?”

  “They don’t know what’s wrong,” Zack replied through gritted teeth. “They’re waiting on tests and—”

  “It’ll be something to do with us, what’s inside us,” Micah said, eyeing the lot of us with those unearthly grey eyes. “I don’t reckon they’ll find out what using human medicine.” He lifted a hand as he moved closer, hovering it over Mason’s lax one.

  “Don’t,” Lorcan said, shaking his head.

  I stepped in closer, eyeing the two men, then forcing my eyes down. I’d been studiously ignoring that, the echo of my father in Mason’s form. Micah’s eyes glittered with a dangerous light, his hand dropping lower.

  “Isn’t that what got us in trouble the first time? When we touch, we connect,” Lorcan said, scanning the lot of us.

  When we touch, we connect. There was a simple truth to that which I hadn’t felt before. We’d all touched in various ways, from romantic to sexual to just comfort. So what had happened back at the forest? I lifted my hand, grabbed Micah’s, and drew it to my lips, feeling the hum when I did, of energy, of him. My eyes slid sideways and found his watching me, some kind of unspoken knowledge hovering there.

  But I let Micah’s hands go, and as a collective breath was let out, my other one shot out, taking a hold of Mason’s. We were going to war, and I needed to know exactly what we were walking in with. I’d felt our power rise like an ancient sea monster before. Well, now the lack of that surged up, just as vast and sluggish. It snatched me in its massive jaws and yanked me down into it.

  Chapter 20

  The darkness swallowed me, rolling me around in its endless depths until I became it and it became me. I felt like I was falling, falling, falling, until finally, something caught me.

  Mason.

  There he was, emerging from the gloom as it plucked at his skin like a spurned lover, but it was me he focussed on. He frowned, then shook his head.

  “What are you doing here? I… No, you need to go back, now.”

  “We need to go back,” I agreed. At my words, the shadows shifted. Like predators in the night, I could barely track the movement, but I could feel it. “We need to go, now.”

  “We can’t, you can.”

  I hated his face, the way it fell into resigned lines. I knew this expression, though it had been years since I’d seen it. It was the same as my father’s when he watched me leave town.

  “No, Mason—”

  “Yes. I felt it when we joined. We didn’t know what this was. Zack said he was doing research, and you need to ask him about that when you go back. There’s something more to being a nix. The pull for us is just one part, but there’s a power. It’s not complete, we shouldn’t have joined up. Instincts we shouldn’t have kicked in, somehow realising innately what we were asking of ourselves.” He blinked slowly, his eyes dropping down to focus on my hands. “If it had just been you, you would have failed. No harm, no foul. Well, except for Bridget. There’s something in her, so strong, it blocks us. Her…” He shook his head. “Ask Zack, he can investigate. The longer you stay here…”

  His eyes darted around, and at that, the darkness became more oppressive. The tendrils that writhed on his skin became claws, raking away everything he was in long slender scratches, leaving only nothingness behind.

  “No…” I said, shaking my head wildly. “No, Mason. I’m not…” What? What was I going to do? “I’m not leaving you.”

  “I could feel it, the teeth in this place. Power exacts a cost, you know that. The Spehr girls have paid the price for keeping your family’s place in the pack. Nix pay the price for their gifts. This is mine.”

  “No.” I wrapped my arms around him, holding the mass of him tight, but he felt cold and imprecise against my skin. “No, Mason. No. You can’t…whatever this is.”

  “I’ll fade away. I think I only held on for this.” His lips, when they pressed against my skin, burned. “To say goodbye. I love you, my beautiful girl. There was never anyone else for me, no one but you.”

  I went to protest, but his hand covered my mouth.

  “I need to get this out. I’ve tried a hundred times. When you first left. Your dad gave me your number in the city when he got hold of it. When you came back. Since that night in the woods.” He shook his head, a gentle smile on his lips. “I’ve kept it locked down so fucking hard, I could never seem to let it out, but I’m out of road to run on. This is it. Now or never.”

  My protests were muffled, by his palm, by the tears choking my throat, little more than animalistic grunts, but he smiled through them, lit from within by some kind of golden light. One that was slowly being dimmed as the wind ate away at it.r />
  “I could meet a million women, and none of them will touch you, not in my heart. Vulnerable and strong as fucking steel. Sweet yet savage when it’s required. Loving, loyal, brutal and uncompromising. It makes sense to me that this would be the way it goes. You’re too fucking good for me, too good by half. I knew I was never gonna be up to the standard you deserve, so instead…” He looked around at the darkness, as if it had the answers. “I’m selfish enough to be happy that I was the first man you loved as an adult. But you’ve found others now, strong men who add to your strength.” Tears blurred my vision of him, but I felt him as he pressed his forehead against mine. “Stick with them. Go forth and kick arse, my love. They will never be a match for my girl…”

  His words faded last, being whisked away by the unearthly breeze here. It tugged at my skin now, smooth as a wolf’s fur, sharp as our fangs. It took little parts of me with it when it moved, ready to consume me, consume everything attached to me.

  Ready to consume the world.

  I just stared at it, the endless fucking void, and I did exactly what Zack had always taught me.

  “Keep your stance strong. It’s the basis of everything in life. If you stand strong, everything else can be built on that. Strikes, hits, kicks, using weapons. You need that solid core first, and I won’t teach you until you master it.”

  I moved my legs into a wider stance, relaxing the knees.

  “Keep your fists up at all times. I don’t care how tired you’re getting or what amazing combo you can see in your mind, until you’ve committed to a strike, you keep your hands up. Hands up, eyes on the enemy is your best form of defence. You can do that moving around the bag, and I’ll show you how to block a strike.”

  I lifted my fists, even though the endless blackness before me showed no weak point, no limbs to deflect, no sentience even. Well, until it moved.

  They flicked on like floodlights, two massive silver eyes shining in the dark, and they seemed to illuminate the rest. I made out two shadowy paws that looked like they were each bigger than my head, which then drew my attention to the rest of it. This was a wolf, but what a wolf. My fists didn’t waver, even as my lips parted, slowly picking out the outline of the beast. Now revealed, its mouth dropped open, revealing a starlit throat and spear length fangs.

  “No…” This was barely more than a breath. I negated it all—Dad’s death, my attack, Bridget’s brutalisation, Mason’s disappearance, all of it. Once the word escaped, more came. My head shook, back and forth, that same word coming out over and over, louder now. “No.” The beast panted in response, the drawing in and exhaling of breath threatening to dislodge me, but my stance strengthened. Instead, I just felt the push-pull of it as I declared my inability to accept.

  “No,” I said, my voice clear and crisp, cracking through the space now. It firmed as my body did, as my will did.

  “Half the battle is in your head,” Zack had said. “The guy who believes he’s gonna take you down is more likely to fight in a way that convinces you he will and hence does. Your head game is as important as your body.”

  “No.” A hint of growl in my voice had the beast’s head jerking up, tilting somewhat comically to one side. “No!” I shouted now, to make sure the stupid thing heard me. “No!” I could see why two-year-olds were so fond of it, because it had a power to it. I did nothing but shout my protest to the void, and yet somehow, I felt stronger. “NO!” My voice roared now, echoing through the endless space, a chorus of mes protesting what had happened.

  But what good did that do?

  Like any child, I could chuck all the tantrums I liked, but beings bigger and more powerful than me would decide whether or not that stood. The wolf stared at me. Was there a hint of a vicious smile in that open mouth? Did it matter? It just watched me, implacable as the moon, and I remembered that last time I’d cried out my distress at it.

  I was thrust right back into that damn fucking chapel, where Mason and all the rest of my pack stood vigil, commemorating the passing of my father. The bullshit, the sheer teeth grinding unfairness of it all came roaring back, twice as hot.

  Because Dad, his life was cut too short. I’d been robbed of an opportunity to make amends, but he was older, had lived, loved, had a child, but Mason… My teeth clamped down tight so hard, I felt my fangs grind as they appeared. Because I might face down a massive beast, but it wasn’t the scariest predator in the room.

  Inevitable, relentless reality tracked me persistently, crushing any hope and dream I might cling to, and finally, it crushed him. Mason, every memory and every experience, that was what it was eroding from me with its endless breath, wearing me smooth until there would be nothing more than a husk of me left.

  He’d told me to let him go, said he needed to, but I couldn’t accept it, none of it. I was not gonna sit a vigil for my mate while his body still breathed. I wasn’t going to watch another person I loved slide between my fingers. Nance, the town, they would not take one more thing.

  And neither would this motherfucking wolf.

  I moved in a fluid sequence of kicks and strikes, something Zack and I had practised so many times, spinning faster and faster towards the giant wolf. It loomed larger and larger, those silver eyes spreading so wide, it felt like I was about to kick the moon.

  And I did.

  “NOOOO!”

  I didn’t shout or scream the words, they rose up within me, an equal and opposite force that swelled and swelled until it burst outwards. Out of me, out into the darkness, filling every damn inch of its inky depths, forcing its way down the throat of the wolf, resonating through it, seeming to grow and grow, not trail away like any normal sound. Because it wasn’t my voice, it was me.

  My love for them, for us, for him. For Mason.

  “GIVE HIM TO ME!”

  I screamed like a rabid fishwife, any kind of decorum or grace long gone. I couldn’t, I didn’t have any left. It couldn’t end this way. I was done with shitty, truncated, unfulfilling endings. I was fucking tired of trying to work my way through accepting the unacceptable. I was going to get Mason back, then I was going to finally start shovelling the metric fuck ton of emotional bullshit we’d created and get down to it—us.

  We were going to come together, I was going to hold him in my arms. I was going to wrap myself tight around him, and then I was going to bite deep, claiming him as mine. We’d kick Nancy’s butt, make Lupindorf a democracy, and then fuck off into the city, where Mason would hate every smog filled moment. Except he wouldn’t, because we would be together.

  When I blinked, I realised I’d told the wolf all of this in a series of rasping, hacking breaths, and then when I fell silent, I heard it. A low rumble at first, this sound I could feel from my head to my toes. Like mine, it rose and rose, getting louder and louder, so much so, my hands clapped over my ears, desperate to protect them. But I looked up to see the wolf transform, lighting from within, growing brighter and brighter, until she came. Monolithic, maternal, looking down at me with blank, silver eyes filled with that terrible love only mothers seem to possess.

  “Time to return, little wolf, daughter of mine. The nix, the ulva are rising, and you will rise with them. You have your six. Now it’s time to claim them, all of them.” Her smile was gentle as a feather and as sharp as a razor blade, but as it cut through me, she faded and the world returned.

  Machines were beeping, staff were barrelling through the door, Zack was trying to prise my hand free of Mason’s, and the man himself? He sat up in bed, just gasping in breaths for one, two, three seconds before looking around.

  “Paige?” Mason croaked out, and that was it. I swept in, wrapping my arms around his shoulders, being careful not to hold him too close but wanting to with everything I had.

  “Mrs Klein! I need you to step back so we can examine your husband,” the doctor said sharply, the nurses shooing away the guys with deep frowns.

  “Mrs Klein?” Mason’s smile was so bright and intense, it felt like it speared straight th
rough my heart. “I like the sound of that. I like it a lot.”

  Chapter 21

  “You don’t need to hover,” Mason said.

  The doctor had reluctantly discharged Mason after a series of checks. Once his blood pressure stabilised and all his other vitals were fine, he was allowed to go, but they weren’t happy about it. The humans wanted to watch over him for longer, like they were with Bridget, and make sure there was no sign of concussion.

  We stood now in a hotel room we’d booked. It was the off season for tourists so we were lucky to get a couple cheap, but right now, we were in the one, ringed around Mason.

  “I’m fine,” the man himself said. “I shouldn’t be.” Those dark brown eyes met mine, burning deep with something I wasn’t ready to interrogate. I heard his snort of amusement as my eyes slid away. “But I guess Paige is done taking no for an answer.”

  “So is anyone gonna tell us what the fuck happened?” Declan asked, sinking down onto a bed, looking paler than normal.

  “Fuck, mate…” Zack said, stepping close to his brother. He shook his head, staring at the other man, the silence stretching out longer and longer before he wrapped an arm around Mase’s shoulders and hugged him. “I know you’ve got that white knight shit going on, but don’t fucking do that again.”

  “You woulda done the same if you’d felt it,” Mason retorted, but he returned his brother’s thumps on the back.

  “Probably, but being the one doing the self-sacrificing seems a lot easier than watching someone’s swan dive.”

  “We need to do that research, find out what that was.” Mason held his brother at arm’s length now, dark eyes burning into dark eyes. There was something there that I hadn’t seen before. A kind of mutual understanding that came from spending years growing up together. “There’s something else going on here.”