Blood Moon

by A. D. Ryan

  Yes, it was still weird to even consider what he’d said to be true, but it also felt oddly natural. Like I’d been repressing the knowledge, but deep down knew it to be true all along. It only took Nick explaining it to me to stimulate the information.

  “You know, I had that under control,” I told Nick very matter-of-factly.

  He only laughed. “Brooke, you were two seconds from tearing out his throat.”

  My jaw dropped. Not because he was wrong—because the thought had crossed my mind quite vividly—but also because, in hindsight of the actual incident, it was such a violent resolution. I was ashamed I’d even entertained the idea. I wanted to believe I would never have actually followed through with it, but I wasn’t so sure. It did seem to be the more dominant “solution” I could come up with. Dismemberment coming in a close second.

  “I was not,” I denied weakly.

  “No?” Nick challenged. “Dismemberment then?”

  Silent, I pressed my lips firmly together, looking up at Nick sheepishly through my lashes, and he smirked. The cocky son of a bitch smirked.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  We wandered farther into the house, my eyes moving about and taking it all in for the first time. My head was in such a foggy state when I had been in a mad rush to leave the other morning, I never really noticed all of the little details. Not that this surprised me; a lot had happened, and I wasn’t ready to accept any of it as the truth.

  “Can I get you anything?” Nick offered. “Coffee? Tea?”

  “Um, tea? I probably shouldn’t have caffeine if I plan to sleep any time soon,” I replied, wrapping my arms around myself as I continued to look around.

  It wasn’t an overly large house, and the floor plan was pretty basic. The living room was off to the right of the front door, furnished as only a bachelor pad would be—leather furniture with glass and chrome coffee and end tables—and the kitchen was next to it. There was a dining nook that adjoined the kitchen and living room, and a second entry to the kitchen off the hall we were currently in. There was also another hall that exited off this one. What was down it, I didn’t know. I guessed a bathroom and maybe a bedroom. Upstairs, as I already knew, housed Nick’s bedroom, a bathroom, and another two rooms.

  In addition to the visual details, I also picked up on the various scents that surrounded me. Obviously, this place was filled with Nick’s scent, even mine lingered from the other day—weird—but in addition to ours, I also picked up on a few others. One of them I immediately recognized as Jackson’s, and it forced a deep, guttural reaction from me. I may not have DNA evidence that he was the one who did this to me, but I remembered with perfect clarity what the wolf that bit me looked like, and I saw something in his amber eyes earlier that shook me to my core.

  Three other scents I didn’t recognize joined the others, swirling around me and forcing me into some kind of sensory overload. I just assumed they belonged to the other guys that were staying here with Nick.

  Nick disappeared into the kitchen, telling me to make myself at home. This was much easier than it probably should have been, and I couldn’t quite figure out if that was because I was in Nick’s space, or if I felt like I belonged here.

  No. I don’t belong here, I told myself, the feeling that filled me reminding me an awful lot like the denial I was working to overcome. It’s all just familiar because it’s Nick.

  I took a seat on the couch, sitting in the center of it, and soon, I heard the shrill whistle of the teakettle. Nick emerged from the kitchen a moment later with two steaming mugs in his hands and joined me on the sofa. Still shirtless. Still distracting.

  Knowing it was rude to ogle—not to mention inappropriate since my boyfriend was at home sleeping while I sat here with my ex—I avoided looking at him, instead focusing on the rising steam and swirling golden liquid in my cup.

  Nick set his mug on the table in front of us before shifting toward me. He reached out hesitantly, resting his hand on my forearm. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I croaked, glancing at him. My eyes wandered south, and I noticed the scars on his torso for the first time. Some looked like bites, some like cuts and gashes. Then I realized they were battle wounds from seven years as a werewolf. “You’re just…well, shirtless.”

  This made him laugh. Loudly. My cheeks warmed, and I avoided his gaze once more. I knew I shouldn’t have been this uncomfortable around him; it wasn’t like I’d never seen him without a shirt—or pants, for that matter—before. But this was different for so many reasons.

  “I just woke up, and then I caught your scent,” he explained, standing up. “I was getting dressed when I smelled that guy, too. It worried me, especially when I picked up on your anger, so I rushed outside. I’m sorry.”

  Nick disappeared, his heavy footsteps clomping up the stairs, and when he returned moments later he was in a black T-shirt that did little to hide the chiseled planes of his body. So, really, it was no better than being shirtless. I actually stared even more at his biceps, wondering how the sleeves of his shirt weren’t ripping under the strain of his muscles.

  “I’m glad you came tonight,” he said, pulling me from the inappropriate thoughts that swirled in my imagination. “There’s still so much we need to talk about.”

  After taking a sip, I set my tea down next to his and nodded. “I think it’s important for me to get a handle on this sooner rather than later. I’m still so confused.”

  “That’s normal.”

  “How long before you could control it?”

  Nick paused a minute, running his hands through his hair. “About two years.”

  Hearing this sent my heart plummeting into my stomach. Two years? While I didn’t expect this to happen overnight, I definitely didn’t want to have to suffer through this transition for two years.

  “But I was angry and hated that my life had been uprooted.”

  This was something I could relate to.

  “I’d just lost my best friend, and then I was bitten—in the same damn alley—forcing me to—”

  What he said registered quickly, and my eyes snapped to his. “What?” He looked at me, blinking. “You were attacked in the…” I swallowed thickly, trying to keep my voice even and calm. “In the same alley that Bobby died in?”

  Nick nodded solemnly. “I returned to that alley almost every night after the cops released the scene from their investigation. Your dad didn’t seem to be making much progress, and I was so sure that they had to be missing something. Every time I showed up, I felt like I was being watched, but no one ever appeared…until the night I came face to face with a wolf. It wasn’t your average wolf though. This one was almost twice as big and built like a brick house. At first, I didn’t know why it attacked me without hesitation, but now I do.”

  “It wanted to change you,” I deduced, but Nick shook his head.

  “He thought I was the thing he was looking for.”

  Nick’s extremely vague explanation prompted me further. “He?”

  “Jackson.”

  I scoffed, even more resolute in my suspicion of Jackson’s involvement in my own attack. He seemed a little too quick to bite.

  “I didn’t think much of it at first, until the changes started. I didn’t know what to make of it in the beginning. The heightened senses, my increased strength…” I nodded along, understanding wholeheartedly what he was saying. “Then Marcus approached me before the next full moon—my first transformation.”

  “Marcus?” I inquired, unfamiliar with this new name.

  “Our Pack leader.” Nick laughed as if remembering something. “I thought the man was bat-shit crazy—much like you thought I was, I suppose. Though, I was a little more violent about it. Perhaps because, deep down, I knew the truth, and I was beyond pissed off about it.

  “I told him to fuck off and leave me alone, that I didn’t need him or his bullshit theories…” Nick sighed, and I saw something familiar in his eyes—something I’d been dealing with these
last few days. I reached out to take his hand. It was only meant to be a comforting gesture, but Nick threaded his fingers through mine, smiling as he continued. I knew I should correct the act, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. “And when I woke up the next morning, naked, alone, and in the woods, he was there. Sitting, fully-clothed, against a tree with his arms resting on his bent knees. He had this smug look on his face, and I just lost it.

  “I started beating the shit out of him, accusing him of drugging me—like you’d accused me. I couldn’t remember anything. I didn’t come around nearly as quickly as you,” he told me. “I stuck around town for a few more days, and by then, little fragments of that night started to come back.”

  “So you left.” My voice was quiet, barely audible.

  Nick shook his head. “It wasn’t my change that prompted me to leave,” he admitted sadly. “I thought for sure I could manage it. I mean, changing once a month? Sounds easy enough, right?” Something dark flashed in his eyes before he dropped them to our still-joined hands. “In the wake of my mounting frustration, I almost hurt my mom.”

  “Wh-what?”

  “I don’t even know how it happened. I’d been going out a lot at night—the need to be outside overpowering the need to sleep.” Yet another thing I empathized with. “I came home at dawn one day. Mom had been up, sick with worry. I couldn’t blame her for being scared something happened, especially after Bobby, but when she started in on me…” A visible shudder rocked through Nick, and he seemed hesitant to continue. “I recognized what was happening before anything bad could transpire. But the things I imagined doing… I was so unbelievably angry—not necessarily at her, but at everything that had happened—and I just snapped. I got outside and away from the house before I shifted.”

  “During the day?”

  Nick nodded. “It can happen if your emotions get too intense. Fear, confusion, stress, anger. They can all escalate and trigger the change.

  “Marcus found me hiding in a shrub three blocks from home. He coaxed me out and led me here.” He looked around the living room, indicating the house. “He owns houses in several towns and cities since the Pack tends to travel around quite a bit. After I was calm enough to change back, he gave me clothes and something to eat and then explained everything to me. Again, it took a bit for the memory of such a violent shift to come back to me, but it did, and it was then that I decided to go with him.”

  “Where?”

  “To his main residence. He owns a large plot of land near the mountains in Canada where he built an above average house that we all stay in. He likes to keep the Pack close together. A unified front.”

  Canada. Nick’s been in Canada this whole time.

  “So, Marcus taught you to control it,” I said, trying to steer the conversation toward something that I hoped would be a little less stressful on Nick. It was clear that, even seven years later, this still bothered him.

  “He did.” Nick paused, smiling. “It wasn’t easy, and as you know, I’m easily frustrated if I don’t catch onto something right away.” I laughed, because he was absolutely right. He’d always been a pain in the ass in that regard.

  “But two years later, you had it figured out.” While I knew this was going to be a process, I had hoped for it to take less time. Especially based on what he told me earlier this morning. “I thought you said that once you accepted it, it was easier.”

  “And it is, but you’re never really out of the woods until you’ve got absolute control.”

  “Meaning?”

  Nick grinned, his smile reaching the outer corners of his eyes and brightening them. He pulled his hand from mine, and I looked down in shock; I’d been so completely content that I’d forgotten all about the connection. And now I missed it. It was confusing, so I tamped it down with every other unsettling thought I’d had regarding Nick and tried to ignore it.

  The key word being tried.

  “When you have absolute control, it’s possible to focus the change on one particular part of your body.” I eyed him, at a complete loss for words. Nick still seemed pretty amped about it though, turning to face me and pulling his right leg up onto the couch between us. “You want to see?”

  Chapter twenty-one | surrender

  I sat for a moment, looking at Nick like he’d lost his ever-loving mind—something I realized I’d been doing a lot of the last couple days.

  Did he just ask if I wanted to watch him transform part of his body? Was this some kind of perverted euphemism? Nick always had a strange sense of humor, so I honestly wouldn’t doubt it.

  But, no. Something in Nick’s eyes told me he wasn’t kidding around. He seemed excited about sharing this strange ability. I know I said I believed all of this—because I was pretty sure I did—but now that I was being offered the opportunity to witness an actual transformation firsthand, I wasn’t sure I was ready to fully let go of that last thread of denial.

  Naturally, that curious—and fast-becoming dominant—part of me that I kept trying to repress answered for me, forcing my head to move up and down. I don’t know what exactly I expected, but I watched with complete awe and shock as Nick held his right arm out and stared at it.

  Nothing happened at first, and I started to doubt everything he’d told me. A strange combination of relief and disappointment filled me. Relief because I started to believe I could go back to my normal life, and disappointment because…actually, I didn’t quite know why. I think it was that part of me that I’d been repressing that was disappointed.

  Yup. That was exactly where the disappointment originated, but at the same time, it seemed to be cheering Nick on. It was bizarre and very disorienting to have my brain so split on what to believe.

  The warring emotions were suddenly yanked back the second I heard the telltale sound of bone cracking. No, bones. Plural. It wasn’t an overly loud sound, meaning it wasn’t a large bone that splintered, and the minute I saw his fingers begin to bend, his knuckles contorting at impossible angles, I realized that was what I heard, and I panicked, thinking something had gone terribly wrong.

  This can’t be normal, I tried to tell myself, unable to take in enough oxygen as alarm set in completely. My first thought was that I needed to call an ambulance or get him to a hospital, but I couldn’t even move. I remained seated next to him, completely transfixed by what was happening to him. My eyes momentarily left his hands, expecting to find pain and agony all over Nick’s face, but all I found was focus and determination in the furrow of his brow. His skin slowly turned red and beads of sweat started to form on his forehead. It wasn’t until a smile of satisfaction slowly formed on his face that I glanced back to his hand and gasped audibly.

  It was…well, it was unlike anything I’d ever seen. What I witnessed was nothing like what you saw in the movies or even the milder television shows where it was an instantaneous and magical change with absolutely no trauma to the body. This looked excruciating, not to mention grotesque and absolutely horrifying. Forget trauma to the body…what happened to a person’s mental stability during this process? Concerned, I tried to speak up, but I was paralyzed. A light sheen of sweat covered his arms now, and I watched in abject horror as his wrist snapped back, the sound of his bones continuing to crack burning into my memory. Nothing could cleanse this from my memory. His fingers curled in toward the palm of his hand, and I watched in absolute terror as new skin formed over his hand somehow.

  Believe it or not, that wasn’t even the worst of it. While it definitely wasn’t the most appealing sight in the world, a pretty violent bout of nausea presented itself as five sharp claws started tearing through his skin, right below his knuckles. It trumped everything I’d seen so far. I could smell the small amount of blood that mixed with the sweat on his skin, and then I watched as his skin darkened… No, it wasn’t the actual skin that darkened; new hair was sprouting, coming in quickly, thicker, coarser, and a shade darker than the light hair that currently covered his forearms and head.

  M
y breathing increased, my heart hammering almost painfully against my ribs. I tried to tell myself that this had to be normal, but it looked bad. Really, really bad.

  Then it was all over. The scent of sweat and blood still lingered in the air, but nowhere near as potent. I stared, unable to process what I was looking at. One minute, it was his hand—a hand I’d held—and now there was a much larger version of a dog’s paw attached to Nick’s arm where said hand used to be. I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out and touching it, feeling the coarse fur against the pads of my fingers.

  Is this really happening?

  It never occurred to me that Nick might not have been a fan of being petted like a domesticated dog, but when I looked up and found him smiling proudly, I realized I was wrong. He loved this far more than I’d thought possible.

  Suddenly, the front door slammed, startling me and making me jump. Nick pulled back his arm, almost like he was trying to hide it from our unannounced company. One sniff of the air was all it took for me to recognize who it was…even though I’d only met him once before. His scent was vaguely different—a little more human and a little less dirty dog—but I’d know it anywhere.

  Jackson.

  The second he entered the room, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and a rumble formed in my throat. I realized this was something I did when I felt defensive or territorial.

  Weird.

  The fact that I experienced such a visceral reaction to his scent had to mean something. Yes, I suspected he was the one who bit me—and by suspected, I mean I was pretty damn sure of it—but there was something else about the way he carried himself that was off-putting.

  This was the first time I’d met him in his human state, but I could recognize him by his eyes alone. Not only were the color of his eyes the same as that wolf, with an added bit of dark brown around the edge of his irises, but the way he leered at me unnerved me.