Moon of the Terrible (Seasons of the Moon) (6 page)

Slowly, he turned around and set his mother on the snow. She staggered to Cain’s side. “Son,” she said warmly, placing a hand on his shoulder. Her gaze chilled when she turned it on Seth. “My
only
son.”

“Now drop Seth,” Abel said.

“Fine,” Cain said. “He’s not the one that I want anyway.

He didn’t drop Seth—he
threw
him.

Abel’s reaction time was good. He just barely caught him before he slipped into the river.

But it meant that neither of them were close enough to Rylie to keep Cain from grabbing her.

His hand clamped tightly on her arm, and he jerked her into his grip. She felt the silver pinch of claws on her throat and gasped.

“You killed my mother,” he hissed into her ear, tightening his hand as he took a deep sniff of the side of her face.

The claws bit into her jugular, and Rylie knew that there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t change in time. Abel and Seth were running, but they wouldn’t be fast enough.

She was about to have her throat ripped out.

But Cain froze as blood trickled down her neck. “Wait,” he said, taking another smell of her. He turned his burning gaze on his brothers. “Wait!”

They froze.

“What are you doing?” Eleanor asked.

Cain released Rylie’s throat and shoved her. She stumbled over the ground and spilled onto her side. Abel stepped over her, hiding her behind their protective wall of bodies.

But Eleanor and Cain didn’t try to attack.

“What happens right here, right now—it doesn’t really matter,” Cain said, hooking his arm around his mother’s shoulders. “I have men in the Union. As soon as I left, they will have seized the sanctuary. They’ve killed the impure so we can start over.”

“The impure?” Seth asked. He was still pale and wavering on his feet.

“Those who were bitten instead of born. It’s time for a change.” Cain’s eyes glowed silver. “And that change begins with you, Rylie. Congratulations.”

With that confusing proclamation, he hugged Eleanor tight and ran from the woods.

He vanished in an instant.

N
INE

Talking in Code

Trevin and Crystal were still
waiting by the van when Rylie reached the top of the hill. Abel lagged a few feet behind, carrying Seth.

As soon as he set his brother down, he rounded on Trevin.

“Show me your arms and chest,” Abel ordered Trevin, eyes burning with fury. “Take off your shirt!”

“Whoa there,” Trevin said, holding up his hands in a gesture of peace. “Did we miss something?”

“Vanthe is Cain,” Rylie said.

Both of the werewolves looked genuinely shocked. And they smelled genuine, too—although Rylie didn’t think that meant anything. She hadn’t smelled Cain’s lies either.

Trevin took off his sweater and showed them his skin. He didn’t even blink when Abel checked his legs, too. There was no tattoo of a bleeding apple in sight.

Crystal was barely dressed, so she had nowhere to hide a tattoo. Rylie checked anyway.

They were both clean.

“We have to get back to California,” Rylie said.

They called the Whyte sanctuary at the first gas station they reached, but nobody answered. “It doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Trevin said when they set out again. Seth was unconscious again from the pain of his hand, so Trevin was driving as quickly as he could to the nearest hospital. “Maybe they’re just busy.”

“Fifty werewolves, a coven of witches, and the Union are all too busy to pick up a phone?” Rylie asked.

Even Crystal didn’t laugh at that.

Seth was showing signs of
shock, so the doctors checked him into the hospital for a few hours of observation. Rylie borrowed a phone and called the sanctuary again—still no response.

Which left Rylie nothing to do but talk to Abel.

She found him standing outside in the snow with that girl werewolf, Crystal. Rylie hung back under the hospital awning to watch them talk.

Crystal was leaning toward Abel and giggling, like he was saying the funniest things ever. She poured flirty pheromones into the air. But even without Rylie’s sense of smell, she would have been able to tell that Crystal wanted him—and
bad
.

Rylie swallowed back a growl as her inner wolf surged.

Don’t get jealous
, she told herself.

Easier said than done.

Crystal pressed herself against Abel’s side, and before Rylie could think about what she was doing, she strode across the parking lot.

“Hi,” she said, interrupting them.

Crystal hugged his arm tighter. “Oh, Rylie! I didn’t hear you coming!”

She gritted her teeth together. “Yeah, I bet you didn’t.”

Abel’s glower shifted into a hint of a smile, like he thought her reaction was funny. “What do you want?” he asked.

“You,” Rylie said. Crystal looked surprised, and Rylie realized what she had said. Her cheeks heated. “I mean, I want to talk to you. Pack stuff.”

Abel glanced down at Crystal. “Catch you later?”

The girl disengaged. “Okay. Sounds good.” Her cheeks dimpled when she smiled.

Rylie glared at Crystal as she walked away.

“Want to walk?” Abel asked.

She nodded, and they set out. They walked together in the silent, snowy night, shoulder-to-shoulder. There wasn’t much town to walk through—the hospital was on the outer edges of the city, and they were soon on an empty highway.

Abel stopped and sat on the fence, one knee propped up on the railing.

“Why did they let me go?” Rylie asked.

He didn’t look angry anymore. Instead, he looked worried. “I don’t know. A new beginning. What’s that even supposed to mean?”

Rylie had no answers. It wasn’t like she had ever thought to prepare herself for “what to do when your zombie in-laws rise from the dead and attack.”

“What do we do if he was right? If we get back to the California sanctuary, and everyone is…” Rylie bit her bottom lip. She didn’t need to say what they were both thinking.

Abel’s brow dropped low over his eyes. “We’ll find Cain and kill him.” The words fell flat in the night. Rylie shivered. “Don’t worry about it. Not yet. We don’t know that anything is wrong.”

That didn’t make her feel any better. She bit her bottom lip and ducked her head. “I think we need to talk about everything that’s been going on. Not the Cain thing. The… other stuff.”

Abel lifted his eyebrows. “Yeah. I think we do.” He hooked a finger in the waistband of her jeans and dragged her to stand between his knees. He grabbed her hips, dug his fingers into her lower back, and leaned toward her neck.

She pushed his hands off. “Not like that.”

He gave her a look that was way too innocent to be genuine. He had instantly flipped from his gloom to something a lot more… intent. “Like what?”

“Just because we kissed once doesn’t mean we have a…” She flapped her hands in the air. “Relationship. I’m already in a relationship.”

Abel didn’t seem to be listening. He stood over her, so impossibly tall and broad that he filled her vision. She could barely breathe.

She went on, even though it was really hard to keep track of her train of thought.

“Werewolf packs have two Alphas. A man and a woman. I think that our wolves are just… drawn to each other. But that doesn’t mean…”

Abel’s hand pressed into the small of her back, tugging her chest against his.

Wait, what had she been saying?

“I shouldn’t have kissed you,” Rylie rushed out. “I’m not going to pretend there isn’t something between us. There is.” In fact, there were two flimsy layers of clothing between them. And the wolf would have liked it if there was a lot less. “What’s happening is some werewolf
thing
. Seth and I have something else.”

“A tedious relationship that’s hung around two years too long?” he asked, tracing his thumb over her bottom lip. How was she supposed to talk when he was doing that?

“Love,” Rylie said. “And a history. He’s given up everything for me.”

“But Seth doesn’t need you like I do.” He caught her hand and brought it to his face, pressing her palm against his scars. It always surprised her how much softer the ridges were than they looked. “I
need
you, Rylie. Just like I need air. And just like you need me.”

He bent down, and she knew with sudden surety that he was about to kiss her—and that she wanted to be kissed.

“Don’t,” she said faintly. He didn’t stop, and his lips brushed over hers. So she shoved him harder. “I said,
don’t
!”

He sprawled on the snow.

She was shocked to see him fall—she hadn’t meant to hurt him. But Abel didn’t seem bothered. He only propped himself on his elbows so he could stare at her.

“You need a werewolf mate,” he said.

She took a deep breath. “Maybe I do. But… I bit Seth.”

“You did
what
?”

She lifted her chin in defiance. “He forced me to do it.”

Abel stared at some invisible object in the distance—maybe the horrible memories of the first time he had been bitten. “Why the hell would he have done that?”

“He was trying to protect me. And I think… I think he
wants
to be changed.”

“What an idiot,” Abel said.

Rylie didn’t exactly disagree on that point. “We’ll know if he’s going to change tomorrow. On the next moon.”

Abel stood, anger clouding his features. But there was something else there, too—something that looked a lot like pain. “So maybe you don’t need me after all,” he said in a low voice, almost too quiet for her to hear. “But nobody needs
me
.”

“Abel…”

But he had already walked back up the highway, leaving Rylie alone in the snow.

The Gresham ranch was a
short detour on the way back to California, and the moon was approaching quickly. Seth had been held at the hospital for too long—they were out of travel time.

So they returned to the abandoned sanctuary for what might be Seth’s first night as a werewolf.

Nobody came out to greet Rylie, Seth, and Abel on arrival. The house’s windows were dark, the burned husk of the barn was a black mark on the fields, and it was eerily quiet.

“Looks… nice,” Crystal said in a falsely upbeat voice.

“Shut up,” Trevin responded.

She gasped.

“Let’s just get inside,” Rylie said. “I feel too exposed out here, and moonrise is coming in a few hours.”

Hot prickles rolled down Seth’s spine.

Moonrise.

It came all too quickly. Seth lingered outside to watch the sunset, his hand in a cast and stomach knotted with nerves. After witnessing so many werewolves changing, he wasn’t sure what to expect. He still felt normal.

Shouldn’t he have been feverish? Restless? Hungry?

Trevin and Crystal ran into the fields before they had even shifted—in opposite directions. So when the kitchen door behind Seth opened again, he expected it to be Rylie. But the silhouetted figure was about a foot too tall, much too broad, and way too masculine.

It was Abel.

“What are you doing out here?” Seth asked.

Abel came to stand beside him. “I’m here to get you through your first change.”

“I thought Rylie was going to help me.”

“You got me through my first six moons. I’m going to get you through yours.” He bared his teeth in an unpleasant grin. “I’m being sentimental, so shut up and appreciate it, numbskull.”

“But you’re going to change into a wolf, too,” Seth said. “You won’t be very helpful when you’re licking your own nuts and chasing your tail.”

Abel jerked his thumb at the house. “Rylie’s watching from inside. She’ll using her magical powers to monitor our changes tonight.”

“She’s staying human again?”

“Guess so. She said she’s been feeling crappy—like she has the flu or something. She didn’t want to run around in the snow.”

Seth frowned. The flu? Rylie never got sick. He didn’t think werewolves
could
get sick. Was she avoiding him?

Or was she avoiding Abel?

After a long moment of silence, Abel asked, “How do you feel?”

“I’m okay, but that doesn’t mean anything, does it? The shift is completely mental on the first moon,” Seth said. “I don’t even know if Rylie can control me. You might want to tie me down if it looks like I’m losing it.”

“I’ll just punch your lights out if it looks like you’re going to change.”

Seth rolled his eyes. “This is so much better than having my girlfriend with me.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Thanks, by the way,” Seth said, keeping his voice carefully casual. “For coming to rescue us. You probably saved our lives.”

His brother shrugged it off. “Whatever. I knew something was wrong as soon as you said that you loved me.”

Seth’s smile slipped off of his face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I knew you were talking in code.”

Seth hung his head and kicked his foot in a clump of snow.

Actually, he had just been thinking about how much he had been fighting with Abel—especially since Rylie had come between them. And he figured that there was a pretty good chance of Eleanor killing him.

He didn’t want to die without his brother knowing the truth: that he really did love him.

Seth laughed and raked a hand through his hair. “Good thing you caught onto the code.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Abel said. He blew a breath of fog into the cold air. “Who am I kidding? I’m a huge goddamn idiot.”

“I don’t know about
idiot
, but you did kiss my girlfriend. That’s not cool, man.”

“Look,” Abel said. “It’s probably hard for you to understand with your meaty doctor brain, but—God, you’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?” He folded his arms. Unfolded them. Stared at the ground. “What I…
feel
… for Rylie… is nothing that I’ve ever felt before. But she wants you. Not me. And now I’m
feeling
really gay, so can we drop the subject?”

A smile slowly grew on Seth’s face. “And Abel’s heart grew three sizes that day.”

“Screw you, dork wad.”

“No, it’s cute. Really cute.”