Dark of the Moon Read online

  "Hey." He sat behind me and put his arms around me. "Hi, Ms. Reed."

  "Hello, Connor." She patted my arm. "Think it's time for me to go find some folks closer to my age. I brought the car. It's parked about ten miles from here. Find me if you want a lift home."

  I figured she was the only Shifter who had arrived in a car, but then she was the only one with a human daughter.

  "I'll see." I didn't know yet what my plans were. For all I knew, the elders would have me placed under house arrest for impersonating a Shifter.

  "Okay'" Lucas yelled. "No one is left in the building. Everyone stay back. They're ready to demolish the building." He raced toward us. Kayla met him halfway.

  Lindsey wandered over to where Rafe was waiting for her.

  Connor and I stood up to have a better view.

  The series of explosions went off in a timed sequence and the building crumbled into a pile of debris and dust. Somehow after all we'd faced, it seemed…anticlimactic.

  After the vaporous clouds settled, Lucas walked back over to us. "I'm going to send Guardians out to search for Mason and Dr. Keane. Their underlings I'm not too worried about. But the Keanes, we need to find. We can take them to Wolford, hold them prisoner there until the elders decide what to do with them."

  "I'll help you search in a minute," Connor said. "I need to take care of something first."

  Lucas nodded as though he knew what that something was. I was afraid I might, too. That something was me.

  My suspicions were confirmed when Connor turned to me. "We need to talk."

  I nodded. Yeah, we did.

  Taking my hand, he led me away from the others. We walked along silently. On the horizon, the moon was leaving its quarter phase. They hadn't waited for the dark of the moon. Our being captured had sped up their plans, but in the end, it seemed to have all worked.

  I wasn't convinced we'd seen the last of Bio-Chrome but no one else had seemed as obsessed as Mason and Dr. Keane—so maybe we were in the clear. We could always hope, but continue to prepare for the attack. I liked to think that the others were truly in it for the good of mankind, even if their methods were questionable.

  We were at the edge of a clearing near an abundance of trees when Connor finally stopped and turned to face me.

  "Were you serious about wanting to be Mason's guinea pig?" he asked.

  "He wasn't going to return me to the cage. So we made a deal. If he returned me, I'd take the first injection."

  "Why?"

  "Because I wanted to be with you. And I wanted to be a Shifter so bad. I wanted to shift. I wanted to be beautiful."

  "You're already beautiful."

  "Oh, Connor." His words made me happier than I thought I could ever be. But I needed to explain that it was so much more. "You can't understand how much I wanted it. It's hard to let that dream go. To know I'll never—" I reached up and rubbed his bristly cheek. "It won't work with us if I can't shift."

  "We can make it work."

  "Be realistic, Connor. You can shift and be home by dawn."

  "Or I could ride home with your mother."

  I released a strangled laugh. "Yeah, that'll always be your number one choice."

  "I'm not saying there won't be difficulties, but we could work them out. Besides, shifting is overrated."

  With a smile, I pressed my face into the center of his chest. His arms came around me. Was I being a silly dreamer to imagine that we might be able to make this work?

  Placing his knuckles beneath my chin, he tilted my face up. "I told you not to take the injection if you loved me," he said. "Does that mean you love me?"

  "I've loved you for a long time. I wanted to die thinking about you and Lindsey beneath a full moon."

  "You can walk away from those feelings?"

  "If I have to. You deserve a mate. I don't know if I can ever truly be a mate."

  Shaking his head, he gave me a soft grin. "I don't know if I've ever known anyone as strong as you."

  His mouth found mine with unerring accuracy. I wanted to believe that it wasn't so much because he could see in the darkness, but because of something stronger. A bond between us. My mom had talked about falling in love. I couldn't deny that I'd fallen in love with Connor. He'd said he loved me.

  Why was I so afraid to trust the intensity of his feelings? What if one day he looked across a room and felt that jolt that signaled he'd just found his true mate? How would he feel then if he was stuck with me?

  He pulled back. "Do you smell that?"

  "Monique? I'm still wearing her clothes."

  "No…it's"—he inhaled deeply—"Mas—"

  A growl echoed through the air and a heavy weight thudded into us, taking us to the ground.

  It was Mason. His shape was more man than wolf. He was covered in fur. His face was a caricature of a wolfs. It was as though when shifting it hadn't been able to decide exactly what it should be.

  His long fingernails cut grooves down my arm. I yelled, kicked, maneuvered out from beneath him. Connor made his escape as well. He was ditching his clothes as quickly as possible, while I began looking for a weapon. I'd felt Mason's strength. I didn't think my wrestling moves were going to take him out.

  He leaped on my back, crushing me back to the earth. He'd misjudged, though, and overshot his mark because when we landed I was tucked up beneath his chest, which made me beyond reach of his snapping teeth. Growling and snarling, he leveraged himself so he could get to me.

  It was all I needed to position myself so I could toss him off. I scrambled away.

  I heard another growl, this one more menacing, more controlled. I looked back in time to see Connor diving for Mason. They were both brutal in their attempts to take the other down. But there was a madness to Mason that I wasn't sure we could defeat.

  I found a branch on the ground. It was sturdy but too long. I grabbed both ends, put my foot in the middle and jerked up. It snapped in two, giving me what I wanted: a stick the length of both my hands—a stick with a pointed end.

  I hurried over to where Connor and Mason were locked in battle. They were snarling at each other, snapping their teeth. Connor was on top but he couldn't get close enough to the jugular because Mason's absurdly long arms kept him beyond reach.

  Bouncing on the balls of my feet, I prepared myself. Then I swung my leg around and knocked Connor off. Immediately I went to my knee and plunged the stake through Mason's heart.

  He wasn't a vampire, but a stake through the heart will kill practically anything.

  SIXTEEN

  It was sad that in death Mason reverted back to his human form. He looked so innocent, almost sweet. No harshness, no cynicism, no obsession.

  Before Connor shifted back, he had howled into the night but it wasn't a howl of triumph. It was a call to the others. That he'd taken no satisfaction in Mason's death made me love him all the more.

  I didn't know where Kayla had found the blanket but she knelt beside Mason and draped it over his still form. With gentle fingers she combed back his hair. "Find peace, Mason."

  Earlier in the summer they'd been friends. It occurred to me that it was his obsession with the Shifters more than the formula that had destroyed him.

  And that left me to wonder if I was any different. Was I letting my obsession with not being a Shifter destroy what I might have with Connor? Or was I truly being unselfish in my desire to let him go?

  "Found Dr. Keane—or what's left of him," Rafe said, as he and Lindsey joined the group. "Looks like he was Mason's first victim."

  I wanted to believe that Mason hadn't realized he was killing his father, that every aspect of him that was human had disappeared until he was only a beast that he couldn't control.

  "Poor Mason," Kayla said. "I like to think that in the beginning he did want to do something good for mankind. Our healing properties are miraculous."

  "He got greedy," Lucas said, slipping his arms around her. "We can lay him and Dr. Keane to rest at Wolford."

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