Angela Knight - Over The Moon

The monster's eyes were Paul Newman blue.

"Ray?" Lucas husked, fighting to focus. He must be hallucinating. Ray Johnston couldn't have turned into a seven-foot werewolf…

"Yeah, it's me." The werewolf put Jennifer down in the leaves. "You can see why I didn't want you to come along. I could smell the bastard out here, but I wasn't sure where he was."

"The kid… okay?"

"Just out. Smells like chloroform. Asshole must have been telling the truth." There was compassion in those blue eyes, so human in that alien lupine face. " She'll be fine. But you…"

Oddly, Lucas felt no fear. Everything seemed floating, dreamlike. It no longer even hurt. "Dying…"

"Yeah." The werewolf searched his gaze. "I can save you, Lucas. If I bite you, the magic'll keep you alive until you can change."

He blinked and began to shiver. Cold was spreading up his torso. "Magic?"

"Yeah. That stuff about werewolves being cursed killers is all bullshit. Merlin created us to help people, not kill them. And I think you could do a lot of good as one of us." Blue eyes searched his. "The ambulance isn't going to get here in time to save you, buddy. You'll be dead in ten minutes without the bite. I'm the only shot you have. It's your choice, Lucas."

Blearily, he decided that Ray was right—maybe he could do some good as a werewolf. Besides, he wasn't ready to die yet. "Do it."

When Ray sank his fangs almost tenderly into Lucas's forearm, the pain felt as distant and dreamlike as everything else.

Five years later…

"Lucas Rollings is the best chance you've got, Elena." Candice caught her wrist. In her urgency, pink-painted fingernails lengthened into claws. "He's the best chance any of us have."

"Maybe he is." Elena Livingston pulled away and rose from the sitting room couch to move restlessly to the French doors. A decorative wrought-iron grill covered the glass with lacy, fanciful shapes—leaves, unicorns, wolves, stags. Almost pretty enough to disguise the grill's real purpose: bars on Elena's gilded cage. "But this isn't his fight. Do I have the right to involve him?"

Candice made a frustrated sound and raked both ringed hands through her fine hair. She'd dyed it cotton-candy pink to go with her leather pants and cropped top. It was the kind of thing a rebellious teenager would wear. Candice James was twenty-nine, but like a teenager, she was trying to make a declaration of independence. Unfortunately, pink leather was the best she could do. "Don't be so damned noble. Do you like living like this? Locked up for a month every year like a horny French poodle so the neighbor's mutt can't get to you?"

"No, I don't like it." Elena ground her teeth, barely suppressing the urge to throw herself against the iron grill and rip it right off the door. She could do it. She had the strength. Unfortunately, it would set off every alarm in the house. "I'm twenty-seven years old, dammit. I should have a career. I could be married to a man who loves me, raising babies. Instead I'm a chess piece in Daddy's ongoing game with the Chosen." Letting her forehead rest against the door, she stared blindly through the grill at the forest behind the house. "And I've run out of time."

Candice rose from her chair, concern on her pretty, narrow face. "You think your father's really going to give you to Stephen Bradford?"

She shrugged. "Judith said they've been in negotiations for the past week." The maid might not go so far as to help Elena escape, but she was usually a reliable source of information.

"Stephen. Jesus. Of all the Chosen, why'd your dad have to pick him? He's the nastiest in the bunch."

Elena shot her a dry look. "Which pretty well makes him perfect, as far as my father's concerned. Stephen's arrogant and obsessed with power, and Daddy knows he'll protect the Chosen's traditions."

"Which is exactly why you need Lucas." Candice spread her ringed hands in a pleading gesture. "Look, if you won't do it for yourself, do it for the rest of us. I don't know about you, but I'm sick of living in the Middle Ages. If you can claim your father's seat, you could persuade the rest of the council to dismantle the Traditions."

" If I can claim the seat, and if I can convince them. That's an awful lot of 'ifs.' But I know that if I ask this cop of yours for help, Stephen is going to challenge him, and Stephen has never lost a fight. Is the freedom of a bunch of spoiled rich girls worth a man's life?"

Candice's eyes narrowed under their dramatic eyeshadow. "Maybe not. But my daughter's freedom is."

Elena winced. "Cheap shot."

" I don't care . I want to know that when she gets married, her husband won't consider it his right as a Chosen Alpha to beat her if she crosses him." Candice dropped her voice to a mocking baritone. " 'She'll heal. She must learn discipline.' " Making a lewd gesture at her imaginary daughter's imaginary husband, she snarled, "Fold it into a pointy package and shove it up your hairy Alpha ass!"

"Look, I'm not going to roll over for Stephen. I'm more than capable of fighting my own battles. I just don't like the idea of using anybody else as cannon fodder."

Candice sighed. "You are not up to taking on Stephen Bradford in a fight. Lucas is." She reached into a pocket of her jeans and pulled out a folded envelope. Opening it, she produced a newspaper article and displayed it with a flourish. In a grainy color photo that took up most of the page, a tall, dark-haired man crouched, gazing intently at something on the ground. "Look at this guy. Six-foot-five, and that's when he's not furry. What's more, he's got the muscle to match. He could definitely take Stephen."

Elena took the clipping from her friend's hand and studied it. Candice was right—Lucas looked formidable, but what interested her most was the focused intensity in his gaze. It was pure Alpha male. Pure warrior. Deep inside her, something clenched and heated in response—the Burning Moon reminding her of its presence. She cleared her throat. "He does look like he could give Stephen a run for his money."

"And he's a cop in Harrisville." Harrisville was one of the larger towns in upstate South Carolina, just a three-hour drive from the Livingstons' Charleston mansion. Elena had driven through the area during her frequent trips to Charlotte, North Carolina. "What's more, he hasn't been Direkind long enough to be willing to look the other way for the Chosen. I don't know of anybody else in three states I can say that about."

Elena studied her, interested. "How did you meet this guy?"

"I ran into him a few months ago at a Direkind clan gathering. Fell instantly in lust."

Candice fell instantly in lust on a regular basis. "I'm surprised you didn't snatch him for your very own."

"I did give it some thought. Then I decided you needed him more than I did. I…"

"Shh!" Footsteps on the stairs—ones grown all too familiar. "Oh, hell, that's Stephen. You'd better go, Candice."

"Shit!" Her friend hastily stuffed the clipping back in the envelope and handed it over. "Oh, listen—I also printed out the directions to the Harrisville PD, where Lucas works. I put those in the envelope, too. I want you to think about this, Elena. And fast. You're running out of time."

"I'll think about it." Elena folded the envelope and slid it into the pocket of her jeans, then hurried to escort Candice to the door.

When she opened it, she found Stephen towering on the other side, tall, blond, and icily handsome. He watched Candice slip past, his eyes narrow with disapproval. "What's she doing here?"

"She's a friend, Stephen. My father still allows me to have friends."

The sarcasm, not surprisingly, flew right over his head. "Well, I don't want her here again." Stephen glowered, his gaze deliberately challenging. He was broad shouldered and long-legged in a way that should have made Elena's Burning Moon hormones hum. Yet he left her literally cold. There was just something off about him. Even his handsome face reflected a subtle wrongness. Despite the precisely chiseled features that were the hallmark of the Chosen, his eyes were just a fraction too close together, and his lips were just a little too thin.