Lori Handeland - Marked by the Moon

Tonight he felt Alana’s loss as an unhealed wound. Or what he remembered an unhealed wound might feel like. So why had he been unable to keep himself from touching Alexandra?

Certainly he hadn’t had sex for a good long while. He tried to recall how long and couldn’t. He remembered the woman, her face but not her name. The interlude had meant nothing but a release. Every interlude had been nothing more than that since he’d gone searching for his wife and found nothing but ashes.

“Get down here,” he ordered. “Now.”

Alexandra lowered her gaze. He was her maker, the alpha, and she had little choice but to obey him. Once she realized that, she wouldn’t like it. Not that there was anything she could do about it.

Julian’s lips curved. He’d been wrong to leave her behind to fend for herself. He could exact a much better revenge by taking her with him. A woman like her, forced to do anything he wanted—

Torture.

Which was what he’d had in mind all along.

She blinked as if she’d just come out of a trance. Moon madness. Happened to the new ones. Sometimes they stared at the bright, shiny, exquisite moon until a Jäger-Sucher walked up and blew their brains out. Which was why new wolves were not supposed to be left alone. At least in his pack. Most werewolves couldn’t have cared less.

“Why are you taking me with you?” she asked.

Julian growled, a deep rumble that made her eyes narrow. If she’d been in wolf form, he thought she’d have growled right back. He felt a twinge of interest. He hadn’t had anyone rebel in centuries.

“Why are you coming?” he countered.

She glanced over her shoulder, then quickly climbed over the ledge, landing barefoot at his side. The street person who’d sold Julian the sweats and T-shirt had been wearing canvas sneakers so filthy, so full of holes, and so huge he’d refused them. It didn’t really matter. Despite the area being littered with broken glass and sharp bits of metal, any injuries she might attain by running over them would heal.

Julian heard the police milling about inside. They’d be occupied for a few minutes dealing with the scene, but soon they’d start looking around.

He took her hand, and she let him. Then they ran until they were far enough away for their presence not to matter. When he slowed, he immediately dropped all contact. Together they wiped their palms against their pants.

“Why are you coming with me?” he repeated.

“I—” Her gaze dropped to her feet. “I don’t know how to live like this.”

“And you think I’ll teach you?”

She met his eyes. “Won’t you?”

Of course.

The words whispered through his brain. The combination of fear and hope in her eyes pulled at him. The scent of her enticed him.

“I should leave you here,” he ground out. “Let you run wild until the cops lock you up. If you’re lucky, Mandenauer will arrive before the next full moon.”

She blinked. “Who?”

“I’m not a moron,” Julian snapped. “I checked you out.” Though he hadn’t come up with much. “You were born. You lived for a while in Nebraska, even started kindergarten. Then your mother disappeared—”

He lifted a brow, waiting for her to explain, but she didn’t. He figured disappeared meant “death by monster,” especially considering what happened next.

“You and your father fell off the grid. Since only Edward has the connections to make someone disappear like that, either one or both of you was a Jäger-Sucher once upon a time.”

She shrugged, giving up the pretense. “I don’t work for him anymore.”

“I know.”

The Jäger-Suchers had rules, and Alexandra Trevalyn did not follow them. One of those rules was: Wait until they shift to shoot them .

As Alex had proved with Jorge, she didn’t believe in rules.

“What else do you know?” she asked. “About me? About them?”

“Not as much as I’d like,” he murmured. He and his kind stayed isolated from the world. It was the only way to live the way that they wanted to. Which meant information was hard to come by. Not that he didn’t come by it. It was just hard. And expensive.

“The Jäger-Suchers are in disarray,” he continued. “There was a—” Julian paused, searching for the word. “A purge. Many of them died; the rest are in hiding.”

Her brow creased. “When did this happen?”

“Nearly a year ago. The werewolves banded together and began hunting the hunters.”

“They never cared before.”

Most werewolves only cared about themselves, which was how the Jäger-Suchers had so much success.

“There were whispers of a cure,” Julian continued. “But werewolves don’t want to be cured. They like what they are.”

“Do you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She appeared to think about that for a minute, then nodded. “So the werewolves went on the offensive.”

“In more ways than one,” Julian agreed. “Not only have they gone after the Jäger-Suchers instead of waiting for the Jäger-Suchers to come to them, but they’ve made a concerted effort to replace what’s been lost and purposely increase the number fighting on their side.”

“A werewolf army,” Alex said faintly.

“It’s happened before.”

Barlow knew about the werewolf army. However, according to him, he wasn’t the one behind it.

Except he was a werewolf. Killing? Lying? Both came as easily to him as eating.

Why hadn’t Edward told her he’d been losing agents? That he was on the defensive rather than the offensive for the first time in more than half a century?

He was a big believer in imparting info on a need-to- know basis, and he’d no doubt say if questioned that Alex hadn’t needed to know. She was no longer one of them.

Maybe Edward thought Barlow was behind the whole thing. Although if that was the case, it was something she definitely needed to know.

However, she’d learned in the few years she’d worked for the old man that he had his own way of doing things, and he was usually right.

As they walked along the deserted street, her shoulder brushed Barlow’s and memories rushed in— the kiss, his scent, the bizarre fact that they could even touch.

He skittered as far away from her as he could get and still remain on the cracked, broken remnant of the sidewalk. The expression on his face brought back the image of him wiping her taste from his mouth, her touch from his hand, and fury sparked.

Which was stupid. She’d felt exactly the same way once she’d come to her senses. Disgust for her lack of control, nausea over the flash of lust, horror at what she’d already done and what she’d been willing to do with the slightest hint of encouragement.

Just thinking about the interlude brought back Alex’s thirst for vengeance. She wanted to kill Barlow not only for what he’d done to her but for the way he’d made her feel.

If Edward had not said the werewolf that had killed her father was a member of Barlow’s pack, she would have put a silver bullet through the guy’s brain and disappeared into the sunset, the fate of humanity at the mercy of a new werewolf army be damned.

But Edward had said, and since the only thing that had kept Alex going for the past eight years was the possibility of revenge, she bit her tongue and kept going, silently assuring herself that once she got wherever Barlow was taking her, she’d blast her father’s killer to hell, along with anyone else who got in her way. Right before she left, she’d give Julian Barlow a parting gift.

Kaboom .

The promise soothed her as little else could.