Alphas of Red Moon Ranch Complete Series (12 page)

Holly decided it was time to do this her way. After class, she went into the school library and instantly began ransacking the nature section. Books about bears, books about the wildlife in Etna, books about
ursus arctos
interacting with humans. They had a huge catalogue of books, magazines, and articles about the local wildlife, and Holly took as many books as she could fit in her arms and carried them to a nearby table. There, she pored over the material, flipping through page after page.

Most of it read like
National Geographic
. She read about how bears slept through much of the winter and mated through much of the summer. They
were
approaching mating season, which would explain his inability to keep his hands off of her. She read about how they sometimes claimed their mates with love bites. Holly’s hand slipped absently to the side of her throat and her thumb rubbed over the bruise there. They ate salmon and berries. Climbed trees. Generally kept to themselves, alone.
You can say that again
, she thought to herself. Getting Jacob outside of himself was like pulling teeth.

It was time to dig deeper. Holly poked around the local archives. The college was equipped with microfiche readers that looked like old-fashioned desktop computers with a small slot at the bottom for the microfiche cards. Once she set it up, she could scroll through archives from local newspapers dating back to the early 1900s.

The library, which had been bustling with students cramming for tests earlier, was now still and quiet. Holly twisted the large knob on the side of the microfiche reader to focus the screen. She read stories dating back decades ago about bear attacks in Etna. How it was becoming a problem for the people in town.
Efforts to Chase Out Bears Coming Up Short
, proclaimed a headline in a 1975 issue of
Eyes on Etna.
The Westmore name came up in the same paper, but in a different article.
Scott Westmore Reopens Red Moon Ranch
, the headline read. There was a picture beside it of Scott and Mae Westmore standing under the hanging Red Moon Ranch sign, his arm around her back. Mae was younger, but still very much
Mama Mae,
a stout woman with a boy cut. Both were all smiles.

Holly stared at the image of Scott Westmore…Jacob’s father.
God, he’s a spitting image
, Holly thought. Strong shoulders, that cocky grin, handsome even in a smudged black-and-white photograph.

She kept scrolling. Then, in a 1976 issue of
Eyes on Etna
, she found an article that slowed the turn of her wrist.
Esteemed Hunter Robin Hoyte Cleans Up Bear Problem
, the headline read. Beside the article was a black-and-white image of a hunter standing next to a bear carcass, grinning at his prize kill. The sight chilled Holly’s bones, but she forced herself to keep looking. The man
looked
like a regular hunter, a woodsman complete with the round face and a curly beard that framed his chin. But there was something about him…Holly zoomed in. Around Robin Hoyte’s neck hung a six-pointed star. There was something in it too…it was hard to make out in the pixelated image. A gem? It was an odd talisman for a burly hunter to be wearing, no doubt. Holly sat back, examining the image, and then took a screenshot and printed it out.

The fluorescent lights buzzed above as Holly bounced around the
From Heart to Home
store.

“You get three things,” Jacob said as he pushed the shopping cart beside her.

“Only three?” Holly drew her prettiest smile.

He snorted a laugh.
Amused,
at least. “Three that I get no veto on. We can negotiate the rest.”

In effort to make
his house
more
their house
, Jacob had taken Holly to a home goods store so she could pick out a few of her own decorations to add that
woman’s touch
. And three things that Jacob had no say in? This could get interesting fast.

Holly lifted up a fuzzy pink throw pillow. “What do you think?” she said, totally straight-faced.

Jacob’s expression fell. But, to his credit, he bit his tongue. “Looks…furry,” he forced out, even though she could tell he was already regretting his decision.

Holly couldn’t help it; she laughed. “Relax. I’m not that mean.” She dropped the pillow and began pacing down the aisle. Her eyes landed on an item that she thought was a good blend of the both of them—a small embroidered Winnie the Pooh pillow.
Literature and bear all in one happy pillow
. She lifted the pillow to her chest and tapped it. “What about this one?”

If anything, Jacob’s expression dropped more than it had with the pink pillow. However, he saved it with a poker face and said, “Sure.”

What was that?
It hit her then. Maybe he
didn’t
want any more bears in the house. After all, his own was
literally
haunting him, making him jolt awake in the middle of the night with fever-sweats.

Holly was good at reading people—and thank God for that. It was like prying teeth to get anything out of Jacob. She toyed with the fray at the edges of the pillow and then said, “You know, I heard you wake up again last night.” Her eyes met his. “Do you want to talk about it?”

His gaze sharpened. “I’m fine.”

No, you’re not
. Holly pressed her lips together and then added, “Do you know Robin Hoyte?”

“Who?”

“Robin Hoyte. I was doing some research and his name came up—”

The cart came to a sudden stop. “What do you mean, research?”

Holly blinked.
What part of that was vague?
“I mean…I went to the school library and looked into the local archives. I thought there might be something to explain your…”
What did he call it?
“Moon sickness.”

Jacob’s playful warmth had completely frozen over. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

Was he kidding?
This was starting to sound like a bad Nancy Drew novel. “What…is there something you don’t want me to find?”

“No…
no
,” he said empathically, and then caught himself. “Listen, princess…I just don’t want you getting your hands dirty with this. It’s not your problem.”

Not my problem? My husband wakes up with night terrors. That’s my problem
. Instead of giving Jacob a well-earned lecture, she just said, pleadingly, “Jacob…”

“Don’t go looking into this. I can solve it. On my own.”

“But—”

“That’s an order.”

She set her jaw. He’d pulled the
Alpha
card. He was in a
state
now and she knew arguing with him was only going to inflame the matter. “Yes,” she said as she dropped the Winnie the Pooh pillow in the cart. “Of course.”

“Yes, of course,” my ass.
Holly went back to the library the very next day, digging through the archives once more. She found a couple more sidebar articles about the bear problem and Robin Hoyte and snapped screenshots before hitting the print button.

Holly got up and her heels sank soundlessly into the soft carpet as she made her way over to the printer. Her thoughts were interrupted by a girl’s soft giggles drifting out of one of the aisles. Holly thought nothing of it until the giggles were silenced and turned into quiet gasps and moans.

Holly felt a prickle run up the back of her neck.
Not in my library
. She ripped her printout from the printer and stalked over to the aisle, following the muffled sounds. Sure enough, in aisle E—the travel section—she found a boy and a girl tangled up in the back. She was contorted around him and their hands dipped under each other’s clothes. She could see his wrist worked rapidly inside her jeans as she moaned while he kissed and nibbled her neck.

He wore a shock of blond hair and a tan Abercrombie and Fitch hoodie. Holly recognized him instantly.

“
Cayden
,” Holly said sharply, and the two jolted apart as though they’d been electrocuted.
Cayden
, the troublemaker from her class that she’d spotted on day one, the lone wolf and ladies’ man who spent more time whispering to his fellow students than he did taking notes.

“Dr. Westmore,” the girl stammered, flushed, and Holly recognized her, too, from her lecture. “We were just…um…”

“Going somewhere?” Holly questioned, arching her eyebrows towards the travel books.

“We
were
,” Cayden said pointedly, and flashed her a shark’s smile. For a second, Holly thought she saw a shimmer of gold in his eyes and a lethal point to his teeth.

Holly blinked and the images were gone.
She was seeing shifters everywhere. She was going crazy
.

The girl pulled herself together and grabbed her backpack, slinging it over her shoulder. “I should go,” she said and quickly darted out the aisle.

“I’ll see you on Thursday,” Holly called back as the girl vanished from sight.

Cayden was in a little less of a hurry to get up and languidly got to his feet, zipping up his sweater. “You always this much of a killjoy, Dr. Westmore?”

“In my office, please,” Holly said.

The clock ticked behind Cayden’s head and the young man couldn’t seem to stop fidgeting. His eyes darted between Holly and the door, he picked at a loose thread on his hoodie, and he bounced his leg on the balls of his foot as the seconds dragged on.

“Are you alright, Cayden?” Holly asked, breaking the silence.

“No offense, professor, but I was having a much better time in the library,” he said.

“Listen,” Holly said, “I’ve just noticed a…reoccurring pattern with you. While college
is
the time to experiment and learn more about yourself, I worry that maybe there’s something going on underneath the surface. You don’t have to talk about it with
me
, but I’d recommend you talk about it with someone. I can give you a note for the counselor, if you’d like.”

“Uh-huh,” Cayden said, distracted. Truth be told, Holly was only half-worried about Cayden. Did he not get enough attention when he was younger? Latent mommy issues? It wasn’t her business. Her concern was mainly for the women he toyed with, as though they were playthings.
Young girls deserve to know they’re more than inanimate objects
, she thought to herself.

“What was college like for you?” Cayden said, turning his eyes on her. They were sharp blue and
penetrating
, she’d give him that. “What was that—the seventies? Lots of drugs, sex, and rock ’n’ roll?”

Holly wore a weathered smile. “Believe it or not, some people go to college to learn.” Which was only mostly the truth. She’d met Chris in her freshman year and they were nearly inseparable for her full college term.

“My way is better,” Cayden said,
all
inflated ego now. “I get my crazy years out now, maybe I won’t become some old spinster who looks for excitement in all the wrong places.”

The boldness of his statement threw Holly through a loop. “Excuse me?”

“You jealous, teach?” His smile was wide with perfect white teeth, yet Holly sensed the danger there. “If you want some of this, all you have to do is ask.”

Instead of the rampant, no-holds-barred arousal that must have swept through all of her female students when he said those words, Holly felt a chill run through her. She couldn’t place what it was, exactly, but in the words of Miss Claval, something was just
not right
with this young man.

“Can we hurry this up?” Cayden said, damaging Holly’s line of thought. “I’ve got someone waiting on me outside.”

Another girlfriend, probably.
“I’ll walk you out,” Holly said with a smile. She got up and led Cayden out of her office, towards the parking lot. As she went, she added, “My door is always open if you need to talk.”
Talking, at least, might be better than shoving your tongue down the nearest girl’s throat
.

“Yeah,” he said, dismissive, but she hoped that, underneath that cold façade, he was really
thinking
about it. They walked to the parking lot, where Cayden nodded to a white BMW. “That’s me.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Holly said and was about to turn around when—

“Holly?” Holly lifted her gaze and—to her surprise—saw Miranda step out of the car. The mature bombshell wore a thigh-length dress Holly could never get away with and a surprised smile as she removed her Ray-Bans from her face.

“Miranda.” Holly was tongue-tied, a deer in headlights in front of the Red Moon Ranch’s horse trainer. She fumbled for words as Cayden left her wing and lumbered lankily over to Miranda. “Is this your—?”

“My son, yes.” Miranda smiled sharply.
Now
Holly recognized that smile, the same toothy grin Cayden wore. Teeth…
oh
. So she hadn’t been seeing things in the library after all. Cayden
was
different. He was one of
them
. A were-cougar, like his mother. The sudden revelation made Holly dizzy. No matter what, she couldn’t get away from animals nipping at her heels.

“So
you’re
the new professor,” Miranda said, slipping her hand to the back of her son’s neck and squeezing. They were perfect carbon copies of each other—plastic smiles hiding a layer of viciousness underneath. “Cayden doesn’t tell me much about what’s going on at school anymore, I’m afraid.”

Cayden—like every other normal, angsty young adult—shrugged out from under his mother’s hawk-like grip and glared at her.

“I hope he’s not giving you too much trouble, are you, Cayden?” his mother said, turning to the boy.

He glowered, but then shot Holly a pleading look. A
don’t rat on me
look. What was Holly going to say, anyway?
Your son has been going all “mating season” on my lecture class?
Miranda made Holly uncomfortable, ever since that night in the Weeping Willow Tavern when she’d caught Holly and Jacob tangled together on the back porch. That
look
in her eyes…it was the look of a woman who had lost the battle but not the war. And Holly was afraid what lengths she might go to in order to get what she wanted.

Determined to not be any more on the other woman’s shit list than she already was, Holly pressed her lips in a smile and said, “No. No trouble at all.”

“Good,” Miranda said, practiced grin intact. “Let’s make sure it stays that way.”

Was she talking to Holly or Cayden? Holly couldn’t tell.

“How are my babies?” Miranda asked, casual small talk.

Holly shrugged. “Casanova is getting used to me,” she said, referring to the black stallion Miranda trained. She figured that, at the very least, they could talk about horses amicably.

“As long as he doesn’t forget whom he belongs to,” Miranda said with a wink in a way that made Holly’s blood boil
. He’s a strong horse. He doesn’t belong to you. He doesn’t belong to anyone but himself.

Of course, Jacob was in the forefront of her mind.

“I’ll see you around, Miranda,” Holly said coolly. She wasn’t about to be dragged into the other woman’s drama, especially not on campus. Holly had made this place
hers
, her own piece of quiet, and she would be damned if she was going to let a couple cougars disturb that.

(Maybe she had spent too much time with bears. She was getting positively
territorial
.)

“I’m sure,” Miranda said and then slipped back into the car. “Cayden, move your feet,” she hissed and Cayden—like one of her well-trained horses—jumped to attention and got in the car. Was there nothing Miranda couldn’t control with a strong fist?

Yes.
Holly
. She wasn’t going to fall prey to the spell the other woman seemed to cast on everyone around her. Holly tugged her cardigan tighter around her shoulders and felt the printout crinkle in her pocket. She had far more important things than (literally) catty mama-drama to worry about.