Bite of the Moon: Paranormal Shapeshifter Romance Boxed Set (57 page)

No surprise or anger or distress. Ice cold and smooth, Garik asked, “How do you know? You can’t smell that.”

“But I can taste it.”

“You bit her?”

“Yeah, and she’s not one of us.”

“It’s not full moon yet. You can’t know she’s not a Fenris Wolf just because you bit her early and she didn’t shift.”

“That’s not it,” Finn snarled with mounting agitation. He’d have rather been talking about anything else.

“Then what is it?” Garik asked with equal annoyance. Finn would have done well not to forget that Hagen was just as much a Fenris Wolf as he was, just with stronger self-control. The strongest Finn had ever seen.

Finn slumped in his chair and rubbed his forehead, not wanting to look at Garik as he said it. “I know because when I bit her, we mated.”
We mated
.

Yeah, there it was. Garik, howling, with laughter. Misery really did love company.

CHAPTER NINE

Tabitha got off of Finn’s bike as soon as they’d come to a stop at the nearly deserted desert rest stop. They were inland east of the beach town of Moonstone, where everything had that upscale Napa feel no matter how poor. Dusty wooden benches stretched out under a shade tree to one end of the dirt parking lot. A small diner sat at the other, grape trellises shading the walls. Tabitha was pretty sure the place’s claim to fame was a 1950’s movie star dying in a car accident right in front of the place. That was California, as obsessed with the way celebrities died as how they lived.

Still astride his motorcycle, Finn pulled off his helmet and shook his brown hair back from his heated face. Damn if he wasn’t the perfect female fantasy of a biker. He’d talk and ride and fuck like a bad boy, all while looking like sin in oil-streaked jeans, but he wasn’t going to rape the teenaged hitchhiker beside the road or shoot a bar owner over whiskey that was too warm—probably.

He was just going to break the heart of any woman stupid enough to fall in love with him,
Tabitha
. But of course, she might have been just, you know, bitter over him fucking and biting her and then running out the door while she sat there alone on his couch all night wondering what happened. Wondering why she hadn’t turned, changed, or at least stopped loving him. Any or all of the above. Whatever.

“You can ignore me all you want, Tabitha,” Finn told her. And she had been ignoring him, actively. She hadn’t uttered a word to him since…. “But there’s someone here who’s going to help you, and you have to get onboard with it.”

There was some doubt in Finn about whatever this plan was; Tabitha sensed it in him, though she wasn’t sure how. She couldn’t question him, of course, if she wasn’t speaking to him, and she couldn’t be sure he’d tell the truth even if she did ask. So Tabitha just stood there with her arms crossed while she pointedly didn’t look at Finn and he just stared across the parking lot at the diner, waiting.

The stranger pulled up hard and fast in a puff of dust as her Jeep tires skidded a few inches in the dirt lot. Like Tabitha, the woman who perked Finn’s interest with her arrival was blond and chubby. Pretty, too, with a definite California edge to her with waves of naturally sun-streaked hair and the mirrored sunglasses.

“Come on,” Finn said, and he finally climbed off his bike. “We need to meet her in the middle, in the open.”

“Why the caution? She doesn’t trust you?”

This made Finn smile, if only a little. “Our breeds usually try to kill each other on sight.”

“She….?” Tabitha squinted at the curvy woman stalking toward them in a tank top, jeans, and sneakers, looking confident and athletic for her size. “She’s a werewolf?”

“An Odin’s Wolf. I explained a little about that. To boil it down, we’re the cool kids, and they’re the choirboys. We’re the bad guys in the black hats. They’re the anal-retentive law and order a-holes in the white hats. We don’t answer to anyone. They do everything their gods tell them to.”

“Glad we got that sorted out,” the woman said as she stopped about ten feet back from meeting them, her hands fisted firm on her hips. Sharp hearing, Tabitha realized. And Finn apparently hadn’t cared if the stranger heard what he’d said about ‘her breed.’

“Rachel Corey,” Finn said, greeting her in a voice that dripped with passive aggression.

“Fenris Wolf,” the woman responded, and Finn made a face like he’d been wounded by her refusal to use his name.

Grinning, Finn told her, “Garik says hello. He would have come himself, but there’s that thing about you swearing you’d kill him next time you saw him. I assume the last time you two fucked was just a stunning disappointment. Took that personally, did you?”

“Nice haircut,” Rachel said in smiling retort. “I’ll tell Lund it turned out nice.”

If Tabitha was connecting all the dots right, that meant one of this woman’s pack brothers was the wolf who had tangled with Finn and ended up ripping out hair.

The Odin’s Wolf folded her arms and leaned on one hip. “Niceties aside, Hagen went to a lot of trouble and personal risk to arrange this meeting and assure your safety—this once. Is this her?”

“Her?” Tabitha repeated and tilted her head. Irritation edged into her voice. Whatever issue this Rachel had with Finn, Tabitha didn’t appreciate inheriting it. The amused glance she got from the woman surprised her; it wasn’t entirely hostile.

There was a moment’s hesitation before Finn nodded and responded in a lowered voice. “Yeah, this is Tabitha. And don’t bother asking if I’m sure, because I am. She’s an Odin’s Wolf.”

Tabitha blinked and finally turned to speak to the man. “I’m what? Wait, why are you telling her when you haven’t even told me?”

“Because it doesn’t mean anything to you yet, not until…
not unless
she’s willing to help.”

Thoughtfully, Rachel nodded from behind those concealing shades. “I can see this is a tricky situation.”

Finn snorted. “Damn right it is. Mick is expecting me to bring her to him in three days and prove she can shift, but you know it doesn’t work that way for your breed. If he finds out what she is, or if we try to lie and say she can’t shift, he’ll have her killed. We can’t get her out of town. Even if she’d go—.”

Tabitha glowered at Finn and the constant references to her in the third person, like she was a child, a no-name
again
. “Which
she
won’t,” Tabitha put in as her contribution to the discussion.

“Which she won’t,” Finn repeated with an irritated wince, “Mick is keeping an unusually close eye on her. My gut says he’d find her. I took a lot of time and precautions and wrong turns even getting her out here without a tail.”

The she-wolf stood a moment, scuffing one shoe back and forth in the dust as she considered her thoughts. Then she asked Finn, “Why are you helping her if you think she’s an Odin’s Wolf? Why not just let the Sons kill her?”

Clearing her throat, Tabitha raised her brows. “You guys do know I’m standing right here listening?”

Under his breath, Finn growled and snorted, obviously straining to maintain his patience. “It doesn’t matter why I’m helping.”

“Well that’s just bullshit,” Rachel told him, and Tabitha agreed without saying so.

In truth, Tabitha was hot and dirty from the ride and annoyed with both of the shifters for talking over her head like… like she was a kid with no say over what happened to her. There it was again, Tabitha realized. This was a prime example of why she’d braved the folly of tracking down the Sons of Fenris and marching into Skin. Years were going by, and she was still the no-name victim under the care of people who either wanted something from her, like Mick, or wanted to be rid of her, like Finn. Make her a wolf and she’d stop being prey to the world and its whims.

“Why are you helping her?” Rachel asked Finn again.

“Look,” Finn snarled, took a step toward the blond Odin’s Wolf, then growled under his breath and shuffled back a step. “You know why. The same fucking reason you and Garik, for all your threats, haven’t killed each other.”

The female shifter abruptly came at Tabitha, reaching for her, and damn but she was fast. The only one faster was Finn, who put himself between the women. He did let Rachel touch Tabitha, though. Just the collar on her t-shirt. And Tabitha was too slow to react to either of them before Rachel had pulled aside the shirt to look at the wound Finn had left in his charge’s shoulder.

After a second, Finn slapped Rachel’s hand away and stood more squarely in front of Tabitha, shielding her. Tabitha wished it was sincere protectiveness and concern motivating him. In her wistfulness, she could imagine she felt that from him, that edge of fear for her. But that was all she could reasonably assume it was, her own wishful thinking.

Finn glared at Rachel. “Satisfied?”

“Why should I help?” Rachel asked.

“Because she’s one of you. Her blood is marked by your gods. They’re not going to let you turn your back on another warrior of Odin no matter how she came to be among you.”

Rachel shook her head. “No, I mean why should I help you, Fenris Wolf. Why shouldn’t I take her and get her the hell away from you?”

Tabitha was about to ask what made the woman think she’d agree to that, but Finn didn’t give her the chance to speak.

“Because this makes another favor a Fenris Wolf owes you
and
… you’d have one of your own breed on the inside of the SoF.”

And that idea made Rachel stop and huff her amusement and consider. “Don’t mind betraying your pack, Fenris Wolf?”

“I don’t mind undermining my alpha. He’s not the strongest or the smartest or the most calculating. Mick doesn’t deserve to be the leader of the SoF when the stronger alpha is your mate. Garik.”

Tabitha couldn’t help gaping. “She’s mated to Garik?”

“We’re not mated,” Rachel grated through her teeth, glaring and beginning to breathe heavier and faster as her temper strained.

“Right, not yet. Just fucking for now, but you’ll get around to it.”

Rachel was the one who took a step forward then. “You need to leave that alone before I walk away from you.” She included Tabitha in the scope of her glare. “Both of you.”

For Tabitha, it was like accidentally walking up on a confrontation between wild animals. Her own adrenaline started to rise, setting off her pulse and a tremor in her hands. One instinct told her to back away, but another—the one she obeyed—urged her to slide one hand up onto Finn’s shoulder in a visible demonstration that she was standing with him.

This time Tabitha felt,
really felt
, Finn’s relief. And his pride in his lupa standing up with him. Tabitha didn’t even know what that meant, let alone how she could be so certain of what was going through Finn’s mind.

“Fine,” he said abruptly, forcing down his wolf with so obvious an effort that it hurt Tabitha to watch. Like hearing nails on a chalkboard or a dentist’s drill. “Do this for her, and when and if the time comes, I’ll stand with Garik in whatever way you need. Tabitha….”

Finn paused to turn and glance over his shoulder at the woman he’d just named, at the woman who’d been the only person he’d cared about for most of his life. Tabitha could have sworn she felt a swell of affection from him.

“Tabitha needs this. I can’t have her hurt or… or worse. If she ended up held against her will somewhere…. If Mick hurt her, tortured her to torment or control me…. You can imagine it, Rachel, or maybe you can’t or won’t let yourself. Being caged? Like a lesser animal than what we are? I don’t know if you’ve ever actually seen one of us trapped like that, but I have.”

It didn’t matter if he’d been six; he still remembered what the other pack had done to his parents and how they’d just left him locked in the cage with their bodies never thinking he’d escape once he’d grown starved and emaciated enough.

Tabitha gasped. Where had that thought and those
memories
and that terrible swell of pain—of Finn’s pain—come from? How could she have possibly recalled his experiences and felt…?

“Okay, yes,” Rachel responded suddenly, as though she wanted to stop Finn from talking, from describing his fears any further. “I’ll work with her. But if she’s going to be expected to be able to shift on command, jeez…. I mean, it’s going to be hard.” She confronted Tabitha then, straight on. “It’s going to be physically exhausting in a way I can’t even prepare you for. You’ll have to do to over and over in just a few days. All the energy that you’ll need to work up to make it happen, then the cost to your body afterward? Most of us would sleep at least a day away after our first few shifts. You won’t have that time to use to recover. We’ll have to use and do whatever it takes to get you up and ready to shift again as soon as—.”

“I don’t understand,” Tabitha finally snapped, cutting Rachel short. “So I’m not the right kind of wolf or… or at least not the same kind of wolf Finn and the Sons are. Fine, but what? I don’t have the ability to shift at will like they do?”

Rachel shook her head adamantly no. “No, it not the same for us as it is for them. They can hardly contain their shift, especially when their transition is new to them. They get angry, they shift. They get horny, they shift. The wind blows too hard, they shift.”

And didn’t that explain a lot about what had happened four years before? Tabitha didn’t say that, but she thought it. Finn looked away sullenly as though he had heard what was inside her head.

The Odin’s Wolf continued, explaining, “For us, the change isn’t about our animal nature; it’s about our calling to Odin’s service inherent—inherited—in our blood. For you to be an Odin’s Wolf, those you descend from must have been in his service. When you put on the wolf skins of his ulfhedinn warriors, then… then you become one of Odin’s Wolves. I’ll give you a piece of one of the skins to trigger your shift. With enough time and practice, you get to the point you won’t need it.”

This was all too much for Tabitha to take in at once. The revelation of her nature, and the instruction about her shift, and the warnings about what would be expected of her mentally and physically. She could only nod, to at least acknowledge she was hearing all of it even if she couldn’t absorb it.