Darkmoon (#5) (The Cain Chronicles) (15 page)

He ripped his seatbelt free and kicked the door out of his way, since it had been too dented from the impact to open on its own.

Levi stumbled onto the muddy ground. When he straightened, he looked up to see that the SUV that had hit him was poised on the side of the highway, like a lion looking over its kill.

The doors swung open. Men jumped out.

Men in black suits.

Swearing under his breath, Levi turned to run for the nearest farm.

But Cain was standing behind him.

It had been weeks since he had seen the man he first knew as Vanthe. For a short time, Levi had thought that Cain was a member of their pack—a member of their family. But now he was obviously with the Union. He wore a crisp black suit. His hair was slicked back. And he was looking at Levi with something resembling disappointment.

There was a handgun the size of a small cannon in his hand. It smelled like silver.

“What do you want with me?” Levi asked, and he could taste blood on his tongue.

Cain ignored the question and gestured toward his guards. “Get him.”

F
OURTEEN

Mates

When Seth and James returned
to the real world, the generator in the Union control room was silent. They climbed out the steep tunnel to the surface to find that nothing had changed. The moon was in the same position in the sky. An owl hooted softly.

Seth couldn’t believe what they had just done. It seemed too insane to be true.

Parallel Earths.

“Okay. So…what’s the catch?” Seth asked as they got back into James’s car.

“You mean, for using a Haven as your sanctuary?” He laughed. “Lord, where do I begin? You’ll be secluded from the reality you’ve known your entire life. Any witches that go with you will find their powers altered to some extent—they won’t be as powerful, and certain types of magic will be utterly impossible to perform.”

“I don’t care about any of that.”

“Of course not,” James said. “The main problem is that the rate at which time flows between dimensions is…variable. A minute at the home you know is not a minute in this Haven. It’s a day. Twenty years will elapse in this dimension while only a week passes for your loved ones at home. You can live a lifetime here in less than a month.”

“How does that work?”

James gave an elegant shrug. “Impossible to say. But this means that you need to enter the Haven with Rylie, your children, and the entire pack at the same time. Anyone who stays behind, anyone who lingers on this side—by the time they join you, everyone in Haven will have aged. If you get separated, you may as well not rejoin each other at all. Do you understand?”

Seth frowned. “Not really.”

“Give it time to sink in. You’re most likely in shock.” James pulled the car back onto the road, and Seth craned around in his seat to watch that dark patch of the forest recede behind them.

“How did you find that place?” he asked.

“I didn’t. The Union…gave it to me.” James sighed. “That is to say, they offered it to me as a refuge, and I took it from them. I’m the one who hid it behind the wall so that they couldn’t access it again.”

“Why? What happened?”

“It’s a long story. Suffice it to say, I planned on sending someone very special to me here so that she could be safe, just like your fiancée and her children could be.”

“That woman—the one you loved—she didn’t make it to the Haven. Did she?”

“No. She did not.”

Seth tried to comprehend the gravity of the suggestion.

Safety for the pack—and safety for his children—for the rest of their lives.

But they would never return to the real world again.

“So you think that I should take Rylie’s children away to an entirely different world to grow up,” he said.

“I can’t tell you what to do. But I will say this: whatever it takes for you to reconcile with the woman you love and the people with whom you share blood—yes, even your brother—you should do it. Alone is a terrible thing to be, Seth. Trust me. There is no Hell worse than that.”

Rylie lay in her aunt’s
bed, stared up at the ceiling, and thought about having sex with Seth.

Even though she wasn’t sure that she was really Seth’s fiancée anymore—heck, she wasn’t sure that she was his
girlfriend
anymore—she couldn’t get him out of her head. They had been sleeping apart for weeks, and it had been a long time since she had been touched.

The size of her stomach, and the babies curled up inside, didn’t seem to have had any negative impact on her libido. In fact, she was thinking about sex a lot more than she used to. Between her swelling breasts and pent-up werewolf energy, it was hard to think of anything else at night.

Seth was just a room away. All she had to do was step over her sleeping bodyguard, sneak into his room, and climb into bed with him.

Everything could be normal again. Just like it used to be, before he went to college.

Except that she might be pregnant with his brother’s babies now.

Rylie mashed her pillow over her face to muffle the groan of frustration. She couldn’t do
anything
, not until she knew the truth, and she hated feeling torn.

Of course, her wolf wasn’t having a hard time making its choices.

Rylie’s mind wandered to the thought of Abel’s lips on hers, the way that the plaster cracked when he shoved her against his bedroom wall, and the heat of his hands on her body. When Abel told her that they had been having sex, he had described how he bit her and pinned her to the ground. Dominated her. Taken his position as Alpha, along with a few other things.

What would that be like when they were humans? Would he be just as rough and commanding, or would he be more like Seth, who was always so careful, so considerate, so loving? Seth was amazing in every way, but Abel had always been more of a rebel. She had a feeling that it would show in the way that he made love. He wouldn’t be so gentle with her.

Heat gathered in Rylie’s core, and she rolled over onto her side, hugged a pillow against her chest, and stared at the moon through the window.

Okay, thinking about Abel
definitely
wasn’t helping. Her body was hungry for attention, and she was still alone.

A dark shape moved on the opposite side of the glass, and her heart leaped into her throat until she realized that it was Abel standing outside, as if summoned by her thoughts.

She sat up in bed, hugging the sheets to her chest and blushing. There was no way he could have known that she was thinking about having sex with him. It wasn’t like he could read her mind or anything.

Abel rapped lightly on the window, and then shoved it open. “What are you doing in here?”

Fantasizing about you.
“I was trying to sleep, like most sane people do at night,” Rylie said. “Gwyn’s in the cellar with Scott and the witches, so I’m using her bed to stretch out.”

He grinned. “Sleep is boring. Come outside. We can practice the change.”

“Seth doesn’t think I should go outside alone anymore, and Brody is watching my door. If I try to leave, one of them is going to stop me.”

“Seth has gone off with James, and as for Brody, you don’t have to go through the hallway,” Abel said, reaching a hand toward her.

“I can’t climb over Gwyn’s desk like this!” She gestured at her stomach.

He grabbed the edge of the desk and shoved it aside. It was an antique and must have weighed a ton, but it was nothing in comparison to werewolf strength. “What’s your excuse now?”

She was only wearing a loose white shirt and underwear. She couldn’t get out of bed half-naked, much less go outside. But she didn’t say that. She didn’t want Abel to get the idea of helping her dress, too.

Rylie flushed. “Give me a second. I need privacy.”

Abel rolled his eyes, but disappeared from the window.

She quickly shed the shirt, found a long sweater in Gwyn’s closet, and threw it on. It went all the way to her knees, and that would have to be good enough. Nothing else fit her anyway.

Rylie stuck her head out the window and looked over the hills. All of the snow had melted away, leaving the grass shiny and damp. There were distant shapes moving out by the fence. Brody had organized the pack to patrol again, and there were always at least two people keeping an eye out.

Abel appeared around the side of the house, startling her so badly that she bumped the back of her head on the window.

“Ouch!”

He laughed at her as he took her hand. “Graceful, Gresham.”

She bit back a response and let him help her climb out the window. Rylie was barefoot, and her toes sank into the moist grass. It felt nice after being cooped up inside for so many days.

Between Abel’s long legs and the babies taking up all of the space in her pelvis, it took a lot of effort to keep up as he led her down to the seclusion of the pond. They reached the shore without being spotted, and Rylie sat down on a rock, totally out of breath. Forget her pelvis being occupied—it felt like she had a foot in her lungs, too.

She tried not to notice how amused Abel looked by her slowness. “Okay, I’m out here,” Rylie said. “Now turn into a wolf.”

He rolled his eyes and flopped on the grass at her feet. It was a playful look, similar to the way he was on the moons. “I wouldn’t need you out here if it was that easy.”

“You changed into a wolf on command a few weeks ago.”

His expression turned serious. “That’s because you were in danger. I didn’t have a choice.”

“So it’s adrenaline. Maybe I need to aim a gun at you.”

Abel lifted his eyebrows. “Not adrenaline.”

“Then what?”

He raised onto his knees. With Rylie sitting on the rock, it put them at almost eye level.

“I did it for
you
,” he said.

Rylie didn’t think her cheeks could have grown any hotter, but they did. She ducked her head so that she wouldn’t have to look at him. “Then what am I supposed to do?” she asked her knees. “How can we get you to change at will, so that you can take over as Alpha?”

“Tell me to do it,” Abel said. His voice was low and husky.

Her eyes flicked up to his. He was staring deep into her, like he could see through her skull to the thoughts underneath.

God, she hoped he couldn’t.

Again, she found herself thinking about what he said they had done the night the barn burned. He bit her. Claimed her. Dominated her. But the mental images that followed had nothing to do with wolves, and everything to do with their very human bodies.

She stood up and walked a few feet away, just to give herself room to breathe.

“You need to be able to change on your own, without my help,” Rylie said without facing him again. “Give it a try.”

He was silent for a long minute.

“I want to,” he said finally. “I want to so badly. I can feel the wolf
there
…but it’s waiting for something.” Left unspoken was the truth they both knew: it was waiting for
her
.

Footsteps shuffled through the moist grass behind her. She could feel that Abel stopped at her back, because his heat radiated between them.

“You smell good,” he said. “What is that?”

She swallowed hard. “What do you mean?” she asked, hugging her sweater around her body. It wasn’t thick enough to protect her from the weight of Abel’s gaze. She should have put on full body armor.

Abel’s mouth and nose pressed against the side of her neck, and Rylie shut her eyes as a tremble ran through her body.

“You smell…inviting,” he murmured, lips moving against her throat as he spoke. Was his voice deeper than usual? He sounded like he was on the verge of changing.

It was hard to speak. “You’re not trying very hard to turn into a werewolf.”

He ignored her. His hands touched her elbows, then slid up to her shoulders, and down her hips again, tracing circles over her body. Abel’s fingers left a path of fire in its wake. “You have to tell me what you want me to do.”

“Do I?” she asked faintly. She had a few ideas, but none of them involved telling him to change.

She trembled when his hands dropped to the tops of her thighs, and then disappeared. Abel stepped around her. There were barely inches between their bodies.

“You’re not scared,” he said, cupping her chin. His face was still human, square-jawed, scarred. She was almost shocked to see that he didn’t have any fur. “You’re excited.”

“Abel…”

“You haven’t been sharing a room with Seth,” Abel said bluntly. “I know, because Aden’s been sleeping on the floor in there with Seth.”

“The pack needed more room,” she whispered.

“Tell me the truth,” he said. Rylie bit her lip and shook her head. “Why?”

“You didn’t bring me out here to try to change did you?”

That response didn’t satisfy him. He pulled her against him. “Why aren’t you sharing a room with Seth anymore, Rylie?”

“Because I don’t know if I can be with him,” she blurted out.

Abel’s eyes filled with new heat as a long, breathless moment hung between them.

Rylie had no idea if he made the first move, or if she did. But the next thing she knew, they were kissing, and she felt like she might never breathe again.

She could feel his wolf rise to meet hers, and the energy of the beasts clashed.

The world around them vanished. Rylie’s fingers sought skin. Her hands slipped underneath his shirt and traced his abs up to his broad chest as he gripped her hips tightly, almost hard enough to bruise. He attacked her mouth like a wolf ripping into its prey. It was graceless, more animal than human, and she wanted more.

Even with the extra weight of pregnancy, Abel had no problems lifting Rylie off of the ground. She clung to his neck as he carried her to the safety of the grove of trees. That grove had a lot of bad memories for Rylie—it was where she had found a dead farmer once, many years before, and where Seth and Abel had buried the Union soldier that attacked them.

But there was no room for bad memories within her now. All she could do was gaze up at Abel’s face as he kneeled on the soft, springy grass between the trees, and lowered her to the ground. Her wolf hated to be so helpless in his arms, but part of it recognized that he was the one in control—at least when they mated.