Luna Junction 2 Forbidden Mate (W) (3 page)

That same sense of fear traveled along
my spine and the hair on the back of my neck rose. I gasped as I
spun around. I didn’t know how long the man had been watching. He
stood a good hundred yards away and I couldn’t see his face but I
knew he regarded me intently and somehow I also knew he meant harm.
Carefully I lace another arrow into the bow, though I kept it
pointed down. I would not raise it unless he moved
closer.

The man seemed to shake his head and I
squinted. There was something familiar about him. When he finally
turned and began walking slowly away I studied his shape and
realized I’d been staring into the hostile face of Michael
Casteel.

He disappeared in a matter of seconds
and I stood there, listening to the sounds of summer and feeling
vaguely uneasy. The bow and arrows remained with me when I finally
returned to the house.

My bedroom seemed pretty well unchanged
from the last time I saw it. The bed was still bare, having been
hastily stripped of its cover six years earlier. Scattered
possessions were strewn about, the things I had neglected to bring
with me.

Carefully I set the bow down next to
the bed and lay my head down on the cool mattress. The springs
creaked mildly as my body settled heavily in and I closed my eyes.
It was the most comfortable I’d been in a long time. I slept and
this time it was dreamless.

I sensed someone in the room before I
opened my eyes, though I didn’t feel that earlier kick of alarm. My
father’s silent figure was scarcely visible as he sat in my old
desk chair and stared out of the dark window.

Yawning, I rose on one elbow. “What
time is it?”

He ignored the question. “I’m sorry,
Artemis.”

“
You know I only go by
Acie now.”

“
In this house you’ll go
by your real name. Our mistakes began with your birth. We should
never have tried to raise you here.”

The fatalistic tone of his voice was
making me uneasy. “Well, here’s as good a place as any, isn’t
it?”

“
No. Artemis you just need
to listen now. When you were little we thought perhaps the calling
would skip you. Sometimes that happens. Even your mother isn’t
strong. We stayed here even through the troubles. Ah, that terrible
thing with the Landon woman still haunts me even though the guilty
party paid dearly. I made sure of it. For a while it seemed the
families and the hunters would never reconcile.” He sighed deeply.
“But there was you. You played with their children and ran through
their yards. The Council was keen on keeping the peace and demanded
that we stay.” His cough was hard and painful. “I knew on the
morning of your thirteenth birthday, when I caught you shooting in
the backyard, for once without being hounded to practice. You were
perfect. I saw the confused fear in your eyes because you didn’t
know why the people you’d known all your life suddenly terrified
you. It didn’t help that the Casteel boy was coming of age as well.
He was growing into what he was always meant to be, as were
you.”

None of Max’s word made sense to me.
And yet, they did. I asked the question, fearing the answer. “And
what is that, Daddy?” I whispered.

His tone was wry. “You are your
father’s daughter. As I am a hunter, you are a huntress. We have
only one form of prey and we have for centuries watched, protecting
humanity, intervening when we have to.”

I didn’t have to protest or insist on
the impossibility of his strange story. I already knew it was true.
Only one question remained. “And just what is it we are supposed to
hunt?”

“
Luna Junction is a unique
community. I know you’ve figured out that much. There are some of
us, the hunters. The rest are them, the werewolves.”

Chapter Three

Werewolves.
I had accepted it even before the meaning fully
sunk in. I had been told the unspoken truth of what I’d already
known. The five families, Gideon, all of them. They didn’t hate me.
They were afraid of me. However, the results were remarkably
similar.

I put my head down and wept for a long
time while my father awkwardly stroked my hair. I swatted his hand
away. “You should have told me.”

He sighed. “You think I don’t know
that? We had hope, Artemis. We said to hell with the Council and
put you first for once when it became clear that you felt the
calling and that everyone in town knew it. It was the wrong thing
to do. I don’t know what the right thing would have been. I’m
sorry. Look, it’s all I’ve got at this point. I can’t undo the past
but maybe now, knowing the truth, you can start fresh.”

I wiped the tears out of my eyes.
“Where?”

He shrugged. “Does it matter? Wherever
you want. Your whole life is ahead of you. You aren’t beholden to
Luna Junction.” A bitter pause. “Not like I am.”

“
Daddy,” I shook my head.
“I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

The ensuing silence was deafening. “You
can stay here for a little while. I’ll smooth things over in town.
The leaders won’t be eager to cause trouble, though I heard about
your little run in at the café.” He paused. “That boy didn’t hurt
you, did he?”

I snorted. “No, he finished doing that
years ago.”

Max chose his words carefully. “I know
how close you once were to the Casteel kid. But you need to stay
away from that family. Michael Casteel isn’t like his father. Tom
Casteel was a fair man, a good sheriff. But Michael…his hard streak
runs deep.”

“
Don’t worry,” I mumbled.
“I don’t have any desire to see another Casteel for the rest of my
life.”

Max shifted position and looked toward
the kitchen. “You must be hungry.”

I smiled. “Starving.”

“
Well, come on. Old man
Hoffman felt a little bad about the way things went down. Brought
some burgers over to the store. Even cooked them
completely.”

“
Come again?”

“
Werewolves like their meat
on the rare side.”

“
You sure it’s not
poisoned?”

He laughed softly. “No, I’m
not.”

The food smelled heavenly. I could not
recall how many hours it had been since my last full meal. I peeled
the bun back carefully but all I saw was a benign delectable
hamburger. I shrugged and took a large bite, figuring if the Luna
Junction werewolves wished to do me in, there was probably a more
effective way than lacing a hamburger with antifreeze.

Max sat down at the chipped table,
watching me carefully. I closed my eyes for a moment, briefly
recalling the warm security of sitting across from my father for
every evening meal. It had been a long time.

He cleared his throat, beginning to
speak and then changing his mind. I reluctantly put the hamburger
down. “Tell me the truth. Are we in danger?”

“
No,” he answered quickly.
“Artemis,” he sighed, running a hand through his graying hair.
“There’s so much you need to understand, I don’t even know where to
begin.”

“
How do they do
it?”

He knew what I meant. “It’s just a part
of them. They reach adolescence and the wild beast emerges. It’s a
controllable trait, if the carrier is a blood wolf. The Luna
Junction families are all blood wolves.” He paused. “Then there’s
the bitten.”

I swallowed another mouthful of food.
“The bitten. That has an ominous ring to it.”

He nodded. “It is ominous. A mortal
bitten by a blood wolf under a full moon will soon bear the wolf’s
curse.” His eyes were solemn. “Only the transition is unnatural.
Violent, and unpredictable. The blood wolves will always pose some
risk. How could they not? But the bitten are uniformly
menacing.”

“
And what are
we?”

“
We, daughter, are mere
mortals. With a few abilities. There’s some lore behind it but it
really just amounts to rumor. Supposedly we have some blood wolf in
our veins, going back untold generations.”

I thought about each inexplicable
shudder of dread which had ever overcome me at odd moments. All
this time I assumed I suffered from anxiety or paranoia. “This is
fucking real, isn’t it?”

Max nodded. “It is, honey. I’m
sorry.”

I gave a terse laugh. “Well I guess I
can toss out my meds now. Because I’m not crazy after all. I’m just
a huntress. Of werewolves. One of which is my former best friend.
And apparently everyone I grew up with. All a pack of goddamn fairy
tale hairy beasts.” I began to cackle uncontrollably, finally
falling out of my chair.

My father knelt in front of me.
“Artemis,” he said sternly.

I shoved him away. I wanted to scream
at him, to let him know how my life had been nothing but sordid
confusion ever since I turned thirteen and was whisked away from my
home and denied access to the truth. But there was only so much
blame I could throw on my misguided parents, on the residents of
Luna Junction, on Gideon Casteel. I was the one who squandered
opportunities, dropped out of school, allowed men to use and abuse
me. I couldn’t bitterly shriek like a wronged child because I no
longer was a child. Instead I could only sob.

“
Daddy, I’ve just been lost
for so long.” And my father held me and cried with me on the floor
of the kitchen until we exhausted our combined grief.

Chapter Four

Night was still thick when I awoke. I
thought I’d heard a deep mournful howl but it could just as easily
have been a dream. I crossed my small bedroom and opened the
window, peering out. I half expected to see glittering wolf eyes
glaring back at me but there was only darkness. Distantly I saw a
light in Eddie D’arcangelo’s tiny house. Max had confirmed that
Eddie was another hunter. He had headed to Eddie’s for a while but
the soft snoring from the other bedroom meant that he had since
returned. I had little desire to see Eddie again. He had always
seemed rather shifty and suspect. But then, I reminded myself that
I had spent the first thirteen years in the midst of werewolves
without ever questioning a thing so perhaps my instincts were a
bit…undependable.

The air seeping through the open window
was cool and moist. I wore only an old t-shirt and welcomed the
fresh feel of the air. I drummed my fingers on the windowsill,
considering. I felt as if I’d been given a chance. A chance to sort
through the mess I’d made of my life. Max didn’t seem to dislike
having me around, or at least he hadn’t said as much. If I stayed
in Luna Junction for a while I could pull myself together. I felt a
little queasy about pursuing whatever it was a ‘huntress’ was
destined for. But I could sure as hell stand to finish high
school.

Every muscle in my body clenched before
the sound even reached my ears. No wonder why so many of the old,
fearsome fables were devoted to their kind. It was a call that
spoke an ancient terror, the howl of the wolf. I’d heard that sound
a thousand times in my youth and dismissed it as mere background
noise. Now I knew better. As the sky began to lighten enough to
sort through the shapes of the towering pine trees, I squinted at
the dark figure which sprinted across the hilly land beyond my
father’s property. The large four legged creature moved with such
liquid silence it might have been an illusion. But just before he
left my sight, he turned as if he knew I were watching.

“
Gideon,” I breathed. I
didn’t know if he heard me. In the next breath he was
gone.

“
Artemis?” Max called from
the next room, his voice tense and alert.

“
I’m fine, Dad. Go back to
sleep.”

Eventually I left the open window and
dressed quietly while my father’s deep snoring resumed. I put my
hands on my hips and frowned. The house looked as if it hadn’t
suffered a good cleaning since my mother’s departure. I spent the
next three hours dutifully scrubbing every dingy corner.

When he finally awoke, Max seemed
pleased by my efforts. He whipped up several bowls of steel cut
oats topped with strawberries and brown sugar. We sat across from
each other and ate in companionable silence for a while.

“
You’re thin,” he observed
critically as he scooped the last bite from his bowl.

“
Oh yeah? You’re not.” I
tossed a spoon at his protruding gut.

He stared at me for a moment, then
busted up laughing. He retrieved the spoon, still guffawing, then
abruptly stopped. At first I didn’t understand the tension in his
face. Until I felt it too.

Max relaxed first. “It’s all right,” he
said, taking a few long strides to the front door.

When he opened it, Benji and Zane
Landon stood on the other side, poised to knock. Zane grinned
ruefully. “Should have known you’d sense us.”

Benji looked around curiously. “We
heard Acie was back.”

“
I am.”

The twins watched me nervously as I
stepped toward the door, standing behind my father. He raised an
eyebrow at me and I nodded. Two years younger, the Landon boys had
always trailed after Gideon and I like eager puppies. Their older
brother, Matthew, seemed to fly in a separate orbit and anyway I
had never minded the twins’ company. Cade Landon was always joking
playfully with his boys and theirs was a home I had felt welcome
in. Werewolves or not, I couldn’t imagine having any fear of Zane
and Benji.