Moon Crossed (Werewolf Hunter Series): Season 1 (Episodes 1-6) (Crescent Hunter) (69 page)

“I understand,”
I answer with seriousness.

“Do you?”
She narrows her eyes at me.

“Yes, I really
do.” I pull my lips to the side and parrot what Coretta said.
“There are some secrets that are better untold.”

“And this is two
of em.” She stares straight into my eyes. “Now don't you
come back here.”

“But –”

“No.” She
goes back into the house, slamming the door behind her.

One hundred twelve days

Pike
has turned up the heat, waging an all-out war. Opposing packs are
leaving their territories or dying trying to keep them. Patrols have
been brutal. There are very few alliances between individual wolves
and hunters. I still have Ki, but that's about it. Locke tries to
send me messages from time to time, but I ignore them. Cole has been
completely silent.

Zane and I make it
home; it's nearly sunrise. We're tired, battered, bloodied, and
dirty. I throw my cross bow down on the kitchen table with a clunk
and plop down in the chair with my head in my hands. “When is
this going to let up?”

“When we can kill
Pike,” Zane says, taking off his shirt and throwing it away.

“We have to
figure out how to get to him,” I insist.

“We barely have time to rest, every night there are more
moon-touched wolves. Pike is keeping us busy.” I shake my head.
“I'm sure that part of his plan is to break us down
physically.” Zane gets a bottle of water out of the fridge and
sits down, taking a large gulp while handing me a bottle.

I take it out to the
porch and look in the direction of the sunrise. To fend against the
cold December air, I wrap my arms around my body.

Zane covers my
shoulders with a blanket. “Would you like to watch the
sunrise?”

A sickening chill
shoots through me. How is it possible that one man can ruin the
sunrise? I shake my head. “No, I think I'm going to get a
shower, take a nap, and go down to the lab.”

“Hey, now, don't
forget you promised we'd get a Christmas tree today,” he
reminds me, arching his brow.

I really don't want to,
but I did promise. “I know, we'll go later.” He gives me
a questioning look. “I will! Unlike some people, I keep my
promises.”

This will be my first
Christmas with no family. The decorations are at Aunt Rain's house,
which has sat empty for months. Her imaginary fish are long dead. I
can't bring myself to pack it up; there's no reason to, really.

Trevor's been there;
sometimes he sleeps there. I've caught him sitting on the living room
floor crying. I always back out silently.

The emptiness, knowing
how fickle they are, is painful, and Cole's betrayal touched me on a
level I never knew existed. How is it that a person can get inside
someone's head and learn everything about her just to have sex with
her? He made me nothing but a conquest; I was just a hole he was
trying to fill in himself. When I think of how stupid I was, I want
to stab my own heart out with a shovel. Disgust churns my stomach.

“What's going on
in that head of yours?” Zane asks, putting his arm around me
sweetly.

“How stupid I
am.” I walk down the steps to visit the family graveyard.

“You're not
stupid.” Zane walks next to me.

“I am. I fell for
the one thing I said I never would: a wolf. One that just made me a
conquest.” I look down at Aunt Rain's headstone, remembering
how he couldn't even be here for me. “He never even cared.”

“Claire, we all
make mistakes. It's harder on us because all we do is care. They
don't know how to care about anything other than themselves,”
he says with a heavy tone.

“You're right.”
I press my lips together, biting the inside of my cheek to staunch
the tears. “None of them cared.”

I ran test after test
to confirm that Cole and Locke are hybrids
and
brothers. It
all makes so much sense now, like why I could communicate
telepathically with both Locke and Cole. Then there's Ben. It must be
a hybrid trait.

I've been cataloging
all of my findings as well as putting together the case against Pike.
He is so much more reprehensible than I ever could have imagined,
performing experiments on his own son. I don't blame Coretta one bit
for hiding Locke. I've been back to see her and brought printed
photos of Locke and Cole. She was very appreciative.

To ensure this research
gets into the right hands, there will be a lot of different folks
that receive copies of all the results to date. There isn't much
time; it's about to hit the fan. It's coming; I can feel it. It's
only a matter of time before Pike brings his moon-touched army to my
front door.

Staring at the screen,
I hope to see something happen with my latest potion. The antidote
begins the process of reversing the metaplasia, but it just can't
keep up. The cells in turn destroy the antidote before it can
complete a cycle. But I'm so much closer than I was before. There's
something happening other than the cells being destroyed.

My eyes are feeling
heavy, carrying me off to sleep.

“Oh, Claire, it's
wakey wakey time,” Zane sing-songs as he comes down the stairs
into my office.

“I was awake,”
I lie, wiping drool from my cheek.

Zane laughs. “You
didn't bother taking a nap so I figured I'd find you down here
asleep.”

“Yeah, I tried,
but not even the exhaustion could overcome my insomnia.” I
rattle my head, trying to see straight. “But sitting at my
computer is a sure fire way for me to doze off.”

“Christmas tree
time.” He smiles excitedly and is way too enthusiastic about
this.

I let out a groan. “No,
please don't make me get a Christmas tree.” I whine like a five
year old.

“You promised!”
Zane takes my hand, dragging me from my desk.

“But I don't
wanna.” I follow him reluctantly up the stairs.

“Ki said you love
Christmas, so we're going to bring a festive feel to this house if it
kills us.” His insistence is adorable.

“Fine.” I
put my coat on and grab my keys. “But I'm not cutting one down.
We'll get one from a tree lot.”

“That's fine.”
He locks the door behind us.

Luckily for me, there's
a tree lot set up about ten minutes away. Lights are strung on the
makeshift posts and there's Christmas music playing. The trees are
lined up and ready to be taken home and loved for the next few days
until they are discarded at New Year’s.
Huh, sort of like Cole did to me.

“You know, my
family didn't celebrate Christmas,” Zane says in a sad tone.

“Really?”
I'm genuinely surprised and of course feel like an ass for being such
a bah humbug.

“Yeah, I never
knew why.” He shrugs.

This is pulling at my
heart strings. “My Dad loved Christmas and the festivities. I
always looked forward to it. He would sing and cook and decorate. It
was ridiculous how he would go to the nines on the outside of the
house, when no one would see it. We lived in the middle of nowhere,
far off the road.”

He stops in the aisle,
his tone introspective. “He didn't do it for other people; he
did it for you.”

Stopping with him, I
think about that. “Yeah, I guess he did. I tried to continue
most of the traditions with the boys...” I trail off, trying
not to miss them. This is getting way too heavy and neither of us
have looked at any of the trees we've been walking past for ten
minutes. “What about this one? Not too big.” I point to
the five foot tree in front of us.

“Sure, if you
like it.” He shrugs and walks around the tree.

“Cool.” We
both stiffen and exchange a cautious look. Without realizing it, both
of us touch the weapons under our coats; we feel a wolf-borne nearby.

“Familiar?”
he asks, shrinking down and looking through the trees.

I nod and relax
somewhat. “Rabbit.”

“Hey, Claire.”
His soft voice comes from behind.

Slowly I turn around;
I'm wary, but not frightened. Rabbit hasn't been around for quite a
while; he's never been with the boys during any attacks. The sad
smile on his face nearly kills me. “How are you?”

“I'm okay.”
He reaches around to hug me, but Zane doesn't look comfortable with
this. “I miss everyone.”

“I miss them,
too.” What we had, not what they've become. “Where have
you been?”

“I went out to
New Mexico. I have family there.” He pulls his lips to the
side.

“What brings you
back?” It sucks how uncomfortable this feels.

“I was
summoned
.”
He looks away, his tone bitter.

“By whom?”
Zane asks.

He gives us both a
nervous look. “Cole.”

“Huh, well, maybe
he just wants to have all the boys together for Christmas.” I
go back to looking at the trees, wanting to disengage.

Rabbit puts his hand on
my shoulder. “Claire, I want you to know I will never fight
against you. That's why I left; it was wrong what they did. I only
came in the hopes that I could stop something terrible from
happening.”

His sincerity has
always been touching. I turn around and throw my arms around him.
“Thank you.” He holds on to me tightly. “I love
you.”

“I love you too.”
There isn't any more that needs to be said at this point other than,
“Goodbye.”

He pulls away from me
with moisture in his eyes. “Yeah.”

The entire exchange is
heart-wrenching, I want to lay down on the ground and bawl, run after
him and beg him to come back.

I don't.

Zane and I sip our hot
chocolate on the couch, admiring our handy work. The Christmas music
playing adds to the extreme cheesiness.

“I think it looks
nice.” Zane smiles, but there's something else behind it.

“Yeah, it does.”
I don't stop looking at the tree and how bare it looks without the
boys’ ornaments. It's kind of pathetic. I'm having some regrets
about not taking more time to pick out a tree. It's so small in
comparison to what I'm used to.

“Hey, hey, none
of that,” he scolds.

“None of what?”
I feign innocence.

“No lamenting.
This year we're doing something different.” He nods with
resolve. “I can't wait for you to see what I got for you.”

“What? You didn't
have to get me anything.” Crap, now I feel bad since I didn't
get him anything. There's still time though.

“I know, but I
wanted to. Besides, when I saw it...well, it's fitting.” He
gets up from the couch and takes me by the hand. “Okay, now
what do you want to do?”

“I was going to
go back down to the lab,” I say, putting my cocoa on the table.

“Nope, not
tonight.” He shakes his head, taking my hand. “We're
going to relax. Hayden said we are not allowed to go out on patrol.
The house is cleanish, and we're gonna chill.”

“What exactly did
you want to do?” I wish people would understand that being in
my lab is relaxing.