Moon's Law (New Moon Wolves 2 ~ Bite of the Moon ~ BBW Romance) (20 page)

"That you're mine." He dipped his head and bit her shoulder. She startled, surprised by the bite, but then gave into her earlier urge and sank her teeth into the meat of his shoulder. It felt almost as good as sex, scratching some instinctive itch only her wolf understood.

They collapsed side-by-side onto the bed after that, chests heaving, completely and utterly spent.

"So now what?" she asked, staring at the ceiling.

Kane reached for her hand. "I have no idea, but I know one thing."

"What?" She looked at him, curious.

"Once you've been bitten, you can never go back." And then he was kissing her, claiming her as his once again.

Epilogue

They gathered at the new pack clearing at the next full moon, intent on christening the space. The mortgage had come through, and it was time to celebrate a new beginning. Overhead, the moon cast a luminous, magical glow over the world and stars twinkled in the distant sky. Fall had passed into early winter, the temperature dropping with the last of the leaves.

Leo breathed in the cold air, feeling at ease for the first time in weeks. He and Kai had been living in a tiny apartment in Glen Vine for the last several months, the press of the human world around them feeling a lot like having their fur rubbed the wrong way. With the pack land officially theirs now, they would be able to build a cabin out here and finally have some peace. He couldn't wait to just roll out of bed, shift and go for a morning run. Speed cleared his head and kept his wolf content. He needed to run like he needed to breathe.

Audrey and Tao stood at the center of the clearing, welcoming people as they crunched through the first snowfall of the season. The couple stayed close to each other, constantly reaching out and touching one another, the love between them obvious.

They weren't the only love birds. Charlotte and Kane were just as bad as his brother and his mate. They passed through the threshold of pine and birch trees ringing the clearing and, with a nod to everyone, went to stand off to the side, opposite Leo. They didn't stop touching each other, either. If one stepped away, the other followed, as if unable to bear being apart.

Leo looked away. He was happy for them, but it made his life here in Michigan feel empty. The new pack wasn't home. Not yet. And he was alone, even among his brothers. Tao was too busy with Audrey and their upcoming wedding to go for runs these days. And Kai was ruled by his magic. As for the humans newly made into werewolves, they seemed uneasy around Leo, and he didn't like to bother them unless he had to.

He missed having a place and people that he not only called his own, but who claimed him in turn. Yeah, their home pack hadn't exactly embraced them with open arms, but they'd belonged. Here, no one really wanted them.

Not that Leo blamed them. He and his brothers had been wolf born, which had been hard enough, and he could only imagine how difficult it was to go from human to not human in the snap of a jaw. The fact it had been his own brother who had bitten everyone and turned them made it all worse.

Leo could see it in their eyes sometimes, knew they thought 'Here is a brother of the wolf who attacked me.' And it stung because he'd done nothing wrong.

He took a breath, savoring the pine scented air and gave himself a little shake. Tonight was going to be a new start. Kai had said it earlier and it seemed to Leo that he could sense whatever it was in the air that told his brother these things. The cold breeze filling the clearing seemed to sweep away emotions, giving everyone a clean slate.  Despite his gloomy thoughts, hope stirred inside him.

The pack land had potential. Maybe it didn't feel like home yet, but he had no place else to go. He would just have to make the best of things and hope that someday, he would find his other half, just like Tao and Kane had.

A hand landing on his shoulder made him jump. "Have faith, brother," came Kai's voice, low and solemn. Kai squeezed Leo's shoulder before letting him go.

"Faith in what?" Leo asked.

"That the winds that move our lives know what we need. That the moon will light our way." Kai lifted a hand to the silver orb in the sky, almost saluting the celestial body.

Leo rolled his eyes. "Yeah, okay. Sure." He knew the power Kai's magic held, but the cryptic way his brother wielded it made it hard to take him seriously sometimes. Looking closer at Kai, he said, "Are those
rocks
in your hair?"

Kai lifted a strand, showing off a smooth round stone tied to one end. "Yes. The lake gave them to me. We are anchored here, Leo. Tied to this pack for the rest of our lives."

"So we're stuck here?" His wolf jolted to attention at the idea and a sudden urge to roam made his legs ache. He pushed his animal back and sucked in more cold air. The scent of summer carried a ripeness that stirred his blood, but winter soothed and calmed sometimes to the point where his wolf almost hibernated inside him. It often annoyed him, because he loved to run on four paws, but just then, he was grateful.

"Sometimes it is good to be stuck, brother." Kai nodded to Tao.

Watching Tao sweep Audrey up in a kiss and hearing her giggle of delight, Leo thought with all his heart,
'I want that, too.'

"Run with the wind and you will arrive at the right place," Kai said, seeming to read his brother's mind. He clapped Leo on the shoulder again and ambled off to greet the pack. After a moment's hesitation, Leo followed suit.

Tao opened a bottle of champagne and Audrey passed out glasses. Leo took one and stood with the rest of his pack, waiting for the toast.

"To our new pack clearing and the wolves who will call this place home." Tao held his glass high as his bass voice boomed loud in the night.

Leo clinked his glass with the rest of the pack and then downed the champagne in one gulp. People were already shedding their clothes, preparing to shift. Leo returned his glass to the tray Audrey had left for that purpose and quickly shucked off his clothing. The shift washed over him, reforming his bones and easing the aches that came with carrying human burdens.

With a long howl at the moon, he bounded off into the darkness around the clearing, chasing after the rest of his pack. A sharp wind came up on his back and he smiled as it pushed him forward. He would throw himself to the wind and trust it to take him where he was supposed to go.

~The End~

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed Moon's Law. If you haven't read First Moon (which was a bestseller with more than 50,000 copies sold) yet, I strongly encourage you to pick that up next. Below is a short excerpt so you can see what it's about.

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BLURB: Audrey Levine thinks being bitten by a wolf is just another day on the job. She couldn’t be more wrong.

A wildlife rehabilitation specialist, Audrey usually does all the rescuing, but now she's the one who needs help. In ten days, she’ll be covered in fur and howling at the moon while the wolf who bit her is out there, waiting to claim her as his own…whether she wants to be his or not.

The biggest problem? The curvy beauty doesn’t know any of this.

Werewolf Tao Black is the strong, silent type, which is an asset in his role as pack enforcer. Hot on the trail of a wolf gone bad, he runs into trouble and is saved by Audrey. Realizing her situation, he vows to protect Audrey from the wolf who bit her, no matter what it takes.

But that means going against his alpha’s orders…which might get them both killed.

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First Moon: 195+ Reviews. 4.5 star review average. Top 100 bestseller !

EXCERPT

Audrey looked at all the blood spattering the driveway and tried to act nonchalant. No one else appeared green around the gills. She’d be damned if she was going to be the first person to puke her guts out at the crime scene. The police already made fun of the park rangers as it was.

Greenies they called them. Or tree huggers, if the cops were in a particularly bad mood.

"Miss Levine?" Sheriff Martin strode toward her, his uniform flexing over his powerful thighs. He had enough muscle to give him a natural swagger and the handsome looks that made women’s nether regions quiver at just the sight of him.

Audrey worked hard not to succumb. Sure, boyfriend pickings were slim out in rural Michigan, but she wasn’t his type, would never be his type. He liked tiny girls with giant fake boobs. Audrey had great boobs, thanks to very generous genetics. The problem? Her genes had been
over
generous every place else, too. So she tried not to get caught up in lusting after the Sheriff. It was never going to happen. Not unless she lost a gazillion pounds and magically became a size zero, while somehow maintaining her rack in the process.

Frankly, she liked ice cream way too much to even attempt that kind of weight loss.

The sheriff stood in front of her, his pecs impressive even through the khaki polyester of his uniform. Audrey caught herself staring at his chest and quickly looked away.

"Thanks for coming out." His voice was a rough rumble, deep and masculine. The perfect voice to go with the perfect body.

"I came as soon as I got your call. Is Bob," she stared helplessly at the blood again, "really dead?"

"I’m afraid so." The sheriff looked grim. "Some wild animal mauled him." He held up a plastic bag containing a cell phone. Red smeared the plastic. "You were his last call."

Audrey swallowed hard. She’d wondered why they’d called her to the scene. Now it was starting to make sense. "Bob told me he found something. He swore it was legit and wanted me to look at it."

Bob also thought there were aliens in Roswell, mermaids in the ocean, mind control drugs in the food supply, and that all politicians were corporate shills. Well, she had to concede, maybe that last one had some truth to it.

"Did he say what it was?" The sheriff looked at her, his dark gaze curious.

Her eyes darted from side-to-side, taking in all the details of her surroundings. Deputies were unrolling crime scene tape, blocking off Bob’s front yard. Police and ambulance lights blinked red and blue. Then she caught sight of the front door and gasped. Deep, jagged marks had been carved into the old wood as if something had tried to claw its way inside. Something big by the looks of it.

The sheriff followed the direction of her gaze and cleared his throat. "That’s one of the reasons we called you. We were hoping you could tell us what animal did that." His previous question was forgotten for the moment.

"I-I don’t know," she whispered, putting a hand to her mouth. Northern Michigan had wolves, coyotes, and black bears, but the spread of the claw marks on the door far exceeded that of any native predators. She held up her hand, splaying the fingers, and calculated the claws that had tried to break into Bob’s house were triple the span of hers.

Preternaturally big.

Too big to be real.

Could Bob’s death have been staged?

The thought startled her. The old man had been the resident crackpot ever since she’d started working at the national park along the shores of Lake Michigan. He often showed up at her office yammering on about aliens in the sand dunes and shoving blurry pictures at her as proof. Never mind her job was wildlife management and rehabilitation, not legends and myths.

The sheriff watched her carefully. "We thought maybe it could’ve been a bear."

Audrey considered the idea and then dismissed it with a shake of her head. "No, bears around here are smaller than that. I think..." She trailed off, uncertain as to whether or not she should speak her mind.

"What?" the sheriff prompted, his eyes dark as coal.

She took a deep breath. "I think you should consider if there was a human behind it, hoping to make it look like an animal attack. I don’t know of any animal out here that big. It could be a set-up, a false trail."

Sheriff Martin wrote something down in the black notebook he’d been cradling in his palm. "I’ll make a note of it." He looked at her, his gaze as piercing as a hawk searching for prey, he asked, "So, did you know Bob well?"