Unleash The Moon (The Preternaturals Book 6) (12 page)

“
Rafe,” Shira
said over the music in the bar. “My room. Now.”

Rafe perked up at that and practically raced out of
the bar. They’d all watched Noah turn her down, so now she had to
prove she could still make any one of those wolves jump into her
bed on cue. And most likely she could. She certainly had her
charms.

Noah stayed where he was, irritated that they were
no closer to getting the things he needed to get Sydney out of
here. He’d wanted to leave the following evening as soon as she
rose. They were still far too close to the facility they’d been
held captive in for his comfort. But the possibility of getting out
at sunset was beginning to seem less realistic.

His nostrils flared when he smelled Sydney in the
lobby. He’d told her to stay in their room. He stalked out of the
bar, livid that she hadn’t listened to him when he was trying to
keep her safe. He could have thrown her down and marked her the
second he had her. It would have protected her, but he was trying
not to be a monster about it. What could she be thinking in this
place with all these strange wolves? This wasn’t his dad’s
well-behaved pack.

When he reached the lobby, he stopped dead in his
tracks. The heavy metal screaming through the speakers that once
were used for train announcements, made it hard for him to
concentrate. All he could do was growl.

Two of the male wolves had dragged Sydney down here.
He wasn’t sure if she’d left her room on her own, but the smell of
fear on her made him somehow doubt it.

“
What is the
meaning of this?” Shira said, but her act wasn’t fooling Noah. He
could tell by the way her body went rigid that she’d orchestrated
it. She’d thought things would go a different direction and had
forgotten to call off her dogs.

“
But Shira, you
said…”

“
Release her
this instant,” the alpha said.

Noah tensed, every instinct telling him to rip them
all apart. But even if he thought there was some small chance he
could do that, or at least could take out enough of them to
intimidate the rest, it was too risky. Maybe this could be diffused
another way. Maybe the cheery robotic voice had given him a sense
of diplomacy over the years, no matter how artificial. If he’d used
it once before to survive, he could use it now.

Sydney’s eyes glowed red and her fangs descended.
She growled low in her throat. It was a menacing sound Noah never
thought he would hear from her. She spun on one of her captors,
hauled back, and landed a hard punch to his jaw. He reeled
back.

Sydney stared at her fist, stunned. “I-I don’t know
where that came from.”

The wolf she’d punched advanced on her and
growled.

That was Noah’s cue. He shifted and pounced on top
of the guy. The other wolf shifted as he got thrown to the ground
and the two of them rolled around on the floor, snapping and
snarling, blood flying out from the fight until the other wolf let
out a horrible wail and became very still.

Noah was about to shift back to normal when Shira
shifted and jumped on him. It wasn’t the fight he’d asked for or
the fight he wanted, but it was the one he had. She was tougher
than the male he’d just killed, and he knew without doubt as they
fought, that she’d been strong enough to lead this pack. But she
wasn’t strong enough to beat Noah.

His fangs dug into her as she shifted back, and he
let go. She scrambled away, clutching at her throat, but it was
obvious from the look in her eyes that she knew it was too late for
her.

Noah shifted back and wiped the blood off his mouth.
“You should have let us be on our way without the theatrics. It
didn’t have to go this way. I didn’t want it to.”

The light left her eyes, and she stared sightlessly
up from the floor.

The metal that had raged through the speakers,
stopped, and the room fell quiet. The wolves that had been in the
lounge, filed into the lobby. Noah moved in front of Sydney.

One by one, they dropped to one knee and bared their
throats.

“
We’re going
back to our room,” Noah said, trying to ignore that about forty
wolves had just pledged their fealty to him. No matter what his
instincts said, he couldn’t lead a pack. He barely remembered how
pack dynamics worked. He had some deep issues from being in that
place. He’d only abuse those in his care. If he had a pack, he
wanted to be like his dad. He didn’t want it like this. And he had
to get back home so his family knew he was alive.

His parents would have had a memorial in honor of
what would have been his coming-of-age birth moon. Tonight. They
were mourning tonight, and he had a pack wanting him to lead them.
It was too messed up.

One of the wolves rose and moved hesitantly toward
him. “Um… sir, we have a much nicer room for the alpha to stay in.
That room you’ve been in isn’t good enough for…”

Noah held back a growl as the wolf
moved closer to Sydney than he was comfortable with after what
almost just happened. What
had
almost just happened? He
still wasn’t sure what Shira’s plan had been, but whatever it was
had proven incredibly foolish. Perhaps she’d planned to get rid of
Sydney and then execute the wolves who’d taken her, pretending
they’d acted alone and not on her orders.

The other wolf took a couple of steps back.

“
We aren’t
staying. We’re leaving as soon as the sun is down and we can
arrange transport.”

“
We’ll go with
you,” another wolf said. They were getting
braver.

“
Why? I don’t
want a pack.” That was a lie. “I was only protecting my
mate.”
The mate I haven’t marked
yet.
He wasn’t even a fit mate. If he
was, he would have done what was necessary to protect her first,
before anything else, rather than treating her like they were a
couple of humans on a date trying to see if maybe the other might
be The One.

He’d known Sydney was the one. She knew it, too.
Giving her a few days to make it seem as if fate hadn’t already
decided for them only put her at risk—particularly when she
couldn’t hold her own with anyone stronger than another frail human
female. Although… she’d just thrown a pretty harsh right hook, most
likely courtesy of his blood. And that was just from feeding
once.

“
S-sir, we need
a leader. We’re willing to go with you, wherever you want. Anyone
else here leading will be weaker than Shira. And while she was
strong, our pack isn’t as secure as it could be. It will be less so
if we follow someone else. It’ll be safer for you and your mate to
travel with a pack.”

What was the likelihood they’d willingly help him
and Sydney get out of here if he rejected them? Probably not high.
After all, if he flat out said no, whether they wanted to follow
him or not, they could collectively turn on him and take the trash
out.

He sighed. “Honestly, who here wants to come with us
and establish a pack farther north near my family? Show of hands?”
Maybe if he framed it that way, more would hesitate, and they’d get
off this kick. Shira wasn’t even cold yet.

One by one hands raised until all were in the air,
but the last few were more fear than truly wanting to go.

“
Fine. Get what
we need together and we’ll go at sunset. What do you have for
transportation?”

“
Motorcycles,”
one of them said.

Noah quickly covered his reaction. He couldn’t even
drive a car. Where would he have learned? He’d thought if they had
cars, one of them could act as his and Sydney’s driver and no one
had to know just how cut off from the whole world he’d been. They
were going to figure out he was a fraud before they got out of the
gate. And that would put Sydney at risk.

“
O-only… sir… if
we could just wait until after the moon begins to wane. We can’t
all travel in human form under the full moon. M-most of us can’t.
We need to wait until we have better control. And we’ll better be
able to prepare for the journey.”

And they’d be much less likely to rip Noah and
Sydney apart when they realized their new savior wasn’t so fit for
leadership after all. They’d been far better off with Shira.

Noah looked around at the assembled, anxious wolves.
“We’ll leave on the first night of the waning moon at sunset.
Anyone who doesn’t want to be a part of my pack can stay behind.
There will be no retaliation for anyone who chooses to stay.” He
had two nights to figure out how to ride a motorcycle and even less
time to mark Sydney. Two nights was plenty of time for them to all
defect, anyway.

Chapter Seven

Sydney tensed as Noah guided her back to their room.
Surely he knew she hadn’t just walked out of there under her own
steam. And if there was any doubt, the shattered door was proof
enough there had been a struggle.

One of the other wolves lurked out in the hallway.
“Umm, sir? About that other room…”

Noah growled in response, but took Sydney and
followed the wolf up a couple of flights of stairs to a large
suite. The wolf quickly ducked out and Noah deadbolted the door and
put a chair under it.

Sydney searched the suite, looking for a place she’d
feel safe for the day. The other room had been better from her
perspective with no way any sunlight could get in through solid
wall and brick.

She settled on the bathroom. She could take the
comforter and pillows off one of the beds and put it in the giant
tub. The bathroom was enormous with no windows.

Noah stood back and watched as she made what could
only be described as a nest for herself in the bathtub. He didn’t
say anything. Was he angry?

“
Noah, I-I’m
sorry about all that out there.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What do you have to be sorry
for?”

“
Well, I mean…
if I hadn’t hit that guy… I escalated things, but I just… I got so
angry. I’ve never been that angry before, I’m not sure
why…”

“
It was my
blood. You’ve never drank from a werewolf before, have
you?”

She shook her head. “Therians don’t usually line up
to volunteer as blood dolls for us, and it wasn’t as if I could do
anything to change that.”

Although… when she’d hit the guy, her hand hadn’t
even hurt. And she’d definitely done damage. There was no way she
should have been able to do that. She looked up to find Noah still
watching her closely.

“
I don’t think
you’re going to stay very weak for long,” Noah said. “Earlier, you
healed fast, even old scars. Then you hit that wolf. And that’s
just from feeding one time. Once I’ve marked you, and you’ve had
even more… over time I think you’ll be strong like a normal
vampire.”

A normal vampire.

Sydney could barely dare to dream that she had the
smallest hope of being normal. She’d lived so long having to be
under someone’s protective wing that the idea of ever being able to
hold her own with anyone seemed as unlikely as unicorns.

“
Sydney…”

“
Yeah?” The way
he looked at her, all wild intensity and purpose, made her glad she
wasn’t going to be an entirely helpless damsel for long. It wasn’t
that she feared him. He was Noah. But still.

“
I need to mark
you.”

“
You
said…”

She’d thought as long as she didn’t escalate things
to sex between them, a feat in and of itself for her when it came
to feeding, that there would be time to get used to the idea. Not
that she didn’t want to be with him. It was just that… when she’d
run away from home, she hadn’t realized she was running straight
into the arms of her future werewolf mate. Even if it sounded like
a good idea, a lot had happened in a short time, and she still
worried he might be wrong. Surely being locked up like that for so
long had skewed his sense of… well, everything. They hadn’t talked
about it, but she could see how he reacted around others. Slight
shifts in body language that nobody else paid attention to because
they had other worries to deal with than decoding the body language
of the stranger among them.

But Sydney remembered Noah from when they were kids.
He hadn’t been quiet like this. He hadn’t been closed off, wanting
to be alone all the time. He’d been the center of attention,
charismatic, gregarious. That place had changed him. She still
wanted him, but what if some day he realized that he didn’t want
her? That she’d only been a bit of comfort for when nothing else
around him had smelled like home.

If he later discovered someone else was his true
mate… she’d claw the bitch’s eyes out. Whoa. Yeah, werewolf blood.
Damn. How did Noah control this? It was as if she now had her own
wolf that had grafted onto her. A little angry furry Sydney to
contend with. All the impotent rage that had built within her over
years of powerlessness. The anger she’d had to tamp down because
she wasn’t strong enough to back it up with an arsenal of bad ass.
Someone else always had to fight her battles.

Now that she thought about it… she wasn’t sorry at
all for hitting that guy. He’d had it coming. She only regretted
that it had set up a situation it didn’t seem Noah wanted. Without
meaning to, she’d handed him a huge level of responsibility, and
maybe he just wanted to go back home and live with his pack and try
to find some way to recover from twenty years in that terrible
glass cube.