Mated by Moonlight sb-3 Read online

  “It’s called snuggling,” she grumbled softly.

  An answering growl from far away made her jump out of bed. She went to the loft window that overlooked the lake, the parking lot and the road that wound down the valley.

  A caravan was on its way, the rumbling Harley at the fore. She went to make coffee.

  There would be no rest for the wicked.

  Chapter 10

  Beck took the neatly typed battle plan from Keisha, studied the layout and dispersed his people to the thin spots and a few other strategic locations. For a pack that specialized in pretty pictures, they’d organized themselves well. Not that he’d say that aloud to the pack’s leader, who undoubtedly would find a way to take it as an insult.

  The Alpha whom he hadn’t seen yet even though the sun was heading toward the backside of the mountains.

  He stalked up the hill toward her cottage and grabbed Peter as he hustled by. “Where’s Merrilee?”

  Peter lifted his head, seeking that inherent feel all pack members had for their Alpha. “Down at the lake.” His wife called his name and he abandoned Beck without a backward glance.

  Damn it, “the lake” covered a lot of water.

  Beck glanced at the shimmering blue reflecting the darkening sky. No wonder the view inspired her creative werelings. He took a step that would angle him directly to the parking lot.

  But paused. His head swiveled seemingly of its own accord toward a spot closer to the water.

  There. He couldn’t see her, but she was there.

  His hackles prickled. She was not his Alpha! And yet his feet, apparently turned traitor along with his head, carried him down the hill and through the willows that edged the lake. Where the willows turned to reeds, he found her.

  She stood with her dress hiked up to her thighs, shin-deep in the lake. With the bright hot colors of the dress on the darkening blue, she looked like a flame dancing on the water.

  He paused, still stunned by his awareness of her, and leaned against a willow, striving for casual though really he wondered if his knees would hold him up. Finally he found his drawl. “Gone fishin’?”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “Cooling my heels.”

  “You always were impatient.”

  “Scared, mostly.”

  He straightened. “Mer, I won’t let the phae—”

  “Not scared of them.” She slogged out of the lake without further clarification, shaking water vines off her bare ankles. “I saw the reinforcements you brought. Thank you. I would have missed that opening in our perimeter. You’re good at this.”

  Her blunt compliment made him blink in surprise. “Those years in the army were worth something.”

  “I’m grateful you’re here.” She stopped in front of him and pushed herself up onto her tiptoes to kiss him.

  Her lips yielded against his. He wanted to pull her close, but he was still unnerved by the feeling that had pulled him to her. “You would do the same for me.”

  She quirked her lips, but the expression was more wry than amused. “If the Sun-Down Tavern ever needs a new logo, I’m your girl. But you’ll never change that, will you?”

  He tilted his head, wary of the undercurrents still swirling around her even though she wasn’t standing in the water anymore. Was she saying she wanted to be his girl? A zing went through him, but he wasn’t sure if it was excitement or fear.

  “I brought Nally and the spores with me,” he told her. “Could be dangerous, even with him wrapped in iron and four-leaf clovers, but I wanted every option available.”

  She nodded. “I talked to him earlier. He’s still feeling guilty. I told him he is not to sacrifice himself.”

  Beck tilted his head at the way she said the word. “No one is going to sacrifice for those creatures. They have their own world, as we do. They’ll just have to live with what they have.”

  She studied him. “Didn’t you say that’s not enough for you anymore? Just living?”

  As if the lake waters were rising to drown him, he felt himself paddling to stay afloat on the strange mood ebbing between them. “That was different.”

  “Right. Too different.”

  “Mer—”

  “We should get back.”

  Considering she was the one who’d left, this seemed like a blatant dismissal, but he followed her to the parking lot.

  With the failing sunlight, her pack had lit their own torches, great fiery things scented of pitch. In their flickering light, her dress shimmered like flame, ready to burn.

  And still he wanted to reach out for her.

  He prowled away, out of temptation distance. This was not the time to confuse their people. Or himself. But as he skulked just beyond the firelight, still his awareness of her tugged at him.

  Hands clasped in front of her, she stood in the empty parking lot. On the other side was the lake, dark now and reflecting the early stars in its stillness.

  The first toadstool sprouted as the evening chill snaked across the pavement.

  The circle appeared just outside the ring where Beck had burned the last one with iron, and he realized the mushrooms must have left spores he hadn’t seen. He hefted his spears, one in each hand. Next time, he’d be more thorough.

  Merrilee did not move as the Lord of the Hunter strode from the circle, on foot this time, a myriad of phae behind him with their pale corpselights, and a line of his black-winged hunters behind them, as if in silent reminder about how the phae made corpses.

  Beck’s muscles tensed, itching to throw the spear. But did they really want a war?

  While the rest of the phae halted, the Lord of the Hunt approached Merrilee. “Well, Queen of Mutts, where is my alchemist?” At his voice, the evening chill seemed to spread in half-visible streamers across the parking lot.

  “We found him,” she said.

  An ember glinted deep in the phae lord’s stare. “And his treasure?”

  She inclined her head. “Also found. And I am claiming him and his prize as my own.”

  The phae stalked toward her. “You have no notion of what you are doing.”

  “That has never stopped me before.” From somewhere in the folds of fiery silk, she produced two blades. The iron was rudely cast and brutal-looking, but the knives floated in her hands like dark flowers as she crossed them over her white-wrapped breasts.

  The phae halted. “You move fast. The humans are never so quick to believe.”

  She smiled. “You should see me when I’m mad.” The smile vanished, like a torch doused, leaving only cold determination. “We are not human, old hunter. You call us mutts? Maybe. We run through the night and the day with the same pleasure, creatures of both worlds.” She took her own step toward him. “And iron has never bothered us.”

  The phae lord stiffened. Though his booted feet held firm, his antlered head canted back, away from the approaching blades. “What the alchemist has unleashed is not a thing of this world. It should be returned to our realm.” For a moment, his tone sounded almost plaintive.

  “Where you can use it to open the way back here at your whim? I think not.” She took another step.

  Beck swallowed a shout of alarm and sprang after her, flanked by a handful of his people on one side and a handful of hers on the other.

  Their arrow of iron forced the phae lord to retreat. But if the lurking black wings took to the air, there weren’t enough werelings to contain them.

  The phae shook his antlers with obvious dismay. “If you think our Queen will be stopped by mere threats—”

  “Not mere threats.” She strode toward the phae, spreading her arms with blades at the ready. “And definitely not alone.”

  She pointed at the lake.

  From the water a bubbling circle appeared, rapidly widening with arching sparks, an algae bloom of silver and violet unfurling across the dark surface.

  And from the middle burst a horse and right behind a confusing clash of black and white wings so it almost seemed the horse was flying.
>
  The phae lord reeled back at the sudden appearance. His scream was piercing. “Traitor!”

  The hunters behind him launched skyward, their leathery pinions battering the air like a sudden storm.

  Beck and the other werelings raced to Merrilee’s side as the newcomers emerged from the lake, shaking off mere speckles of water as if they’d only come through a drizzle, not a mountain lake. A dozen phae were led by the traitor—Vaile, Beck guessed, the rogue hunter, with a white-winged woman behind him—plus the rider who fired a stinging round of buckshot toward the phae lord’s circling killers.

  Beck smelled the iron burning the air even as one of the killers screamed in pain, wing-pierced; Orson must have brought the human Josh Reimer along. As if his name had conjured him, Orson and the rest of his quartet lumbered from the lake, already in the midst of the verita luna, their grizzled hides gleaming with diamond droplets.

  The phae lord and his followers milled, caught between the iron-armed werelings and the new arrivals whose spore-sprouted entrance had been hidden by the dark waters.

  Beck caught Merrilee’s arm. “You were laying the spores in the lake. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Nally wasn’t sure it would work, if Vaile would be able to find the portal from his valley.” She shrugged him off. “I might have gotten pulled into the phae realm instead.”

  His heart thrashing in his chest, Beck grabbed for her again.

  But the Lord of the Hunt was not finished, even as Reimer’s rifle boomed again and another killer spiraled out of the sky while the werelings advanced with their spears. “I’ll take you back with me, traitor,” he shouted. “The Queen will have her way.”

  “Not here,” Beck growled. “This is our valley.”

  He charged the phae lord. He needed damned opposable thumbs to wield his spears, but the speed and ferocity of the wolf sizzled inside him. He called on the verita luna, feeling the crazed shift of bone and skin and fury. Muzzle gaping wide, he howled, caught halfway between in the il-luna.

  He heard Merrilee cry out and knew he had crossed a line, revealing the ugly darkness at the heart of the beast, worse than any burn or scar. But he would not let their place, their chance, be stolen by thieving phae.

  The Lord of the Hunt, focused as he was on Vaile, spun only at the last moment, stunned by the attack.

  Beck raised the spears high above his head and brought the points slicing downward.

  The phae lord shrieked as the iron carved through the antlers at his brow. The gleaming bones fell, smoking from the severed ends. The phae’s wail seemed to shiver the stars and the corpselight torches of his followers went black. No preternatural blood spurted, and Beck realized the antlers were part of a helm.

  But whatever authority the helm had given the lord was gone. He stumbled backward, clutching at his head. His followers fell back around him, crowding toward their toadstool gate.

  One of the killers swooped low, reaching for the severed horns.

  Beck snarled and leapt, his jaws snapping at the leathery wings. The phae veered off, wobbling with a piece torn from his pinion, though he swiped with a vicious claw that didn’t quite reach.

  “Beck!”

  He turned with a frustrated roar, spears rattling forgotten in his own clawed hands.

  Merrilee watched him, empty hands outspread. “Beck, enough. They are fleeing.”

  He stepped over the horns. “Mine.” The word was garbled, ugly in his half-shifted throat.

  She smiled around the fear in her eyes, fear that made him want to howl again, howl until the stars fell down. “Antlers do make good chew toys.”

  He shifted back on his haunches to kick at the horns. “Not. Not these.” He hissed out the words. “You.” As mangled as his thoughts were, he could not stop them. They twisted past his reluctance to be rejected, past his understanding of her reticence, determined to be freed. “You. Are. Mine.”

  Around them, the rogue phae and the werelings had forced the invaders back to their circle. Even the killers dropped from the skies as the toadstool ring glowed a sickly pale green and began to collapse. The werelings pierced each mushroom with their spears, and oily smoke spiraled up.

  Merrilee didn’t glance at any of it. Her gaze was fixed on him even though he wanted her to look away from the il-luna monstrosity he’d become. Where was the gallantry here?

  But instead she walked toward him, silk shifting around her long legs. When she was bare toe to clawed foot with him, she reached up to grab his muzzle. “No way.”

  He sank to his knees as the il-luna passed, and she was right there beside him, cradling him with her bare arms strong around his shoulders.

  She kissed the shaggy hair at his temple and whispered, “You are mine, too.”

  Chapter 11

  Merrilee took them all back to her cottage. The great room had never held so many people—people, werelings and phae. Luckily she had enough wine, though not enough glasses, so she shared her bottle with Beck.

  Nally blinked at the rogue phae, Vaile, and his white-winged wife, Imogene. The two had brought with them the strongest of their kin who had escaped the phae realm. “The portal worked? I thought maybe, but... It really worked.”

  Beck glared at him. “You may never give your Alpha a ‘maybe’ again, ever.”

  The professor ducked his head. “Yes, sir.”

  Merrilee nudged Beck’s shoulder. “Or maybe not. There’s a lot we have to learn about what the spores can do.”

  He turned his glare to her. “Or should do.”

  Imogene shook her head. “Spores that open pathways between the realms in ways we’ve never dreamed and into the secret magic inside all of us and humans as well?” She sent an apologetic glance to Josh Reimer and Babette who was seated very close to Orson. “This is...disquieting.”

  “Things change,” Merrilee said. “Can’t do anything about that.” She felt Beck’s golden gaze on her, and as much as she was enjoying this impromptu party—the first of many, she supposed—she wished everyone would go away.

  Vaile flipped the broken antlers between his fingers. “When I was one of the Queen’s hunters, I wondered at the power in these bones. I suppose things will be changing for me too.”

  Imogene stroked the arch of his black wing. “From foundling to Lord of the Hunt. Our hunt.”

  “We will need our own army,” said the quietly exotic woman who sat beside Josh with emeralds winking in her strangely restless hair. “The Queen will not be gracious in defeat.”

  Merrilee stood. “So we’re lucky we aren’t alone anymore, and we have each other’s backs.”

  By the time they worked out a plan to have some phae come to the lake to work with Nally on the capabilities of the spores and send some werelings, including Keisha and Peter, to Vaile’s Valley to learn more about their new phae neighbors—neighbors thanks to the lake gateway—the sun was just starting to come up. She walked everyone to the front door and thought she was being very gallant not to slam it on their butts.

  Then she turned and leaned against it, watching Beck who had followed silently behind her.

  His gold eyes were shadowed despite the burgeoning light. “I wish you hadn’t seen that.”

  She didn’t pretend to misunderstand him. “The il-luna.” She shrugged. “Maybe I needed to see it. You’re always so perfect and strong, so in control.”

  He gave a harsh laugh. “Never around you. But never so obviously.”

  “Maybe that’s the part I needed to see.” She pushed away from the door and walked toward him. “Makes me realize I haven’t a chance of doing it all, being everything to everyone. To make matters worse, I just sent my Beta away.” He took a breath, but she flattened her palms on his chest to forestall him. “I’m not saying I want that from you. But I want...I want us to be together, one pack, one valley.”

  “Two Alphas,” he murmured.

  “If the phae can change their ways after centuries, I think maybe I can change too. My pack ca
n still be strong without standing alone. And so can I.” She peered up at him. “It won’t be easy, will it?”

  Slowly, he smiled. “Good thing I’m so perfect.”

  “Well, let’s not get all arrogant about it—” She squeaked when he caught her hard against his chest and brought his mouth crashing down on hers, as if the wolf still ruled him.

  Or maybe that was just his passion for her.

  He swung her into his arms and carried her up to the loft. Sunlight streamed through the window and sparkles from the lake cast violet-edged spangles on the ceiling as he laid her gently on the bed.

  “Make me yours, Alpha,” she whispered.

  “With pleasure.” He kissed her gently. “Always.”

  * * * * *

  Return to Jessa Slade’s sensual world of shifters and phae in these other tales available now from Harlequin Nocturne Cravings...

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