Marked by the Moon

24

Despite her roiling mind and equally roiling stomach, Alex fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. The last time she’d slept like that, she’d been in Julian’s arms.

Eventually, the nagging thought that there was something she needed to do, somewhere she needed to be, someone she needed to see, penetrated, and Alex fought her way to the surface. She’d never been so bone-deep tired.

Ebony velvet darkness floated around her. She had no idea what time it was, even what day it was. Her mind was fuzzy; her mouth tasted like dirt, and her stomach was so damn empty. She lifted her head, and the darkness spun.

“Bad idea,” she said, reaching out to touch the bedside lamp.

Light flooded the room, revealing a sliver of gray at the edge of the curtains, which, around here in the land of eternal twilight, did nothing to help her figure out how long she’d been asleep.

She caught the scent of salt and flour, and her stomach rumbled. When she turned her head, she discovered that someone—Ella—had left her a package of saltines and a note.

Eat these BEFORE you get out of bed.

Considering the state of her belly, who was she to argue? Alex devoured the entire package without dropping a single crumb. Amazingly, when she lifted her head this time, the world stayed right where it belonged.

“Ella, you’re a genius,” she muttered, dragging herself to the shower.

Twenty minutes and a cup of tea—the idea of coffee brought the nausea back—later, Alex was dressed and out the door. She’d stop by Julian’s house, see if he was there. Though if he was, would she have awoken so dizzy?

“I’m fine now,” she said. If talking to herself was fine.

The clock in Ella’s kitchen had read just after noon, which meant Alex had slept for two hours. Unless she’d slept for twenty-six.

The sky was cloudy. Since the sun made an appearance only a few hours each day, cloudy just wasn’t fair. But the moon would rise in another few, and perhaps by then the clouds would be gone. The thought that she and Julian might run together beneath those silver rays brought a lightness to her heart that Alex didn’t want to examine. She had enough to worry about.

Alex knocked on Barlow’s door. Several minutes later she knocked again. She was deliberating moving on to Cade’s place—maybe his brother had found him and taken him there instead—when she lifted her nose and sniffed.

Snow and trees, his distinctive scent, and it was coming from inside. Too strong to be anything but Barlow. Without a second thought, Alex turned the knob and went in.

She searched the entire house without finding him. But every time she walked past the living room, the smell became sharper. Finally, she just followed her nose.

The scent intensified near the large leather chair. Right next to it stood a squat, glass-topped end table, in the center a picture frame that hadn’t been there before. Alex didn’t need to turn on the lamp to see that the picture in the frame was of Alana. She turned the lamp on anyway. All the gloom was starting to get to her.

“I know you’re here,” she said to the empty room.

The room stayed empty.

“I’ll stay until you have a brain aneurysm from the anger it takes to keep that invisibility bubble up and running.” Nothing. “Come on, Julian,” she said softly. “Talk to me.”

Slowly he materialized. First a mere shadow—there, gone, there again—then more and more solid until he was so close she could reach out and touch. But she didn’t.

His back to her, his gaze remained on Alana’s face. “I didn’t know she left,” he said. “If I’d gone after her right away, I could have stopped her.”

The pain in his voice made Alex’s throat tighten, but she made herself ask. She needed to know. “Why did she leave?”

He reached out and ran a fingertip down the glass, right over the smiling woman’s cheek. “She needed something from me that I couldn’t give her.”

“What is there on this earth that you couldn’t give?” And what fool of a woman turned her back on a love as deep as Julian’s?

All the breath seemed to go out of him, and his shoulders slouched as his head sagged. “A child,” he said. “All she ever wanted in this world was a child.”

“But—Wait. What? You obviously asked her if she wanted to be a werewolf.”

“Of course,” he said, in a weary, haunted voice.

“And she agreed.” He made a noise that she took to mean yes. “Was Alana—” Alex paused, not wanting to use the word stupid, but hey, if the shoe fit—

“I thought her grandmother had told her,” he continued. “I mean, if a child were so damn important, then why wouldn’t she have told her?”

“Yeah, why?” Alex murmured, pulled toward him despite herself by the agony in his voice. She wanted to hold him and comfort him and make it better—three things Alexandra Trevalyn had never wanted before. That she wanted them with a desperation she could barely control scared her.

She just might have to kill him after all.

“Her gran knew Alana wouldn’t agree to becoming a werewolf if it meant giving up her dream of a big family, and Alana had to agree or she would have died. So Margaret lied.” He laughed, but the sound was more of a cough. “Told Alana that of course werewolves could have kids. When I found out I—” He paused. “Well, let’s say Margaret won’t be lying again anytime soon.”

Alex frowned. Did that mean he’d scared the old lady speechless? Or something else?

“But when Alana asked me,” he continued in that same voice that pulled at a part of Alex she’d never known she had, “and I told her the truth, she looked at me as if I were a monster.” He gave that short, sharp, un-funny laugh again. “I thought she’d get over it. That I would be enough. That we would be enough. I mean… what choice did she have? She was a werewolf, for better or for worse. Forever.” He shook his head. “Or not.”

Alex had always wondered about that beautiful blond wolf in northern Minnesota. Either the woman had been dumb as a rock, or she’d wanted to die.

Alana had breezed into town, and people had started disappearing. That always got Edward’s attention.

He’d sent Alex; she’d done her job. But she’d always wondered. Alana had shown up first, then —bing, bing, bing—several other strangers followed. Folks left town, and they didn’t come back, and there were whispers of a wolf pack with a sleek, golden she-wolf in the lead.

Alana had been sloppy. She hadn’t tried to hide their tracks. But it had always bothered Alex that she’d caught the other werewolves red-pawed, one with his snout buried in the local sheriff. But Alana…

She’d never attributed a single death to Alana.

Then came that fateful night. All of the other wolves were dead, and Alana had loped right into town. Strange behavior for a real wolf, kind of typical for a were.

She’d crashed through the picture window in the lobby of the hotel where Alex had been staying. That sound, followed by the screams, drew Alex out of her room and down the hall.

A wolf the shade of sunlight had backed the clerk—a teenage kid with a nametag that read holly—into a corner. The beast had glanced once at Alex, as if making sure she was there and that she was armed; then she’d lunged at the girl, teeth snapping.

Ka-bam!

That had been the end of Alana Barlow.

Alex lifted her gaze to Julian, but he was still captivated by the photo. Alex couldn’t tell him that his wife had committed suicide by Jäger-Sucher, that Alana would rather be dead than live a childless life with a man who adored her. She just couldn’t.

Besides, it would sound like an excuse, and she wasn’t going to make one. It didn’t matter if Alana had wanted to get shot or not, Alex would have obliged her either way. If Alana hadn’t been killing people in that town herself, she’d been leading a pack of monsters that had.

In Alex’s opinion, Alana was as much of a psycho as the next werewolf. Obsessed by a child instead of blood, willing to give up her life rather than live it, screwing up Alex’s future, thank you very much, by getting herself killed, thus causing her husband to agonize over her loss and eventually come gunning—so to speak—for the hunter who had ended her.

“You deserved better,” she murmured.

He spun away from the photo. Alex hadn’t realized she’d crept so close until his chest brushed hers. Together they gasped, their eyes widening, nostrils flaring as the awareness that had always been between them ignited.

Then he was dragging her against him, and she was letting him. As his mouth hovered, and his fingers clenched, and their breath mingled, he whispered, “Then there was you.”

Julian believed in fate. And this was his.

He had loved Alana with all that he’d had. But she’d left him and gone away to die.

Though he’d suspected it he hadn’t wanted to believe it, had refused to, until he’d heard the truth in Alex’s voice, saw it in her face.

Suicide by Jäger-Sucher. What a way to go.

But Alana was gone, and Alex was here, and through some bizarre twist of that fate he believed in, she was his mate. At least he understood now why he couldn’t keep his hands off her.

He was tired of fighting—her, himself, Edward, the rogue—all he wanted was to sink into the strange peace he found in the circle of Alex’s arms and forget.

Still he would have let her go if she’d asked, if she’d made even a single movement toward freedom. Instead, she knotted her fingers in his shirt, pulling him close; then she closed the distance between their lips.

And he was lost.

Her taste was home, she smelled like…here. When had that started?

Mine, whispered his mind.

Mate, growled his beast.

He nipped at her lip, drank her sweet gasp, ran his mouth over the curve of her jaw. The line of her throat beckoned, the scent of her skin, the pulse of the blood that called to his, that made them one even when they weren’t.

He marked her again, taking a fold of her flesh between his teeth and worrying it. She lifted her hand, cupped his head, tangled her fingers in his hair, and urged him on.

As he trailed his tongue over her collarbone, then followed the slight swell of her breast, he thanked all the gods he’d ever known that she’d found a blouse with buttons somewhere in Ella’s closet.

He opened them, muttering hallelujahs that she hadn’t bothered with a bra when she’d come looking for him.

Her skin held the flavor of cinnamon atop a cake of spice, her nipples swollen, hard, luscious as a cherry to his lips. When he suckled she cried out, arching, straining, and when he bit, just a little, her gasp whispered, yes.

Her knees were weak, or maybe just his. Nevertheless, they couldn’t continue to stand in the living room, especially when anyone could walk in. So he carried her up the stairs.

He’d burned everything Alana had touched. All of his furniture was new. He’d never been more glad of it.

He laid her on the bed, straightened to take off his clothes, then became captivated with the picture she made there. Her hair matched the southwestern copper of his quilt. Her eyes, open a mere slit, gleamed like slices of limes against the honey shade of her skin sparkling in the half-light that spilled from the hall.

Her shirt fell open, one side covering a breast, the other revealing it. Ella’s black pants gaped at the waist, exposing her navel, a round, perfect well, and the stepping-stones of her ribs drew his gaze to the smooth curve of her waist. He wanted to lick her from the tips of her toes to the top of her head, then start over again.

She lifted her hand. Her long, clever fingers furled back toward her palm.

Come to me, they said, echoing the invitation in her eyes.

He tossed shirt and jeans into a corner, then knelt, removing her boots—God they were ugly—her socks, the rest. He placed his mouth to her arch, running his tongue along her sole, nibbling at the fine bones of her ankle.

He touched her as if she were spun crystal, tasted her as if she were the finest of wines. She shivered when he skimmed his palms over her; she shuddered with his every breath.

Her legs were long, the muscles hard beneath the softest of skin. Her inner thighs trembled when he kissed them, as did her fingers in his hair.

The bones of her hips were like blades in a sheath. He tested them with his thumbs, ran his nails down her flanks, cupped her buttocks, then he feasted. By the time he moved on, his name on her lips had gone from curse to caress and back again.

He couldn’t wait; he didn’t want to, rising up, then sliding home. Her arms came around his shoulders, her legs around his hips; she held him close, she welcomed him in, yet still he didn’t feel their connection.

He perched on the edge; she did, too. Deep within, he felt her tremble. He clenched his jaw to keep from coming.

It wasn’t right. Not yet.

Please, not yet.

Sweat broke out on his brow as he tried to think what was missing, what he needed, what she did.

She clenched, clamping down on him, squeezing him from within, and her hand drifted across his chest, meandering right and left, thumb scraping one nipple, then the other, before coming to rest at his waist.

She stroked the sensitive flesh where his thigh became his hip, and he tensed. “Alex,” he growled, both a wish and a warning.

Her eyes opened, and something caught in his chest when she whispered, “Julian.”

He thrust one final time; then he was coming; then she was.

Two simple words. Her name and his. A recognition. An admission.

A vow.

It was enough.