New Moon Summer (Seasons of the Moon) (2 page)

Abel’s grin stretched the scars on his cheek. He barked a laugh and sauntered into the kitchen without responding.

She watched his retreating back, mouth hanging open.

He was pretty good at communicating without words—werewolves were big on that whole body language thing. And Abel’s swagger spoke volumes.

They weren’t polite volumes.

The Alpha wolf inside of her gave an offended growl.

Abel wasn’t running, but his legs were so long that Rylie had to jog to catch up with him. By the time she reached the kitchen, the back screen was slamming shut with a rusty whine.

The newest werewolf, Vanthe, was helping Aunt Gwyn pull a tray of broiled meat out of an oven. “Food’s almost ready,” she said when she spotted Rylie. “Better warn the troops.”

“They’ve been out in the fields all day. We’ll have to ring the big bell,” Rylie said, but she didn’t grab the mallet. She squeezed between Gwyn’s hip and the kitchen island.

“What’s the rush?” Vanthe asked. He was a tall, lean man in his late twenties with dark skin and shockingly blond hair.

“Abel’s going to pick up another wolf from the airport.”

Gwyn threw a critical look over her shoulder as she turned off the second oven. They’d been forced to expand the kitchen in order to accommodate the ravenous appetites of twenty werewolves, and dinner took all three ovens to cook on most nights. “So…?”

“So tomorrow night’s the new moon!”

“He’s a big boy, Rylie,” Gwyn said.

She also said something else, but Rylie didn’t hear it, because she was rushing out the back door to catch Abel. It was one of the first really warm evenings of summer; the darkening sky was thick with the haze of heat, cicadas echoed over the hills, and a breeze sighed through the long grass.

Rylie found Abel throwing his backpack in the passenger’s seat of the Chevelle. He had washed his car that morning, and it glimmered in the porch light like a steel blue jewel in the otherwise dusty ranch.

“Come to tie me to a chair so I can’t leave?” Abel asked.

She ignored the taunt. “Let’s send someone else to get this one. Like Levi—he’s not doing anything.”

“It’s only a couple of hours away. Not a big deal.” He slammed the door shut.

“But what if something happens?” Rylie pressed. “What if you can’t get back in time?”

Abel rolled his eyes. “Then I’ll lock myself in the hotel room for the change, and the Whyte family’s going to get a huge cleaning bill. Like I said. Not exactly a big deal.”

She bit her bottom lip, watching as he circled the tailgate. That wasn’t what she meant. In fact, she hadn’t even given consideration to Abel transforming without her presence.

He stopped to lean on the trunk of the Chevelle. Abel gave her an appraising look, and she stared back, chin lifted in challenge.

Abel had been mauled in a werewolf attack before they met, but every time he transformed, the scars healed a little more. The skin on his temple and chin was still twisted, but his eye and mouth were untouched now. He had actually managed to grow a complete goatee.

He still looked wholly terrifying to new people, which made him perfect for intimidating young werewolves into good behavior. But Rylie knew better than to be scared.

“Are you worrying about me?” he finally asked.

She dropped her gaze first. Some Alpha. “I just can’t handle all the wolves without you,” Rylie told her feet.

It had been almost two years since they officially opened the sanctuary and Rylie took charge of an endangered species. She had survived almost fifty moons as the head of her pack.

Fifty moons. Shouldn’t that have been enough for her to feel confident in her ability to lead?

But the idea of getting through a moon without Abel at her back made her heart beat against her ribs like a mouse trying to escape a cage.

Abel pushed off the trunk of the car and stood over her. A hand touched her chin. Dull surprise jolted through her as she looked up at Abel.

Rylie expected him to tease her. He
always
teased her.

But his face was totally serious.

“I’ll be back in time.” Abel’s deep voice vibrated with intensity. “I’m not going to leave you alone. I promise.”

Her cheeks heated until she thought that she might catch fire.

It looked like he was thinking of saying something else. His golden eyes were fixed on hers, and his mouth opened. Rylie found herself staring at his lips. He was looking better and better now that the scars were healing.

But then he dropped his hand, and he was grinning again—that lopsided grin that looked so much like his brother’s.

Abel climbed into the driver’s seat of the Chevelle and rolled down the window. “You better have a bed ready in the barn when I get back tomorrow.”

He gunned the engine, and she hugged her arms around herself as she watched him peel down the path toward the highway. The tail lights shrunk and faded into the sunset-lit hills.

Her heart was still beating hard, but not from fear.

Vanthe emerged from the kitchen holding the mallet. “Dinner’s ready. Gwyn says to ring the bell to let everyone know.”

She shook her head to clear it. “The bell is on the front step. You want to go around the other way.”

He didn’t move. “What’s up with that guy?”

“Abel?”

“Yeah. He smelled like silver.”

“He used to be a werewolf hunter,” she said. “Old habits are hard to break, I guess. He still takes a gun with him when he picks up new guys. Like he did with you last week.”

Vanthe’s eyes widened. He had the same gold irises that all werewolves did. “How did a hunter end up your second-in-command?”

Because I bit him
.

Rylie gave Vanthe a shaky smile instead of answering aloud. “You should probably go find the bell. Gwyn might not turn into an animal twice a month, but she’s pretty scary when people don’t do what she tells them.”

He saluted her and loped around the building, vanishing into the shadows. As soon as he disappeared, Rylie sagged against the fence.

Just the thought of having to sit down to eat with the pack made her tired. Even Bekah and Levi treated her weird, and they had known her before the Alpha thing. Abel was the only one who made her feel normal anymore.

Up until the moment he touched her chin, anyway. Now she thought she might explode into a thousand pieces.

“What was
that
?” she whispered into the night, brushing her fingers over her jaw. She could still feel his skin on hers.

Loneliness. It had to be loneliness.

Only one more week until the semester ended. Then Seth would come home for the break between terms.

Summer couldn’t come fast enough.

T
HREE

Mail

If there was one constant
to life on a ranch—even a ranch filled with werewolves—it was the omnipresence of chores.

Rylie woke up to work before sunrise, and she could already feel the new moon approaching. It whispered to her from the dark sky beyond her window. She parted her curtains to gaze up at the smattering of stars fading into the velvety blue of false dawn.

The moon was only a sliver of fingernail over the hills.

I’m coming…

That whisper used to fill her with dread, but it no longer held any sway.

She closed the curtains and ignored it.

Hoping that she was the first to wake up, Rylie grabbed a pair of jeans and work boots off of her dresser and sneaked into the hallway.

The bathroom door was open.

“Success,” she whispered. When was the last time she had gotten to shower without waiting in line?

Feet thudded down the hall. A shoulder bumped hers.

“Sorry! Emergency!” Bekah’s honey-blond curls flashed past her, and the bathroom door slammed shut. The lock clicked.

The pipes in the walls rumbled as the shower blasted to life.

“Hey!” Rylie pounded her fist into the door, forgetting that everyone else was still asleep. “Showering is not an emergency! I was here first!”

Bekah started humming show tunes.

“I’m sending you back to California,” Rylie growled, more to make herself feel better than anything else. The Riese twins, Bekah and Levi, split their year between the two sanctuaries. They would be going back soon anyway.

Grumbling to herself, Rylie hiked the jeans over her hips, stuffed her feet into boots, and went out to labor in the fields alone.

She usually shared the chores with Abel, so his absence quickly became hard to ignore. Feeding the chickens and checking the fence for holes wasn’t nearly as much fun without someone to distract her.

By the time the sun rose, the temperature was already over seventy degrees, and she was sweating.

Rylie tried not to watch the highway for signs of the Chevelle, but when she finished making a lap around the outer layer of fencing, she found herself sitting on a post to watch for Abel anyway.

Only a few hours until the moon. Only a few hours until she had to be Alpha again.

Where was he?

A car approached, but it wasn’t the Chevelle—it was the mail truck.

Her heart jumped.

Rylie ran to the mailbox, and she arrived just as the truck pulled away with a cloud of dust in its wake.

There was a lot of junk mail and hospital bills, but there was also a padded manila envelope with Rylie’s name on it. Another letter was addressed to her, too. All the return address said was, “Seth.”

The sight of his slanted handwriting made loneliness gnaw at her stomach. Despite his promises to visit between every semester, he had started doing summer and winter classes, too—they hadn’t been together for longer than a weekend since spring break the year before.

Opening the envelope made his smells wash over her, bringing back memories of their time together.

Meeting at summer camp. Fighting off his werewolf-hunting mother. Working on the ranch together. Having to leave him so she could get control of her wolf and become Alpha.

Before she could read the letter, the big red pickup rolled down the hill. Gwyn stopped beside her.

“Where are you going?” Rylie asked, passing the bills through the open window.

“Thought I’d stay in the city tonight. Escape the furry…” Gwyn whirled her finger through the air, as if searching for a word. “You know.”

“Are you worried about getting hurt?” she asked, frowning. It had never been a problem before.

Her aunt’s eyes were warm. She reached down to brush the hair over Rylie’s shoulder. “Not with you in charge, babe. I could just really use the vacation. I’ll only be a few days.”

Rylie made herself smile and nod, but worry knotted in her throat.

The only reason Gwyn ever went to the city was for treatments at the hospital. But the antiretroviral cocktails had been working great, especially since Rylie had been keeping a close eye to make sure her aunt took them.

Things weren’t getting worse again… were they?

“Love you,” Rylie said as Gwyn wiggled the gearshift.

Her aunt shot a knowing smile at her. “No wild parties while I’m gone. And if you’re going to drink, don’t touch the liquor on the top shelf. That’s the good stuff and it shouldn’t be wasted on teenagers.”

“Gwyn!”

“See you soon,” she said with a wink.

The truck groaned down the path.

Rylie waited until she reached
the privacy of her bedroom to read Seth’s letter. She curled up among the fluffy white pillows in bed with it, leaving the padded envelope on her desk.

Rylie,

That last picture of you almost killed me. You’re so damn beautiful. Being away from you makes it hard to breathe.

My every waking hour is consumed with studying for finals, but I keep losing concentration to think about you. The way your hair falls over your eyes when you’re sleeping. The taste of honey on your lips lingers. When I try to study for my anatomy lessons, I can only think about your body.

Stupid as it sounds, I’m counting the hours until the last final ends and I can join you at the ranch. As I write this, only one hundred forty-six hours remain—only.

I’ve got a surprise for you. It’s going to be good. Promise.

See you soon.

With all my heart,

Seth

Unable to control her smile, she hugged the letter to her chest and closed her eyes.

Saturday. Just three days, and she could have the real thing.

Her gaze drifted to the other piece of mail with her name on it. She sniffed the padded envelope. It smelled faintly of gunpowder—one of Seth’s distinctive odors. It must have been the surprise referenced at the end of his letter.

Rylie peeled the envelope open. A small box fell into her lap, along with a dried red rose and a slip of paper. Even though the flower’s petals were dried into curls, its perfume lingered. Sweet musk drifted through the air.

She opened the note. There was only a single line inside:
I’m coming for you
.

She blinked and reread it, then read it a third time.

I’m coming for you
.

Her smile faded a fraction.

What a weird message. Of course Seth was coming for her. He would be back next Saturday.

Feeling uneasy, Rylie opened the box—and almost dropped it.

There was a silver bullet inside.

F
OUR

Missing Wolf

The breeze cooled as the
sun dropped low to the horizon. The barn cast long shadows over the fields, and lights turned on inside. Dark figures moved on the other side of the frosted glass.

After they got rid of the herd, they had converted the barn into a dormitory for the sanctuary’s werewolves. Rylie kept an eye on them from the back step of the ranch house.

She should have been down there to help them prepare mentally for the night’s transformation.

But she didn’t get up.

Rylie considered the box in her cupped hands. She hadn’t opened it again, but she could smell the silver bullet through the wood. It made her queasy to have it close.