Bound To Moonlight (Sisters Of The Moon #2)

He inclined his massive head.


This was wrong. She knew it. She didn’t know who or even what he really was. How could she trust him? Nearly ten years had passed since her mother had helped her flee from the Agency laboratory where she had lived until she was thirteen. The Agency had wanted to terminate her then, and as far as she knew, nothing had changed. They still wanted her dead and her only hope was to hide, bury her secrets out here in the wilds of the moors with only the animals for company.

Could he be from the Agency? But she didn’t believe that. She had seen briefly into his mind and sensed no taint of evil. Just a wildness at the very core of him. That would be the wolf. And a self-hatred she recognized as close to her own.

She made a decision. “Come back with me. For a little while.”

She turned toward the keep and then changed her mind and paused. When she’d first seen him, he’d carried a rucksack. He must have dropped it when he came after her. She started walking back the way they had come. The wolf stalked after her.

Eventually, she found the bag resting among the heather. Picking it up, she slung it over her shoulder and headed toward home.

The wolf kept pace behind her, his huge paws making no sound on the thickly grassed ground. Even while she couldn’t hear him or see him, each breath she took, saturated her nostrils with the wild warm feral scent. Not quite animal. Wolf tinged with human and a hint of something she had never encountered before. Magic maybe. She peered over her shoulder and found him watching her, intelligence staring out of his wolf’s eyes.

Finally, she halted beside the walls of the old keep. They loomed dark grey above her, the base surrounded by huge rocks fallen from the walls. From the outside, the place appeared ruined, but she led him around the walls, then held back the branches of a rowan bush and gestured for him to enter. He gave her a narrow-eyed glance, then sniffed cautiously at the opening before he disappeared inside. Keira followed, letting the bush fall back behind her, hiding the entrance. Stepping past him, she led the way through a half tumbled arch into the room that had been her only home for the last ten years.

***

Connor woke in the night. Moonlight spilled into the room from a window high up in the wall and deep inside him, his wolf stretched sleepily. His head pounded and he had a huge erection. Neither of which was a common occurrence for him these days.

Werewolves didn’t get sick, though they did get erections. Except him. He’d been too pissed off with life lately to even think about sex.

Now, he lay on his back on a makeshift bed on the floor of a ruined castle with a woman’s warm sleeping body draped over him, her arms wrapped around his middle, her head on his bare chest. He stayed very still as he remembered what had happened.

The girl on the pony. Excruciating pain. The shift.

She’d told him not to change back as she couldn’t control whatever it was she had done to him. Shit, it had hurt—as though his brain was melting from the inside. But obviously, she was no danger when she slept, as apart from the headache, he felt fine. Good really. And he realized, for the first time in years, he hadn’t awoken engulfed in the black hatred, which had so colored his life since the attack.

He always shifted back to human when he slept whether he wanted to or not. Sebastian had told him that would change once he had more control, which he’d get if he gave in and shifted more often. He’d replied that he didn’t want to shift more and he didn’t want more control. What he did want was an end to the nightmare his life had become. Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen.

But yesterday was the first time he’d shifted when it hadn’t been forced on him by the full moon. And she’d done it to him.

Without moving, he peered down at where her head rested against him. A long tangle of dark hair framed a face with pale skin drawn too tightly over cheekbones and shadows beneath her eyes. He recognized the signs of exhaustion. Now she slept like the dead.

He wished he’d paid more attention when Sebastian had told him why he was here—something about a huge black monster that could suck people’s brains from their heads. But they’d been chasing every rumor they heard which could in any way be related to Anya’s sisters and the Agency. Up until now, they had all proved to be nothing. He’d presumed this would be the same. Consequently, he’d been going through the motions. He’d supposed all he needed to do was turn up, prove the rumors were the usual load of crap, and then he could get back to being miserable in more congenial surroundings.