Moonshadow (Moonshadow #1)

Belatedly, she realized she hadn’t answered his question. “No,” she told him bluntly. If he was going to try to do anything to her, she would make him do it on the high street, in front of everybody, not tucked away in a side parking lot. “It’s not all right with me. Who are you, and what do you want?”

His smile never dimmed, and his body language remained open, easy. There were slight lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes. If he hadn’t been setting off all the alarm bells in her head, she would have found him quite attractive.

“I want a few moments of your time, that’s all,” the man said. His quiet voice remained as nonthreatening as his body language. “Just a quick conversation, I promise. Are you by any chance Sophie Ross?”

“How did you learn that name?” she countered, taking another step back.

“The people in town speak highly of you,” the man said. “They say you saved the lives of the pub owner and his wife during an attack from lycanthropes. That was very brave.”

“You still haven’t told me who you are,” she said, eyeing him narrowly. She was going to have to drop the cake to get the gun, and she didn’t like what that would signal.

His smile never wavered. “My name is Morgan.”

Morgan.

The sound of his name was like a punch to the kidneys. The town wavered around her. Oh God, no wonder he held such Power. If he chose to do anything to her, she was toast.

She whispered, “Could there possibly be more than one Morgan in the UK who carries the amount of Power that you do?”

His smile dimmed. He said, “It was not my intention to frighten you. I apologize.”

“Why are you here, talking to townspeople about me?” she asked through numb lips. “What do you really want?”

“I meant what I said, Sophie Ross,” Morgan replied. “I just want to talk and to ask you a few questions, that’s all. I mean you no harm. For the moment, you are safe.”

“For the moment?” she echoed. Then because he had frightened her so badly, a wave of anger hit. She held the cake as if she might throw it at him. “What the fuck do you mean by that?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the shopgirl watching them worriedly. Morgan noticed her too, and as he waved the fingers of one hand in a subtle gesture, the shopgirl appeared to lose interest and wandered into the back of the store.

Morgan turned his attention back to Sophie. The smile in his eyes had disappeared. He said in a quiet, courteous voice, “Right now, my Queen knows nothing of your existence, and I am free to act as I choose. And I choose to wish you no harm, Sophie Ross. But if my Queen does learn about you, and she orders me to do a thing, you must understand—I will do it. I must.”

As reassurances went, this one basically sucked donkey balls. Still angry, she asked, “Why would your Queen learn anything about me? What am I to her?”

“She has misplaced her pet, and she wants him back,” Morgan said. “She wants him back badly enough, she sent me to search for him. At the pub, the owners told me that you had brought a stray dog into town when you arrived. If I might ask, what happened to him?”

The question fanned her anger into outright fury, and she jettisoned straight into Stupid and Crazy?.

Advancing on one of the most dangerous men she had ever met, she said between her teeth, “That dog was a pathetic mess. He had been tortured and starved. What kind of man are you to serve someone who could treat a creature with such cruelty? Do you have any ethics or morality, or any sense of decency?”

His expression slammed tight as a vault, while a muscle flexed in his lean jaw. Morgan said, still with that terrible, even courtesy, “My Queen commands, and I must obey. Do you still have the dog?”

“No, I do not still have the dog,” she snapped, throwing the weight of all her fury into a perfect blend of truth and misdirection, and she knew instinctively that she had hit the exact right note. “It disappeared at the time of the pub attack, and I haven’t seen it since.” Looking him up and down, she added contemptuously, “But if I did see that dog again, you can be sure as fuck I wouldn’t tell you anything about it.”

“No, I can see that you would not,” Morgan said, holding his body still, his expression calm and stony. “At any rate, not by choice.” He offered her the bunch of flowers. “I wish you well, Sophie Ross. Enjoy your day. Pray there’s no need for us to meet again.”

Breathing hard, she accepted the flowers gingerly, as if they might bite. In an archaic-seeming courtesy, Morgan inclined his head to her, then strode away.

She stood staring until he disappeared around a corner. Only then was she able to get her feet unglued from the pavement. She made it back to the car, tucked her purchases in the back, then sat in the driver’s seat and shook. When she felt she was capable of driving safely, she started the Mini and pulled carefully onto the road.

Her mind was leaping around like a scalded cat. Maybe she shouldn’t drive back to the property. But everybody in town knew she was staying there. Maybe it would look worse if she didn’t go back.

Maybe Hounds had already been to the property to search the cottage. Maybe Nikolas and Gawain had already been attacked. By the time she parked at the cottage, she was in a clench of worry. Already familiar, the scene looked peaceful, untouched by violence, but as she knew from bitter experience, looks could be lethally deceiving.

As she turned off the engine, the cottage door opened and Nikolas strode out. “What took you so long?” he demanded. “I almost came looking for you.”

She was so relieved and happy to see him whole and unharmed she forgot that normally she would be irritated with his brusque tone. She whispered, “Nik.”

He took in her expression, and his manner changed. “What is it?” He took hold of her hands, and alarm flashed through his sharp gaze. “You’re shaking like a leaf.”

She walked forward until she bumped into his body, then she put her arms around his waist. As his arms closed around her, she told him, “I met Morgan in town. He was looking for Robin.”





Chapter Fourteen





At her words, Nikolas’s arms turned into iron bands. Bowing his head over her, he crushed her body against him.

I met Morgan in town.

The words were worse than his worst fears, and at the thought of her facing Morgan alone, a sense of wrongness, like nausea, clenched his stomach.

She coughed. “Too tight. Ease up.”

“I shouldn’t have let you go into town by yourself,” he growled. “I did it anyway, and I knew better.”

Sighing, she rested her head on his shoulder. She said, sounding tired, “You don’t let me do anything. ‘Let’ and ‘permit’ are not words we modern folk allow in our vocabulary. Do we understand this concept yet?”

“Sophie, for God’s sake,” he snapped while he stroked her hair. He couldn’t seem to help himself. His hands wanted to roam all over her body so that he could finally insert into his overheated brain that she had returned unmaimed.