Full Moon by Rachel Hawthorne (best biographies to read .txt) 📕

He gave me an ironic grin. “Met with them early. The elders had a special meeting with some of us afterward.”

“I didn’t hear about that.”

He shrugged. “It was just the guys.”

Brittany was so right. We’re such a sexist group. I couldn’t keep the irritation out of my voice. “What are you guys doing? Planning some secretive operation that’s too dangerous for the girls to be involved in?”

“It’s secretive, but only dangerous if Brittany finds out.”

“She’s not the only one who’ll be pissed off for not being included.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“Then what is it?” I prodded.

He shifted his gaze back to whatever he’d been staring at before I joined him. “Connor? What’s going on?”

“You have to promise not to tell.”

That sounded so childish, but whatever. I wanted to know what was going on. “It goes without saying.”

“Still, say it.”

“I promise not to tell.” It was so unlike him to be melodramatic that I was starting to get a little worried.

“The elders are concerned about Brittany. You know. Because she doesn’t have a mate. They were looking for a volunteer.”

I was appalled that they’d tried to hook her up with someone who didn’t love her. Especially after what Kayla had confessed, about how intimate shifting with someone truly was. And Connor was right to keep it to himself. Brittany would explode if she found out.

“What? You mean like…a pity mate?”

He looked really uncomfortable, and I realized that was exactly what this was. Worse than a blind date. She might as well sign up for an arranged marriage.

“Connor, this is insane!” Then I had another thought. Maybe one of the guys did have an interest in her but was too shy to come forward. If his hand was forced…

“Did someone volunteer?” I asked.

“No. They drew a name.”

“This is totally nuts.”

“Look, she doesn’t have to choose him. But he’s going to be part of our sherpa team, hang with us, determine if there’s any chemistry there.”

Oh, there would definitely be chemistry—like an explosion in a lab—if Brittany discovered that the elders were trying to set her up. On the other hand, we didn’t get a lot of time to hang out with the other Dark Guardians, so maybe it was simply that she hadn’t been around anyone else enough for that attraction to develop.

Part of me wished I had her problem, because feeling something for two guys seemed almost worse.

A horn beeped as Lucas pulled up in his jeep with Kayla riding shotgun. Brittany was sitting in the back.

Connor opened the door for me, because, of course, he came from a family that did that sort of thing. I couldn’t imagine Rafe extending the same courtesy. He’d probably think I could handle it myself. I climbed in. Connor tossed our backpacks into the rear of the jeep before sitting beside me.

“So what are we going to do about Bio-Chrome?” I asked.

“We stay alert,” Lucas answered.

“You don’t think we should be proactive, go after them?”

“Not until we know more.”

I looked at Connor. He took my hand and kissed my knuckles. I felt Brittany shift on the seat beside me and my cheeks turned red.

“So I hear we’re getting a new member for our team,” I said casually.

“Yeah,” Lucas said catching my gaze in the rearview window, before adjusting it slightly so he could see Brittany. “Daniel. He’ll be joining us tomorrow.”

“He’s the guy from Seattle, right?” Kayla asked.

“That’s right,” Lucas said.

He’d become a Dark Guardian only this summer. We’d met him, of course, but we didn’t know a lot about him.

I looked over at Brittany. She was staring out the window, as though she couldn’t care less that an interesting new guy was part of our team.

“I’m glad we have another team member,” I admitted. “With all those girls we’re taking out tomorrow morning, the more help we have, the better.”

Lucas cleared his throat. “Actually our number stayed the same. Rafe got reassigned.”

I jerked my attention to Connor as his hand tightened around mine, before loosening again. “You didn’t mention that.”

“Is it important?” he asked quietly without looking at me.

That depended on the reason he’d been reassigned. It was, but only to me, and I couldn’t admit that without explaining why. But as I watched Connor’s jaw tighten, I had the sick feeling that he might already know the answer.

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SIX

The national forest is a little over five million acres in size—about the size of New Jersey—and traveling from our hidden village to the main entrance of the park took us until late afternoon. It didn’t help that we had to drive cautiously through the woods. Even when we eventually hit an actual road, we took it slow because of the wildlife that was likely to dart out in front of us—and maybe because in a way the wilderness we’d grown up in no longer felt like ours, no longer felt completely safe.

Ever since our encounter with Bio-Chrome we couldn’t completely relax and enjoy our surroundings. We were waiting for them to leap out at us at every turn.

And I couldn’t stop worrying about Rafe. I wanted to know what had really prompted his reassignment and if he was okay with it. I was so tense by the time Lucas brought the vehicle to a stop that I thought I might snap in two.

Inside the entrance to the park was a small village with a few cabins where the sherpas stayed when we weren’t serving as guides. I shared one with Kayla and Brittany. After we dropped our packs in our cabin, we climbed back into Lucas’s jeep to head to town. We were all restless, so we decided to spend some time at our favorite hangout—the Sly Fox.

The rustic building was a cliché: a bikers’ bar and gaming hall, a favorite haunt of hikers, campers, and locals. The only people over age thirty were the owner, Mitch—who carded