Moon Glamour by Aimee Easterling (books to read to be successful TXT) 📕

wolf forms and Rowan didn’t bother barking out another alpha order. Still, he got the message across quite admirably. I was expected to enter the tunnel. Was expected to follow along like a good little wolf even though, for all I knew, this tiny orifice was the only way in or out of his domain.

I slid a glance sideways into the night. The last of the stream of wolves had entered the tunnel, leaving me and Rowan the only ones present. And while I couldn’t take him in a head-on battle, I might be able to outrun him for a short distance. I’d have to be clever. Focus his attention elsewhere then sprint to get out of range of his alpha compulsions.

After that, I could cut across country. Shake my pursuers. Find a phone and call for help.

Then what? I wouldn’t be able to return to my apartment, the same apartment Rowan had broken into once this week already. Wouldn’t be able to reel in Marina or keep her away from those I cared about. The best I could come up with was hiding in the forest for three days waiting for Lupe to open camp back up.

I was a doer, not a waiter.

So I let Rowan think he’d intimidated me. Dropped my head to my chest and inched toward the tunnel entrance.

Then, swallowing down the scent of damp and mildew, I padded inside.

THE SUBTERRANEAN CORRIDOR opened up to human-height fifty yards later. Bright lights forced my eyes to squint. My nails clicked against unpainted concrete.

Rowan’s lupine scent had been crowding me all the way through, but now he shifted upward. Motioning toward the sound of flowing water, he prodded verbally: “This way.”

Glancing back down the tunnel, I saw nothing but darkness. Not even the moon, suggesting the grinding noise I’d heard was a door closing behind us.

There was no easy way out, so I stayed lupine but otherwise obeyed Rowan. Sidled through a human doorway and entered a gym-style locker room.

There, Rowan nodded at someone while I took my bearings. Naked shifters sluiced mud off their bodies without bothering with modesty. I’d never seen so many naked butts in one place before in my life.

They weren’t all men either. Six women chattered at one end of the room, equally naked and equally oblivious to human modesty. I headed in their direction, still lupine, but Rowan reached down and grabbed my ruff.

“No. Wouldn’t want any mistakes before November.”

I had no idea what he meant, but the words sent a shiver through me anyway. Enough so that I let him steer me in the opposite direction. To a far corner where I could shower in semi-privacy.

Not that the space was truly private with a human Rowan stepping beneath the shower head beside me. His voice came out as an amused purr. “I wouldn’t have thought you were shy.”

A challenge. I pressed human skin out of lupine fur and met it head on. “I’m not.”

Rowan must have smelled my lie because he huffed out laughter. But that was good. Shyness gave me an excuse to run my gaze around the shower room a second time. Now I wasn’t looking at the inhabitants but rather at the space itself.

Three doors. The one I’d come through plus two others. As I watched, the six showering women left in a gaggle through one doorway. Two men sauntered out through the other door.

Coincidence, or were there male and female wings to Rowan’s underground den?

Rowan had seemed busy scrubbing dirt off his fingers, but he must have been watching me also. Because he broke into my thoughts with words that would have sounded like a suggestion from a human. “You’ll stay in my spare room, of course.”

From Rowan, the sentence came out as a command.

And I should have been thrilled. After all, that would put me close to the bedroom I was supposed to be photographing for Marina, even if I didn’t currently have my cell phone handy.

But my eyes had continued wandering while Rowan spoke to me. Seeking familiar faces...or familiar bodies rather. I couldn’t pick out the cat-chasers from outside my apartment. For all I knew, they were here and my face blindness made me skim right over them. But one male posture looked familiar, even if it had been a decade since I’d last seen him. After all, I noted hints of similar features in my mirror every day.

“Dad?”

I hadn’t meant to speak aloud, but surprise pulled out the name Ace had never given me permission to use on him. No wonder the man in question tilted his head away from me. My father wasn’t any more interested in talking now than he had been a decade before.

Not that it mattered. I was here on a scouting mission, not a misplaced genetic quest.

“Is that why you decided to join us?” Rowan shut off his shower then shook his entire body as if he was still lupine. Alpha-scented water sprayed away from him, striking my chin, throat, and chest.

Now I smelled like Rowan. It was all I could do not to scrub away the odor. I felt like I’d been marked.

“No,” I answered. “I was curious.” Which wasn’t a lie, even if it also wasn’t the entirety of the truth.

“You’re welcome to assuage your curiosity while we’re next door to each other.” Rowan stood facing me with no water to obscure my view of his muscles. He flexed them, aware of my perusal.

So that’s why he thought I’d come? The male ego was boundless.

And while the museum girls would have been impressed by the view, all I saw was a wolf with too much power. Plus, over his shoulder, a hint of movement.

My father’s head shaking ever so subtly. He slapped his ear afterwards, as if he’d just been trying to knock water out of it.

But that hadn’t been his original purpose. Ace didn’t think I should stay in Rowan’s spare room.

My father was a stranger I’d met once before, a stranger who