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

passed in a blur of shackling politeness. Although I hadn’t been able to speak to any of my team mates, my illicit cell phone vibrated repeatedly in my pocket. And when I begged for a bathroom break, I discovered I’d been added to a walkie-talkie-enabled group chat.

Lupe: Report in.

Ryder: Barracks room fifteen is a dump. I’ll manage.

Tank: I’m your neighbor in fourteen.

Butch: My room has no number. Turn left from the dining room, take the first right, then walk to the end of the hall.

Tank: Athena?

A pause, then:

Lupe: My lock has been repositioned so I can’t be penned in. Yours?

Butch: No lock.

Ryder: Got a lock...and lock picks. Thanks, A-bear!

Tank: No picks here. My roommates say they’re locked in every night.

After another pause, he’d added:

Tank: Are you there, Athena?

Ryder: Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to your ugly mug. Maybe she wants some of my sugar instead. After all, A-bear gave me a present.

Tank: Ryder.

Lupe: Enough. Athena, are you able to receive messages?

That text had come through only ten minutes ago. I touched the screen to pull up the keyboard...then Jasmine tapped on the bathroom door.

“Everything okay in there?”

I wasn’t locked up...yet. But I certainly wasn’t free to travel wherever I wanted. Rowan was taking no chances.

“Fine.” I flushed, using the second of stolen leeway to tap out the tiniest reply imaginable.

Athena: Here.

Then I left the privacy of the bathroom and followed Jasmine down yet another hall.

I’D THOUGHT SHE PLANNED to return me to my no-longer-prison. But we didn’t travel downstairs. Instead, we journeyed up.

Up from quality to luxury. At the top of the stairs, a door opened into a space that could have been called a room...if you were used to the scale of mansions.

Dark windows promised that night had fallen while I was stuck inside. Rowan lounged on a black leather sofa, smoking robe half open and shot glass cradled in one hand.

“You can go, Jasmine.” The alpha waved dismissal and air movement promised his sister had obeyed him. I didn’t take my eyes off his face, however. My wolf was completely and instantly alert.

Leave, she demanded. Predator, she added.

As if I wasn’t aware of Rowan’s eyes glowing hungrily in the near darkness. Still, I shook my head and took a single step inside.

Because I wasn’t yet ready to burn the bridge Rowan represented. Despite the vibrating cell phone in my pocket, I couldn’t afford to. Not when Harper’s school was within McCallister territory. Not when the Samhain Shifters would disband by the middle of the week.

Instead, I evaded. “Maybe this can wait until tomorrow? I’m tired.”

“My bedroom is around the corner.” Rowan was standing now, his scent of hungry wolf enfolding me. He advanced and I took a step backward, my spine coming to rest against the closed door.

“You’re frightened.”

“I’m not.”

His finger rose, nearly but not quite touching my unprotected throat. “Your pulse beats like a bird battering itself against a window pane.”

I shivered and he smiled. The door knob turned easily in my hand.

His teeth glinted as his lips widened. “No, you’re not locked in. Not now. Although I have locked wolves away for much longer than your short training session. Weeks. Months. One I forgot about. No one fed him. He died and we gnawed on his bones.”

Rowan’s wolf was so close to the surface, I could see its shadow beneath his cheekbones. This wasn’t normal behavior. Not even for a power-hungry alpha.

“What do you want?” I demanded.

“A signature on a contract. Two years will be plenty. I tire of playthings quickly. Then, when your sister graduates, you’re free to go.”

A contract? From the little I knew about the fae, that sounded far more like their MO than like a werewolf’s.

Surreptitiously, I hunted in my pocket for the stolen salt shaker. It had spilled out a teaspoon of granules and I pinched some up between thumb and forefinger....

Flinging the salt at Rowan’s throat, I waited for him to sizzle or at least retreat away from me. Instead, he advanced another step until our fronts touched.

His voice quaked with humor. “You’re fighting me off with pocket lint?”

I shook my head. Rowan wasn’t fae. He was just a wolf toying with my future as if I was a junebug on a string.

The phone hung heavy in my pocket. I could follow Rowan to his bedroom, take pictures for Marina, hope they were enough to get me out of this mess....

Or I could deny Rowan and hope a solution arose in the next two days. Well, make that one day and a half.

“I”—I swallowed—“I have to think about it.”

For half a second, I thought Rowan would stop me. He reached forward and my gut clenched around a wolf who wanted to shift and bite our way to freedom....

“By all means,” Rowan said. Instead of stopping me, his hand tapped the door above my head and pushed it open. “Until tomorrow. I await your pleasure.”

I FLED DOWN THE STAIRS, unable to slow my descent even though Rowan didn’t appear to be following. The ground floor was silent. The route to the basement, I knew from the day’s endless tour, was right around the bend.

Meanwhile, the front door beckoned. I could leave, collect my sister, take her somewhere far away from Rowan and Marina. Nick wouldn’t try very hard to find us, not when he had the rest of the Samhain Shifters to deal with. And while Harper would hate being on the lam, dodging strange alphas, she trusted me. She’d go and she’d behave.

She’d behave. I hated that. Didn’t want to squash the small hint of independence and playfulness Harper had recently grown into.

So I pulled out my phone and checked the group chat. They’d discussed the job more since I’d sent my one-word answer—it appeared the node really had moved into Rowan’s territory. Ryder mentioned strange behavior from his guides that sounded an awful lot like the cat-chasers outside my apartment. Tank had left me an opening to insert my experience with Marina but hadn’t