kissed-by-moonlight by Rakhibul hasan (ebook reader for pc .TXT) 📕

snarl rippling through her body like tremor.

 

She barely got within an inch of me this time before Gabriel barked a vicious warning.

 

Screaming in frustration she turned away, hands fisted in her hair and rage making her body shake. The pack, meanwhile, was having a heyday, making their own displeasure obvious. I saw Marcus walk over to Gabriel and whisper something in his ear.

 

A moment later Gabriel’s face morphed into a picture of outrage and his voice rose in disbelief.

 

“Impartial? I am impartial.” Marcus leaned in, whispered something else, and Gabriel crouched where he stood and sulked. “Fine.” Waving his brother away, he spoke without looking at any of us. “Yvette you’re allowed to lay hands on the human.”

 

Taking a deep breath, Yvette smiled, inclining her head in thanks to her Alpha. I was probably the only other one besides Yvette that saw Gabriel look at her and very slowly, very deliberately, bare his teeth in warning.

 

Clearly flustered, Yvette faced me once again, hands loose and ready at her sides. I met her eyes, and for the life of me, I couldn’t help but laugh. I tried, but I couldn’t stop the laughter. It took me over, filled my chest, and made my stomach ache with the force of it.

 

The laughter surprised her at first, and I could see her face work as she tried to stay angry and willing to fight, then she snorted. The snort became a chuckle, and then she was bent over and cackling there beside me.

 

Our mirth was contagious, and soon more and more of the Pack were lost in amusement. Marcus looked at all of them, and his mouth tightened in anger. He pushed through the men and women that stood around him, coming towards the two of us as if he were more than willing to do Yvette’s job for her.

 

I straightened, body going rigid. Before he could reach me, a shot rang out and the dirt around us exploded in a shower of grass and rocks. Another shot split the air, and I looked up in time to see one of the Weres collapse, the bullet ripping through one side of his head to come out the other. Some of the pack were already taking off, the others morphing from their human forms to move more easily through the woods.

 

I was still stunned by what had happened when Gabriel came up from behind me, grabbed my arm, and jerked me into a run all without breaking stride. I heard engines rev and more gunfire as we both darted through the stand of trees. Around us, wolves were escaping in leaps and bounds, their bodies nothing but streaks of color through the foliage, their steps silent but for the occasional rustle of leaves on the forest floor. The trunks of the trees around us exploded with gunfire, the bark ricocheting through the air.

 

My breath came hard and fast and my chest ached. It was obvious that I was slowing Gabriel down. The rest of the pack was barely visible through the trees ahead now. I could hear cars crashing through the brush and every now and then the pained yip of a wolf reached my ears.

 

I stopped, yanking my arm out of Gabriel’s grip and struggling to breathe past the terrible pain in my chest.

 

“Can’t. Keep up,” I gasped, hands on knees. I waved him off. “I’ll hide. You run.”

 

His jaw clenched. Bouncing on his heels he looked between me and back where we’d come from, where the sound of engines was quickly growing louder and louder.

 

Lips tight, he shook his head.

 

“Won’t work. They’ll catch you.”

 

“They wo—”

 

“They will,” he spoke, tone implying that he would brook no argument.

 

“Yeah,” I admitted, lamenting my awful lack of upper, lower, or mid-body strength. I sat at a desk all day. Who the hell actually expected me to outrun men with shotguns and semi-automatics? “They probably will.”

 

“Come here.” Pulling me towards him, he looked down into my eyes and kissed me. It felt oddly businesslike, and when his tongue brushed against my own something sizzled on my skin. It felt like I was being bitten by thousands of tiny little mouths, like I was bathing in liquid flame. It ended as quickly as it had begun, and when he stepped back, my eyes widened and I gasped on a tide of smoke.

 

I felt like an actress in a winter fresh gum commercial. All tingly and refreshed. My arm even felt better. As if it had been healing for months rather than a few days. I felt like I could run a marathon, hunt some bison, or come up with a cure for cancer.

 

I grinned at him, fairly fizzling. “Wow. What did you do? Am I high?”

 

His smile was easy, despite the rising cacophony that now surrounded us. I knew I should be worried, the cars were practically on us now, and I could hear the voices of our attackers as they

 

marched through the woods. But for whatever reason, I just couldn’t care. I only had a wild joy in my heart and all my attention was focused on Gabriel.

 

“I mark you,” he said, voice growing urgent as men I could only assume were Huntsmen stepped into view. His hands gripped my forearms and tightened, forcing some of the euphoria back so that I could focus on what he was saying. “Before Pack and man alike, I mark you. From this moment forward, my enemies are your enemies, my allies your allies. When you raise your voice in need or loneliness, in joy or sadness, the Pack will come. Do you accept your place as my mate?”

 

In the back of the crowd, I saw Agent Liam talking to the woman I recognized as Jessica Pearson, the Huntsmen ringleader and I made a terrible realization.

 

The werewolf hunters and the government were working together, and Marcus had used my footage to lead them both to the Pack and to Gabriel. That knowledge brought me down to earth as nothing else could have.

 

When I was silent for too long he shook me, nails digging into skin while men and women in army fatigues surrounded us and attempted to pull us apart.

 

“Do you accept? Phaedra,” he breathed, pressing me close, “I can’t do anything for you if you don’t. I can’t keep you safe. Not against this.”

 

“I accept,” I sobbed as the soldiers finally managed to rip him away from me. My arms were jerked behind my back and one of them pressed their knee in the back of mine, so that my legs buckled. I was brought to the ground and cuffs were slapped around my wrists.

 

Beside me, I watched the people dressed in camo (obviously not military) begin to beat Gabriel to the ground. His skin started to soften around the edges, his wolf coming to the forefront, but with a soft buzz Jessica Pearson pressed a stun again against the side of his neck. She shocked him twice more while I struggled in my own bonds, and when the Alpha had finally been brought down, she looked over at Marcus and smiled.

 

“Good work, Evans. I knew we could count on you.”

 

Marcus smirked, and for the first time I wished that I could shift into a wolf, if only so that I could rip him to shreds.

 

“A curse. Sometimes, that’s all it is.”

 

—Patrick Knowls

 

 

 

Chapter Thirteen

 

 

 

 

 

I rejoiced when the world ended. I wasn’t sure why. In this place, it always came back. Reality was always there, waiting for me, watching for me from the corner of the room like a demon hell-bent on sewing nightmares. It got to the point where when I opened my eyes again, only to see the harsh fluorescents of the interrogation room still shining above me, it was all I could do to keep from breaking down into tears.

 

The worst part was that no matter how badly things were going for me, I knew for a fact that they were worse for Gabriel. I knew because they had us locked in cells that were separated not by concrete walls, but by bulletproof glass. I could see what they did to him, and even worse, I could feel it, thanks to my connection as his Mate.

 

I felt every cold touch, every broken bone, and bleeding wound. I felt them shatter his kneecaps while he lay strapped to a table and I felt the agony multiply tenfold when his body healed the damage in minutes.

 

They had him manacled to a wall by a collar, and they brought him his meals inside dog bowls while on the other side of the glass, my captors allowed me to eat from fine china. The first few days he refused to eat. It was only after they started severing limbs just to watch them regenerate that his body finally broke down and cried out for sustenance.

 

I remember watching him look at me first. The shame that twisted his gut and turned the food into ash in his mouth, even as he continued to shovel it in with his hands. That day, I refused my meals. And the day after that, and the one after that. Instead, I went into a corner of my cell and turned my back on the proceedings going on the other side of the wall. I sat there, staring at gray concrete, body rocking while it danced to the echoes of Gabriel’s pain. I didn’t have to see to know what was going on. We both knew that. But he seemed able to handle the experiments a little better when he knew that my eyes weren’t upon him.

 

The sad part about it all? It wasn’t the werewolf hunters who were in charge of him. The agents had told me that the werewolf hunters couldn’t be trusted with him. Something about them not taking his health into consideration.

 

They weren’t hurting him for fun. At least, I didn’t think so. It was all to get results. To see how fast he could run, how fast he could shift, how much damage he could take before his wolf came screaming to the forefront.

 

They were gathering data about Weres, and Gabriel had been chosen as their guinea pig. Agents Liam and Benson listened to suggestions from Marcus and Jessica, but didn’t allow either of them to step through the door of his cell.

 

So they visited me instead.

 

In a nutshell? We didn’t get along. I found myself bruised and bloody on more than one occasion, and whenever I sat in my cell, nursing a bloody nose or cracked rib, Gabriel would sing for me.

 

Not in the traditional sense. We couldn’t hear one another through the glass, but, thanks to the link between us, I could feel his words rather than hear them. They appeared to me like pictures in my head. His singing wasn’t done in the language of men, but in the language of wolves. I came to learn that even the slightest nuance could change the meaning of a particular call.

 

It wasn’t all about dominance, but also about your intent. The emotion that you put behind your voice before you raised it to the sky. To Gabriel, the howls he sent to me along our bond sounded like words, but all I saw were dark winter nights and towering pines, as he sung in that way that only a Were can do.

 

Sometimes, when I craved the sight of him, I would stand before the glass wall, hands on either side of my head, and watch him. Trapped by his collar, he’d crouch there in his own cell in the darkness, the only sign of life the glow of his eyes through the heavy veil of the night.

 

On those nights, I could feel his mind race. Images would tumble through my brain faster than I could make sense of, but eventually I caught up. Eventually, I trained myself to see the stories he was mindlessly telling me, over and over in a bid to keep himself sane.

 

He was showing me the Wild Hunt.