Huntbound (Moonfate Serial Book 2) (10 page)

I look over my shoulder; half expecting yet another monster to come striding out of the soon-to-come darkness, but in the legions of disorderly trees behind me I can’t see anything.

“I’m sorry, Artemis.”

“For what?”

“For what I’m about to do next.”

My gaze whips back to him. I see him as he truly is now, a wild, naked thing. Blood and dirt streak his pale skin like war paint and a feral snarl curls his lip. He is uncontrollable. I was a fool looking for the monster over my shoulder.

It was standing in front of me all along.

Chapter Sixteen

He prowls toward me, and I can see the wolf so clearly in his every movement. Shadows dance over his skin, and I almost wonder if he’s going to shift. His gaze brims with resolve.

I can’t help but flinch when he gets close enough to touch me. But I ball my fists and manage to stay calm. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

“We’re beyond what I want, Artemis.” Instead of stopping he makes a lazy arc around me the same way he did around the dead body. He looks at me with the same cold professionalism, too. “And we’re beyond what you want at this point, too.”

“Then w-where are we, Orion?” I bite my lip to stop the stutter.

“At a place where I have to do what’s best.”

His orbit is getting closer now, and I feel like he’s only giving our conversation half of his attention. The other half is focused entirely on me. My reactions. My body. Like he’s searching for weak points. “I will let nothing take you from me, not even yourself. Do you understand that?”

I nod once, incapable of anything else.

“Now.” He takes a deep breath, amazingly deep. I had no idea his lungs could expand that far. His chest almost doubles in size.

When he does speak, his voice seems to have all the qualities of the forest, at once soothing like the soughing of wind through leaves, and ancient, like the twisted networks of roots, and the darkness of shadows in a place so far away from civilization the only light comes from the stars. “So, now, tell me, Artemis. Why did you run from me, why did you disobey me, and why are you so reluctant to tell me who you really are?”

The power of his werecall speaks in my bones and blood, leaving no room for anything but absolute obedience. I open my mouth, or he opens my mouth. My body and my motions don’t feel like they belong to me. But this time the sensation is not a pleasant one. “I lost them.”

My heart feels full of helium.

“Who? Who did you lose?”

“My parents. Werebeasts killed them. And I stayed in the tent.” The words leave my mouth so easily; I can’t believe that it took me so long to say them. I can’t even process the words. They seem like a random collection of syllables. “I couldn’t lose Lawrence too. He’s the only friend I’ve ever had who really knew me. All of me. The bad and the good, and he loved me anyway. I couldn’t let him die.”

Nothing feels different after I release the words into the atmosphere. There’s nothing special about them. Nothing life-changing. No tears run down my cheeks.

Nothing is different.

Except for Orion.

I don’t know what I expected. Sadness, understanding, like when he held me and kissed me at my house. Maybe I even expected him to try to fix me, to open his mouth and tell me to forget about my parents, to forget about all the pain werebeasts had caused me. The pain I had caused them.

But none of that happens.

Instead, he grasps my chin in his fingers and yanks it up so I’m looking at him. “Don’t lie to me.”

His words have no less power this time, but I don’t fight them. I let them wash through me, and actually offer him a sad, knowing smile. “It’s the truth, Orion. I lost everything because of your kind.”

“But that’s impossible.”

A bitter laugh builds in my lungs, and I let it out. “I’ve learned over the years that nothing is impossible.”

The sense of disconnection is fading, my limbs prickling with pins and needles, my heartbeat beginning to accelerate again. But even though I’m beginning to feel something, it’s not fear. It’s relief. God, it feels so good to be honest with him. With myself. About what I am. Who I am.

The irony, I realize, is that it was this feeling, this ability to share my secrets, that made my friendship with Lawrence so important to me. I had thought that this strange feeling of kinship was something I could only have with Lawrence.

Orion’s done nothing yet to fix the situation, and yet I already feel better. Not completely; I never will completely, but as I close my eyes and take in a shuddering breath I realize that I had never before named my grief.

I had spent the last seven years mourning, and hadn’t been able to accept that fact. Accept my pain. Acknowledge it aloud.

Until now.

Orion lets go of my face, and I want him to return. I want him to kiss me and try to make it better. Not because I think he can, but because I need the assurance that somebody, anybody wants to try.

But he doesn’t return. Instead, he backs away from me as if I’m the wolf, as if
I’m
the monster.

My heart hits the floor of my stomach, hard. And the tears that seemed so far away only a minute ago suddenly teem behind my eyes. What was I thinking? It was because my face was plastered on poster after poster that Orion was kept in captivity for years. It was because of my parents that hundreds if not thousands of his kind were imprisoned. And I almost shot him to save Lawrence.

Now that he knows who I really am, why would he ever want to do anything to help me again?

It’s too late.

I fight down a choked sob. “I’m sorry.”

When Orion finally speaks again, it’s not with horror or hatred or empathy or sorrow, but something else: disbelief. “You can’t be Artemis Williams.”

“I am,” I say. “I’m so sorry, Orion. I am.”

“No,” he says with utter, heartbreaking finality. “You aren’t. Because Artemis Williams is dead. She’s been dead for five years.”

***

Artemis and Orion’s story will continue in the third installment of the Moonfate serial,
Bloodbound
, due out on November 31
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A lot of people have read
Huntbound
: my beta-readers, my author friends, my editor, strangers on the street I kidnapped, your grandmother, former US president Bill Clinton — okay, okay. Some
of those people have read
Huntbound
, but none of their opinions are as important to me as yours.

Table of Contents

Chapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter Four Chapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter Sixteen