Moon Dance (2 page)

“
He said I was in danger.
Are we going to discuss that?”

“
Some ploy to get you to
talk to him again. He’s done it before, when he was forcing his
beta wolves to shift out in the world just so you’d visit him in
jail.”

Dana pressed her lips
together. “I’m not trying to defend him. I know what he is. But I
do want my phone back.”

“
Too bad.”

“
Avery, you are driving me
crazy. If you don’t give me that phone right now—”

“
You’ll what?” He crossed
his arms over his chest.

She was so frustrated that
she felt like she might start crying. It wasn’t so much that she
even used the phone very often. Hell, it had been in the bedroom,
buried under clothes, when she heard it ring. She never got phone
calls these days, because she didn’t have any reason for anyone to
call her. She had no job, and she had no social life. So, all
things considered, losing the phone didn’t really mean
much.

But it was the principle of the
thing.

Avery couldn’t take her
personal property. He was her husband, but that didn’t give him the
right to make decisions like that.

“
I know you’re jealous of
him, but you really have no reason—”

“
I’m not jealous of him.”
Avery’s nostrils flared. “This isn’t about me. It’s about you. I’m
trying to protect you from him, Dana.”

“
Well, if you want me to be
protected, what about what he said? About us leaving the SF because
we’re in danger?”

He shook his head. “Oh, no,
we’re not playing Randall’s little game. We’re going to ignore
him.
You’re
going
to ignore him. Forget about him.”

There was a creaking noise
as the door to the bedroom opened wider. “Mommy?”

Dana peered around Avery to
see her toddler Piper standing there chewing on one of her
fingernails. She’d just started doing it, and Dana wasn’t sure if
it was out of nervousness or stress or some kind of hand-to-mouth
comfort thing. She wasn’t sure if she should worry about it or not,
but she did worry. Everything about Piper made her
worry.

“
Sweetie,” Dana said.
“You’re biting your nails.” The last website she’d looked at said
that Piper was probably doing it subconsciously, and that gently
bringing attention to the activity might help the child decide if
she actually wanted to do it or not. The website said that most
children would choose not to, but Dana wasn’t sure about any of
it.

Sure enough, Piper removed
her small fingers from her mouth, but she looked scolded and
guilty, like she’d been caught doing something wrong.

Dana flinched. Was she
giving Piper a complex about biting her fingernails? God, why was
being a mother so damned hard?

Avery looked back and forth
from Dana to Piper, his expression hard. And then he whisked over
to the little girl, facial features breaking into a grin. He picked
her up and held her high above his head. “Pipers!”

Piper giggled.

He pulled the little girl
close. “Mommy got a call from a bad man who wants to take her away
from us, but Mommy’s not going to leave us, is she?”

Dana’s eyes widened.
How
dare
he? There
was no reason to bring Piper into this. She was far too young to
ever understand.

He kept going. “Mommy’s
going to stay right here and take care of you, because she loves
you and she would never, ever—”

“
I’m going for a run.” Dana
stalked past both of them.

Avery set down Piper. “Hey,
Dana, hold on.”

But she didn’t listen. She
had to get out of there. She hurried through the apartment, needing
to get to the door as quickly as possible.

* * *

Dana pulled her shirt over
her head. She was out in the woods near headquarters, far enough
away that no one could see her as she stripped off her clothes.
Carefully, she folded them all and left them in a small pile under
a tree. She scrutinized the trunk, making sure
she
’d be able to recognize it
later.

And then she relaxed everything in her
body and let her wolf take over. It scrambled eagerly up her spine,
overtaking her all at once, like the rush of orgasm. She exploded
into fur and teeth and claws.

She yipped in excitement,
enjoying the feeling of her paws against the forest floor, the wind
in her pelt. She felt good. She felt right. She felt at
peace.

She took off running immediately,
bounding through the woods, luxuriating in her wolf
form.

Things were easier when she
was changed. Her thoughts were simpler and more primitive. She only
cared about running, being one with her surroundings, and hunting.
A few times, when she’d been out on a run in wolf form, she’d
caught and killed rabbits or squirrels. When it was happening, it
always seemed like the rightest thing in the universe. Being the
wolf was a singularity of purpose, far away from the rest of her
complicated life.

And her life was complicated these
days.

It shouldn’t be, maybe. In
terms of the things she was dealing with, her life should be
easier. She didn’t work anymore. Instead, she stayed home full time
with Piper. All she needed to do was take care of her daughter,
keep the house clean, and make meals. Should be fairly
straightforward.

But it wasn’t. It was hugely
difficult, more difficult than Dana had ever imagined.

It was a job that was never
done, for one thing, so it was exhausting. By the time she got
breakfast cleaned up, it was practically time for lunch, and by the
time lunch was cleaned up, it was practically time for dinner. And
Piper was demanding, constantly demanding, constantly needing
things. Of course, that was what children did. Piper was a little
girl, and she needed Dana. Dana even liked the feeling of being
needed, knowing how important she was to her daughter. It filled
her with a sense of rightness not that different than the way she
felt when she was the wolf. Being a mother was ancient and
primitive, and she knew the feelings of it in her bones, the way
she knew to hunt rabbits when she shifted.

But the feelings weren’t
enough to guide her, because it was too confusing to know how to be
a mother.

There were so many
conflicting pieces of information, and there were so many things
that Dana needed to protect the little girl from. Was she watching
too much television? Was she playing with appropriate toys? If
Piper was only given dolls, was she being conditioned to grow up to
value having babies over a career? Should Piper be given toy
stethoscopes instead? What if Piper liked the dolls better? Did
that mean that she was already screwed up and there was nothing
Dana could do about it?

On the other hand, what if
Piper reacted badly from Dana’s interference? What if too much
parental dictation of her imaginary life stunted her creativity and
individuality?

Dana felt like every day was a battle,
and every day, she failed in some way.

She lost her temper, or she
didn’t make a healthy meal, or she didn’t get Piper to pick up her
toys.

Before all of this, Dana had
been very good at her job. She’d been a first-rate tracker who had
brought it rogue werewolves. Rogues were wolves who’d changed for
the first time and gone crazy, generally killing people. The SF
found those wolves, brought them in, and trained them to control
their shifts so that they didn’t have to shift at the full
moon.

Then Dana had been promoted
to head up her own branch of the SF—the Pack Liaison Branch. She’d
pioneered the working relationship that the SF now had with
traditional werewolf packs.

In the past, the SF had
required all wolves to go through their training. But the training
stripped a wolf of pack ties, and it focused on suppression of wolf
characteristics. The traditional packs kept their shifting in
control because they all had alpha wolves, and those alphas could
control the shifts of the others in their packs. Packs were
typically family units. Mothers and fathers were the male and
female alphas, and their children were beta wolves. When a wolf
took a mate, he or she became an alpha, in full control of
shifting.

Dana and Avery had their own pack that
way. They were alphas to little Piper.

But even though Avery was an
alpha in his own right, he still struggled against his wolf. He had
been trained by the SF to believe that he and the wolf were
separate entities. That his human side was the true side of him,
and that the wolf ought to be suppressed.

Dana used to believe that as
well, but she didn’t really. Not anymore. She knew that things were
better whenever she made sure to shift and run in the woods. Being
one with her wolf meant that she was happier, more balanced. If it
weren’t for running in her wolf skin, Dana was pretty sure that the
strain of raising her daughter would have driven her insane by
now.

She wished Avery would do it
with her, because she thought it might mellow him a bit. He always
seemed so tense and touchy. He’d get angry at the slightest thing.
She tried to convince him to run with her, but Avery wouldn’t do
it.

For one thing, Avery didn’t
have as much control over his shifting as Dana did. The full moon
forced wolves to shift. If they had an alpha, they would shift
back. If they had gone through the SF training, they could resist
the shift. Most wolves didn’t bother with shifting at any other
time, treating it as a nuisance. But it was possible for every wolf
to get mastery of his or her own shifting, to be able to do it at
any time and to be able to do it without pain.

When Dana had been captured
by Cole Randall, the wolf serial killer who had kept her chained in
his basement while he tried to work up the nerve to kill her, Cole
had taught her how to control her shifts. He had taught her how to
embrace her wolf, to integrate both of them together, so that her
wolf was part of her, and she was part of her wolf.

She thought she could teach
Avery the same thing, but he resisted. He was afraid of the wolf,
and he didn’t want to give in to it.

She tried to explain to him
how blissful it was, how deeply peaceful and tranquil, but he
didn’t care. He wasn’t interested, and that was that.

So Dana ran alone, glorying
in her simplistic, animal side. And it was a sweet respite from the
rest of her life, an oasis of freedom.

Sometimes, when she ran like this, she
had an urge to keep running. Running forever, never shifting out of
her wolf form. Simply staying in this perfect world of rightness
and peace.

She felt it again as she
leapt through the forest.
Stay,
whispered the leaves on the trees.
Be with us.

Not today,
Dana thought back.

But someday… someday she
wondered if she just might do it.

CHAPTER TWO

Avery looked up to see his
wife coming back into the apartment. She had that glow around her
that she usually did when she
’d come back
from shifting into the wolf, and he had to admit that she was
beautiful. He felt the familiar tug of his wolf to her. They were
mated. She was his.

He wasn’t sure why that
couldn’t be enough in and of itself.

Maybe it was because real
life—human life—wasn’t quite as simple as wolf bonding.

But he still smiled at her.
“Hey, babe.”

She made her way into the
kitchen, which was sectioned off from the living room of their
apartment by a breakfast bar that jutted out between the two rooms.
“You’re making dinner?”

Avery gave the green beans
in the skillet a stir. “Just chicken nuggets, french fries, and
green beans. All frozen stuff I’m heating up. It was Piper’s
idea.”

She kissed him on the cheek.
“Thanks, sweetheart.”

“
Yeah, I made the bed too.”
He grinned at her.

“
Thanks.” She sighed. “I
swear, I don’t understand why I can’t get on top of this house. It
just seems so overwhelming.”

He turned back to the green
beans. They’d argued about this before. She didn’t have anything to
do except keep the house clean and watch Piper, so he didn’t
understand why everything was such a wreck all the time. But he
didn’t want to have that argument again. He didn’t want to argue at
all. So, he didn’t say anything.

She was quiet too. Then, she
started to back out of the kitchen. “Well, I guess I’ll sit down
with Piper for a bit.”

He reached for her and pulled her body
against his.

She wrapped her arms around
him.

He held her close. She was soft and
small, still his Dana, and he knew her body as well as he knew his
own.

She buried her face in his
chest.

He planted a kiss on the top of her
head.

They held onto each other like that for
a long time.