Moon Dance (3 page)

Then she went into the
living room. He listened while she made Piper’s dolls talk in high,
silly voices. He listened to his daughter’s laughter.

God, he loved them both so
much. He’d never given much thought to children, and Piper had come
along quickly after he and Dana had officially become a couple. But
the little girl was basically the best thing that had ever happened
to him. The first time he’d seen her, all her tiny fingers and
toes, squalling and squirming, he’d been overwhelmed with such a
rush of love that it had nearly toppled him. He’d never expected to
feel so much for someone.

And he was bonded to all of
them through their wolfness as well. Dana was his mate, Piper was
their beta wolf. They were connected so tightly and so deeply that
being without them would be like losing part of himself.

Still.

That didn’t mean it was all
easy, because it wasn’t. He thought that he and Dana would be good
at being married and raising a child together. After all, they’d
worked together as partners for years, and they had a good working
dynamic. Somehow, he thought that the work dynamic would transfer
into their family life.

But it didn’t, not
really.

Dana was never happy
anymore. Okay, that wasn’t fair. She was happy sometimes, but she
was complaining more often than not. She seemed to be frustrated
with every aspect of their lives together, and it was difficult for
him not to take it as a personal affront. It was his job to make
her happy, right? So, whenever she wasn’t, it must mean that he was
doing something wrong. He didn’t know how to please her.

It didn’t help that his work
was different than it used to be. Avery had enjoyed being a tracker
more than anything. He was good at it, and it was important work.
He liked the excitement of hunting down the rogues, and he liked
the unpredictability of the job. He’d never known when he and Dana
would get a call that would send them off to Maine or
Massachusetts. They’d drive all night, sniff out the rogue, bring
him back to headquarters. It was exhilarating. But it wasn’t a
great job for a man with a family, because of all the travel and
unpredictability. Most rogues broke out at night, and getting up in
the middle of the night to go hunt down a wolf would have been
disrupting to his wife and child.

So, now, Avery worked in the
SF as a trainer for the rogues. He taught them to suppress their
wolves. It was important work, but it wasn’t nearly as exciting,
and he sometimes longed for the thrill of tracking.

Whenever Dana would go off
on one of her tangents, complaining about all the things that she’d
given up to raise Piper, he wanted to scream at her that he’d made
sacrifices too.

But
he
understood that the sacrifices
were worth it. Piper was more important to him than being a
tracker. Being close to his family trumped all his desires. He
wanted those other things, but he wanted to be with them
more
.

He wasn’t sure if Dana felt
the same way.

But as he finished making the dinner,
he tried not to think about it anymore.

And eating dinner itself was
always too eventful to think about anything.

Piper was in a phase where
she liked playing with her food more than eating it. She’d just
been moved out of a high chair into a booster seat at the table,
but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still occasionally throwing pieces
of food across the room. She thought that was endlessly funny, and
she thought her parents’ angry responses to her behavior were even
funnier.

And that night… Avery wasn’t
sure why, but it was probably because of the phone call from Cole
Randall earlier. But that night, when Piper was laughing, there was
a moment in which she twisted her face a certain way, and she
looked
exactly like
Cole.

But Avery didn’t say
anything, because he’d decided a long time ago that broaching that
subject was only going to cause lots of pain for
everyone.

He knew, of course, that
there was a chance that Piper wasn’t biologically his. Dana had
been mated to Cole and the two of them had been having sex. When
Avery mated with Dana, it was specifically to break the bond
between her and that monster. It was possible that when he’d done
it, Dana had already been pregnant.

He was sure that Dana had
considered this possibility too. Hell, she never actually came out
and told him she was pregnant. They’d been together for months, and
at some point, he began noticing the changes in her body. But he
didn’t say anything, not at first. But eventually, one night as he
was running his fingers over the swell of her belly, he’d
whispered, “Hey, Dana, are we ever going to talk about
this?”

And even then, they hadn’t
really talked about it. She’d been shy and almost frightened, and
he’d had to reassure her that he was there for her, and that they
were in this together.

They were, after all. They
were mated, tied together with wolf bonds, and sometimes Avery
thought those bonds were stronger than anything that humans could
forge on their own.

And even if Piper didn’t get
made from his sperm, it hardly mattered, because she was born when
he was mated to her mother, and that made her his. According to
pack logic, if an alpha mated with a female with children, he
became the new male alpha of the pack. Piper
was
his.

Still, he didn’t like
thinking about the idea that Piper was connected to Cole
biologically, because he didn’t want Cole to have any part of his
life.

So, to keep from thinking
about it, he helped Dana clean up after dinner, even though he
usually wouldn’t have. The way he figured it, he worked all day,
and Dana didn’t, so the cleanup was her job. Especially tonight,
when he’d also made dinner.

But he wanted to distract
himself, so he stacked dishes and scrubbed the table and picked up
the green beans that Piper had thrown on the floor. And it didn’t
help. He still kept thinking about Cole, thinking about everything
that jackass had put him through. And all the things he’d done to
Dana. Maybe that was the worst of it. The fact that Cole had put
Dana through hell, but that she’d never really blamed him for it.
She had a soft spot for the man, and he’d tried to kill her. He was
responsible for Dana’s mother’s death. He had killed six other
people in cold blood.

Avery sat down at the table,
still holding the dishrag. “I’m sorry.”

Dana looked up from the
dishwasher. “Baby?”

“
I’m sorry about earlier.
You were right. I was jealous.”

She straightened up slowly.
“You don’t have to be, you know. I would never be with
him.”

“
You
were
with
him.”

“
But not like this.” She
gestured around at their house. “I couldn’t share a life with a man
like that. You know that. Things that I did… they were only because
I was off balance. I couldn’t let the wild, wolf side of myself in,
and Cole forced to me to do that. But once I knew how to do it
myself, I didn’t need him anymore. I don’t need him
now.”

He nodded. “I
know.”

She’d explained this to him
before, and he guessed it was as good an explanation as
any.

He looked at the dishrag.
“It’s not really about you anyway. It’s about… fear. My fear of
losing you. I don’t know if I could survive seeing you with him
again.”

“
Avery, that’s not going to
happen.”

“
Maybe not.” He turned back
to the table. It was already scrubbed, but he started scrubbing it
again. “But I didn’t know for sure if he was alive, and you did.
And…”

Her hand was on his
shoulder. “Baby.”

He looked up at her. “You
don’t know what it was like back then. Lying awake in my apartment
in Brockway and knowing you were just a few doors down, with
him
. It hurt so
much.”

She bit her lip.

“
Please don’t do that to me
again,” he whispered. “Please, Dana, I think it would kill
me.”

* * *

Dana woke to the sound of a
phone ringing. At first, she thought it was hers, and the idea of
Cole calling her again made her feel breathless. But then she
realized that it was Avery
’s ring
tone.

She rolled over to see that
he was sitting up in bed, and switching on the bedside lamp. He
answered the phone. “Brooks.”

Dana wrinkled her forehead.
Who could be calling Avery in the middle of the night? Was there an
emergency at work?

Avery sat up straight.
“You’re kidding…. But how could… Yes. Yes, of course, I’ll come
in…. No, she can’t leave the baby.”

What? Were they asking about her? Why
would they do that?

“
I’ll be there soon.” He
hung up the phone.

She sat up too. “What’s
going on?”

His face was white. “I’ve
got to go in.”

“
What happened?”

“
It’s the west coast
regional headquarters. It’s… it’s gone.”

“
Gone?” She didn’t
understand. “What do you mean?”

“
Well, the building’s there,
I guess, but everybody in it is dead. They’ve all been shot to
death. Every single person.” His voice was quiet.

“
What?” Dana was shocked.
She and Avery worked for the largest SF headquarters in the United
States. There were regional headquarters set up in various spots on
the country. Since the northeast region was the most heavily
populated, it was the largest, with the most staff. The
organization’s board had offices here. But the west coast was the
next largest. It served a huge area, stretching over the entire
west coast. “W-why? Who? How?”

He shook his head. “No one
knows. But they’re calling people in right now. There’s probably
nothing we can do, but…”

“
No, of course, you should
go.” She hugged herself. “If I didn’t have to stay with Piper, I
would—”

“
No, I know that.” He kissed
her on the forehead.

* * *

Avery still
wasn
’t home by noon the next day. Dana
talked to him on the phone a few times. (Of course, not on her cell
phone, because Avery hadn’t bothered to give that back to her.
Instead it was the land line in the apartment.) He told her that
there was still no official confirmation on who had killed all the
SF workers in California. There had been a lot of them, whoever
they were, and they’d managed to kill every single person working
there.

Most workers at the SF
weren’t trained to protect themselves. There were only a few people
who were trained as trackers and knew how to use tranq guns. Since
trackers only tracked on full moons, they weren’t constantly
working. The eastern branch only had four. There were probably
around that many on the west coast. There were also guards in the
facility, but, even factoring them in, there were probably less
than twenty people who were trained to fight. Even if those people
could have mounted a quick defense, they would have only had
tranquilizer guns, and that wasn’t a match for people with real
firepower.

Apparently, calls had been
placed to local law enforcement, but the police had been late in
arriving. Probably because there was friction between the majority
of regular humans and werewolves. Most people were inherently
distrustful of wolves. Werewolves who lived outside the confines of
the SF kept their identities secret, despite routine outcries from
the populace that lists of werewolf identities be made
public.

Truthfully, the SF made the world safer
for people, corralling rogue werewolves and teaching them to
control their shifts. In this way, the wolves never had to harm
anyone ever again.

But most people didn’t see
the SF that way. They were frightened of werewolves, and they
wanted them segregated—or even killed.

The reigning theory, according to
Avery, was that a group of angry humans had found a way to get into
the SF headquarters and kill all the wolves within.

“
It’s a hate crime,” said
Avery, “but you think anyone in the mainstream media’s going to see
it that way?”

“
No,” she said. “Probably
not.”

Good press about werewolves
was practically unheard of. There were a few progressive groups who
advocated acceptance and goodwill, but they were the
minority.

At any rate, no one knew
what had happened. There were no clues about what had happened, and
the SF itself was not going to be allowed to investigate, since
this didn’t seem to be a crime perpetrated by werewolves. The SF
only had jurisdiction over wolves, not humans. That meant they were
at the mercy of the same police who had taken their sweet time
getting there to help in the first place. To say that the SF was
not confident justice would ever be served was an
understatement.

“
Mommy, watch!” said Piper.
The two-year-old was on the floor of the living room, at Dana’s
feet while Dana talked on the phone. Instead of playing with all of
her toys, which were scattered around, she’d decided that a stack
of decorative coasters were more interesting. Piper was now hurling
the coasters around the room.