Unleash The Moon (The Preternaturals Book 6) (11 page)

The main doors were constantly opening and shutting
as wolves shifted and ran out. A few ran back in, shifted back, and
dropped onto one of many sofas, goofy grins on their faces. The
blood moon was making everyone high, and the alcohol wasn’t
helping. There would be two more nights of this insanity before the
moon began to wane. He had to get Sydney out of here before it got
too crazy. Tomorrow night would be even worse.

Eyes followed him as he moved through the lobby and
toward the bar. They sensed power, and a couple of them seemed
ready to throw their fealty at him. It was natural for werewolves.
Most weren’t comfortable being outside a strongly organized social
order, and most weren’t driven to lead. They wanted to know who to
follow, who to answer to, and who would keep them safe. When a
stronger wolf came into a pack, there was always a risk that wolf
could take over as alpha.

If Noah wanted to take this pack
and run it, he could. Easily. He’d have to mark Sydney first, so
she’d be safe. The idea of running a pack appealed to him on a deep
instinctual level, but he had to get back to his family.

He wasn’t sure if he could go back
and be a member of his dad’s pack and not feel that hot feeling
under his skin that recoiled at not having his own group to run,
but he needed to see them and spend time with them. Maybe a lot of
time.

He needed to learn how to re-integrate with normal
life on the outside. No matter his strength or instincts, he knew
he wasn’t fit to lead, not after being a caged animal for so many
long years. Even just being around this many other werewolves
without a structured routine and cells to divide them, made him
feel unhinged.

Noah wouldn’t show Sydney that side of him. He
couldn’t. She had to feel safe and know she was protected. She
didn’t need to have to deal with his mental issues on top of
everything else. He’d have to work it out privately for himself.
He’d figure out what normal was. He’d blend. It would be fine. But
right now being anybody’s alpha was the last thing he needed in his
life, no matter how many heads seemed to incline the most
imperceptible amount when he neared.

Their current alpha sensed it, too, and she was in
panic mode. As he moved into the bar, the metal from the lobby
faded to make room for smooth jazz, but the two still met at the
door and clashed liked fighting siblings.

The wolf behind the bar put a glass in front of him.
“What’ll you have?”

Noah wasn’t sure how things worked here. Did they
use some form of currency? Was it all on the house because it was
pack? He wasn’t sure if he was being treated as a guest or a
patron. He held up a hand. “I’m fine.”

He’d never had alcohol, but they didn’t need to know
that. They didn’t need to know he’d never drank, never hunted like
a real wolf, never had sex even. If they knew any of that, the
sycophants among them would go back to their current leader and
fawn over her.

“
You’re our
guest. Try this.”

Noah watched an amber liquid being poured into a
small glass. He caught another wolf tossing back a similar drink in
one gulp. The other wolf slammed his hand on the bar and let out a
howl. “That’s harsh, Rafe. Damn. Did you mix it with battery acid
this time?”

The wolf behind the bar chuckled.

Oh great. Noah knew this. He was being tested. It
was something he understood. Being watched and studied and tested
and measured was familiar. He knew how this worked.

His eyes never left Rafe’s, not even to look at the
glass, as he picked it up and drank it down. Holy shit. What the
fuck was that? He covered an impending cough with a growl and said.
“Another.”

Respect. He passed.

“
Nobody can take
two shots of Rafe’s home brew whiskey. Trust me on this one,” the
wolf Noah had watched pound one back said.

“
I’m sure I can
handle it,” Noah said.

He tossed the second one back and resisted the urge
to melt into hysterics as the alcohol burned down his throat.

He stood from the bar and moved to the back of the
lounge and sat in an old overstuffed chair in a corner so he could
see the doorway and anyone approaching him. Thankfully no one was.
He recalled how his dad had been with the pack. When Cole had been
distant, they seemed to hang on to every word he said more.

They interpreted distance and silence as strength
and power. But Noah wasn’t trying to give off any of that, he just
couldn’t handle that many people crammed around him. The extent of
how different he was from the other wolves was only just now
becoming clear.

When he’d been imprisoned, the canned mechanical
voice had kept order. He didn’t know how the world worked out here,
how anything worked without a small glass cell to go back to and
spend most of his time in. He’d been surrounded by silence for so
long that any amount of raucous noise made him want to crawl under
a table and hide, but if he showed that kind of weakness, they’d
join together and attack, and soon after they took him out, Sydney
would be at their mercy.

He couldn’t let that happen, so he had to fake it.
All they knew was that he’d escaped from the city. They had no way
to know how long he’d been in there. They couldn’t know that all he
knew about how packs worked and how life worked was from fragmented
childhood memories, instinct, and the tiny bits of conversation
he’d picked up over the years in the yard from his runs.

Many of his fellow prisoners had been taken as
adults. They had entire histories to reference back to. He’d
listened to them talk and had practiced sounding like them because
if he didn’t, he’d known when he broke out of there, he’d sound
like some stiff robot and would never be able to successfully blend
into life anywhere.

Noah thought back to the escape. In so many ways
they’d been lucky. He’d been terrified they wouldn’t make it past
the service elevator. And then what would happen to Sydney? He’d
long ago stopped caring what happened to him. If his escape wasn’t
successful, he’d be happiest dead, but Sydney had given him the
will to believe failure wasn’t an option. Failing himself was
nothing, but if he failed her…

He’d never killed anyone before. When the guard had
grabbed Sydney and took advantage of Noah’s distraction to jerk her
free of him, he’d reacted on instinct. And in the lobby, he’d known
it was them or Sydney. As he’d scooped her out of the laundry bin
and run for the door, he’d glanced back at the macabre tableau he’d
created with fangs and clawed hands. Why didn’t he feel
anything?

Shouldn’t he have felt guilt, remorse, horror?
Something? But he was blank. He wasn’t even sure what he was
supposed to feel about it. But if he could just flip like that, fly
into a rage and take dozens of people out, was Sydney safe with
him?

He’d become too anti-social locked away from the
world, isolated even from his fellow prisoners. It was too many
years without any socialization. The orders and routines had
substituted for pack hierarchy, and for a while it had fooled some
part of his brain into going along with it.

He’d spent years repressing everything inside him
that screamed to fight, because he’d known it was the wrong time to
fight. He would only lose, and he shouldn’t start a fight he
couldn’t win. But tonight, all the pent up aggression and rebellion
rose up out of him with the power of the moon, and he’d reacted. It
was as if an invisible trigger had been pulled. He’d gone from
mild-mannered, quiet Noah, to crazy-killing-machine Noah in an
eye-blink.

He looked up to find the alpha striding toward him.
For whatever reason, she was running this pack alone, and he
smelled the fear on her. If he could smell it, just having met her,
he knew her pack could smell it. He knew she feared losing her
wolves to him, but at this point, she may as well fear losing it to
any one of the werewolves in the bar. If there was one thing he
remembered from his dad, it was that the alpha couldn’t show fear
to anyone.

Even if no one was waiting in the wings to take
over, it de-stabilized the pack and introduced petty squabbling
among the other wolves, testing boundaries, trying to find a
barrier they would bounce off of so they could feel safe and
cohesive again.

Shira scanned the room. Noah felt a wall go up
around her as she pushed the fear down and tried to cover it. But
she wasn’t nearly the expert at covering emotion that Noah had
become, and everyone had already seen it.

They watched curiously as she sat
in the chair across from him. A small table separated them. He
didn’t say anything. He knew everyone in that bar watched him with
as much scrutiny as they watched her. He wouldn’t speak first no
matter how much he wanted to start figuring out how he’d get back
home. Let her set the parameters of their engagement.

“
I’m Shira,” she
said for the second time that night. “This is my pack. Since you’re
my guest, don’t you think you owe me a name?”

Noah considered giving her the number tattooed on
his arm. But baiting her would be stupid right now if he still
wanted her help. He needed transportation and a plan. If her pack
had been holed up here a while—and it looked as if they had—they’d
know where he could get the things he needed for the trip.

He watched her discomfort grow as he stared at her.
Finally he said, “Noah.”

She still wore the black leather pants her pack had
tossed her. But she’d changed into a more revealing top and had
added boots and some gold jewelry to the mix. And make-up. Her
smokey eyes and bright red lips were an orchestrated seduction,
meant to draw him in. She formed her words slowly, and leaned in
toward him.

“
So, how did you
meet the girl?”

Noah stared at Shira, his expression closed. He
wasn’t going to play this game. Sydney wasn’t her business, and he
wouldn’t give the alpha even the smallest tidbit of information
that she could use in whatever her plan was. But he thought he
knew. Though he’d been blocked off from the world, there were some
things you just knew without knowing how you knew them.

When she saw she wasn’t getting anywhere via that
route, she unbuttoned another button on her top. “Wow, it’s hot in
here. The desert. You never get used to this heat.”

If that was the case, she
shouldn’t be wearing leather pants and boots. Werewolves ran
hotter, anyway.

She scooted her chair closer and ran a long red
fingernail down the side of Noah’s throat.

He growled. “I told you, Sydney is mine.”

“
You haven’t
marked her,” Shira said.

“
Not
yet.”

“
And even so, it
doesn’t mean you can only have one. You can have whatever you want.
Why don’t we move this conversation somewhere more
private?”

Someone casually observing might guess that her
desire for privacy was rooted in seduction, but Noah sensed it was
because she feared he’d shoot her down in front of her pack. After
all, he’d already given her a warning growl.

“
I’m fine right
here,” he said.

She leaned in even closer, her breasts brushing his
arm as she whispered, “She’s too weak for you. You and I could run
this pack.”

“
Why? Because
you’re afraid I’ll try to take it from you otherwise? Don’t worry,
I have no designs on your pack.”

“
A bit
presumptuous don’t you think? I run a big pack with several decent
fighters. You think they’d submit to my leadership if I weren’t
strong enough to lead? This isn’t the human world. I couldn’t have
slept my way to the top even if I’d wanted to. You saw me reclaim
my human form out there when no one else could.”

Noah turned fully toward her, pinning her to her
seat with a glare. “I know we both sized each other up out there
under the moon. I was born in my fur. Tonight is my twenty-eighth
birth moon. And it’s a blood moon. I escaped a heavily guarded
facility, leaving dozens of bodies in my wake. You might be strong
enough to lead, but we both know you’re just trying to seduce me
because you think I’m going to take your pack from you. Between us,
you know I would win in a challenge fight. And I think you’re smart
enough to know I wouldn’t pull my punches. After all, it would be
disrespect to hold back just because you’re a woman when you’ve
proven you can hold a pack on your own.”

Her manipulative pout morphed into a snarl. “I
shouldn’t have extended hospitality to you. I should have just let
you and your girl die out in the desert. Between the vampires and
the human magic users coming from the city, they would have ripped
you apart.”

Noah shrugged. “Just turn off the
seduction routine. I’m not interested in you or your pack. I just
need a mode of transportation, a map, and some supplies.” He still
wasn’t clear on what supplies he might need, but if he just
said
supplies
, maybe they would magically come together in a bag for him.
Let her lackeys sort out what kind of supplies he needed. They knew
the area. There was no reason to show his ignorance. It would be
another sign of weakness.

She sighed. “Fine. Truth be told, I want you out of
my space.”

He very much doubted that. He’d smelled her when
he’d first shifted in the lobby. She wanted to jump on him. If she
took a mate, most likely she’d fall back to second in command, and
none of the wolves in this pack seemed like someone she’d want to
take a ruling backseat to. But someone new, someone with power?
Maybe. Though, despite her desire for Noah, there was also some
truth to her words. She wanted to be the alpha, not second string
of an alpha pair. And if she’d back the hell off, he would happily
get out of her space and let her carry on as the queen or however
she saw herself.