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  she was fascinated by it. He understood. The moon called to them, its waxing and waning marking time until the one night they all ran beneath it as one.

  At times like this, when the moon was round and

  high and white, it seemed to whisper, to pull at them like a past lover who is gone but never quite forgotten. On every eve of every full moon, Julian always missed Alana so badly that each howl he uttered resembled her name.

  He’d spent centuries without a wife. He hadn’t been

  interested; he’d never once been tempted. Why have one woman when you could have a dozen?

  Then one of Julian’s people, Margaret Jones, had

  Begged him to save her granddaughter. A young preschool teacher who had an incredible gift with children, Alana had been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, and she was very near the end.

  Julian had gone to the hospice, and he’d asked

  Alana—as he’d asked every one of his wolves—if she wanted to live or to die. He’d shown her what he was, and she’d agreed to become like him.

  When he brought her home, Alana’s gentle, sweet

  nature had captivated him. She’d been so damn young, and Julian— though he appeared exactly her age—had been so damn old. She’d made him remember things he’d long ago forgotten; she’d made him see the world as brand new. She’d looked at him as though he could do anything, probably because, at first, she’d believed that he could.

  Tonight he felt Alana’s loss as an unhealed wound. Or what he remembered an unhealed wound might feel like.

  So why had he been unable to keep himself from touching Alexandra? -

  Certainly he hadn’t had sex for a good long while. He tried to recall how long and couldn’t. He remembered the woman, her face but not her name. The interlude had meant nothing but a release. Every interlude had been nothing more than that since he’d gone searching for his wife and found nothing but ashes. -

  “Get down here:’ he ordered. “Now.”

  Alexandra lowered her gaze. He was her maker, the alpha, and she had little choice but to obey him. Once she realized that, she wouldn’t like it. Not that there was anything she could do about it.

  Julian’s lips curved. He’d been wrong to leave her

  behind to fend for herself. He could exact a much better revenge by taking her with him. A woman like her, forced to do anything he wanted—

  Torture.

  Which was what he’d had in mind all along.

  She blinked as if she’d just come out of a trance. Moon madness. Happened to the new ones. Sometimes they stared at the bright, shiny, exquisite moon until a Jäger-Suchers walked up and blew their brains out. Which was

  -why new wolves were not supposed to be left alone. At least in his pack. Most werewolves couldn’t have cared less.

  “Why are you taking me with you?” she asked.

  Julian growled, a deep rumble that made her eyes narrow. If she’d been in wolf form, he thought she’d have growled right back. He felt a twinge of interest. He hadn’t had anyone rebel in centuries.

  “Why are you coming?” he countered.

  She glanced over her shoulder, then quickly climbed over the ledge, landing barefoot at his side. The street person who’d sold Julian the sweats and T-shirt had been wearing canvas sneakers so filthy, so full of holes, and so huge he’d refused them. It didn’t really matter. Despite the area being littered with broken glass and sharp bits of metal, any injuries she might attain by running over them would heal.

  Julian heard the police milling about inside. They’d be occupied for a few minutes dealing with the scene, but soon they’d start looking around.

  He took her hand, and she let him. Then they ran until they were far enough away for their presence not to matter. When he slowed, he immediately dropped all contact. Together they wiped their palms against their pants.

  “Why are you coming with me?” he repeated.

  “I—” Her gaze -dropped to her feet. “I don’t know how to live like this.” -

  “And you think I’ll teach you?”

  She met his eyes. “Won’t you?”

  -

  Of course.

  The words whispered through his brain. The combination of fear and hope in her eyes pulled at him. The scent of her enticed him.

  “I should leave you here,” he ground out. “Let you run wild until the cops lock you up. If you’re lucky, Mandenauer will arrive before the next full moon.”

  She blinked. “Who?”

  “I’m not a moron,” Julian snapped. “I checked you out.” Though he hadn’t come up with much. “You were born.

  You lived for a while in Nebraska, even started kindergarten. Then your mother disappeared—”

  He lifted a brow, waiting for her to explain, but she didn’t.

  He figured disappeared meant “death by monster,” especially considering what happened next.

  “You and your father fell off the grid. Since only Edward has the connections to make someone disappear like that, either one or both of you was a Jäger-Suchers once upon a time.”

  She shrugged, giving up the pretense. “I don’t work for him anymore.”

  “I know.”

  The Jäger-Suchers had rules, and Alexandra Trevalyn did not follow them. One of those rules was: Wait until they shift to shoot them.

  As Alex had proved with Jorge, she didn’t believe in rules.

  “What else do you know?” she asked. “About me? About them?”

  “Not as much as I’d like,” he murmured. He and his kind stayed isolated from the world. It was the only way to live the way that they wanted to. Which meant information was hard to come by. Not that he didn’t come by it. It was just hard. And expensive.

  “The Jäger-Suchers are in disarray:’ he continued. “There was a—” Julian paused, searching for the word. “A purge. Many of them died; the rest are in hiding.”

  Her brow creased. “When did this happen?”

  “Nearly a year ago. The werewolves banded together and began hunting the hunters.”

  “They never cared before.”

  Most werewolves only cared about themselves, which was how the Jäger-Suchers had so much success.

  “There were whispers of a cure:’ Julian continued. “But werewolves don’t want to be cured. They like what they are.”

  “Do you?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  She appeared to think about that for a minute, then nodded. “So the werewolves went on the offensive.”

  “In more ways than one,” Julian agreed. “Not only have they gone after the Jäger-Suchers instead of waiting for the Jäger-Suchers to come to them, but they’ve made a concerted effort to replace what’s been lost and purposely increase the number fighting on their side.”

  “A werewolf army,” Alex said faintly.

  “It’s happened before.”

  Barlow knew about the werewolf army. However, according to him, he wasn’t the one behind it.

  Except he was a werewolf. Killing? Lying? Both came as easily to him as eating.

  Why hadn’t Edward told her he’d been losing agents? That he was on the defensive rather than the offensive for the first time in more than half a century? -

  He was a big believer in imparting info on a need-to-know basis, and he’d no doubt say if questioned that Alex hadn’t needed to know. She was no longer one of them.

  Maybe Edward thought Barlow was behind the whole thing. Although if that was the case, it was something she definitely needed to know.

  However, she’d learned in the few years she’d worked for the old man that he had his own way of doing things, and he was usually right.

  As they walked along the deserted street, her shoulder brushed Barlow’s and memories rushed in—.the kiss, his scent, the bizarre fact that they could even touch.

  He skittered as far away from her as he could get and still remain on the cracked, broken remnant of the sidewalk. The expression on his face brought
back the image of him wiping her taste from his mouth, her touch from his hand, and fury sparked.

  Which was stupid. She’d felt exactly the same way once she’d come to her senses. Disgust for her lack of control, nausea over the flash of lust, horror at what she’d already done and what she’d been willing to do with the slightest hint of encouragement.

  Just thinking about the interlude brought back Alex’s thirst for vengeance. She wanted to kill Barlow not only for what he’d done to her but for the way he’d made her feel.

  If Edward had not said the werewolf that had killed her father was a member of Barlow’s pack, she would have put a silver bullet through the guy’s brain and disappeared into the sunset, the fate of humanity at the mercy of a new werewolf army be damned.

  But Edward had said, and since the only thing that had kept Alex going for the past eight years was- the possibility of revenge, she bit her tongue and kept going, silently assuring herself that once she got wherever Barlow was taking her, she’d blast her father’s killer to hell, along with anyone else who got in her way. Right before she left, she’d give Julian Barlow a parting gift.

  Kaboom.

  The promise soothed her as little else could.

  Not that she didn’t understand the man’s need for payback—even sympathize with it. Alex shook her head.

  He wasn’t a man. Alana hadn’t been a woman. They were murdering beasts. They didn’t feel love, or pain, or remorse.

  Except Barlow did. The agony in his eyes, the gruffness in his voice told the tale. He mourned his wife with an intensity that matched Alex’s own.

  Unease flickered. She was a werewolf now, and yet she

  still missed her father, ached with his loss and her lo’ for him.

  But there was a reason for that. She been injected wit Edward’s serum and cursed by a voodoo priestess. She wt as close to human as a werewolf could get. That was the one reason she still felt any -emotions at all.

  So what was Julian Barlow’s excuse?

  “Where’s your car?” he asked.

  Alex glanced around. They’d run a long way, then walked some more. She wasn’t familiar with the area, but she recognized a few of the buildings ahead as some of those she’d passed while trailing Jorge.

  She pointed to the west “About a mile.”

  Barlow began to jog and she did the same, just a young couple out for a little exercise. Except it was the middle of the night, they were white, and—with Alex’s oversize, worn clothes, bloody arms and neck, and lack of shoes—she looked like a bag lady in a Dawn of the Dead remake.

  “Now you understand how it is for most were Wolves,” he said.

  “How what is?”

  “You were changed against your will.”

  “So?”

  He sighed as if she were incredibly dense and continued. “New wolves are like babies. They can’t be blamed for what they do. Would you punish an infant for banging a toy against a wall and breaking it?”

  “I hardly think the man you left behind for me to kill was a toy.”

  “No, he was a habitual child molester.”

  Alex’s lips pulled into a grimace.

  “Kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth, doesn’t he?”

  Thanks to Edward’s serum and Cassandra’s spell, sin

  hadn’t killed her toy. Right now, Alex was kind of sorry about

  that.

  “I told you he was a very bad man:’ Barlow continued. “He deserved to die.”

  Alex had to agree, but— “Who made you judge and

  jury?”

  ‘‘Me.’’

  Huh. He sounded just like Edward.

  “You felt the madness as soon as you awoke, didn’t you?”

  he pressed.

  Alex glanced at him and told the truth. “Yes.”

  He continued to stare straight ahead as they ran much faster than she ever had with much less huffing and puffing.

  Certainly Alex had kept up with her training. If she wanted to best supernatural beings daily she didn’t have much choice. She could run ten miles without collapsing, sprint one hundred meters in thirteen seconds; she’d had instruction in Judo, and she could fight with every kind of weapon. Her father had been very thorough.

  However, she hadn’t kept up this well. No human being could. The virus in her blood was obviously good for more than a full moon fur coat.

  “Would you execute an insane person for listening to the voices in his head?” Barlow continued.

  Alex didn’t answer, because her answer would give her away. Despite her new abilities, her conflicting feelings, she still didn’t consider a werewolf a person.

  They came around the corner of yet another empty building and stopped. Five guys stood between them and Alex’s cargo van.

  Yesterday Alex would have run the other way. She was interested only in killing werewolves, not stupid kids trying to be tough. Today she wanted to fight, even before she saw that they’d managed to get inside and were using their switch-blades on what few clothes she owned.

  A growl rumbled from Alex’s throat. Barlow cast her quick glance. “No,” he said.

  “That’s all I’ve got in the world.”

  “You don’t need it anymore.”

  “That isn’t the point,” she snapped.

  “Don’t shift.”

  Alex had been inching forward, longing to plant her fist in the face of a guy who was shredding her underwear.

  She paused though she wasn’t sure why. Something in Barlow’s voice, in the tone of his command, made it difficult for her to disobey.

  “You’re too new,” Barlow explained. “I can hold them o while you change, but once they’ve seen us do that, we’

  have no choice but to kill them all.”

  Alex frowned. Since when did a werewolf care if he ha to kill people?

  “What do you suggest?” she asked.

  Barlow cracked his knuckles, and his smile gave Alex shiver. He might wear a veneer of humanity. He might play’ being calm, reasonable, in control. But that smile and the flash in his eyes revealed the truth.

  He liked violence as much as the next werewolf.

  “Let’s kick their ass,” he said.

  CHAPTER 4

  Alex moved into position with Barlow as if they’d been lighting together for years.

  The five young men dropped everything but their knives and approached holding the weapons as if they knew exactly what to do with them. Alex wasn’t worried. Knives were made of steel, not silver; any wound they might have the good for-line to land would heal.

  The boys rushed forward, and Alex decked the guy who’d dared to finger her panties. He flew off his feet and smacked Into another one. They hit the pavement; their knives clattered every which way, and they lay still.

  Alex glanced at her fist She could get used to this.

  Hyped, she bounced on the balls of her feet, spinning toward a third guy. She caught the scent of steel and jerked away ‘ii instant before the knife slashed her cheek. Barlow tackled him, and the two went down in a tangle of arms and legs.

  A wild punch caught Alex on the chin. Her head snapped hack, but she didn’t go down.

  “What the hell?” the guy muttered; then his eyes widened nit Alex started to laugh. The blow hadn’t even hurt.

  He turned to run, and Barlow kicked the kid in the chest Alex sidestepped as the boy sailed five feet and landed in heap. He didn’t move, either.

  The one Barlow had tackled lay immobile, the fifth— “Watch out!” Alex shouted, and Barlow rammed his elbow backward, catching his attacker in the gut.

  “Ooof,” the kid said, then dropped to his knees. Hi

  eyes rolled back, and he toppled over like a well-hit bowling pin.

  Alex’s harsh, excited breathing was the only sound that broke the resulting silence. Barlow wasn’t even winded.

  “That was—” Alex clenched and unclenched her hands. “Freaking fabulous.”

  “Learn to pull your
punches,” Barlow said, refusing to look at her. “You could kill someone, even in this form.”

  He walked to the van, opening the driver’s-side door and climbing inside. Alex stared after him and thought again Since when does killing bother a werewolf? Right now, didn’t bother her. Right now, if someone came at her with the intent to turn her to ashes, she’d kill him with ease and probably dance a jig on his broken bones.

  What was wrong with her? She was behaving more like beast than the king beast.

  The adrenaline rush faded, and Alex was left in a cold sweat, her hands lightly shaking.

  “Alexandra!” Barlow roared from the van.

  Alex glanced at the bodies flung all around; her he~ slowed as she noted that each one was still breathing before she followed him.

  “Keys,” he snapped as soon as she climbed inside.

  “What’s your problem?” she asked. “You said, ‘Let’s kick their ass.’”

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  It had. In fact, it had seemed like a fantastic idea right up until the time the stillness had descended, and she’d realized how much fun she’d had, how easy it had been to hurt people, and how much she’d wanted to keep doing it.

  Alex was both energized by their success and seriously worried by it. What was the weird connection between them, and how could she break it?

  “Alexandra:’ Barlow murmured.

  “Alex,” she returned. The last ‘time someone had called her Alexandra, finger painting had been the most important thing on her schedule, followed by snack and an afternoon nap.

  “Your keys?”

  -

  Her hand went to her pocket before she remembered this wasn’t her pocket “I think they’re back in that room.”

  She put her palm against the passenger window. One of the boys stirred. Another groaned. “With my clothes.”

  Barlow muttered a word in another language, and despite her not understanding it she knew it to be a curse. “We need to get out of LA,” he said. “The cops are going to figure this out.”

  “Right. They’ll decide the torn clothes are because someone shifted into a werewolf, and the keys on the floor belong to—-” She paused. “How will they figure out who they belong to?”

  “Your ID?” he suggested.

  “I was a Jäger-Suchers once. That translates to ‘hunter,’ not moron. No ID.”