Rogue Moon Read online

  Rogue Moon

  Kira Fairwood, Volume 2

  Aimee Easterling

  Published by Wetknee Books, 2022.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  ROGUE MOON

  First edition. May 17, 2022.

  Copyright © 2022 Aimee Easterling.

  ISBN: 979-8201807405

  Written by Aimee Easterling.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 1

  The tug of the full moon slapped me in the face with all the finesse of a stinky locker-room towel. Bar-interior dimness brightened as my pupils dilated. Hubbub faded as my attention laser-focused on the man serving pints half a room away.

  Not just any man. If Thom ever wanted a break from his current gig as bar owner, he could make a go of it as a pinup model. After all, the muscles of his forearms were dreamily displayed by rolled-up flannel shirt sleeves. The rest of him was equally super-sized, but bulk didn’t equate to slowness. Instead, Thom crossed the room with all the speed and agility of what he also was—an alpha werewolf.

  I hummed, fingers settling on the medallion between my breasts as I licked my lips. And—

  “Out.” Thom shoved the man on the neighboring bar stool away from me. The guy—a human—uttered only one complaining syllable before he took a look at Thom’s face, changed his mind, and yanked out his wallet with shaking fingers instead.

  Smart man. Obey the alpha werewolf. Give him space so he could wrap himself around my skin and....

  I snorted displeasure as an annoyingly familiar human woman joined our threesome. Subsided as she did what her role as pack hanger-on mandated—she moved the non-pack male along.

  “On the house. Here, let me get you a doggy bag for the road. Do you like burgers? Fries? How about pie? We have lemon meringue and cherry.”

  I didn’t bother watching Thom’s employee soothe the evicted human as she drew him away from us. Because Thom was in my personal space now, finally and fully. He’d settled onto the vacated bar stool, jeans-clad thighs splaying wide as he encompassed me in his alpha musk.

  “Kira. Look at me.”

  I hummed again. Thom didn’t have to ask for my attention. In fact, I thought it might be time for us to do more than look.

  Would his stubbled jaw feel as roughly enticing as it appeared from a distance? If I reached out to test the terrain, would he open his lips and take my finger into his mouth?

  My hand didn’t complete its journey, unfortunately. Instead, a hot fist manacled my wrist as Thom barked. “Bertrand. Get over here.”

  A suited shadow blocked the light. “I can’t see why you two don’t just seal the deal. You’re into her. She’s into you. I’m sick of playing chaperone.”

  “You think this is ordinary behavior?” Thom’s voice was so deep it vibrated his hand and my arm along with it. I leaned in closer, or tried to. His muscles flexed as he fended off my advance.

  “I guess not,” the other man said after a moment. He cocked his head, snapping his fingers in front of my face then jerking them away as I clicked my teeth together irritably. “Kira. Focus.”

  I hissed. Suit dude wasn’t the man I wanted. If I shifted, my needle-sharp teeth would make him think again about addressing me while I was busy.

  I craved the alpha. I needed....

  “Hey, hey, hey, hey. Not here.” The unwanted man had his hands on my shoulders now. And Thom was gone, moving so fast I’d missed his exit. Dimly, in the distance, I heard the deep rumble of his voice:

  “Bar’s closing. Family emergency.”

  Feet shuffled toward the exit, which was irrelevant. What was relevant was Thom’s distance from my aching center. I could barely smell him. The loss hollowed out my core.

  I yanked against my jailer’s grip, but it was as firm as his alpha’s had been. My voice rose into a yodel as I flung myself from side to side.

  “She’s going to hurt herself.”

  That was the woman. The woman who’d crept closer to Thom than I was. How dared she?

  I lashed out, fingernails turning into claws as fur rose on a dwindling body. Soon I was smaller than all of them, approximately the size of a well-fed tomcat.

  I wasn’t a tomcat, though. I was a fox. And that grip on my shoulders after one fast wriggle? Gone. Their ability to catch me as I slipped through grasping fingers? A joke.

  Now it was my turn to take control. First order of business: the woman was going down.

  Except I wasn’t the only four-legger in the bar. I skidded to a halt in front of a wolf who’d planted himself between me and the woman. A tie dangled from his neck and suit pants slid off his rump.

  Which should have been humorous, but the wolf’s size wasn’t funny. His raised ruff radiated menace. The shadows beneath his legs were large enough to swallow me up.

  Not that I intended to hide myself. Not between his legs. I’d gotten turned away from my target, but now I realigned myself. The alpha. He was still in human form, which was good. Shortly, I’d be human again, and naked. It wouldn’t take much effort to rip his clothes off as well.

  Well, the belt might present a challenge since my brain was oddly muzzy. He could take care of that part. I took a step...

  ...and something soft and warm dropped over my nose and back. Enveloped me just like I wanted Thom’s arms to do.

  But this wasn’t arms and it didn’t smell like alpha.

  I spat and hissed, but the bindings just pulled tighter. Then the woman—I could smell her—scooped me up. The swaddling fabric that stunk of her man resisted the tearing of my claws.

  “Give her to me.”

  For a moment, cool air pressed through cloth bindings, then the warmth of body contact rekindled. I was no longer restrained by the woman. Instead, I’d found the arms of the alpha, my goal from the start.

  “What’s going on?” This was suit dude, returned from wolf form to question his alpha.

  I growled. You didn’t question an alpha. You obeyed him. Lay beneath him. Let him pet you until you shattered from pure pleasure and delight.

  Like I wanted to. Hadn’t yet but would soon, unless....

  A distant memory of Thom’s months-old explanation filtered through the moon craze. “The Faris curse,” he’d confided. “Single parents going back at least three generations. I”—he’d cleared his throat—“need a committed relationship before I’m willing to be intimate.”

  Now I was the one who shook my head, whipping irrelevant human words away and fragments of the past along with them. I wanted Thom and I’d smelled how much the alpha wanted me. I
t was time for us both to take.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” Thom answered suit dude, his voice slightly choked. Could he smell my arousal the same way I smelled his presence? If so, he knew I craved his skin slicking my skin. He knew....

  Thom took a step backwards, his voice hardening as he shared our private business with those irrelevant to us. “Two months ago, it started with flirtation. Last full moon, Kira wasn’t herself, but she held it together. Tonight....”

  “I thought moon phases didn’t impact werewolves.” This was the woman. Why was she still so close to my alpha?

  I struggled and Thom’s hand settled on my nape, caressing me through the fabric. My muscles eased.

  Yes, he’d take me to bed shortly. I could wait a moment while he addressed annoying pack members, sent them away and won privacy for our tryst.

  “Moon phases are irrelevant to us,” Thom confirmed, his rumble like a rocking boat lulling my senses into somnolence. “Shouldn’t impact kitsunes either. Something’s wrong, and I intend to stop it.”

  The other male snorted then muttered, “Good luck with that.”

  Chapter 2

  I woke to a pounding head, Pumpkin on my chest, and Charlie’s face inches from my eyeballs. “Rise and shine!”

  For several seconds, I blinked confusion. Had the craziness of last night merely been a stress dream? The evidence seemed to suggest as much. Because here I was with my entirely human housemate along with Thom’s cat who slipped in to sleep with me every night before wandering back to the bar to be fed by his real owner. Meanwhile, the light—or lack thereof—pointed to this being just another ordinary January morning.

  So why did my fingertips throb as if I’d used them in an attempt to rip away bindings? Why, as I sat up from a couch that released me reluctantly, did a quilt crumple to the floor and cold air slap my naked stomach and thighs?

  Because that stress dream had been reality, despite the fact I had no explanation for my out-of-character behavior. It had been reality that faded into darkness after Bertrand and Dixie Lee left me and Thom alone in the Full Moon Saloon.

  Well, alone except for my moon-crazed refusal to abide by Thom’s relationship line in the sand. My head fell into my hands. “Oh shit.”

  Before I could indulge in full-on hysterics, a fried-egg sandwich nudged its way into my view field. The offering wiggled as Charlie misunderstood the reason for my distress.

  “Yes, you overslept, and on the lumpy couch instead of in your bed. We all drink too much sometimes. Or were you feeling foxy? Whatever. Eat and you’ll feel better.”

  My lips quirked at Charlie’s mothering, humor cradling me for one split second until my hand rose to the empty spot where Thom’s medallion should have hung at my throat. The jewelry was missing, just like my clothes. Missing...along with the bond it implied?

  Eating abruptly felt impossible. I drew the discarded quilt up over me instead, an action Charlie’s keen eye didn’t miss. “Hey, you don’t have to cover up on my account. Casual nudity. Shifters. I get it.”

  “You’ve come a long way since last fall,” I murmured, hugging the quilt a little tighter and hoping it would warm the cold hole in my belly.

  “Shifters. Magic.” Charlie shrugged. “Once I accepted that the majority of the human body is made up of empty spaces between electrons, everything else was a breeze. Now eat.”

  The trouble was, the cut egg yolk oozing out of my half of the sandwich was precisely the texture of semen. I had an abrupt urge to hit the bathroom and peer at my thighs in search of crusted substances. Because if Thom and I had broken our friends-only agreement...well, he might never forgive me.

  “Kira. Food. I mean it.”

  Charlie wasn’t going to let the matter slide. So I forced myself to pick up her gift, allowing the awfulness to drip onto the plate while I contemplated bringing it to my lips.

  A bite was beyond me, but a word wasn’t. “Sure.”

  And, apparently that was enough for Charlie because she took a deep breath then spoke a little too fast. “So...Jessie’s coming to visit this weekend. She’s bringing the whole family. You good with that?”

  My eyebrows shot up, the question marks of last night fading for one split second. I hadn’t seen Charlie’s twin since college. Hadn’t seen Jessie’s husband either, which was very understandable since Ito was the reason the Raven girls and I had lost touch.

  “Is Ito willing to see me?”

  “He’s not unwilling,” Charlie prevaricated, polishing off the last of her sandwich then licking crumbs off her fingers. A dab of yolk on the corner of her mouth made my gorge rise. “He doesn’t blame you for not being able to find his brother, you know. You and Thom pulled out all the stops, uncovered everything there was to uncover. The trail is simply cold.”

  While true, my recent failure to track down Charlie’s sister’s husband’s brother—and, yes, I knew how convoluted that sounded—only layered on top of Ito’s and my ancient history. History that culminated with my sister using his brother to fuel a spell that locked Kaito in a coma for over a decade. No wonder Kaito had fled after waking up three months ago, completely disappearing off the face of the earth.

  Whatever Charlie said, given the fact that all my efforts to track down Kaito turned up goose eggs, I didn’t expect Ito to be keen on seeing me tomorrow.

  “Maybe I should make myself scarce,” I offered, letting my half of the breakfast sandwich drift back down to the plate.

  “No.” Charlie was halfway across the room now, pulling on her coat, hat, and gloves. “I want you here. It’ll be fine. Oh, and Thom asked me to give you this.”

  My cell phone tumbled through the air between us. The phone...but no medallion.

  I must have winced because Charlie breezed back over to pat me on the head the same way she used to when I was the younger tagalong to her two-sister posse. “Don’t worry about my brother-in-law. Ito is a teddy bear. Once you two spend a little time together, you’ll be BFFs.”

  I’d actually forgotten about Ito already. And about the fact that Charlie’s sister’s visit wasn’t the only thing my housemate had wanted to discuss with me. I forced my voice to brighten. “You said we had two things to talk about?”

  Charlie considered me for a moment, then she shook her head. “Later. Don’t want to make us both late for work.”

  Chapter 3

  I wasn’t late for work, but only because I lacked a permanent job. I did have a login to an app from a temp agency, though, one that offered the best gigs to the earliest applicants to rise.

  It was already half an hour past my usual check-in time, but I headed for my personal messages first. And there, at the top of my notifications, was a text from Thom.

  “Nothing happened.”

  My breath whooshed out in what was only half relief. Nothing happened...because Thom had stood firm against my wild advances? Because he’d brought me home and, what, sedated me?

  And if nothing had happened, why hadn’t his mother’s medallion been sent back to me along with my phone?

  Just like Charlie’s aborted conversation, Thom and I would need to talk at some point. But, right now, retreating ice beneath my skin turned that drippy egg yolk back into food I was ravenous for. I wolfed it down while opening up the temping app.

  The best jobs went to the early birds and I’d overslept. Which is how, three hours later, I came to be standing on a cold street corner dressed like a slice of pizza while twirling a saucer of fabric that was supposed to look like dough over my head.

  “Delicious pizza! Get your slice here!”

  A couple of teenage boys walked past, snickering into their fists. “I’d like a slice of that,” one said just loudly enough that even a human would have overheard him.

  I ignored the commentary and focused on the lines I’d been given. “Hot and ready! Deep dish!”

  The next laugh was feminine, familiar...and behind me where no one should have been.

  I spun on feet t
hat weren’t as fleet as usual when bogged down by the non-bending crust of the pizza costume. My star ball—the magic that let me turn into a fox or materialize pointy as well as non-pointy objects—tingled at my fingertips, but I didn’t dare pull a weapon out of thin air at the moment. Not here among humans. Not in front of someone who had been known to put non-shifters to death for seeing things they shouldn’t see.

  Instead, I greeted the woman who used to employ me with her name only. “Scarlet.”

  WHEN I’D SEEN HER LAST, my ex-boss had been vanquished but not downtrodden. She’d tossed warnings back over her shoulder at me and Thom. Warnings that had teeth as sharp as any werewolf’s. Specifically, she’d sworn to gather more alphas to defeat us if we didn’t keep the magic of Gate City under wraps.

  But the fox skull in the Full Moon Saloon’s crawl space was locked away beneath a newly formed trapdoor only Thom and I were aware of. The drama of a werewolf battle on city streets had faded as those not in the know accepted Thom’s reimagining of events.

  Noses were clean. Scarlet had no reason to track me down. So I twirled my pizza with only a small twinge of trepidation while demanding: “What do you want?”

  My ex-boss graced me with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m here about your darling niece.”

  The dough splatted onto the sidewalk. “Chipmunk? What’s wrong with her?”

  “Sniffles. A cough. I hear she cries half the night.”

  And now my star ball was a stiletto. A knife small and thin enough not to be obvious to passersby, but wickedly sharp anyway as it dug into the skin above Scarlet’s left kidney. Rather than threatening with words, I released a vulpine growl.

  Scarlet merely laughed. “Relax. I saw the baby when I asked your sister for a favor. She turned me down, so I’ve come to you.”

  I snorted. If Mai didn’t want to assist Scarlet, I didn’t either.

  Still, the fastest way to get rid of Scarlet likely involved hearing her out. “I’m listening.”