Moon Glamour Read online

  IT WAS SO LATE THAT even the highway was empty by the time we made it back to the exit closest to my apartment. Which meant no nosy neighbors noticed when Tank pulled into an empty parking space and helped me pry myself out of the car.

  By this point, one of my toenails had turned purple from where Harper had stepped on it. My ankle had swollen to the size of a cantaloupe. My muscles felt like they’d been attached to lead weights.

  For the first time, I sincerely regretted choosing an apartment on the seventh floor.

  But even though stairs felt insurmountable at the present moment, I wasn’t about to lead Tank into my ramshackle building. Not that I was ashamed of the books spread across my couch and the dirty dishes in the sink...much. The real issue was who he was and who I was. No way I was inviting a strange werewolf into my den.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I dismissed him.

  Rather than leaving, Tank waited, head turned slightly away. Silent. Immovable.

  I sighed and unlocked the downstairs door.

  “Look, you don’t need to come up with me. I’ll be fine,” I told him at the bottom of the dark stairwell. It seemed to rise up into eternity, as if I lived at the top of a lighthouse rather than in an ordinary, if run-down, apartment building.

  Tank’s response was diffident. “I don’t have anything better to do.”

  I blinked and his arm was around my waist again. I was leaning into him...for no reason other than the fact that each stair loomed approximately ten feet tall. When had they expanded from their original size?

  “Step up,” he murmured, and I did. Again and again and again. Time and space tunneled. I lost a few minutes to a strange combination of pleasure and pain.

  Then we were on my landing. Tank’s hand rose in front of me, palm up. “Key?”

  My growl was half-hearted. “I can open my own door.”

  After I fumbled at the lock for ten long seconds, however, me swaying and Tank as solid as his namesake, it became apparent Tank had won that round. Who knew silence could be so effective? He turned the key in the lock, opened my door...and froze.

  Adrenaline woke me out of my haze as I took a step forward. “What?”

  My nose provided an answer. The air, which should have stunk of carpet that refused to release its dirt plus the musty hint of ceiling mold, was filled with the wildness of wolf. Someone had been in my apartment since I was here last. Had shifted and, if I wasn’t mistaken, had peed on the door jamb.

  I’d hoped to have at least until morning before anyone heard about a pair of wolves robbing the local museum. But word, apparently, travelled fast.

  “Keep an eye on the stairs,” Tank demanded before pushing me back out the door and closing it in my face.

  I rattled the knob. Blinked. Had he seriously just locked me out of my own apartment?

  Endless minutes later, the door I was leaning against opened. Tank’s grip on my arm was firm as he pulled me into the overwhelming brightness of my own living room. “There’s no one here. I tried calling Lupe, but my phone doesn’t have service.”

  “The office building across the way blocks it.” I waved vaguely. “You’ll get three bars down on the corner.”

  Tank lowered me onto the couch, propped my injured leg up on a pillow, then crouched down to my level. His head was averted as he spoke to the wall. “I’m going to lock the door behind me. Stay here. I’ll be back once I’ve made a call.”

  The raised hairs on his arms and neck were too long to be human so I didn’t bother arguing with him. Tank was acting like an alpha werewolf, which meant he wouldn’t listen to reason. I’d learned that the hard way. Didn’t need to beat my head against that particular wall ever again.

  Instead, I watched him leave. Waited as my own key turned in the lock to protect me from danger that wouldn’t come from that direction.

  Then I wrestled my way back to my feet. Hunted down my wallet. Opened the sliding glass doors across from the metal one Tank had locked behind him....

  The instant I stepped out onto the seemingly empty balcony, a werewolf dropped down from above.

  Chapter 12

  “Rowan,” I greeted the alpha I’d known would be lying in wait for me. The one who’d given me the card in my pocket. The one I’d hoped never to see again.

  “Ace’s daughter.”

  As if I had no name other than a relationship to an absent father. My face twisted but I didn’t argue. After all, I was the one in the wrong.

  Instead, I dug in my wallet for the card that had granted me safe passage through this alpha’s domain for the last year and change. I’d known what I was risking when I took the furry shortcut at the museum. Had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but had accepted that it might.

  Losing access to Harper’s visiting hours was a gut punch, but it would be worth the loss now that I could afford to pay for the rest of her high-school career and part of college. Our relationship would survive the hiatus. I could always call my sister and bug her with endless emails and texts.

  Swallowing down bitter regret, I held out the card representing an in-person relationship with my sister. “You want this back.”

  Rowan didn’t snatch it out of my hands the way I’d expected him to. Instead, he stepped in closer. The musk of alpha werewolf made me choke on my own inhale.

  “That’s not enough, Ace’s daughter. You fucked up. You really fucked up this time.”

  “Did I?” I straightened despite the fact my ankle was trying to tell me how much it missed the couch and pillow. “If you already know about my mistake, then you’ve had plenty of time to cover up any leaks. Admit it. You have the police in your pocket. The story won’t even show up on social media let alone in the evening news.”

  Rowan’s head shook slowly. “No.” His eyes glinted in the darkness. “You stole from a museum. They filed a report with a national alert network at the same time they contacted the police.”

  Goosebumps rose on my arms. I’d sent Tank away so he wouldn’t do something stupid while I accepted the knocks I had coming. But...this was bad. Rowan wasn’t taking my card and tossing me out of his territory the way he’d threatened to. The story of my furriness had escaped his control.

  I swallowed. “What do you want then?”

  Rather than answering, Rowan peered down over the railing into the darkness beneath us. When the apartment complex had been built, I suspect there’d been a rather nice view from each balcony. Since then, more buildings had sprung up cheek to jowl. By the time I moved in, the only view was of a dirty alley, now barely lit by a couple of lights above back doors.

  Still, I could make out two lupine forms down there, moving toward the center from each end of the alley. Of course Rowan hadn’t come alone. He was the alpha. He travelled with lackeys for appearances’ sake. Plus, he wouldn’t want to be the one huffing and puffing after me if I thought running was a good idea.

  I shifted my weight, well aware that I had no ability to run tonight.

  “Alpha?” I prodded when the silence stretched longer than I’d expected it to. But Rowan didn’t answer. Just kept peering downward, brow wrinkled as if he wasn’t just staring off into space.

  Of course. Pack-bond communication from alpha to underling was common among werewolves. But the effort didn’t usually last this long or cause so much facial contortion.

  I sidled away from Rowan’s overwhelming presence to give myself a little breathing space then leaned over the railing, pulling on a little wolfishness of my own. Vision enhanced, I finally saw what Rowan was reacting to.

  There was a cat down there—Mr. Fletcher’s tabby, I was guessing—being stalked by Rowan’s lupine underlings. They had the feline cornered in an indented stairwell and seemed an inch away from progressing from tease to torture.

  They were going to tear the poor thing apart. Or would have if their alpha hadn’t stopped them.

  Rowan’s frustration was bitter on my tongue. His words, when he gave up on the pack bond and went audible, c
ame out as a bark.

  “Leave the damn cat alone and get up here!”

  The wolves ignored him. One slammed his paw down on the cat’s back. The other widened his jaws as if to swallow the hissing feline whole. And....

  “Now!”

  The cold blast of alpha compulsion froze both me and the shifters in the alley. As the effects faded, I stumbled back onto the cheap plastic folding chair that had come with the apartment. What happened to the wolves in the alley I could no longer tell.

  I could, however, see Rowan turning away from the railing. He had no interest in the cat’s survival. He’d only snapped at his crew because a wolf-mauled pet threatened shifters’ ability to slide beneath the radar.

  After all, Rowan was alpha. His priorities revolved around the future of his pack.

  Which was bad news for me. My theft in wolf form was ten times as dangerous in that regard as tearing apart a house cat would have been.

  WHEN I OPENED MY EYES, Rowan stood above me. Barely restrained fury pinned me in place the way it had a decade ago when I tracked him down in his office to beg for help.

  “You’re not my father,” I’d said then, bamboozled by the fact that the name on my child-support checks had materialized into someone only a few years older than me.

  “You figure?” Rowan leaned forward, sniffing as if he was in wolf rather than human form. Just like today, I’d backpedalled until I fell onto my butt.

  I had no weapon other than words, so I used them. “I want to speak with my father.”

  “About what, exactly?”

  “My mother’s dead.”

  Rowan nodded and strode to his desk, giving me a second to pull myself together. By the time I scrambled to my feet, he’d drawn a checkbook out of a drawer, uncapped a fancy fountain pen, and raised one eyebrow. “How much extra do you need?”

  “My little sister....”

  Both eyebrows pulled down into a V over his nose. “Harper stinks of humans. She’s not my problem.”

  Rowan had been close enough to smell my sister? “I don’t want your money!” I exploded, the four feet between us enough to unleash my teenage temper. “And I don’t want you close to my sister either!”

  If I’d taken the time to think about it, I would have expected to be slapped down. After all, Mom had warned me so many times about male werewolves, alphas especially. She might have only spent one night with my father, but she’d made other connections—and later severed them—when I turned old enough to shift.

  But Rowan didn’t live up to her warnings. Instead, he merely cocked his head. “What do you want then?”

  So I told him. The whole sad story in three short sentences. “My stepdad is a drunk. I can take care of my little sister on my own, but I need someone over eighteen to be in charge on paper. All I’m asking is my father’s signature on a few forms....”

  As I spoke, Rowan came out from behind his desk. He advanced on me, step by step, something sharp and interested in his eyes.

  “I could, perhaps, make your life easier if you had something to offer.” His voice was low and lupine. “Something that would make the effort worth my while....”

  The air stank of an aroma both pungent and wild. I couldn’t pull in enough breath to deny him. Could only frantically shake my head.

  And Rowan shrugged. Clicked the cap back on the pen he held, as if nothing had happened between us. “In that case, your sister isn’t worth the hassle.”

  The only reprieve I’d been able to dream up was disappearing like the shreds of my own childhood. And while I couldn’t accept what Rowan had offered, I wasn’t too proud to beg. “Just let me talk to my father. Tell me his name....”

  Rowan breathed out through his nose, not quite a snort but more than an ordinary exhale. “You don’t get it, do you, pup? I’m the alpha. I say no and your father won’t speak with you. Now, how much extra money do you need?”

  He twirled the pen around his fingers, the motion captivating my attention. This was a leash and I knew it. If I took his money, I’d also be accepting the barely concealed deal his wolf was offering.

  So I swallowed back terror. Ground out: “None. I need none.”

  It was a lie, of course. Without Mom’s steady paycheck, our family was floundering. But I could get a job. I could fend for myself and my sister....

  And I could find my father. It wasn’t really all that hard. The day after slamming out of Rowan’s office, I paid for a copy of my birth certificate at the county courthouse. Memorized my father’s name from the appropriate line and used that information to track Ace to his lair.

  There...my father had refused to so much as speak to me without his alpha’s permission. Pack wolves. They had no concept of self will. No interest in family outside the alpha-approved clan.

  And, despite all that, my child-support checks kept coming. They doubled, in fact. Started being made out to me instead of to my mother.

  I cashed them. Had to when my employment prospects as a sixteen-year-old high-school dropout became obvious. I cashed the checks and waited for the other shoe to drop.

  But the shoe just hung there above me for a decade. Checks arrived every month like clockwork. Long past the point where I needed the cash.

  Which is what gave me the idea, a bit over a year ago, to make a new deal with Rowan. At that point, Harper was starting school much closer to the center of the pack’s territory than I’d dared travel after my sixteen-year-old slap down. I needed to be able to visit Highlands without being hassled by Rowan’s pack mates more than I needed additional money.

  So I’d traded in my chips for the card in my hand. The card Rowan now said wasn’t enough to make up for my museum lapse.

  Thirteen months ago, Rowan had made me another offer. A more overt one. But he’d let me walk away when I refused.

  Unfortunately, I had a bad feeling I wouldn’t be able to walk away this time. I swallowed down bile as I stared up at the alpha who had grown older and more powerful since I first met him. He took a single step forward and my wolf bowed down my head.

  Sure enough, the scent emanating from Rowan now wasn’t the sour scent of annoyance he’d exuded earlier. Instead, his aroma had morphed into something sweeter that was even less appealing.

  “You’ve grown into an appealing woman. So I’ll deal with your mistakes.” Rowan’s murmur should have been heartening, but it wasn’t. Instead, my blood chilled as he continued to let me off the hook. “I’ll stand up for you when other packs call for your blood. It’s an alpha’s prerogative.”

  I felt sixteen years old again. My reply came out as a squeak. “And in exchange?”

  “In exchange, you’ll take your proper place in my pack.” He leaned in closer. “Assuming, that is, you want access to the territory your sister calls home.”

  Chapter 13

  There was no answer on the tip of my tongue, so it’s a good thing the door behind me slammed open. I hadn’t heard the scratch of a key in the lock first. Still, I had to hope this was rescue....

  I spun to see who had kicked my door down. A mistake, I realized, the instant Rowan’s hand clamped down on the back of my neck.

  His gesture wasn’t reassuring. Instead, it screamed ownership. Threat. Fingers squeezed my spine as if my bones were sticks ready for cracking....

  And the person who’d kicked open my door materialized into...not Tank. Instead, it was a woman who ignored me while speaking to Rowan over my head.

  “Chief McCallister. I thought we had a deal. We protect your pack from the node. You provide every requested assistance. Which, primarily, means staying out of our way.”

  The woman’s hand slid toward the bulge holstered under her arm, and I recognized her at last. Lupe. Tank’s temporary boss. The one who’d tried to hire me.

  The one who, I was pretty sure, had a day job as a cop.

  “I’ve left your affairs alone,” Rowan growled. “I recommend you return the favor.”

  I wasn’t sure what he was talking
about—other than me—until my ears popped. Then I heard it. The snarls of wolves in the stairwell were quiet enough not to wake the neighbors. But scritches of fast-moving toenails were more ominous for the muted nature of the resultant thuds.

  No wonder Rowan’s fingers pinched down harder. It was all I could do to prevent my shoulders from hunching upwards. This, I’d learned, was a fact of life around alpha werewolves. They took out their aggressions on those under their thumbs.

  Literally in my case.

  Lupe took a step closer, which didn’t help matters. She was goading him, whether she meant to or not. Rowan’s body twisted behind me, and now there were two hands around my throat. Two hands squeezing, cutting off my oxygen....

  And instinct took over. My head morphed before my body. Wolf teeth bit into Rowan’s forearm even as the rest of me became a dead weight dangling from his grip.

  “Shit!”

  He flung me against the wall, the electricity of his impending shift prickling against my nostrils. I scrambled to four feet, trying to work my way out of the baggy sweats Tank had lent me. My wounded ankle throbbed.

  Okay, that wasn’t working. Giving up on shedding clothes, I gathered my haunches under me anyway even though my right hind leg felt like I’d slammed it in a door.

  Then Lupe was between me and Rowan. She hadn’t drawn her gun and her body was still fully human, but the air oozed with near-shift tension. “Athena is one of mine for the next week and a half.”

  Rowan, to my surprise, reined in his feral impulses. There was fur on the outside of his throat, but his speech was fully human. “Is this true, Athena? You’re a Samhain Shifter? You chose to give up your lone-wolf status to someone other than me?”

  He’d smell a lie. It was one of many downsides of hanging out with werewolves.

  So I made my answer truthful. Accepted Lupe’s offer, belatedly and in my head only.

  Then I nodded. Barked out a soft yet audible reply.

  Rowan’s cheek twitched. He was annoyed but holding onto his anger.