Marked by the Moon (Nightcreature 9)

Alex felt a strange urge to hurry after him, almost as if he’d ordered her to, except he hadn’t.

She’d been doing so well ignoring his alpha orders. The more she did so, the easier it got. But this morning she felt connected to him in a way she never had before. Was it because Julian had saved her life last night? And was he behaving strangely because he was sorry that he had?

He entered the building ahead of them, not pausing to hold the door, instead letting it slap closed. Annoyance flared, and Alex relished it. When she was annoyed with him, she wasn’t in lust with him.

Much.

Julian waited in the main room. His hair was a mess and the dark circles under his eyes made him seem very pale. He still wore the same clothes George had given him last night.

“You never went to bed,” she said.

He flicked her a glance before switching his gaze to Cade. “Show us what was so important.”

Cade beckoned them to join him at one of the high-topped tables where he had several petri dishes spread out. “I was trying to discover why Alex could touch the others without the serum, and I got nowhere. So I thought about the other—” He glanced up and caught Julian’s scowl. “—problem,” he finished.

“You mean the one where he pukes if he gets too far away from me?”

“Uh, yeah,” Cade said. “That problem I thought I wouldn’t mention since it makes the alpha a little—” He wiggled his hands next to his head.

“Ape-shit?” Alex murmured.

Cade choked. Barlow growled. Alex grinned. When she poked him with the proverbial stick she felt so much more like herself.

“What did you find?” Julian demanded.

“I…Well, it’s…” Cade took a deep breath, let it out, then reached for two clean petri dishes. “I’d better show you.”

He set the glass circlets next to each other, then went to the refrigerator in the corner and returned with two test tubes of blood. Alex read her name on one and Barlow’s on the other.

Her chest hurt, and she realized she was holding her breath. She wasn’t going to like this.

Cade set the tubes in a stand, uncorked them, then took an eyedropper in each hand and filled it with blood. He dripped a few drops of hers into the petri dish on the right; then he met her gaze and Julian’s. “Ready?”

Neither of them answered.

Cade sighed and squeezed the rubber on the other eyedropper. A bead of Julian’s blood seemed to fall in slow motion toward the petri dish on the left. Alex had enough time to wonder what experiment Cade could possibly have done with their blood in different dishes; then the drop hit the glass.

And immediately leaped into the other one.

Utter silence reigned. Alex glanced at the left dish. Not a mark on it. The right dish held a tiny puddle of blood, all the drops merged into one.

Maybe she’d been mistaken. Maybe Cade had dropped Julian’s blood into the right petri dish and not the left at all. Her eyes deceiving her made a lot more sense than blood hopping through the air.

“Do it again,” Julian said.

Cade nodded and pressed his first finger and his thumb together around the rubber bulb. This time, two drops of blood fell.

And two drops of blood arced from one petri dish to another.

“That’s impossible,” Alex said.

“I thought so, too,” Cade replied. “Until it happened.”

&n

bsp; “What does it mean?” Barlow asked.

“I’m not sure. But—”