Marked by the Moon (Nightcreature 9)

Chapter 8

Alex fell asleep again. Shape-shifting required voracious amounts of energy, and the one small rabbit Julian had left for her dinner would barely have taken the edge off her hunger. Combined with the adrenaline r

ush from being chased by a polar bear, then being severely injured, her becoming unconscious for several more hours had been a given.

Julian, however, was wide awake. He lay side by side with Alex, trying not to let their skin brush, but every once in a while it did. Then he would have a flash of them together, and the only way to make the images stop would be to think of Alana and how he had lost her.

This child—and Alex was a child, even without the nearly twelve centuries that separated them—had killed Alana in cold blood and without remorse. That he’d touched her, kissed her, been inside her, not only kept him awake but made him slightly ill. That his body kept responding as if it wanted to do so again eventually forced him to leave behind the warmth of the quilt and venture into the chill of the cave where he sat with his back against the hard, icy stone and stared at her sleeping face. She really was quite beautiful.

Julian growled a curse in Norwegian and banged his head against the wall. The resulting thud echoed throughout the small space and caused Alex to murmur what sounded suspiciously like his name.

What in Thor’s hammer had possessed him to bring her along? Besides the fact that he’d been physically unable to leave her behind.

By dusk the storm had petered out. The sun set in a clear sky, red and pink and orange rays spreading across a vista of ice and snow. Julian shape-shifted, relishing the brush of the wind in his fur and the drift of the last few snowflakes tumbling onto his face.

“Planning to leave without me?” Alex stood in the opening. The quilt around her shoulders only reached to the apex of her thighs.

Julian’s gaze was drawn to the long, toned length of her legs, and he remembered how they’d felt clasped around his hips as he’d pounded into her again and again—

“Wake up on the wrong side of the cave?” she murmured.

Only then did he realize he’d been growling.

Annoyed with himself for the hard-on he couldn’t seem to shake, and with her for giving it to him, Julian ran into the deepening gloom.

Once Barlow’s tail disappeared over a near ridge, Alex dropped the blanket and changed.

She’d slept better than she could remember sleeping in years. Had that been because of the great sex or because for the first time since her father had died she hadn’t felt alone?

Alex caught the flash of Julian’s golden fur just ahead and increased her speed. How was it that a man she considered her enemy, an animal that had turned her into one, too, had made her feel secure enough in his presence to sleep peacefully for hours? Just because the man had made her come didn’t mean he was anything less than a beast.

They continued on throughout the night, moving farther and farther north. Julian appeared and disappeared ahead, but he never allowed Alex close enough to actually run at his side, and that was fine by her. Despite being housed in a wolf’s body, her woman’s mind remained confused.

She saw nothing but snow and ice and trees, a few bunnies, which she managed to catch and eat. Her legs were working almost in tandem with her brain tonight. She only tangled them together and fell once or twice.

Not long after midnight, lights sparkled on the horizon. Alex blinked and they disappeared. She figured they’d been a mirage, especially when they reappeared several times over the next few hours, winking out again each time she tried to focus on them more clearly.

The air was so cold her eyeballs ached. Maybe that was why.

They’d left the trees behind. Eons of ice and snow spread to the sky. Alex began to worry about what would happen when the sun came up and she changed. Naked, without any kind of shelter, life would become extremely unpleasant.

However, in that time of eternal darkness, when the moon drops away and the sun is not yet born, a light twinkled to her left. For an instant she thought perhaps it was the aurora borealis—something she’d heard of, though she wasn’t quite sure what it was.

She paused, snorting with surprise, the chill of the night and the warmth of her breath creating a cloud of mist about her head. When it cleared, she saw the lights hadn’t come from the sky but a village.

More of a city really, with streets and electrical poles, houses and businesses. Cars. Trucks.

Her snout hung open. This place appeared as modern as any small town in America. Probably because it was a small town in America.

She took one step forward, and Barlow howled—much farther up the trail.

Not that there was a trail. They’d left the road a few miles back and begun to cut across the tundra. Ahead lay nothing but ice and snow—mountains of it.

She glanced at the smoke trailing lazily out of chimneys. Who would want to continue into that seemingly impassable wilderness when they could remain here?

However if this wasn’t the werewolf village, and considering Barlow’s skirting of it she didn’t think so, she’d do better to stay away. She had a feeling that in these parts, people shot wolves on sight. They’d definitely blow her away if she loped into town. Wolves didn’t do that unless they were starving or rabid—two things that often warranted an express bullet to the brain.

They’d need a silver bullet, but she wouldn’t put it past the folks of Alaska to pack a few of those just in case.