Blood Moon (MalexMale Paranormal Fantasy)

Chapter 9 ∞ REEVE

I place a palm to my chest, to an inward surge of adrenaline as howls call out in chilling warning. Bats flood the sky with piercing shrieks, flapping into the trees, a massive swooping colony pulsing high and low through the pack land.

I duck from the creatures and grab toward my father, who's already pulling his clothes off to shift.

Master Daire stops running only long enough to say, "It's a vampyre. Stay with your pack."

There's an emergent flare through our pack bonds confirming his words. Delta Banks weaves between swells of agitated bats and runs to my father's side. Our alpha knocks a bat away from us and says, "Banks, gather the delta force as backup." To me, he says, "Shift and stay close to my side."

I take off like a bolt behind them, charging toward my first real confrontation, driven by nerves and a need to have my vampyre's back.

I'll poke at the strangeness—possessiveness—of that thought later, but for now, I have no choice but to bend to it.

Through the pack bonds, Alpha instructs the delta force to meet us at our breached border and assist the master warder. The trust he puts in Daire with that one command hammers away at the wall of denial I'd built inside me. We are truly in this together.

Rounding along the delta trails toward the southeast, my father's personal betas join our charge. I catch the vampyres' faint scents, scarcely more than a mile ahead, and I strain to get there faster.

Daire's scent becomes stronger, thickening the air with hostility.

As I close in, a fog builds with a dark mist, clouding in the spaces between trees and obscuring my view. Is it smoke?

I whip around, catching sight of the tails of passing wolves, and the glisten of lycan eyes in the dark.

"Reeve," my father calls through our bond, "I'm to your left."

I can't see anything. I paw through the thickening vapor, disoriented, my vision blinking in and out of focus. Each inhale sears my throat and lungs, and my movements become sluggish. My front leg gives, dropping me to the ground. "Alpha," I think I say, though I can't be sure.

There's a thud of feet landing to my right, then a primal hissing before a familiar clash of fang and claw.

"You?" I hear a stranger gasp in a pompous accent that doesn't excite me in the same way as when it comes from Daire. "It's not possible," he says, but those are his last words, as the telling grunt-turned-gurgle and warm splatter of blood on my bare legs convinces me he's dead.

Bare legs. Somehow, I've shifted back into human form, but I don't remember doing it.

My skin tingles like I'm going numb and my head lays like a drowning weight.

"Reeve," a lovely, familiar voice reverberates like a distant echo. I wish I could reach out for it. I wish it would grab me and keep me close, but I'm drifting away from it, unable to stay and wrap myself in its safety.

There're hands cupping my cheeks and then wiping hair from my forehead. "Come on, Reeve," a sweet wind whispers, an urgent press to its voice, "let me see those gray eyes."

Are my eyes closed? Sure enough, I lift my heavy lids to see that the fog is evaporating and Daire is kneeling in front of me, relief lighting his face. "He's here," he calls out to my father without taking his eyes from me. "How do you feel? The toxin will take a while to fully wear off."

"What happened?" I manage to croak out.

"He was one of the king's guards." He pauses, expression tight as if he's not sure whether he's going to continue or not. "They, and the king, are each able to shift into a toxic mist."