Unleash The Moon (The Preternaturals Book 6) (16 page)

Milo
goggled. “How is that possible?”

Time for a half-truth. “My pack growing up had
access to some demon dimensional portals and we otherwise lived in
a small area. We didn’t use cars or trucks much, either.” All of
this was true. He was just conveniently leaving out the part about
how he hadn’t been properly socialized with others past the age of
eight.

“
It’s pretty
simple. Let me show you.”

Noah was glad Milo was being cool about it. After
everything else that had happened in the past twenty-four hours,
being introduced to something new wasn’t the highest crime in the
world. But then he had second thoughts.

“
Let’s wait and
do this tomorrow night after we hunt.”

“
Sure.” He
didn’t ask why, and Noah wouldn’t have told him, anyway. It was a
sign that Milo accepted him as the new alpha, that he didn’t pry or
push for information not offered freely.

Noah had felt comfortable leaving one relatively
weak female wolf alone with Sydney, especially after his mate had
made a show of strength earlier, but he wasn’t sure about leaving
her alone with an entire pack.

As they made their way back to the front of the
building, Noah turned to Milo. “I’ve been meaning to ask… are there
no pups in this pack?” It had seemed odd to Noah when he’d seen all
the wolves together the first time, but an opportunity to ask about
it hadn’t come up.

Milo’s face went dark. “It’s too dangerous. Livia is
from the last generation of pups that were allowed. Shira was quite
a bit older than her. Their parents died trying to protect her
younger brother from some vampires. The boy died as well. Soon
after that was when Shira took over and banned reproduction.”

“
Forever?” There
wouldn’t be any kids in his and Sydney’s future. Sydney herself was
an anomaly, but she was still a vampire, and female vampires
couldn’t have children. But he hadn’t expected to lead a pup-free
pack.

“
Just until
things got safer. But they never did. Now I think most everybody’s
okay with it. I mean, we do a lot of drinking and cavorting without
clothing. Our den hasn’t been child friendly since Shira’s sister
came of age. I don’t know if we could all comfortably adjust, so
I’m not sure it’ll be an issue.”

“
And what if
there’s an accident?” Noah pressed. Therian breeds in general were
less fertile than humans, due to their much longer lifespans, and
werewolves were more in tune with the times they were able to
reproduce and the times they weren’t, but accidents still weren’t
unheard of.

“
Shira had a
recipe for an herbal concoction to take care of it. It’s only
happened a couple of times, and the wolves involved were in
agreement. The other option is to leave the pack. It’s too
dangerous for pups here. It’s dangerous enough for the
adults.”

Noah nodded. He didn’t disagree.
The world wasn’t the world he’d heard stories about as a pup.
Resources were too scarce. And just the thought of another pup like
him being taken captive by the human world and used for blood magic
filled him with rage. It was bad enough to steal away the life of
an adult who’d had a chance to live some of it, but there were
parts of his life he would never have or get back, things that
would always make him
other
from the rest of them who had normal childhood
memories.

“
Noah?”

He stopped and turned back to Milo.

“
We all loved
and respected Shira, but they’re following you and acting like
nothing happened because they need you. And we all saw it go down.
She initiated the attack, and that was stupid. She let us down.
It’s not that the world is moving on and we don’t care she’s gone.
It’s that the rest of us are going to die if we don’t work as a
unit. We’ve seen a lot of tragedy, and we just want to survive it.
If you can help us do that, you’ll never have to worry about not
counting on us.”

Noah wasn’t sure about all that, but the one thing
he was sure about was that his new beta was sincere. There was no
artifice there, no grand agenda. If he’d gotten one good thing
genetically from his dad, it had been his instincts about
people.

Noah clapped Milo on the shoulder. “I know. I was
suspicious of intentions until I ran with them. For what it’s
worth, I didn’t want it to go down like that, but she was going to
kill me. I couldn’t leave Sydney behind. What would have happened
to her left alone with you guys?”

The beta didn’t respond because they both knew. The
pack would have ripped her to shreds and danced in the blood.
That’s if they didn’t whore her around the group first. Relations
with vampires was tense enough. They wouldn’t have cared that
Sydney wasn’t their enemy, that she couldn’t have hurt a fly last
night. Now? The outcome of a confrontation with her was
debatable.

Noah strode into the lobby to find the metal
screaming out of the sound system again. The pack was more relaxed
than they’d been since he was first introduced to them. A couple of
wolves cuddled on one sofa in their wolf forms. Others ran around
in human form.

All the clothes were in piles on the floor, and most
appeared too lazy to sort through them to find their own. Noah’s
original pack wasn’t as uptight about nudity as humans could be,
but this pack took it to a whole other level.

Shouting rose from the bar. Noah rushed in to find a
crowd around Sydney. He tensed, ready to rip heads off bodies.

“
There is no
way,” one of the guys said.

Sydney laughed. “Oh yes there is.”

As Noah moved closer, he could see five shots of the
home brew whiskey lined up on the bar in front of his mate. Noah
wasn’t going to spoil it for her by giving away the fact that
vampires metabolized alcohol faster than humans or even most
therians. Strangely, drugs and alcohol affected them more strongly
when it came through drunk or drugged human blood. Straight alcohol
posed less of an issue. Being as close as his pack had been to
Anthony and his vampires had given them a clearer picture into
things than these wolves had been afforded.

It wasn’t as if this pack would sit down with
vampires for drinks to learn this sort of thing.

Noah was betting she’d never been able to do this
before his blood—another fact he wasn’t going to point out to spoil
her fun. If this got her more accepted by the pack, as long as she
didn’t get hurt, he wasn’t saying a thing.

Then she downed them. One right after the other. By
the last one she smacked her hand on the bar about ten times just
to cope with it. The werewolves around her all howled as if she’d
just led them into successful battle.

“
Told you!”
Sydney shouted.

Noah cleared his throat and the group turned serious
and moved out of his way. “Having fun?” he asked. And to think,
he’d worried about her alone with them. Fate hadn’t made a mistake
when it had put them together.

She winked at him. “A blast. You?”

“
It’s not
terrible,” he admitted. But now that he knew she was okay, he
needed space away from everyone. Quiet.

It was crazy. He could never tell anyone this, but
he wished he was back in his cell because it was quiet and
predictable and cozy in a completely fucked-up way. He wanted to be
free. He wanted to be with Sydney and see his family and go back
home and have a pack. He wanted all of the things that seemed to
have been just laid at his feet overnight. But the noise, the
unpredictability, the constant socialization was getting to him.
And he wasn’t sure how much longer he could wear the mask
tonight.

He recalled loving these things as a pup, but now…
he felt broken. It hadn’t been so clearly apparent what was wrong
with him, but something inside him had died in that place. Every
day as he’d said his name to himself and every afternoon when he’d
dreamed of the past, he’d thought he was holding onto everything,
but it had all slipped through his fingers one granule at a time
until he was left with this shell that needed to get away before he
crawled out of his skin.

He pulled Sydney away from the group, far enough to
be out of earshot. “Are you drunk?”

“
A little,” she
admitted.

“
Then I want you
to come upstairs to the room with me. I know you’re stronger now,
and I think I have their loyalty, but it’s too soon to know for
sure. I don’t want to leave you with them like
this.”

He half expected her to become belligerent. Her
inhibitions were way down, and he still didn’t completely trust the
pack would respect him enough to not take advantage of that. But
she didn’t fight to stay behind with the others.

“
Are you okay?”
she asked, coming back to herself.

“
Fine. I just
need some space.”

She was skeptical but didn’t question him again in
the bar.

“
We’re going
upstairs,” Noah said. “Don’t disturb us unless there is an
emergency. We’ll see you tomorrow in the lobby at sunset. And start
packing. As soon as the moon begins to wane, we have to get on the
road and head home.”

One of the wolves at the bar spoke up. “Are we going
to join your family’s pack?”

Noah shook his head. “No. We’ll stay separate. There
will be no integrating of the packs. We should be able to share
general space, but it would be better if we remained our own
group.”

The wolf looked relieved. Noah didn’t blame him. As
much as he missed his family and their pack, and as much as he
feared he couldn’t handle the alpha thing, his instincts screamed
differently. He didn’t want to be in constant battle with his dad.
They’d find a makeshift den separate from the hive.

He led Sydney from the group. As they left, the
wolves got rowdy again, letting out howls because of course they
assumed he and Sydney were going to their private den—or suite—for
mating purposes.

It was a possibility, but more important to him was
to escape before he combusted from too much social interaction.

***

Sydney followed Noah upstairs to what she’d been
privately thinking of as the alpha suite. She still couldn’t
believe the wolves seemed so willing to leave their home. If this
place weren’t so far from her family and Noah’s, and if it wasn’t
so close to the city, she’d want to stay. They had a cool
set-up.

The irony of wanting to live close to her parents
wasn’t lost on her, but it wasn’t as if she’d wanted to get away
from them. She’d just wanted her own autonomy, and not to be
treated like an over-sheltered teenager for the next several
centuries. Hardly an unreasonable desire.

Tension rolled off her mate. From his perspective it
might have been foolish of her to be in the bar, surrounded by
werewolves and getting drunk. Though she was much stronger now, she
wasn’t silly enough to think she could take on the entire pack in a
fight. She didn’t even think Noah could do that if they
collectively turned on him. Though he’d leave enough bodies on the
ground to make the rest think twice before attempting that suicide
mission.

Sydney had no idea what had come over her when that
wolf openly defied her, insisting he wouldn’t accept a vampire
alpha. It was a rage that had risen from the depths of her being to
flow out through her muscles as she shoved the wolf as far and as
fast as she could. Her heart had pounded in her chest. She’d never
escalated any interaction with anyone to violence because she knew
she couldn’t back it up.

She wanted to blame it on Noah’s
blood, something in werewolves that influenced her. That might be
partly true, but it was also an impotent rage that had simmered in
her for as long as she could remember. It had taken hold the night
she’d woken to find she wasn’t allowed to play with Noah anymore.
It had grown stronger when she’d heard he’d disappeared. And it
kept piling on with each restriction her father added to her life
in the name of
protecting
her
.

She knew he loved her and worried
and wanted to keep her safe, but once she’d reached adulthood,
shouldn’t her fate have been in her own hands? The anger had grown
so strong and so much a part of her that it had blended into the
background, simmering underneath the facade of
Sweet Sydney—
the
person they all thought she was.

Noah’s blood wasn’t new rage. It was permission.
Agency. The ability to DO something. So when that wolf had implied
as so many others around her had before, that she was less-than, it
had been the final straw. She hadn’t thought how it might
negatively affect Noah. She hadn’t considered it might incite
fighting or put the two of them in danger. All she’d cared about
was that she’d spent far too long being mild and meek and trying to
push the rage down underneath the inability to express it.

She’d been shocked when the wolves had looked at her
with new respect after that. It was only then that she remembered
things she’d seen her father do to maintain his power and the bits
of pack behavior she’d observed when she was a kid still playing
with Noah. There was so much politics under the surface of any
powerful person, so much artifice—a carefully controlled act and
sleight of hand, dancing like a puppet to keep the others gaping up
at you in wonder so they didn’t turn on you.

After that moment, she’d realized they saw her as
part of the new alpha pair—not some abnormally weak freak vampire
that Noah had for some reason taken under his protection. She’d
proven herself, and as long as she didn’t back down from them or
act nervous around them, they’d continue to see her this way. The
shots at the bar had been pure politics. Part of her was grateful
Noah had dragged her away, because she really was a bit drunk, and
it might not enhance her new bad ass image to be stumbling all over
the place.