THE SECOND MOON

Chapter Nine - A Different Skin

The voice came from somewhere above Drake and to his left, loud enough to drag him out of sleep.

"These damn blasted kids. Every single time. Every eclipse, every Blood Moon, every excuse they can find to come out here and make a mess of themselves."

Drake kept his eyes closed. His head was pounding, his clothes were wet, and moving felt like a commitment he wasn't ready to make.

"Hey. Kid."

Something nudged his shoulder.

Drake opened one eye.

An old man stood over him wearing a green warden's jacket and holding a walking stick. He looked annoyed rather than concerned, which Drake supposed was fair considering he'd apparently spent the night passed out beside Blackridge Lake.

"Hey. Wake up. Go home."

Drake opened both eyes.

The sky was gray above him. The trees were wet, and the grass beneath his back had soaked whatever part of his clothes the lake hadn't already managed to ruin. His mouth tasted like lake water and bad whiskey.

"There he is," the warden said. "Up. This isn't a hotel."

Drake pushed himself upright.

He expected his lower back to complain, but it didn't. He waited for the familiar pull in his right knee when he bent it, but nothing happened.

That was strange, but his head hurt too much to care.

"How old are you?" the warden asked.

Drake rubbed his face. "Thirty-five."

The warden stared at him.

Drake stared back.

The old man lifted his walking stick and pointed it at him. "Think I'm stupid or blind, boy? Drinking underage, passing out by the lake, leaving your crap everywhere. Every damn Blood Moon, it's the same thing."

Drake frowned. "I'm thirty-five."

"Sure you are, and I'm the mayor of Blackridge."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about you getting your ass off the ground and going home before I decide to call somebody."

Drake pushed himself to his feet.

He stood too quickly, except he didn't. There was no stiffness. His knee didn't catch, and his back didn't force him to straighten slowly. His body simply moved.

Drake looked down at himself.

His jeans were hanging strangely low around his hips. He grabbed the waistband before they slipped farther.

"What the hell?"

The warden snorted. "Maybe next time drink less."

"I'm not drunk."

"You smell like a distillery."

"That's different."

"Of course it is."

Drake ignored him and reached for the nearest tree to steady himself.

Then he saw his hand.

He stopped.

Something was wrong with it.

Drake turned his right hand over and stared at his knuckles. The scar was gone. He rubbed the skin with his thumb, then rubbed harder. Nothing appeared. Four years ago, a warehouse shelf had caught him across the knuckles and split them open badly enough to need stitches. The scar had healed into a pale raised line that he had seen every day since.

The skin was smooth now.

"What the hell?"

Drake checked his other hand, then his right one again. He knew his own hands. These looked like his, but they weren't the hands he'd gone to sleep with.

He looked at his ring finger.

The pale mark was gone too. He had worn his wedding band for so many years that even eighteen months after taking it off, a faint line had remained.

Now there was nothing.

Drake rubbed the spot as his heart started beating faster.

"Hey."

The warden had already started walking away.

"Hey!"

The old man turned around. "What now?"

Drake hesitated because the question forming in his head was ridiculous. He asked it anyway.

"Do I look thirty-five to you?"

The warden stared at him for several seconds.

"Son, you don't look old enough to legally buy whatever you were drinking last night."

Drake stopped breathing.

The warden shook his head. "Go home."

He walked away, still muttering.

Drake didn't move. His fingers tightened around the waistband of his jeans. The old man was either insane, blind, or telling the truth.

Drake turned toward the lake.

He walked faster than he meant to and nearly tripped when his jeans slipped again. He grabbed them with one hand and reached the water.

The Silverroot blossoms were still there. They looked ordinary now. Their silver veins had faded with the moonlight, and the closed white flowers drifted quietly across the surface as if nothing had happened.

Drake crouched at the edge.

He looked down.

For several seconds, his brain refused to understand what his eyes were seeing.

A boy stared back at him.

Drake jerked away from the water.

"No."

He leaned forward again.

The boy was still there. Dark hair fell across his forehead. His jaw was sharper than it had been yesterday, his skin was smooth, and there wasn't a trace of gray at his temples. His gray eyes looked larger without the lines that had formed around them over the years, and the lashes around them were ridiculously long.

Drake knew that face. He hadn't seen it in a mirror for eighteen years, but he knew it.

"No f*****g way."

He touched his jaw, and the boy in the water touched his. Drake pulled at his cheek, then ran both hands through his hair. The reflection copied everything.

It was him. It wasn't someone who looked similar to him, and it wasn't someone who could have been his son.

It was Drake.

Seventeen-year-old Drake West was staring back at him from Blackridge Lake.

Drake stood so quickly that his jeans nearly dropped. He caught them with both hands.

"What the f**k?"

His voice stopped him.

Drake slowly closed his mouth. Then he spoke again.

"Hello?"

The voice was his, but it sounded wrong. It was higher and younger, without the roughness he'd developed somewhere in his twenties.

Drake grabbed his throat.

"No."

The younger voice said it back to him.

Panic finally arrived.

He searched his pockets until he found his phone. The screen was cracked, but it came on.

Drake stared at the date. He blinked, then checked again. He opened the calendar because apparently seeing the same date twice wasn't enough.

Nothing had changed.

"What?"

Drake looked toward the lake. "What did you do?"

The water moved gently against the shore.

"Seriously?"

Nothing answered him.

He looked back at his phone.

The notifications were still there. A missed call from Lucas at 11:47 p.m. was waiting for him. Maya's last text was still unread, and the bank notification was still there. His severance letter would still be sitting on his kitchen table beside the divorce papers.

Drake's breathing slowed.

He looked at the date again.

He hadn't gone back.

That possibility had been so insane that he hadn't even consciously considered it, but seeing the date made something inside him settle into an even worse realization.

He was still here.

His job was still gone. His landlord still wanted his rent. His children were still teenagers who barely wanted to speak to him, and Maya still wanted a divorce.

Nothing had been erased.

Drake looked down at himself. His shirt hung loosely from narrower shoulders. His jeans were so large that he had to keep one hand around the waistband to stop them from falling. He looked seventeen. He felt seventeen. His knee didn't hurt, his back didn't hurt, and even the headache from the alcohol seemed to be disappearing faster than it had any right to.

Drake pressed his free hand against his chest.

Something moved inside him.

He froze.

For three years, that place had been empty. He had called for Ronan until calling became embarrassing, then painful, then pointless. Eventually, he'd stopped because silence hurt less when he wasn't constantly asking it to answer him.

Now the silence felt different.

Drake closed his eyes.

"Ronan?"

For several seconds, nothing happened.

Then warmth spread beneath his ribs.

Drake sucked in a breath.

He knew that feeling. He would have known it after thirty years.

"Ronan?"

The presence strengthened.

Drake's eyes burned.

"You bastard."

Nothing answered.

Drake laughed once despite himself. "Three years, and now you're shy?"

The warmth remained.

It wasn't the Ronan he remembered. His wolf had once been impossible to ignore. Ronan was constantly commenting, arguing, complaining, and occasionally making Drake want to punch himself just to see if Ronan would feel it too.

This was quieter, but it was Ronan.

Drake opened his eyes and looked at the lake again.

"What happened to us?"

The Silverroot blossoms drifted toward the shore.

Drake waited.

Then the voice came.

Drake.

His entire body went still.

Three years had passed since he'd heard that voice, but he knew it immediately.

Drake swallowed. "Ronan?"

We need to go.

Drake almost laughed again because apparently his wolf could disappear for three years, return after some impossible moon turned Drake into a teenager, and still open with an order.

"Go where?"

Ronan was quiet.

Drake looked down at his phone. Maya's name was still there. So was Lucas's missed call, and everything waiting for him belonged to thirty-five-year-old Drake West.

The problem was that thirty-five-year-old Drake West no longer looked like himself.

Home, Ronan said.

Drake stared at Maya's name on the screen for another second.

Home.

He looked down at his seventeen-year-old hands and the jeans he was barely managing to keep around his hips. Then he looked toward the path leading out of the woods.

"Yeah," Drake muttered. "That's going to be a problem."