SINS OF THE MOON

CHAPTER FOUR

Ryker

The headlights puncturing the darkness behind the car driven by Sera were like a wake-up call.

It was a cold road between two worlds, and the full moon was blazing silver above me, and all my instincts told me to draw Sera and the boy under my protection. My wolf was already charging, and her claws were pricking my fingertips, and her scent was growing clean and protective and angry as the fury which had been brewing in her since her first message came to my phone.

Sera’s face went pale in the glow of my truck’s headlights. She turned about and faced the coming vehicle, phone still ringing in her hand with the name of that scoundrel Elias in front of her. “Ryker… that’s him. My husband. He must have tracked the car.”

The term husband fell on my tongue like acid. I tried it--bitter, and my chest was tight as I had to breathe out. Five years. Five years of dreaming of her creating some safe, quiet life without me, and now the man who had offered her a ring on her finger was rushing in the direction of the son who bore my blood.

I went nearer to her, near enough that her honey-juniper fragrance was around me as if it had never gone. It was stouter to-night, bordered with fear and something better, something that gave my wolf a whine in my throat. The same fragrance with which I had been dreaming for half a decade. That very scent that had almost ruined me the night I had almost kissed her in the kitchen prior to my father informing me I was to be mated to Lira.

“Here my truck is right there. We are not waiting to have him come to us.”

One charged second Sera looked up at me with storm-gray eyes. The air between us bristled--a five-year period of repressed desire and accumulated guilt and longing smashing itself together in a single moment. I smelled the faint slick of her reaction and how her body still reacted to me even now, even with our dying son in the back seat and her husband palling on us. I wanted to feel her, to put my arms around her and press my face on her neck as I had longed to do each and every night since she had gone.

But there wasn’t time.

She shook her head and pulled the back door of her car open. “We are changing cars, Finn, sweetheart, Daddy will drive us all the way.”

The small boy--my boy--threw back his head on the pillows, flushed with fever, and with those inimitable midnight eyes fixed full on me. My heart stuttered. He resembled so closely the old pictures that my mother could show me of myself at that age that it was painful to the touch. Same stubborn jaw. Same black curls on his forehead.

“Hi,” Finn said, in a weak, inquiring voice. “You are my daddy?”

The lines drilled right through all the walls that I had constructed during the past five years. I sank down on one knee by the open door before I could prevent it, and brought myself up to his level. “Yes, boy, I am your father.” The last word broke my voice. I stretched out gradually, palm upwards, lest I should frighten him. “And I’m going to make you better. I promise.”

The little hand of Finn crept into mine. His skin was burning hot, and he was surprised by his grip. “Mama said you run under the moon like a big wolf. Can I behold that day?”

My throat was choked up. I touched his fingers, and was tempted and tempted to drag him right into my arms, never to leave him. “Once every full moon henceforth, you wish. But first we must get you home to the healer.”

Sera had already begun to unbuckle him, and the movements were rapid, and practiced, but I could see the trembling of her hands. I stood and walked about her, sliding one arm under the knees of Finn and the other behind his back without even consulting him. He had been scarcely any weight--light, too weak--and the thought of it made my wolf snarl within my heart.

“I have him,” I said to her, a little softer than I intended. I picked him up and our arms touched and it felt like being shocked down my spine. Her aroma grew more intense, sweet and desirous, and I was compelled to clench my jaw to prevent groaning. Five years and a single accidental touch was sufficient to make me hard and aching under the moon.

Her eyes were wide and dark, and as she looked up at me, lips parted. “Ryker… Thank you. For coming. For not turning me away.”

I was staring her in the face, Finn in my arms firmly clasped to my breast. And we are not doing it here. Not before him. I swung my head back to the Headlights that were becoming brighter behind us. In the truck, Front seat. I will strap him in the back.

She didn’t argue. She took a small duffel out of her car and walked after me to my truck, her footsteps fast on the road. I laid Finn down in the back seat, and pulled the blanket over him even closer, pulling wet hair off his forehead. He raised his eyes toward me with the same confiding air which gave me the impression of a too-small chest.

“You reek of forest,” he said. “Like Mama said.”

I swallowed hard. “Because I am a Blackthorn wolf, just as you are.”

Sera got into the passenger compartment, and his door clicked softly. I got behind the wheel, turned on the engine and reversed so quickly that gravel flew behind us. The other car was near now--so near that I could make out the figure of the driver in the windshield. Elias. Tall. Tense. Hands on the wheel as he already knew there was something wrong.

My cell phone was buzzing on the dashboard. The name of Lira this time.

“Where are you? Mira continues to request her bedtime story. Is everything all right?”

I disregarded it, and stepped on the accelerator, getting us further into Blackthorn country. The pines hemmed in about the road, and were known and safe. The scent of Sera charged the cab at once--honey and juniper and that warmer omega that had always made me crazy. I was holding the wheel tighter, my knuckles whitening, trying to concentrate on the road rather than the manner in which she was breathing faster or how her thighs were squeezing together in the seat next to me.

“You ought to have told me,” I said after a minute, when no one was listening, “Five years, Sera. Five years thinking you were out there creating yourself without me and all that time of my son.”

She looked at me with her shiny eyes. “I was afraid, Ryker. Your father had explained it so clearly that night--what would happen to us, should anyone discover what had happened to us. What I had conceived. I believed that by marrying Elias and going away, my Finn would be alright. I believed I was saving him.”

“Guard him against me, eh?” It was more vituperative than I intended. I glanced in the rearview mirror. Finn now had his eyes closed, and was breathing shallow but steady. “Sera. He ought to have grown up here. With me. With us.”

Her hand reached out before she could restrain it, and touched my thigh. My jeans were being burned by the touch. Now I know. Now I was wrong. But now it is all that counts to get him through the ritual after which. We can figure everything out.

Her fingers remained thus, warm and tentative, such as she was trying whether I would withdraw. I didn’t. I put my hand over hers instead, and interlaced our fingers on my leg. The touch was easy, and yet like returning home after a war. My wolf rested down the first in hours, though the rest of me grew with a five years of pent-up need. I would have sworn I smelled her arousal spiking once more--the slight, intimate, all to me--and it swelled my c**k against my zipper.

“I never ceased to think about you," I grumbled, voice harsh. “All full moon runs. All the time Lira touched me. It was always you.”

Sera’s breath hitched. “Ryker…”

There was another flash of headlights in the rearview mirror. The car of Elias was closing in on her and straining to reach her. The second he knew we were moving he must have floored it.

The hand of Sera was clenching mine.” He will not take it lying down. our marriage. it never was to me, but he believes it has been. He is going to insist on an explanation.”

I looked at her, and my jaws were fixed. He may have it his way. “You are not going back to him to-night. Nor is my son.”

The Alpha house lights were in view through the trees--warm golden windows in the darkness. Home. Where it all had gone wrong in five years and where it was all going to hit again.

I drove up the long driveway with tire-crunching gravel, and turned off the engine. Sera glanced up at me, with eyes open and scared and full of the same tempest I could have sworn I felt in my heart.

Whatever comes, no more running, never again, no more.

I bent over the console, before I could restrain myself, forehead almost touching hers, and our breaths intermingling in the little cabin. Good. Since I am not letting you go this time.

In the backyard, Elias' car, banging its door in the night, came to a halt at the end of the driveway.

And Lira, out of the front porch of the Alpha house, set foot, Mira on her hip, her beautiful face changing between confusion and something more as she glanced around--me, Sera, the unknown car, and the little boy asleep in my back seat.

Across the yard her eyes were meeting.

The storm was here.

And it was just the beginning.