Moonlight by Lisa Kessler Read Free Book Online Page A

died because of a Jaguar attack. An attack that could have been avoided if I had followed through and done my part to keep the Pack safe. There had to be a second jaguar. A jaguar I should have been tracking. Fuck.
    Instead of eliminating the danger to my Pack, I’d been tailing Lana, and while one of my best friends bled out, I’d been leaning in for a kiss. My chest tightened.
    She yanked her cell phone from her pocket and flipped it open.
    “I said, no!”
    Her eyes narrowed. “He’s dying, Adam. We’ve got to call for help.”
    “He’s already gone.” I closed my eyes, composing myself before looking over at her. “If we call nine-one-one they’ll want to perform an autopsy. They’ll find out he’s not entirely human. We can’t risk having our race exposed like that, remember?”
    I watched her mulling it over. Tears filled her eyes, and she nodded slowly. She took a deep breath and pocketed her cell phone. “So, what do we do with…”
    My shoulders tightened and my hackles rose. “His name was Gabe.”
    “I didn’t mean it like that.” She winced as if I slapped her. “I’m sorry.”
    I pursed my lips and carefully rolled Gabe onto his back, thankful when I noticed his eyes were already closed. “What could have done this to him?” Lana asked, inspecting his wounds.
    “A jaguar.”
    Lana paled. “How do you know?”
    “He told me before you got over here. That’s why he panicked when he recognized your scent.”
    The question hung in the thick silence between us.
    “Did I…” A tear rolled down her cheek, and her voice trembled. “I didn’t.” She shook her head, crossing her arms. “I couldn’t have… I was far from here.” She paused and added, “When I woke up this morning I was clean. Blood would’ve been all over me if I did this, right?”
    I didn’t think about it before, but she was right. When I picked her up, her clothes were clean. I would have caught the lingering scent of blood. “Yeah. It couldn’t have been you. I would’ve smelled the blood on you.”
    “So there’s another jaguar around?” Her eyes scanned the lake.
    “Apparently.” I scooped up Gabe’s body, when Lana reached over to stop me.
    “Wait a minute. How did he get out here?”
    I frowned. “He probably walked.”
    “No, we both smelled blood a minute ago. If he’d been here all day, you would’ve caught the scent as soon as we got out here.”
    Damn, she was quick. And right on target. I’d caught the scent of cologne, but I never heard footsteps accompanying the smell. No teenaged kids who doused their bodies in Polo. That’s why it had caught my attention earlier when I first jumped on the boulder. Now I knew the cologne was a mask. Someone didn’t want me to catch their scent.
    I searched around Gabe’s body for any signs of animal tracks. Nothing. Then I turned back and noticed some tracks in the dust, but they weren’t jaguar prints.
    They were tennis shoes. And only one set.
    “He didn’t get attacked here.” My hands tightened into fists. “Someone dumped him here.”
    “What? How do you know?”
    “There are tracks, but no sign of a struggle. The jaguar attacked him as a cat last night, and dumped him at our feet today as a man.”
    “But no one knew where we were.”
    I met her eyes. “Someone did.”
    We wrapped my shirt around Gabe’s torn mid-section to hide his injuries, and I carried him back to the Jeep. I barely broke a sweat. Even when I wasn’t in the physical form of a wolf, I was much stronger than any man.
    I laid Gabe’s body across the backseat of the Jeep and fought back another wave of emotion. My twin brother Aren and I had grown up with Gabe and his twin Gareth. Nature of the beast with werewolves—only the males carried the shifter gene, and we were always born in matching sets. Rage burned in my gut. We graduated high school a year apart. I thought we’d have more time. Now I’d be the one to tell Gareth his brother was gone.
    Because of