To Crave a Blood Moon by Sharie Kohler Read Free Book Online Page B

just made sense.”
    â€œAnd how old were you when your mother died?”
    â€œFourteen.”
    â€œAnd you were in foster care after that?”
    The skin of her face tightened at the memory of those years. “Yeah. Only four years. Not like some kids stuck in child services all of their youth.” She swallowed down the tightness in her throat as she recalled Amy and Emily.
Amy
. She jammed her eyes closed against the pain. Amy wasn’t stuck in foster care anymore.
    â€œWhat? What is it?”
    Her stomach cramped, recalling the pain, the horror of Amy’s death. “I came here last night looking for—” She stopped at the strangled, unrecognizablesound of her voice. “Looking for two girls—” She buried her face in her knees, freezing the burn of tears in her eyes, refusing to let them fall in front of this stranger, refusing to let her emotions out. Keep them in. Funny, considering all she ever did was fight to shove out the emotions of others.
    â€œLet me guess. Dead.” The coldness of his voice felt like an injection of ice in her veins. “They were dead the moment the pack had them in their sights. You should never have followed them here.”
    She shivered at his coldness. “They were my responsibility.”
    â€œYour mistake then, to ever let them leave your care and come here.”
    His words fueled her temper. And partly because she believed them. “How do you know so much about it? You don’t appear to be doing that great yourself. If you’re here, I’m guessing you screwed up somewhere along the way, too.”
    Who the hell was
he
anyway? Her jaw clenched. While she had disclosed a great deal about herself, she knew next to nothing about him. “Who are you? How did you land in here?”
    Silence held for several minutes… and there was still that desperation humming in the cold air, strumming through her nerves. And underneath it, always danger.
    His voice sounded hollow, wearied. “No. You talk to me. Tell me more about you.”
    â€œCan’t I at least know your name?”
    In the shadows, he shook his head. “It won’t end there.”
    â€œWhere are you from?”
    His sigh floated on the air. After some moments, he answered. “I was born in Spain, but I don’t live anywhere. I have apartments in Barcelona, Vienna, Dublin. No home really.”
    â€œWow.” His life sounded exciting. Completely opposite from hers. Travel. People. Adventure. “You must do well for yourself to live that way.”
    â€œWell enough.”
    â€œWhat do you do?”
    He cleared his throat. “Little of this. Little of that. I work on different… assignments.”
    â€œSounds interesting. Contract work?”
    â€œYou could say that.”
    â€œHow’d you get here?
    â€œEnough questions,” he snapped.
    Fingers squeezing around her calves, she demanded, “Why?”
    â€œTrust me. You don’t want to know me. I’m not the kind of guy sweet little Southern belles need to know.” A thread of warning hung in his words. The dark rumble of his voice made her shiver, and shedidn’t doubt he was right. But what choice did she have? She was stuck here with him. She needed to get to know him so she would not feel so terribly alone in this nightmare.
    For a while, neither of them spoke. Strange emotions stirred from him, reaching her across the distance. A gnawing ache that made her rub her own belly in hunger. “You’re starving,” she murmured.
    He laughed a dry, broken sound. “You can tell that, huh?” He stretched his broad torso and held his arms wide, his skin flexing over ridged muscle and his flat, washboard belly. He looked a bit thin, with a lean ranginess that reminded her of a starved wolf. She winced at the comparison, remembering last night again.
Werewolves
. She wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it