Page 47 of Under A New Moon

“Why would you want to follow him? He’s gone.” She leaned into him as they walked in step. “I’m just glad he didn’t have any friends this time.”

“Yeah,” he said, biting the inside of his cheek. “This whole thing is strange. I don’t like it.”

“Me, neither. At least with PEACE, weknewthey were going to try to kill us both.” Her fingers tightened in his. “I don’t get why it attacked the bus. Peopledied. I didn’t think shifters want that to happen. I mean, besides Sol and his friend.”

She was getting antsy. Galen could feel it through their connection. He looked down at her, verifying what he felt as he noted the sour look on her face. “Let’s just count our lucky stars we’re still in one piece.”

Darla kicked the ground. “It’d be better if we had a dead shifter to show for it.”

The sentiment struck him hard. His lips tightened even as his heart dropped, but they had more pressing matters at hand. Staying alive, for starters.

“Galen?”

It took him a minute to respond, the pain gripping his throat like a vise. “Yeah?”

She rubbed her sternum. “I’m- sorry.”

He didn’t need to tell her how he felt. She felt it, too. “It’s all just a game to you, isn’t it?”

“No, of course not-”

“It is. Our lives, ourexistence. Just a fucking game.” His words were hurting her. He was sort of glad they did, or she’d have been worse than the monster they’d claimed he was. “I guess I can’t blame you, though. You were trained to kill us indiscriminately, without question. We both heard what Lily said, y’know, before they blew her brains out.”

Shock gleamed in her eyes, then distress.

He let go of her hand. The pain of it all was just too much.

Galen led them through the woods, almost breaking the silence several times before biting back the half-hearted apologies. She followed like she was lost, her heart weighing as heavily as his. She was his fated mate, his best and only chance at real love, and she was a trained killer of his kind. Not once had he been able to stop and think it through.

Her scent was the only thing he smelled in these woods.

Galen’s pain was raw, too raw.

Between that, and their mating, he could have lost himself and driven her against a tree. How she’d yield under the pressure. Soft and tender. He could imagine her sweet moans filling the clearing. Galen banished the impulse.

It would do neither of them any good.

The soreness was catching up to him. Changing twice in a day was already an exhausting feat. He needed something to sink his teeth into before he could do it again.

His eyes strayed to a familiar landmark. It was a gnarled old sycamore with twisted roots, doing its best to crawl out of the ground. He remembered it from his youth. He’d tripped over its roots countless times. “Here,” he said, noting a worn trail through the woods. “This is it. I think we’re getting close.”

Thirty-Eight

Darla

Darla felt the furious energy pluming off Galen.

She didn’t need their connection to sense that. He was poised to spring, and any target would do. Her PEACE training had made her callous to the deaths of shifters, and Galen was beginning to teach her there was another way. Still, shit slipped, and she regretted it more than she could tell him.

The further they ventured, the darker the woods became.

Darla was used to fighting on the pavement and in the streets. With backup, preferably. Sure, she could grab a branch and whip some hounds into submission but the security of a gun or knife couldn’t be matched.

Even her shifter mate was out of commission, and as likely to lash out at her as anyone. Itwasher fault, no matter what he’d said. She’d admired shifters, once upon a time, but she’d been embittered to them and found it easier to kill than relate.

They’re just animals, one of the trainers had told her.Don’t ever get it confused. They might look like people but they’ll sooner rip your throat out than negotiate.

That’s how they turnedherinto a monster.

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