Page 56 of Bad Moon Rising
But he did look. Impeccable white shirt and black suit, Flynn’s eyes darted between them, settling on Roman with a double eyebrow raise.
“This ought to be interesting,” Flynn said to him. He gave her an appreciative once-over. “Nice dress, Nova.”
His gut churned. Guilt about Nova ate through him. No way could he sit through dinner with his disturbingly perceptive mother and his brothers without them knowing how much he was in a bind over her. How much he wanted to keep her safe, the king’s order be damned. A burning sensation, as if someone ran a blowtorch on his skin, started in his wrist and channeled up his arm.I get that you want me to kill her. That I was ordered to do it.But he refused to commit to it. He inhaled deeply and cleared his mind, blocking out the pain and all thought, focusing on the horizon. Air in. Air out.
The scorch receded but didn’t entirely disappear, reminding him not to forget his orders. The curse detected his conflict. Not for the first time, he wondered if it could actually kill him if he disobeyed.
“You brought her.” Flynn’s statement carried a huge subtext, starting withNova shouldn’t be here.
“Safest option.”
“For who? Her or you?”
He shrugged but didn’t deviate from his necessary fixation on the water. The red hues of the sky, the gulls floating on the breeze, and the white froth of the choppy waves…beautiful.
“So, the bomb? Was that you guys?” Flynn asked.
“An assassination attempt. Guess they escalated from kidnap to kill order,” Roman said. He’d filled in Flynn earlier via web video about the kidnap attempt on Nova.
“You get the guy?”
“Someone else did.” Roman met his brother’s concerned scrutiny.
Flynn frowned. “You see who else was there?”
Roman shook his head.
“This keeps getting weirder. And we still can’t find Ky.” Flynn consulted his watch. “They’ll be here any minute.”
Flynn practically vibrated with open anxiety verging on dread. None of them missed this once-a-month family date. Ever.
They always spent the full moon in the safety of one of their mother’s bunkers.
Flynn whipped out his phone and started texting. “Maybe it’s time to involve Gerard. He might be able to figure out where the hell Ky is.”
“Does Gerard know this burner phone’s number?” Roman snagged the phone and held it up.
Flynn nodded.
Roman crunched it beneath his feet. “No mistakes. We can’t be traced, especially not by him right now. I don’t trust him.” He picked up the dead device and chucked it into the sea.
Gerard might allow them this once a month night to “disappear,” but he’d want to keep tabs on them and track them however he could. He knew the battle they fought on full moon nights was personal. They let Gerard think they disappeared to some private hole in the ground on these nights. But no one, especially the Crown and Gerard, knew his mother was still alive. He and his brothers worked hard to keep her existence under wraps. Mom had many houses and bunkers around the world, so they went to the one closest to wherever their most recent mission had taken them. They made certain to erase their tracks.
Flynn said, “I wish Ky were here. She’s going to freak out when he doesn’t show. We all know she loves him best.”
“I thought I was her favorite,” Roman said.
Flynn rolled his eyes.
A burgundy-colored powerboat slid into the dock, driven by two male lycans in dark tactical clothes. They grinned, regarding Nova like tomcats around a cat in heat.
She laced her fingers with Roman’s, moved in close to his side and whispered, “Why do I feel like I’m on the menu?”
“Knock it off.” Roman growled to the guys.
They bowed their heads in submission.
One ordered, “Get below.”
