Chapter 3: Ancient Bloodlines
Luna's hotel room looked like a hurricane had hit it. Furniture overturned, clothes scattered, bathroom mirror shattered. But it wasn't random destruction—someone had been searching for something.
"Professional job," Marcus observed, holstering his weapon. "What were they looking for?"
Luna knelt beside her destroyed laptop bag, checking for the encrypted files she'd hidden in a false bottom. Still there. "Information about the murders."
"What kind of information?"
Luna sat on the edge of the bed, suddenly exhausted. "Marcus, sit down. Please."
He remained standing, cop instincts on high alert. "I think I'll stand."
"The murders aren't random. And they're not being committed by an animal."
"I figured that much out on my own."
Luna took a deep breath. "They're being committed by someone like me."
"Like you, how?"
"Marcus, what do you know about the legends surrounding Silver Ridge's founding?"
"You mean the Native American stories about spirit wolves? Tourist nonsense."
"Not nonsense. Truth."
Marcus was quiet for a long moment. "Luna, you're scaring me."
"Good. You should be scared." She stood and walked to the window, looking out at the full moon rising over the mountains. "The seven families that founded Silver Ridge weren't just settlers. They were refugees."
"From what?"
"From what they were. What they'd become." Luna turned back to face him. "Marcus, werewolves are real. And I'm one of them."
She expected him to laugh, to call her crazy, to walk out. Instead, he sat heavily on the chair by the window.
"That explains a few things," he said quietly.
"You believe me?"
"I've been tracking an impossible killer for two weeks. I saw you throw Tommy Reeves like he weighed nothing. And..." He looked up at her. "I've been around enough predators to recognize one when I see one."
Luna felt a rush of relief so intense it nearly brought her to her knees. "You're not running."
"Should I be?"
"Most people would."
Marcus stood and crossed to where she was standing. "I'm not most people."
When he kissed her, it was with the desperate hunger of two people who'd been fighting attraction all day. Luna's enhanced senses exploded; she could taste his desire, smell his arousal, and hear his heartbeat accelerating.
"Marcus," she whispered against his mouth, "if we do this, you need to understand what you're getting into."
"I understand you're the most fascinating woman I've ever met."
"I'm also the most dangerous."
"I'm a cop in a small mountain town. I think I can handle dangerous."
His hands found the buttons of her shirt, and Luna felt her carefully maintained control beginning to slip. The wolf in her was responding to his touch, his scent, the way he looked at her like she was something precious instead of something to be feared.
They moved to the bed with urgent need, years of loneliness and isolation dissolving under desperate caresses. Marcus's touch was reverent but possessive, and Luna found herself responding with an intensity that had nothing to do with her supernatural nature and everything to do with finding someone who accepted her completely.
"You're so warm," he murmured against her throat.
"Higher body temperature," she managed, then gasped as his mouth found sensitive spots that made her arch beneath him.
They made love with desperate passion, two people recognizing in each other something they'd been searching for without knowing it. Luna had spent years suppressing her supernatural nature, but with Marcus, she felt safe enough to let some of her carefully maintained barriers drop.
Afterward, Luna lay on Marcus's chest as she listened to his heartbeat slow.
"The killer," Marcus said eventually. "Another werewolf."
"Yes. But not pack. Something else."
"What do you mean?"
Luna traced patterns on his chest. "Pack wolves have rules. Structure. We don't kill humans unless we're threatened. This killer is hunting for sport."
"Or revenge."
"That's what I'm afraid of."
Marcus's arms tightened around her. "Luna, the text messages you've been getting. They know you're here."
"They wanted me here. The murders, the timing, the targets—it's all designed to bring me home."
"Why?"
Luna was quiet for a long moment. "Because fifteen years ago, when I left Silver Ridge, I took something with me."
"What?"
"The location of the pack's most closely guarded secret. Something that could expose our entire world if it fell into the wrong hands."
Marcus sat up, suddenly alert. "What kind of secret?"
Luna's phone rang before she could answer. Dr. Elena Marsh's name appeared on the screen.
"Agent Blackwood, you need to get to the clinic. Now."
"What's wrong?"
"I have something to show you about the murders. Something that can't wait until morning."
Luna looked at Marcus, who was already reaching for his clothes. "We'll be right there."
"Come alone, Luna. What I have to show you... It's pack business."
"Elena—"
"Trust me on this. If you bring the human, people will die."
The line went dead. Luna stared at the phone, her enhanced hearing picking up the lie in Elena's voice during the last few seconds of the call.
"What is it?" Marcus asked.
"Elena wants to meet about the case."
"I'm coming with you."
Luna caught his hand. "Marcus, I need you to trust me on this. Some things I have to handle alone."
"Like hell."
"This is pack business now. If you come with me, you'll put yourself in danger and make it impossible for me to protect you."
Marcus studied her face. "You're lying to me."
"I'm trying to keep you alive."
"By shutting me out?"
Luna kissed him fiercely, pouring all her conflicted emotions into the contact. "By handling the supernatural politics so you can focus on solving the murders."
"Luna—"
"Give me two hours. If I'm not back by midnight, call the FBI field office in Denver and tell them Agent Blackwood has gone dark in Silver Ridge."
"What aren't you telling me?"
Luna was already dressing, her enhanced senses picking up scents on the night air that made her wolf stir uneasily. "That someone in the pack has been lying to me since the moment I came home."
"And you're walking into that alone?"
Luna checked her service weapon and headed for the door. "Marcus, in my world, sometimes you have to trust the monster you know over the one you don't."
As she left the hotel, Luna caught the scent that had been nagging at her all day—the killer's trail, leading directly toward Dr. Marsh's clinic.
But underneath that, something else. Something that made her blood run cold.
Her father's scent. Fresh and heading in the same direction.
Someone had been very busy setting up this meeting. And Luna was beginning to suspect that she wasn't walking into a trap.
She was walking into an execution.