A Werewolf's Moon (The Council)

© 2012 J.C. Isabella

This book is the personal property of J.C. Isabella. Its characters are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental. This book is for your entertainment, not to be given freely or resold in any way.

Thank you for respecting her work.

Prologue

I should feel scared, shaking from head to toe with a fear that rivaled any I’d ever felt before—but I wasn’t.

I should want to run, put miles between me and the werewolf who claimed I was now like him—but I couldn’t.

I could only lock my blurred gaze with his golden eyes and wait for the moon to rise, for the pain to end
, and for my new life to begin.

Chapter 1

Pepper

Being kidnapped wasn’t high on my list of things to do. It was at the very bottom. Just before being eaten by zombies and abducted by aliens.

Unfortunately my list didn’t matter to the bad guys.

My best friend Venna and I were being held by raving lunatics in a dilapidated mill just outside of town, for reasons unknown to me.

Venna was standing on the other side of the room with her boyfriend,
Henry
—he’d come to our rescue—and clasped tightly in
Henry
’s hands was a sword encrusted with sparkling rubies. They were speaking to a man in a black cloak, who was shouting, throwing his arms about in exaggeration as he carried on.

Uh, weird much?

Henry
shouted back angrily and the humid ground rumbled against my cheek. I was on the floor under a table; feeling like someone hit me over the head with an anvil and poured sawdust in my mouth.

I turned over to rest on my side and propped up on my elbow, wincing. Rough cement floor scraped my arms and legs. How and why I came to be here was a mystery.

What in the world happened to my friend and me…and why did her boyfriend have a sword?

No clue.

I’d been unconscious up until a few minutes ago, so I wasn’t going to be any help to myself.

The ground shook again and I got a sneaky suspicion that I wasn’t hallucinating or dreaming when a man on the far side of the room caught my attention. He stared at me in the creepiest of ways.

Wait…his eyes were
black
.

I rubbed my eyes, blinking. I hoped I was seeing things.

Nope.

He walked with a ghostly grace, seemed to drift across the large expanse of cement floor littered by old beams that had tumbled down from the ceiling and walls. He leapt over them with such ease I knew he wasn’t a normal
human
being.

My chest throbbed from the hammering of my heart.

That was ridiculous!

Of course he was human. But what kind of man had a black light emanating from his eyes and—I’m just grasping for an explanation here—if he wasn’t human, what was he?

An actor?

Maybe, everyone knows they’re not human.

I debated running, crawling out from under the table and hauling ass for the nearest exit. The man with black eyes was now twenty feet and closing, grinning evilly.

But he’d already seen me, and escape from him seemed like a slim possibility.

I didn’t know what else to do, besides curl into a ball and hope for the best. Venna and
Henry
looked a little too preoccupied with the lunatic in the cloak to help me out.

So I tried to slide back farther under the table, expecting to find a wall behind me. I let out a startled yelp when I didn’t get very far, bumping into something warm, something
alive
.

I took a fortifying breath and looked behind me. My eyes went wide. A man was crouched under the table. His shoulders were hunched and his chin pressed to his chest to help him fit in the tight space. I’d been so distracted by everything else I failed to notice a person two feet from me.

Who should I be more afraid of…the man with the swift, lethal steps and black eyes, or the absolutely wild guy next to me?

His unruly brown hair hung
a
little long, grazing his shoulders, falling in his eyes. It stuck out in places where he must have run his hand through it. There was a tiny cleft in his wide chin. His thick neck tightened as he clenched his teeth.

He was built like a linebacker.

This could definitely work out in my favor.

He kept his profile to me, never spoke or glanced my way, and slipped out from under the table. For someone so enormous and muscular he moved with a fluidity that wasn’t unlike the man with the black eyes.

It was just amazing to see him walk, yet different. Not ghostly like the man with the black eyes, more like a lion or a wolf. He did it without making a sound.

He faced the inhuman man who watched me with a creepy interest and braced large hands on his hips. The man with black eyes backed away slowly, looking more than a little discouraged.

This wildly gorgeous, boy, uh…man, person…whoever he was, protected me from the black-eyed monster.

Why?

The hair stood up on my neck and arms as the man in the cloak roared at the top of his lungs. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but he sounded furious.

The wild one who’d been under the table with me cursed and whipped around
, crouching down to peer at me.

I
gasped as I saw his whole face.

A nasty scar started at the corner of his left eyebrow, ending at his jaw. The jagged line was darker in color than the tan skin surrounding, puckered, gouged, and making the co
rner of his eye droop slightly.

It was hideous.

I forced myself too look past it, to keep my eyes on
him
. The scar was just a mark, part of his face. I’m sure plenty of people looked away out of fear or revulsion, but not me. He was too amazing for me to begin to fathom.

I probably should have been terrified of him, and although I searched inside me for the fear, I found none, not even a little.

“Let’s get out of here.” His voice was very deep, with a hint of a southern accent. The words rolling slow off his tongue like honey, warming, soothing, and dispelling the chill I felt when the man with the black eyes looked at me.

“Okay,” I started to crawl toward him, thinking that getting out of this strange place was the best offer I’d get all night. He held out his hand for me and I almost took it, but then his eyes glowed too.
A deep, golden glow that took my breath away.

I scrambled back, pressing myself against the wall under the table. “You’re one of them.”

I prayed not.

“No, I promise. My name is Quinn. I’m a friend of
Henry
’s.” He made an exasperated sound, “
Pepper
, trust me.”

I gulped, desperately trying to find something to hold onto, and dug my nails into the crumbling wall as he shifted closer. “How do I know you’re not lying?”

He opened his mouth to answer and was cut off by a deafening crash.

The pillar holding up the roof cracked in half. The ceiling caved inward.

Quinn dove under the table. He shoved me underneath him, caging me between his arms and legs. He covered my head with his large hands and pressed my face into his neck.

At first I stayed still, wondering if I really could trust him. But he was warm. His body heat seeped down to my bones.

I pulled back and gazed up into his gold eyes, the color of the honey in his voice, and felt the strangest feeling of calm. I wasn’t afraid. It was as if we were in the eye of a hurricane, surrounded by the terror and destruction, but perfectly safe together under the table.

It was the golden glow emanating from his amazing eyes that eased any fear I might have felt. I knew I had no need to worry about his intentions toward me. The light was too warm and reassuring.

“What are you?” He was different too, like the other man with black eyes, but infinitely superior because he was protecting
me
. Surely someone who risked his life to protect a complete stranger was good.

He pressed his lips close to my ear. “Are you sure you want to know?”

The rumbling and crashing grew louder. The mill disintegrated. I hugged my arms around Quinn’s head as something smashed into the table, hoping to shield my protector from any debris.

“Yes,” more than anything. I couldn’t explain why. There was just this hunger,
need
, clawing inside of me, greater than any I’d known before. I had to obey it.

No, I
wanted
to obey it.

“I’m…different,” He looked pained, torn so badly about the admission I’d asked of him.
“Werewolf.
I’m a werewolf.”

Chapter 2

About a week later…

“We need to talk…” I said into the phone and stared up at my bedroom ceiling, wondering if I’d ever come to terms with my new…
er
, status. “Are you busy?”

“
No, Henry
is at the compound with Dmitri, and he won’t be back for at least another hour.
”

“Can I come over?”

“Yeah, i
s everything okay?” Venna asked.

“That depends on how you define okay.” I slid off my bed and threw on a pair of flip-flops. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll be over.”

“Sure thing,” she said before hanging up.

I headed out the front door, locked up, and started the short walk from my house to
Henry
Langley’s house. It wasn’t long, and if I thought about running part of the way, I’d cut my walk time in half. But I was in more of a mull over, strolling kind of mood.

I was…having issues…

My life is complicated.
Way complicated.

And now I had to add being magical on top of it.

At least, I think I had to add being magical…I wasn’t sure yet.
The only thing I knew was that
something was not right.

So I picked up the pace and practi
cally ran to the Langley house. I
found Venna in the back garden waiting anxiously for me.

All this craziness started when my best friend Venna found out she was a witch, and that her friend
Henry
was a warlock. They were secretly in love with each other, but neither could admit it for reasons unique to each of them.

It was like our own Capeside soap opera—Venna overheard a conversation when she was a child that she wasn’t supposed to, just before her mom died.
Henry
’s mom, the queen of the witches and warlocks, brought Venna and her little brother Zane to Capeside to live with a foster family. The queen wiped their memories so they wouldn’t be in danger, and it had been
Henry
’s job to befriend and keep an eye on them.

I had no clue about
any of this, I am—I was, human.

My skin sustained scratches and bruises from the debris, so did Quinn’s while we were trapped together. He wasn’t invincible to the giant beams and cement he’d been protecting me from. And since we were plastered against each other, my cuts touched his cuts,
ergo
, his blood found
a way into my body, and presto.

Pepper
Peterson, AKA, werewolf.

I mean, I think I might be a werewolf. I wasn’t quite sure yet.

“Hey, you look sick,” Venna put her arm around me as we walked into the house. Her puppy, a St. Bernard named Bruno, bound playfully at our heels. He wanted to play, but I wasn’t in a fetch kind of mood.