Huntbound (Moonfate Serial Book 2) Page 4

  Shit. I have a serious problem. I grip my matemark and worry it with my thumb. I will focus.

  “Your friend’s a vampire. His room smells of too many different kinds of blood for him not to be. Either that or he’s a serial killer.”

  “Lawrence is v-positive, technically.”

  Orion’s eyes open. “Vampire. Call things by their real names.”

  “So then I suppose I shouldn’t call you an animal-human-shifter-hybrid,” I say, trotting out the current favorite, politically correct term for werebeasts.

  He growls. “Sometimes I think you want me to slam you up against the wall and kiss some sense into you and you’re just pretending to resist to torment me.” He cocks his head wolfishly. “Most times, actually.”

  Before I can even process the flood of arousal that’s dampening my panties, he’s already moved on.

  “He’s a homosexual as well.” Orion shoots me a warning glance. “I’m glad to know that you weren’t lying about that, Little Mate. It would be a shame to pulverize your friend after I’ve rescued him.”

  “You don’t have to pulverize anyone for me.”

  “I don’t have to do anything.”

  I roll my eyes. “How did you figure out he’s gay? Other than the fact that I told you last night.”

  He smirks. “No, I got that from the décor. The rest of the house is barren. His room is the only place that feels like a home.”

  “So that makes him gay?”

  Orion shrugs. “Am I wrong?”

  “No.”

  “He and the pufferfish were lovers, then.” He strides over to the window and taps it once, then leans in sniffing again. “The pufferfish came through here, hoping to meet your vampire friend. My guess, from what you’ve told me, is that the coyote is probably the pufferfish’s boss. Like most of my kind, he believes any breaking of the mate-bond to be the deepest sacrilege, so he murdered Cooper. That much makes sense, but why not kill your friend, too?”

  “Jesus, Sherlock. Slow down. Like most of your kind? Cooper told me that matemarks are different, that his wasn’t as strong.” My stomach does a couple of sloppy somersaults at Orion’s words. All the color leaves my cheeks at once, leaving me feeling as cold as I did in the nightmare, even though it’s May and hotter in Rochester than it should be.

  “I don’t know much about werepufferfish. They’re something of a curiosity. It very well could be true that his matemark isn’t strong. But that doesn’t change the fact that breaking a matebond is tampering with one of our oldest traditions. It hardly narrows the list of suspects. Any werebeast could’ve acted that way.”

  “And you, could you have acted that way?” I bite my lip as a possibility occurs to me. The comfortableness he expressed with my house, the uncaring way he handled Cooper’s body. He couldn’t be the one who murdered Cooper, could he? My heart stutters, and breathing seems impossible. But no, I was with him last night when Cooper was murdered.

  Orion stops his examination of the room and focuses the full force of his attention on me. His eyes blaze blizzard blue. “I don’t kill anyone who doesn’t deserve it, Artemis.”

  My heart doesn’t restart. “And Cooper, do you think he—”

  “Deserved to die?” he asks sharply. He holds my gaze for another second, making me feel at once guilty for thinking that he could’ve ever killed Cooper, and stupid for not thinking of it sooner. “No.” He returns his attention to the room around him, as if he’s figured out my mysteries and is ready to move on to bigger and better ones. “While the traditions have their appeal, there is too much in astrum and terrum that we don’t know for us to follow them blindly.”

  “Astrum and terrum?”

  “Heaven and earth. It’s Latin. Well, our colloquial version of Latin.”

  “Well,” I say awkwardly, feeling incredibly over-stimulated, scared, and still vaguely aroused. “I’m glad you’ve done your superhero Sherlock Holmes thing. Are we sure which way to go now? We’ve got to get going.”

  “Yes, I’m very quick.” He grins. A second too late I realize that praising Orion is possibly the worst idea ever. It’s like feeding hamburgers to a piranha before you go swimming in the Amazon.

  “I just have to grab a few things from my room before we go. I’ll just be a minute.” Turning around, I walk with what I think is a brisk pace back to the hallway. I’ve got to get the gun before I go.

  But it’s not brisk enough, because Orion is once again right behind me. “That’s what you said last time. This time I’m coming with you to make sure you don’t take too long.”

  Chapter Eight

  Reluctantly, I lead him to my bedroom. Even though he doesn’t get too close, and definitely doesn’t touch me, my cheeks burn with the knowledge of where I’m taking him. Of what we did just a couple of hours ago in the dream. Below that, guilt festers because of my tardiness. Every second we take costs Lawrence, but I can’t leave my house without the gun.

  And there’s another problem. If Orion figured all that out about Lawrence in only a few sniffs, what can he discover about me?

  With a deep breath, I push open my bedroom door.

  The beating of my heart calms and slows as Orion enters the room. Lawrence’s space had something to tell, but mine is an empty page. The only things in it are the dark green air mattress, looking sad and half-deflated, my open duffle bag, my purse and my laptop. Which, even if Orion could unlock it, and considering his lack of knowledge of computers I doubt that, is dead.

  The floorboards creak under Orion’s weight as he walks in a straight trajectory to my duffle bag. “What do you need to pack?”

  “Just some girl stuff. I can get it.” I breeze past him, elbowing myself in front of his body. I unzip my duffle and make a point of rifling to the pocket where I keep my tampons. But from Orion’s body language, I’m not even sure he knows what a tampon is, let alone that he’s supposed to be embarrassed by them.

  Time for another strategy. “So what do you think of my room?”

  Orion stops glowering over my shoulder and looks around the room instead. “You just moved here. Am I right?”

  I fish around for the gun. I know I put it back in here before I fell asleep. Probably not the wisest choice, but I was too afraid of accidentally rolling over onto it and setting it off somehow if I kept it nearby. “I inherited the house from my aunt a month ago, after she died.”

  “But your scent has seeped into the walls.”

  My hand hits something solid in the middle of the bag. Yes. That’s it. Maybe I can wrap up the gun in some clothes and shove them all in my purse without him noticing.

  “You’ve been here a month at least,” Orion says. “Long enough to buy proper furniture. Why haven’t you?”

  With renewed speed I dig underneath the gun, moving away my double-D bra and panties and replacing the gun’s cushioning with a bulky sweatshirt instead. Then I rotate the mass of fabric with one hand, grab the handles of my purse with the other and stuff the gun and laundry into it. “I’m a minimalist.”

  But Orion ignores me. “Don’t let it happen again,” he says slowly, parsing out each individual word.

  “What?” I ask.

  “An interesting Post-it note I just found.”

  Oh fuck. The Post-it notes. How am I going to explain that? And that’s not even the worst of them.

  “They’re just silly reminders.” I scramble back to the duffle bag. In my panic, I end up losing my balance slightly as I lurch toward the bag. He puts a hand to the small of my back to steady me again, and again, a flare of desire shoots through me. Worse this time, because it radiates outward and lasts longer.

  With the other hand he begins to tear through my duffle.

  I try to swallow, but I can’t. Under the tangle of my black harem pants and double-D bras, I know there are more notes, a whole nest of them. And there are ones a lot worse than, “Don’t let it happen again.” Like, “Remember who killed them,” and “Never let him find you.”

/>   Willing to risk it, I press my hand against his to stop him.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see a softness in Orion’s gaze that reminds me of the dream. For an instant I think that maybe I’ll get away with my plan. But then he shakes off my hand roughly, grabs my purse and turns it upside down. “Let’s see what else you’re hiding.”

  By some miracle the clothes manage to fall still swaddling the gun. They land with a muffled thump. “S-see,” I say. “Nothing.”

  But Orion grabs my sweatshirt sleeve and all I can do is watch as the gun tumbles out of it, barrel over butt, until it hits the floor with a more pronounced clang.

  For a moment no one breathes. Then Orion picks it up and asks, “Would you mind telling me, Artemis, why you have a gun?”

  Chapter Nine

  Many decry the matemark as a symbol for the oppression of women. More undergraduate papers than I can count have been written on the topic. However, whenever a particularly passionate student visits me during my office hours to argue, I always say this.

  In the post-romantic era, we’ve grown to equate marriage with love, but less than a hundred years ago this was not the case. People married for money, security, political advancement or even because they had no other choice. But there is only one way to become matemarked. Not only must a girl be exposed to werebeast territory, ideally by having an interaction with her soon-to-be-mate, or with that mate’s family, but she must also be a good match for her intended.

  There can be no politics. No lies. No exterior motivation. The only reason a werebeast can mate is for love — or whatever their approximation of it is. (With the exception of the few rare subspecies notated in Appendix B, see werefish.)

  I’d call that pretty revolutionary.

  - Beasts, Blood and Bonds by Dr. Nina M. Strike

  The gun looks small and insignificant in Orion’s large, pale hands. Almost harmless. I would reach for it, but I’m not sure if the safety is on. “For protection,” I say coolly.

  “And what do you need protection from, hmm? You couldn’t have bought this since you found the pufferfish. You must have purchased it before.” He turns it over in his hand carefully and unloads the bullet chamber onto the floor. I wince as the bullets fall, glinting perfect silver in the light.

  Orion winces too, but not for the same reason. His mild tolerance must not make him immune.

  I carefully pick the bullets up from where they fell and slip them into the still-open side pocket of the duffle.

  “You got this because of me, didn’t you?” His voice is soft, low. If it were anyone else speaking to me, I’d say they almost sounded hurt.

  “Yes,” I whisper. I steel myself for the questions to come. The questions that I know I can’t dodge anymore. There’s even a small part of me that’s ready to tell him, to let him take all of my worry and pain away. I have barely enough space in my heart to care about Lawrence and my own safety, let alone an old wound. Maybe being numb would be easier.

  I struggle with the rest of the zipper. Somehow it got off its track. I don’t even know why I’m zipping the bullets back up into the duffle. God knows I need them more than ever now. But my hands have to do something to keep busy.

  “Look at me, Little Mate.”

  My body responds intuitively to the dominance in his deep voice, and I look up. But where I expect to find him glowering at me with those cold blue eyes I find a soft green gaze instead. It’s as if his expressions have all been shades of winter, and now there is finally a hint of spring.

  “I will never hurt you,” he whispers. With both hands he cups my face. “Challenge you, give your body what it craves, seduce you, of course. But never wound you. You don’t have to be afraid.”

  But I am afraid. I’ve never been more afraid of him than now. Not even in the second when I thought he might’ve murdered Cooper. And I know he can feel it. I’m trembling in his arms, leaning toward him. Not because I’m afraid he’ll hurt me. But because I’m afraid he won’t. I’m afraid that beneath his cold blue eyes and hunter’s instinct, there isn’t a monster at all, but a man. A man who could make me feel things not by commanding me to, but by simply being present.

  And kissing me.

  He’s kissing me, and it is so sweet. Soft lips press into mine, downy hair tickles my cheeks, hands slowly slide down until they rest at my waist.

  I let him, soaking in his attention like it’s the sun, melting in his embrace. And when his tongue peeks through my lips I moan against him shamelessly.

  “Please,” I whisper. I don’t know what I’m asking for, but I know that whatever it is, it’s not just more kissing.

  He smells like fresh forests, like mint. He smells like a beginning and tastes like coming home at the end of the day.

  He breaks the kiss, but brings me closer into his embrace until my head is resting against his shoulder again. I could stay like this forever.

  “I’m sorry that our kind has given you such cause to fear us. Taking your friend, and whatever else we’ve has done that has made this so much harder for you than it needs to be.”

  Perhaps the inevitability of his phrasing — that the only reason I could ever not want him would be because of my past — should annoy me, but it doesn’t. All I can feel for him in this moment is grateful. Grateful that he hasn’t pried further, grateful that someone, anyone is apologizing. For my parents, for Lawrence, for everything. Not because it makes things any better, but because if all this is someone else’s fault, maybe it won’t be mine.

  “It’s not your fault,” I say, and for the first time I actually believe it. An arrogant bastard Orion may be. Dangerous, and with more secrets and darkness in him that I can bear. But he’s not the one who killed my parents. And I’m not the only one who’s suffered.

  “I know,” he whispers. “And it’s not your fault either.”

  My heart sinks. It is somehow my fault, what happened to his kind. While it took Timothy Higgens transforming on national television to finally convince the public that werebeasts had returned, I have no doubt that it was pictures of my sad face that mobilized people into action. Like it or not, I was the poster girl for the movement that forced him into hiding. Forced him to endure years of abuse at the hands of his father, just so he wouldn’t go insane.

  Orion leans in closer, until the warmth of his body and the coolness of his breath intermingle into something poignant and seductive at the same time. I can hear my heart beating in time with his and the world narrows until I live only between each of those beats, those moments.

  That’s all we have, a handful of heartbeats. You can never be sure when they’ll be up.

  Cooper’s are done. So are my parents’. I wonder how many I have left. I wonder why I suddenly want so badly to spend mine with Orion.

  He strokes my cheek once before he sighs and hands me the gun. “We don’t have any more time. We have to go. You’ll need this.”

  “You’re not worried about me having a gun?” I take it from him reluctantly. Even after last night and this morning, holding it still feels like holding a snake. I’m never sure if it’s going to attack me or not.

  He smirks. “I’m pretty sure you’ll wait until after we find your friend to shoot me.”

  “Will it hurt you to have the bullets nearby?”

  “As long as you don’t fire any at me, I’ll be fine.” Orion shakes his head. “Most likely you won’t need to use the gun, anyway. As long as you do as I say you’ll never be in any real danger, but—”

  “Better safe than sorry?” Happy for any excuse to tear my gaze away from his, I bend down and collect the silver bullets from the pockets of the duffle, threading them into the chamber before reloading the gun.

  His grin returns. “Better safe. I’m never sorry.”

  “Eugh.” I roll my eyes and pick up the rest of my loose clothes and throw them back into my purse again. “Sometimes I think you want me to slam you up against the wall and punch some sense into you and you’re just pretendi
ng to be an obnoxious asshole to torment me.”

  “Punch away, just do it quickly.” He grabs my arm and, practically yanking it out of its socket, drags me down the stairs until we’re in the living room once more.

  “Wait.” All the false ease leaks out of me as I stare at the obstacle still standing between us and the exit. Cooper’s body. “What if the police or the FBSI find him and think we murdered him?”

  Orion winces. “They won’t think that.”

  “And why not?” I stare around the house. Other than the body in the middle of the room it’s almost sterilely empty. It even has that same strange chemical smell, like a photography darkroom. Like the dream. Silver. Of course.

  I wasn’t best friends with Cooper, but it seems unreasonably harsh to just leave him in my house. “Someone should bury him.”