Moonlit Rescue Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Praise for MOONLIT RESCUE

  Dedication

  Story

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  Moonlit Rescue

  by

  Leigh Erikson

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Moonlit Rescue

  COPYRIGHT © 2013 by Leigh Erikson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Angela Anderson

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Black Rose Edition, 2013

  Digital ISBN 978-1-61217-692-5

  Published in the United States of America

  Praise for MOONLIT RESCUE

  “So good I couldn’t stop.”

  ~Eliza Knight, Historical Romance Author

  Dedication

  We would like to thank those

  who have supported and encouraged us over the years.

  You know who you are.

  The cheap apartment carpet scraping across her knees didn’t stop Kira Simon from swiping the dust ruffle aside to check under the bed.

  Nothing. No monster, no predator, only a pair of tattered boots, dust, and discarded papers greeted her. She wiped her nose to stop the tickle threatening to make her sneeze and stood, thankful no one was around to witness her childish act.

  Tranquil and silent, her bedroom beckoned her for the sleep she both wanted and needed. Even with a small bit of light in the room illuminating all the hidden corners, a shiver raced down her spine. She wasn’t alone.

  Instinct screamed at her to take action, but her mind told her she was safe, overreacting. There was no need to go hunting for nonexistent demons. She sat at the edge of the bed, raising her arms above her head in a welcome stretch to let oxygen flow through her body and slow her heart rate.

  Nerves subsiding, she glanced at her nightstand decorated with rocks and minerals. Collected over her lifetime, each possessed its own personality, woven with stories and histories all their own. She reached over and picked up her newest prize, a jagged silver stone. Rare and beautiful, this small piece of Earth was hers to study and decode. She’d worked for something like this her entire life, and no one would take it from her.

  As she returned her treasure to its spot next to her clock, a blast of cool air brushed against her shoulder. She’d closed the windows and the ceiling fan was off, but before she could investigate, a gloved hand covered her mouth, silencing her.

  “I won’t hurt you. Don’t scream,” a deep male voice whispered in her ear. “Look at me.”

  She shoved her elbow back into whoever held her, hitting nothing but a hard, unmovable mass. Her body betrayed her, turning so stiff and frozen that it felt like pieces of her would snap off if she dared move, but she would rather lose a limb than give into anyone’s demands. She kicked, arched her back, and did anything she could to free herself.

  “Look at me.” He curled around her, his breath brushing her neck.

  She closed her eyes in silent protest as she continued to flail her arms and legs.

  “Open your eyes.” The voice bore through her.

  She reached up and dug her nails into the arm that held her tight, but they only bent in on themselves, inflicting no damage to her assailant.

  He caught her hand. “Don’t make me force you.” The power in his voice challenged her.

  She needed to see what she was up against before she made her next move. Bit by bit she opened her eyes, keeping them down and concentrating on the thick arms that trapped her. She gasped at the wide chest encased in a skintight black jacket. She was only a pebble to this mountain of a man.

  “Kira, look up.” His voice softened.

  Hearing her name, she managed to jerk her face away from his hand and scream, “Help!” Somehow he knew her name, but she’d never seen him or anything like him before.

  He loomed above her, his face masculine with angular features framed by long, black hair. The light from the window highlighted pointed ears, yellow eyes and silver tinged skin. What was he? No doubt someone to steal everything that mattered.

  “It’s all right!” Once more, he covered her mouth.

  She bit his hand, butted him with her head, but he didn’t even flinch. His eyes began to glow, radiating a golden light. Warmth encompassed her, enveloping her in comfort as her body went limp.

  “Humans are so attracted to shiny things,” he muttered. “Kira, listen to me and don’t be afraid. You’re going to come with me. You’re in danger.” He removed his hand from her mouth.

  The loss of his hand left her face cold, but his voice warmed her. “Danger?” She needed to fight, but her body lost all strength.

  His slow nod answered her question. “I need you to listen to me.”

  “Who are you?” Her gaze remained transfixed while she floated in a sea of golden light. The scent of earth and pine trees overtook the room.

  “I am Vale Convel.”

  The mist in her mind allowed for only the most basic questions. “What are you?”

  “I will tell you more once we leave.” His hand moved up her back, bracing her.

  “Why are you here?” More importantly, why wasn’t she screaming? Her voice sounded as if someone had taken over her body and she was a puppet speaking scripted words.

  “My pack has been watching you. You pose a threat, and I am here to protect you from them.”

  “I don’t need protecting,” she whispered.

  “You hold the key to their extinction.”

  “No.” She tried to lift her head, but it fell to the side. This had to be a dream, a dream where she listened to fairytales in a strange man’s arms. “That’s crazy.” As a geologist, all she could harm were rocks, and they would never hurt her. Rocks and stones were stable.

  “I promise to explain everything.” He rose off the bed, lifting her while maintaining eye contact. “You need to change and we must collect what you will need. Tell me now if there’s something you can’t live without. Pictures?”

  “Pictures?” She shook her head. No pictures, no keepsakes, nothing to commemorate any great milestone except what she had dug up herself. She didn’t need anything else.

  “We need to leave.”

  “No.” She blinked, trying to clear the fog in her mind. “I’m not going with you.”

  “It’s not your decision to make.” He looked around the room.

  An avalanche of reality came crashing down on her the second he turned his eyes away, right toward her stone, her work. This was no dream, she was being taken and had to free herself. “Let go of me!” With both hands she attempted to thrust him away. “I won’t let you have it, or me!”

  “Look up.” He pulled her into him and took her chin in his hand, forcing her to face him while his eyes lit up again. “We can’t keep doing this. It’s not good for you.”

  His gaze met hers, and her body went limp, falling like a ribbon into his arms.

  “I’m sorry about this, but you need to be quiet, and I need to make sure we have everything.” He pressed his fingers into
the crook of her neck.

  Blackness encompassed her.

  ****

  In one swift motion, Vale caught Kira, holding her light frame against him. The connection between them was strong, an excellent trait to have in a mate.

  After months of watching from afar, he indulged a moment to take her in up close. He admired her long, dark brown hair and ethereal skin that provided a perfect backdrop to her miniscule features. He wasn’t used to such a dainty upturned nose, full mouth, and elegant eyes.

  Relief flooded his body and he let out a low growl. At least now he could protect her. Her safety was his only mission. “We need to get out of here.” He winced when he glanced down at her. She was covered only in a sky blue nightgown.

  “Damn it.” He clenched his fist. He’d acted too fast and didn’t get all the information he wanted. She needed things for their journey. They wouldn’t be returning. Not willing to let her go, he grabbed a handful of clothes and her handbag.

  Before he left, he turned and retrieved his rock from her nightstand. “You couldn’t resist.” He climbed out the window with everything he ever wanted.

  ****

  Kira clutched the blankets, her only anchor from drowning into the darkness with a monster. Hold on, she told herself, don’t let go. The dream will be over soon.

  The constant chatter of a news program coupled with a musty, dank odor broke through the haze in her brain, jolting her into an unwanted consciousness.

  She let go of her security, opening her eyes to find herself in a motel room with sepia walls, outdated furniture and horrible floral print bedding. Her heart beat a rhythm of panic leaving her dizzy. “No…”

  “Don’t scream.”

  Her kidnapper’s voice rose louder than the television. She turned to find the crazed man with yellow eyes and silver skin nearing toward her.

  She struggled out of the bed, considering the small distance between them a victory. “Get away from me.”

  He moved closer, blocking the only exit in the room.

  Strength exuded from him. Any attempt to fight would be futile, but she needed to save herself. She lunged for a phone book lying on a nearby table, throwing it in his direction. “You can’t take me!”

  The book hit him on the chest. It fell to the floor with a thud, and he kicked the disturbance out of his path without missing a step. The only other weapon-worthy item in the room was a lamp bolted to the wall. Instead, she grabbed the bedspread and held it up between them, trying to use it as a makeshift barrier.

  “I won’t hurt you.” He stopped at the far side of the bed.

  “Right, that’s why you kidnapped me and took me to this four-star hotel.” She coiled herself in the foul cloth.

  “Once I get you to safety, I promise the accommodations will be much better.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.” Her back hit the wall. “Here’s what will happen: you are going to move aside, and I am going to leave. In exchange for letting me go, I won’t call the police.”

  “Then what?” He leaned back on his heels.

  “You will go away, and tomorrow I will go to work like nothing happened.” She lifted her chin. Of course, she left out the part where she wouldn’t keep her end of the bargain as she ran straight to the local authorities.

  “Exactly!” He sprang into action and rushed toward her. “You will go back to work and get yourself killed.”

  “What do you know about my work?” Maybe now they would get to the truth of why she was taken. With nowhere to go, she slid along the wall until the corner stopped her. She forced herself to look at him, keeping track of his every move.

  He reached into his pocket, holding up her stone between two fingers and turning it to catch the light in the room. “Look familiar?”

  “That’s MINE! You stole it from me.” At the sight of her stone, in the hands of her kidnapper, she dug her nails into her palm. The day she found the rock she knew it was different, much more meaningful than simply an unwanted nuisance for some land developers.

  She had never encountered anything like it no matter how she researched. All she could imagine was a new element on the periodic table named after her for her colleagues to see. Somehow this man had caught on that her discovery was more than an everyday rock, or someone had hired him.

  “You stole it from your employer.”

  He taunted her, holding her work out, daring her to reclaim it. She paused, not breathing, waiting for the right time, and when she darted forward to snatch her treasure, the stone turned to liquid right in his hand. “It transforms?” She put her hands to her chest. Her dream changed from a solid rock to a gleaming puddle.

  “This protects my pack’s underground civilization. It provides a shield from the outside world, as well as serving as an energy source. Until your research started, no one had been close to discovering us.” He rolled the molten liquid in his hand. “Now my pack wants you dead. What you perceive as a kidnapping is actually a rescue mission.”

  Without warning, he turned his hand over and the liquid fell in a stream to the floor. She reached to save it, salvage it in any way, only to have it slip through her fingers. She collapsed to her knees, watching it pool in the carpet. No way would she allow it to seep into the fetid fibers, but Vale stepped into the mess before she could save any remnants. When he moved, the liquid had rematerialized back into its solid form.

  “This is impossible.” She cupped her hands on either side of the stone. “This is what you want to take, not me.”

  “I don’t want it. I want to save you.”

  No, she didn’t just get stuck with a deranged mammoth magician who fancied himself some otherworldly superhero. She got stuck with a man who wanted to take everything she lived for. She resisted pounding her fist into the floor, reminding herself to keep her wits together. “I don’t need you to save me.” She didn’t need saving by anyone. After being alone most of her life, she turned out just fine.

  He joined her on the carpet, scooping the rock back into his huge, silver hand. “Yes, you do.”

  “Give it back.” She reached out and swallowed. “Please.”

  “Watch.” He balled her stone in both his hands. When he opened them again, it was transformed into a dull lifeless lump resembling clay.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered, forgetting herself as she watched him manipulate the stone with expertise.

  Without answering, he stretched the rock into a long cylinder, bent it around to make a ring and reached for her.

  “How?” He took her hand and placed the mass in the center of her hand. She held her breath, his touch was soft and gentle, not at all what she expected.

  Before she closed her fingers, Vale covered her hand with his. When he pulled back, the liquid reappeared, warm and thick, and rippling in her palm.

  “What are you?” When he didn’t answer, she gazed up at him. “Tell me.”

  “Are you familiar with werewolves?”

  She glared at him, sending hate his way without disrupting the precious fluid in her care. “You’re a werewolf?” Maybe he wasn’t a man, or maybe that was just what he wanted her to believe. Werewolves didn’t exist.

  “Not precisely, but it’s the closest thing I can think of to help you understand. I don’t howl or turn into a wolf during a full moon as humans believe, but it runs in my blood and I can transform.” He spoke with a calm voice one would use for a young child.

  “Humans think we resemble them and turn into wolves, but it is quite the opposite. We take on a human form during the full moon so we may move around and conduct business more freely,” he explained. “I look much more human than my half-brother and the rest of my pack.”

  Between the television pounding, the liquefied rock in her hand, and her stomach rebelling, she shut her eyes. “Wait, let me guess, you have more human blood than your half-brother and that’s why you’re not more wolf-like.”

  “Yes, I am half-human. That is why Xander, my younger half-brother,
is in charge. I’m not a leader and never will be. The only prophecy I have fulfilled is betraying my pack.”

  Somehow her life had turned into a bad movie, one where she would tell him the ending. “By rescuing me?”

  “Precisely.”

  “So I was lucky enough to get the outcast werewolf to protect me from the bigger, badder wolves in your secret underground society?” The silver fluid glistened, giving her answers. Everything he did was a parlor trick. Using the one tool at her disposal, she tossed the liquid right in his face and crawled away, grabbing at the thin carpet to propel herself forward.

  “Yes!” Vale caught her leg and dragged her back. “That’s exactly what I am saying! It was my job to bring you to them and I couldn’t do it.”

  “I think you were sent to steal my rock because I finally discovered something, and this whole stupid story has been concocted to make me comply.” Caught, she kicked at him, trying to free herself. The rock morphed into small pebbles and scattered across the carpet. “I don’t believe your lies.”

  “You will now.” He took her by the shoulders and forced her to look at him.

  His golden eyes lured her like before, entrancing her into his spell and everything became calm.

  “I told you the truth about me.” His tone was so even and soft, she wanted to sink into his voice. “Right now you are under my command.”

  She hung on his every word, not moving, not blinking, even though deep in her mind she knew something was off. One second she was fighting, and the next she was craving the haze.

  He pressed two fingers to her temple. “I can see, hear and smell everything around us. There is a tiny ant crawling on the baseboard behind you.

  “I can smell the rose scented perfume you put on yesterday morning, but unfortunately it is being ruined by the garbage in the parking lot where someone threw away some cheap Italian take-out.” He moved his face closer, their noses almost touching.

  She experienced everything he said down to the acidic marinara sauce burning the back of her throat.