Mated by Moonlight. Jessa Slade

      Chapter 2

      She ran. It felt good to run with her kill in her teeth and the bright moon on her back. And Beck was behind her, which made running even better.

      Weaving between the blackjack pines, she chanced a glance back. He would need a moment to recover from the unsettling transformation of the verita luna, when the beast was dominant, but she knew he was fast—There! That brindled flash between the trees was Beck’s rich brown hair streaked with sun-bleached locks and a bit of gray at the temples from being so damned honorable.

      She thrashed her head from side to side, slinging the T-shirt through the pine needles. He called the shirt a classic. Most of the band members featured on the front had died of overdoses decades ago.

      Which was still more recent than the decade Beck occupied in his head.

      She had sensed his irritation when she talked about her job. In his 1950s mind, he probably believed she should stay home. Probably thought she should turn over her pack lands to him. With a belly roll while she was at it.

      Although sometimes it might be nice to share the burden...

      No. Her pack expected more from her.

      A hundred years ago, her ancestress had defied wolf-kind patriarchy to kill the abusive Alpha who had battered the pack and founded a place for werelings with their own unique ways. But championing such a sanctuary required a leader tough enough to hold hidebound traditions at bay while still holding the pack together, a precarious balance upon which rested their independence. To each female Alpha since came the same warning: Be strong always.

      She thrashed the T-shirt again as if it had questioned her vow.

      From behind her, a low, deep roll like thunder vibrated in her bones. For half a heartbeat, she wondered if Beck’s inner beast still had the upper hand. Or paw, as it were. But it was rare that the verita luna, the Second Truth, completely eclipsed the more human aspect. Werelings spent most of their childhoods in their upright forms, learning the intricacies of the human world and human control, before puberty made the shift—and the passions of the beast—inevitable.

      Of all werelings to succumb to the il-luna, it would not be Beck Villanova. From his strictly traditional upbringing, right down to a stint in the army, he was the perfectly controlled Alpha. She’d had to practically bite him to get him to shift. She shook her head at her own flight of nerves. Beck would never let his beastly side rule unopposed.

      Although sometimes she fantasized about the possibility.

      The whiff of his manly sweat was ripe in her nostrils from the T-shirt he’d worked in all night. The bite of whiskey and the smoky scent of bacon were heady enough, but the hints of leather, musk and books also made her senses whirl.

      Books? Had he been out running even once in the time she’d been in New York? No wonder he was so slow—

      With a roar, a large shape dropped to the path in front of her. She tried to dodge, but he clamped his teeth on the T-shirt. Since she refused to let go, her momentum whipped her around. Her paws left the ground and she was airborne. Which reminded her, she owed him for dunk-tanking her.

      When she opened her jaws, she went flying. She landed in a poof of pine needles and lay still. Wait for it...

      Beck’s presence loomed in her awareness, though her eyes were closed. Wait for it...

      He whined softly, even more softly than the whisper of worn cotton as he dropped the T-shirt.

      Instantly, she scrabbled up, seized the T-shirt and fled.

      Through the trees—weaving, dodging, their twinned shadows dark as ravens skimming across the earth, silvery under the moon—up to the ridgeline, higher yet to where the trees thinned and the moonlight thickened and the town was just an old campfire of cool, yellowing embers below them.

      In a small clearing, lush with early-summer grasses, she slowed. She expected him to pounce, but instead he kept pace just behind.

      She trotted in a circle to face him, finally letting the prize fall between them.

      Beck was magnificent, even for wolf-kind. He sacrificed none of his immense size to the change. If anything, his heavy ruff and luxurious tail tipped with silver made him seem even larger in the verita luna.

      His eyes were the same molten gold though. Not exactly the same, of course. A wereling’s eyes always seemed brighter, as if some tarnish of the human flesh was scoured away in the Second Truth. Despite the flattening effects of the moonlight, the gold gleamed at her with a purity that made her shuffle her paws uncomfortably in the long grass.

      She didn’t want to stare into his eyes. She hadn’t lured him all the way out here to deal in truths—first, second or any other number.

      She tilted back her head to stare up at the moon and breathed out a long sigh as she shifted. Her bones ached and her skin felt seared by terrible sunburn as she made the change. She reared up onto her back legs—no, her only pair of legs now as she shifted back to her human flesh—so she could stand over him.

      But when her vision cleared, Beck was standing too, big and naked.

      Shocked, she took a faltering step back. Not because he was naked—she’d stolen his T-shirt, after all—but that he had shifted so close to her. The verita luna was a dangerous moment: when a wereling was vulnerable and exposed, the beast might attack, unconstrained by any even vaguely human command.

      Again, she fleetingly wondered about his discipline. She swept him with a glance, wincing as she always did at the sight of the brutal swirl of scars and burns that wrapped the lower half of his torso. If he hadn’t had a wereling’s vigor, the IED would have meant his death, not merely his discharge. But except for that reminder of his time in the army, he seemed to be in satisfactory—okay, exemplary—shape. Certainly he would not have been able to achieve his present upright...um, very upright...state if he’d passed into il-luna.

      He stood balanced lightly on the balls of his feet, as if he thought she might run again and he’d have to keep chasing her in this form.

      His other balls were hard and tight, she could see from here. They knew she was done running.

      She took a step toward him, the grass caressing her bare ankles, and he eased back to his heels.

      “So you’re ready to be caught.” His tone was calm enough she wasn’t sure if he meant it as a question or an idle comment.

      Or a warning.

      She paused. “Consider it payment for the beer.”

      “I said I was done playing.”

      She lifted her chin, letting the night breeze finger the locks of hair around her face and tighten her nipples into almost painful peaks. Showing him what he was missing. “Since when do you give up so easily?”

      “Since I realized you’re never going to let me farther in.”

      Skimming her hands down her hips, she framed the tidy triangle of dark hair, resting her thumbs on the points of her hips. She bit back a triumphant smile as his gold eyes brightened, following the gesture. “This has always been far enough for you, hasn’t it?”

      Slowly, as if with great difficulty, he lifted his gaze. “When I first got back from overseas, yes. Not anymore.”

      A draught of doubt, colder than the night wind, iced her skin. Well, she’d gotten what she wanted from him anyway: some good beer, an itch scratched, a few insights into how a powerful male Alpha handled his pack.

      “Fine.” She spun on