Bound by Moonlight by Nancy Gideon

confusion she saw in her partner’s eyes.
    He had seen what Max was. How he reacted to that information had to be carefully controlled before any damage was done.
    Her response was forceful and fierce. “You tell them that Max Savoie saved your son when no one else could have. You tell them that I owe him my life several times over. You tell them that if they have a problem with him, they’d better bring it to me first. And they’d better keep their mouths shut about what they think they saw.”
    “Think?”
His tone said there was no mistake about what took place before their shocked eyes. “Or what— they’ll end up in an alley minus throats and hearts?”
    “No!” She had to get them to see Max as an ally, not as a monster. There was nothing natural about Max, but that didn’t necessarily make him a threat.
    “No, Alain,” she continued with an exasperated laugh, as if the very thought of violence was ridiculous. “He would never harm them. But I’m not going to let them”
—or you—
“harm him, either.”
    Cee Cee watched her calm, rational partner trying to make sense of the unbelievable.
    “Did he kill Cummings’s daughter?” Babineau asked.
    “No. It was another of his kind.”
    “Another?” He latched onto what she hadn’t meant to give away, then anxiousness jumped in his eyes. “There are
more
of them here? How many more?”
    She grew guarded and vague. “Max protects them, I protect him. That’s all you need to know.”
    “There are these . . . these creatures prowling our streets, and you don’t think I need to know? What
are
they? How are we supposed to act around him, now that we know?” His chiseled jaw worked for a long moment before he got right to it. “How can you—be with him, now that you know?”
    She went stiff with outrage as she saw his disgust. “Excuse me?”
    “He’s not human, Cee Cee. He’s a fucking animal that kills and eats those who get in his way. He’s—I feel like I’m going nuts, just saying it—a loup-garou, or some damned thing like that. How can you be okay with that?”
    “Answer him, Charlotte. How can you stand to have something like me touch you?”
    Babineau had a healthy respect for Max Savoie the mobster, but the figure circling behind him with smooth, lupine grace scared the spit dry in his mouth.He, two other detectives, and his son had watched Savoie physically shape-shift, had seen him rip the beating heart from another’s chest and devour it. Had stood in stunned horror as he’d latched onto an exposed neck with huge sharp teeth to slash through tendon and cords in a fountain of blood.
    And he’d said nothing, because he’d also seen Savoie take two bullets to the chest to rescue his stepson, Oscar. He and Joey Boucher and Junior Hammond had gone back into the swamp later that day to tidy up the mess left behind, but none of them had felt good about it. None of them rested easy.
    They’d all shivered at night to think that something like Savoie was out there.
    And there were
more.
    Alain’s nape crawled just being in the same room as him.
    Max didn’t bother to disguise his preternatural power, that quicksilver speed and sleekness of his species, letting Babineau see him as those of his kind did: a cruel force of nature, destructive, deadly, unstoppable. He growled low in his chest as he stalked up behind Cee Cee to slip his arm about her middle. As he rubbed his cheek against hers, his eyes glittered with hot gold and ruby flashes. As his tongue drew a long damp line up her neck, her hand lifted to cradle the side of his face. He smiled at Babineau with teeth as sharp as the point he was making.
    “I’d be very, very careful if I were you, Detective Babineau. You have no idea what you’re dealing with. I control more than Jimmy Legere’s interests in this city. If any hint of what you saw leaks out, I’d hateto think what that would unleash upon you and your friends.”
    He stepped away from Cee Cee to select a crisp