Christmas Moon by Sadie Hart

with
her.
    She kept flipping the pages. A newspaper
clipping on Caesar. Her hands were cold with chill as she turned
another page. Just how long had this psycho been stalking her?
    And what did any of this have to do with
Rylie Kelsen and Hunter’s pack?
    After that, the pages were all blank until
the very last one. Another picture of the guy with the motorcycle
and another guy, but she didn’t recognize either one of them. She
flipped the picture over, hoping for a name or a date but there was
nothing on the back. Frustrated she closed the book and set it on
the cot.
    This guy seemed to know an awful lot about
her and she knew nothing about him. Then again, the bad guys almost
always started with a leg up. It was up to her to close that gap
and solve the case. She took another deep, steadying breath, and
then reached for the bundle of magick buried in the depths of her
psyche.
    Not the magick that let her shift, but the
one granted to her when she’d passed through the Shifter Town
Enforcement Academy. Each member once made an official Hound was
given a gift from a witch—raw magick. Something no other shifter
had access too. You couldn’t get it without a trained witch’s
help.
    She was by no means as strong as even a
lightweight witch, but this gave her an advantage over the average
shifter. And as she held her hands out over the old, worn journal
she let herself fall into a trance. Her hair whispered around her
face, lighting kissing her cheeks as the energy ran through her.
Her inner-canine cowered somewhere deep inside her, trying to avoid
the touch of magick that now spread out of her hands and wrapped
around the book.
    It wasn’t natural for a shifter to do what
she could do as a Hound, but it paid off.
    It was a simple ‘spell’ of sorts. Scrying or
searching, she let her magick sift through the book looking for any
details that could help her. There was so much rage in that book.
Every time that wolf had touched this journal he’d left of piece of
the anger that tore at his soul. He wanted pain, vengeance, and
Bree had no doubt it was towards her.
    If the rogue had been a lion she could have
understood, but a wolf?
    It didn’t make sense. Sure, as a Hound she’d
put wolves behind silver-coated bars before, even executed a few,
but her jurisdiction had largely been lion-shifters. She turned the
focus of her search towards Rylie. Wolf. Female . She let the
magick spread through the small lean-to, but there was nothing.
Nothing here that would explain why he’d attacked one of Hunter’s
pack.
    She angled her hands over the deer leg. More
rage, but it was different. Almost like he’d taken the animal’s
life to vent. Possible, especially if he’d done it after lashing
out at her window. Bree bit her lip and pulled the Hound magick
back inside her. She rocked back on her heels.
    All of this pointed toward issues with her,
not Rylie. So why take the she-wolf at all?
    Why not just come after the one he really
wanted?
    After all, Bree would have been more than
happy to give him a good fight.

Chapter Eight

    Hunter let Bree have her silence as they
trekked back toward the house. They’d traveled at least six miles
out, a distance they could have traveled faster had they shifted,
but she seemed too lost in thought for that. He wanted to know what
she’d found when she’d pulled her little magick trick back there.
Her hair and lifted as if tugged by some imaginary wind and he’d
felt the pulse of power around her.
    Hell, he hadn’t felt magick like that except
for his one run in with a witch. He’d known Hounds had a little bit
of magick but what he’d felt back there hadn’t felt little .
    “I don’t know what he wants with your wolf,”
she said, finally breaking the silence that lingered between
them.
    “What did you find back there?”
    She lifted her shoulders in a half-shrug.
“That he’s pissed at me for something. He killed that deer as sort
of a way to relieve frustration. I think it