Moonrise by Cassidy Hunter Page A

He’d try to run into the bathroom and slam the door, and if he’d been in human form, Michael would have smiled.
    The man held his hands out beseechingly. “What is this?” His voice was weak with terror, shaky and thin. “What are you?”
    Selene’s connection to the wolves had called them to her, and her fear and pain—years and years of pain—pushed them to slaughter him.
    Michael wanted to shift so he could tear into her abuser as a man, but the wolf wasn’t about to relinquish his hold.
    The wolves and the men united to give the stranger everything he deserved, and to make sure he felt it.
    They were going to avenge their woman.
    Michael rammed into the abuser’s midsection and grunted with satisfaction at the sound of crunching bones and the loud thump of his nearly hairless skull against the wood of the dresser.
    Glass fell to the floor and shattered; a lamp toppled over, but nothing could cover the screams of the man who had hurt their Selene.
    Had they been purely human, the men might have stopped, might have beaten the guy up and left it at that.
    But they were wolves, and the wolves felt the evil and saw the threat. They did not hesitate to neutralize it. As humans, they would live with what they did. As animals, they cared little.
    His death was necessary.
    They teased for only a short time to torment him the way Selene had been tormented. It wasn’t long, however, before his screams faded and the blood-splattered walls were almost the only evidence that a man had once stood whole and full of hate.
    They returned to human form after, both of them naked and bloody, and Michael pulled Selene into his arms while Trey attempted to find her heartbeat.
    She was so white and still and little. Her throat was mottled and swollen, and a couple of bruises had begun to bloom on her cheeks. He glanced at the mess that was once a man and wished he’d come back to life just so they could kill him again.
    “She’s not dead,” Michael begged. “Tell me.” But he couldn’t feel her life. Couldn’t grab on to any tiny thread of life inside her, and he knew she was dead.
    “She’s not dead,” Trey said. “Shhh, Michael. She’s alive.”
    It took him a full minute before he could comprehend Trey’s words. She was alive? He took a deep breath. “Call Michelle.”
    But Trey was already on it. He punched in the number to the wolves’ doctor and after a few terse words, hung up and waited with Michael on the bed.
    “She’ll be okay,” Trey said. “I promise.”
    “If she’s not—”
    “She will be.”
    “You could bite her.”
    But Trey’s face became even grimmer. “No. She wouldn’t survive the change, not right now.”
    But she might not survive this, either. At least if they turned her, as a wolf she would heal this beating as though it were nothing.
    “I’m here,” Michelle called, running up the stairs. “Tell me.”
    Trey told her what they’d found and after a quick glance into the corner, Michelle took over. “Michael, call the crew to come clean up. Trey, carry her to my van.” When they started to argue, she put her hands on her hips and stared them down with a fierce chocolate gaze that had cowed men for years. “Now. If you want me to save this woman, you’d better fucking move right now.”
    With no further hesitation, they did as she commanded.
    Selene must be saved.

    Chapter 11

    Selene wasn’t sure how much time passed before she fought her way out of what was surely a drug-induced haze and just lay for a moment, staring at the white ceiling.
    So … Robert hadn’t killed her. But he was dead. No one had told her. Or maybe they had. Maybe one of her men had whispered to her while she’d slept, while she’d visited the darkness and had wondered if she’d ever find her way back to daylight.
    She felt different. Sad, relieved, tired … free. Happy, empty, full, sick. So many contrasting emotions battled inside her that she couldn’t differentiate between them.
    She