Page 104 of Luna: Posy 2

He nodded, and I took a glass from the little table and held it out to him. He reached for it with both hands, which shook with fine tremors, and took it carefully.

"Thank you," he murmured.

I waited until after he took a sip before I spoke again.

"Cookie? Banana?"

"Banana, please."

I passed him one and took a cookie for myself. Nibbling on it, I savored the rich buttery taste as he ate his banana. When he was done, he laid the peel on the grass next to his chair.

"More?" I asked him.

"No, thank you." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Why are you being so nice to me? Did the king send you to soften me up before he comes to torture me?"

"How do you knowI'mnot going to torture you?"

"Please," he scoffed. "You don't look like you couldn't hurt a fly."

"Come on, Leo." I shook my head. "We both know that real torture has nothing to do with physical pain."

"True enough. Point to you."

Typical guy.I took a sip of my lemonade to stop myself from rolling my eyes.Everything's a competition.

"Which pack are you from?" he asked after a few seconds of silence.

"Green River."

He swung his head and stared at me with squinted eyes.

"You said your last name is Briggs. Is Alpha Kendall Briggs your father?"

"He was my mother's husband, but he was never my father," I admitted quietly.

"Yeah." Leo nodded. "I met him at a conference of alphas, oh, maybe five years ago. I wasn't impressed. I can't imagine that he's any better at being a father than he is at being a decent person."

"He isn't any kind of person now. He's dead." I set my glass down and folded my hands on my lap. "My mates killed him."

His eyebrows flew up, and his dark eyes rounded with unspoken questions, so I told him a bit about what happened. As I did, five boys sent me a wave of love, which I returned gratefully.

"I'm glad you got out before he killed you," Leo murmured when I stopped talking. "I'm also glad he's dead. That was one shifter who didn't need a demon to be an unspeakable bastard."

"Speaking of demons, how did it happen, Leo? How did you get possessed?"

"It was such a dumb thing." His hands scrubbed over his face, then sunk into his black hair. "Such a dumb thing to eat more than a year of my life and kill and torment so many of my people."

"Would you like to tell me about it?" I asked quietly.

He let out a deep breath, then the words poured out of him as if a plug had been pulled.

"My friend, Alpha Alphonse Riggans of the Blue Rock pack, asked for assistance in clearing some alligator spirits. They'd been leaving the bayou and encroaching on his territory. I put my beta, Luke MacGregor, in charge and took a squad of my best boys to help my friend. I figured we'd be back in two or three days with no problems. Goddess, was I wrong."

The story he told next was going to give me nightmares.

He explained how, in between the pack territory and the bayou, there's a group of sinking houses that have been abandoned for decades. During the fight, a pair of gator spirits waddled inside one of those houses, and Leo followed. He killed them, then investigated the closet they were guarding.

Instead of the nest he expected, he found the remains of a wooden trunk filled with a bunch of books and papers and stuff. There was a small velvet box, too, that he opened to find a beautiful ruby pendant on a gold chain. He said it glistened in the dim light and seemed to pulse like a heartbeat.

---