Page 23 of Moonlight's Mate
Peter was waiting with an armful of clothing, glancing at the other two males without comment. “The fae are down by the lake. They want…I don’t know what the hell they want. They’ll only speak to you. Keisha is stalling them.” He swallowed, fear for his wife echoing in his human voice just as it had suffused his howl.
Merrilee took the clothes from him. It was a summer tank dress, inappropriate for the cool of night, but she could rip out of it in a heartbeat if she shifted. “How are we doing on weapons? I hope we have more than sketches.” She strode for the back door, yanking the red linen over her head.
Peter followed her inside. “We cut apart the fencing after you left. Each shaft is pure iron. It’s all on the front porch, waiting for you. We didn’t want to challenge them.”
“That’s what I’m here to do.”
“We. That’s whatweare here to do.”
She swung around to face Beck who was only steps behind.
Her mouth opened automatically to warn him off, but she closed it with a snap. She wasn’t stupid. Confused and—little though she wanted to admit it—frightened. Not of the fae,but of him.
But she also knew—as deeply true as her verita luna—he would stand with her against anything.
She gestured down the hall. “Spare clothes are in the bedroom.”
He nodded and tossed Nally’s satchel to the doctor. He brushed past her, his skin hot from their run, and disappeared into the spare bedroom where she kept various castoffs for shifting visitors.
She took a breath to steady herself. Without his presence, the air was strangely bland.
She faced Nally who was pulling his clothes from the satchel. “Doctor, I want you to stay here, out of the fae’s sight, smell, senses or whatever else they use. Help Peter find this Vaile’s valley. If these fae have an enemy, I want that enemy as a friend.”
Nally grunted an assent, but Peter dogged her steps as she headed for the front office. “I need to be with Keisha.”
She paused to touch his shoulder, feeling the wolf-kind muscle under a softer layer of happy, healthy, well-mated computer programmer. This was what Grandmère had fought for. “I’ll send her back to help with this search, which is more important than any posturing down at the lake.” Merrilee planned to do more than posture, and if anything happened to her, she wanted her Beta out of harm’s way, ready to take command. “Doctor Nally will explain the situation.”
Peter looked torn, but he went to her desk and opened a satellite terrain map before glancing at Nally. “What do we know about this valley?”
She left them to their search and yanked open the door to the find the fence staves lined up against the flower boxes, looking incongruently dark and dangerous against her blood-red carnations.
She took a makeshift spear. With the butt end on the ground, it came up only to her belly button, but the blunted arrow-shaped head seemed lethal enough. To anything it pierced, especially a fae.
Beck appeared at her side and plucked the spear from her hand. “I’ll take that.”
She bared her teeth. “Don’t start the Alpha shit now,Bexley.”
He loomed over her, looking as lethal as the iron shafts in his too-tight black T-shirt. The cargo pants she kept for guests had always seemed a reliable choice, but now—on him, considering the circumstances—the leafy camo pattern seemed menacing. He was every bit the warrior with spears in hand.
Including her spear.
She snapped out each word. “Give. Me. My. Weapon.”
He shook his head. “This isn’t the way to face them. You don’t want to look defensive. You want to look in control.”
“Iamin command.” She knew that wasn’t quite the same thing, but the truth hurt like a spear in the gut. She had never faced this sort of threat. And he had.
But he didn’t remind her of the fact. “Let me be the dumb muscle. You go down there, cool and collected, and find out what they want, what they know. If they thought it would benefit them, they’d have attacked already. Don’t reveal your hand either.”
She took a breath. This time, the air was laden with his distinctive earthy scent and the whiff of salt. For an instant, she was tempted to lean in and taste him.
Salt, like iron, supposedly barred the fae.They were creatures of glamour, not the crude realities of the bodily world. But the earthy, salty truth of the Alpha beside her made her pity them. No wonder they wanted to steal the passions of the sunlit world.
So why she was fighting so hardagainstthose passions? Was she really such an uncertain Alpha that she doubted her command over herself? She wasn’t supposed to be fighting herself, but the enemy. Who wasnotBeck, despite what the helpless acceleration of her heartbeat sometimes led her to believe.
She let out the breath slowly and nodded.
Beck gave her a crooked smile. He reached over and snapped off one of the blooms and tucked it behind her ear. The carnation’s peppery perfume wreathed her.
