Page 29 of Under the Moonlight

Pax clucked his tongue. “Dakota. If you can’t control yourself, I’m going to have to punish you.”

“Did you hear what she called me?” Dakota shrieked.

Pax climbed into the back of the truck next to Greer. His hand brushed her bruised cheek almost tenderly and she shivered with revulsion.

“Have no fear, darling. She will regret her cheek. Very soon.”

19

Xander was sitting in the living room with Clyde, having a glass of whisky. Anger and frustration radiated through him and he was tempted to smash the glass of amber liquid against the wall. He’d blundered the entire conversation with Greer, but what was worse, he’d let her leave. Hadn’t even tried to step out of the shadows and stop her.

He was a fool.

But he hadn’t been wrong. She couldn’t understand his

reasoning or motivations. He should have handled it better, though.

Luke and Clint were upstairs playing their uncle’s X-Box, which gave the grown-ups a chance to hash out a few things. Clyde still hadn’t accepted that Xander needed to see this through on his own.

“Greer seems like a sweet woman. What exactly did you do to make her so mad?”

Xander clenched his jaw. “She wanted me to let you and the boys back me up.”

“Ah, and what did you say?”

“I told her no. That she couldn’t understand because she wasn’t a shifter.”

Clyde whistled low. “Boy, you are all kinds of stupid.”

Xander shot him a withering glare. “Don’t start with me.”

“Hell yeah I’m going to start with you. Why would you push a woman like that away? She’s beautiful, seems intelligent. She knows what you are and hasn’t run screaming for the hills. Those are all fantastic qualities in a human, if I do say so myself.”

Xander grimaced. He knew Greer was a catch, but he wasn’t going to go back on everything he had been working for the last five years because she didn’t want him getting hurt. He wasn’t reckless. He knew what he was doing.

Although he might be an idiot where women were concerned. At least Clyde was right about that.

“I’ll go over there tomorrow when she cools down and try to make things right.”

Clyde chuckled. “You better try hard, because that woman had the same look in her eyes my wife gets when she’d ready to dig in about something.”

Xander grinned. “Really? Your wife gets mad at you?”

“Shut it, boy!”

Xander was still smiling when something big and hard hit the sliding glass door off the kitchen.

“What in the hell?” Clyde shouted.

Xander jumped up and flipped on the light to the back porch. He fumbled with the lock and when he finally got it open, he found a tawny cougar with aquamarine eyes glaring at him accusingly.

“Jill, what happened?”

“Someone hit us with their car and then shot at us. Greer was taken,” Dereck called from the dark. As he stepped into the light, Xander could tell he was hurt by the way he hobbled forward.

And then his words sank in, right down to the pit of his stomach.

Taken.

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