Page 5 of Bitten by Bloodmoon (Mateless Shifters #2)

Nyx

A sk me. Ask me about my curse. Ask me anything.

Lumi doesn’t. She’s still standing in the same spot she’s been standing since she entered my living room in a pair of oversized grey sweatpants and a sweatshirt that might as well be a dress on her.

I wasn’t sure what clothes she would pick when I scrounged up clothes from what I could find that the others had left lying around my house.

But she somehow managed to find the only pair of clothes that belonged to me. And she’s wearing them like a shield.

As she stands, her shoulders cave inward, and her eyes are sunken from exhaustion. Without even dipping into her head, I can sense how broken and fragile she is. Whatever Ambrose did to her, I want to kill him for that alone.

But I can’t worry about that right now. I have to find a way to get through the shattered glass that she’s barely holding together.

I need to find a way to earn her trust enough to work with me.

To understand why I can communicate with her in her mind the way Ambrose can.

To figure out who her mate really is and how she can break the curse.

Ask me.

She doesn’t.

I run my hand through my long tendrils, brushing them out of my eyes, my frigid body coiling under my own touch. My body still feels foreign to me even after all this time. It always will.

I stand, careful to walk through the shadows and not where the sunlight shines through my windows toward her. To her credit, she doesn’t cower away from me when I approach her.

“Want to go for a run with me?” I ask.

“A run?”

“Yeah, a run.”

“Um…I guess.”

She didn’t immediately turn me down. That’s good. Progress.

“Let’s go, then.” I lead her out of my house, careful to walk along the shadows.

She walks like a zombie on autopilot, just going through the motions.

I doubt she even knows what she just agreed to.

We keep walking until we get to the thickest part of the forest near my house.

The trees are so thick here that almost no sunlight can get through.

Even so, I prefer to be in my wolf form during the day.

It’s the only way I can enjoy the sunlight.

When I’m in my human form, my vampire side takes over, and the sunlight refuses to allow me into it.

If I accidentally step into the light, the sun overpowers me, weakening me with unthinkable pain until I step out.

I transform into my towering midnight-black wolf with striking red eyes—the mark of a Bloodmoon wolf. I turn my head, expecting to see Lumi’s majestic white wolf streaked with the golden markings of the Moonlight pack.

Crystal blue eyes blink back at me as she stands frozen in her sweatsuit.

“You going to shift?”

“No,” she says aloud.

“Why not? I heard that a healer told you not to shift when you were healing, but that’s stupid. Your wolf can heal you; it won’t hurt you. It would strengthen you to transform into your wolf. Might even help you with your grief.”

She glares at me. “No.”

I’m rooted to my spot, uncertainty clawing at me as I have no clue how to help her. I barely know this woman. I don’t know what she’s been through. So, I do something that is becoming increasingly natural the more time I spend with her—I reach out through our bond.

If she senses me in her head, she doesn’t react.

I’m not sure if she even realizes the bond is more than just a way to communicate telepathically with each other.

It can also be used to read each other’s emotions, to send each other feelings, messages, and probably more.

I suspect I’ve barely scratched the surface of what our bond can do.

As soon as I’m in her head, I want to pull away. White-hot, brutal, relentless pain gnaws at me like a dull blade through flesh. The pain is endless in its vastness. The longer I spend in her head, the more likely it is to engulf me, too.

There’s also a throbbing ache consuming her from the inside out.

For Rowena.

At Ambrose.

At me.

And at her wolf.

Her wolf?

Why is she mad at her wolf?

I force myself to push past the pain and anger that’s threatening to burn me alive. With each push, I want to retreat to the safety of my ice-cold body. But I have to know. I have to find her wolf. Talk to her. Understand her.

Nothing—I find nothing.

I pull out suddenly, realizing exactly why she won’t shift. She can’t shift.

That fucking bastard.

I want to tell her why she can’t shift. I want to tell her everything. But she doesn’t trust me. She wouldn’t believe me. And it wouldn’t help for me to be the one to tell her.

So I shift back into my human form, feeling the heat of her eyes over my naked body as I do. Hungrily, she peruses me up and down, unable to get enough of the sight of me.

I’m used to others looking. Despite it being a daily occurrence in pack life, other shifters still appreciate my naked form. Their eyes heat over my body unapologetically, but it’s nothing like what I feel when she does it.

“Like what you see?” I can’t help but quip before realizing it’s not going to win me any awards with her.

She rolls her eyes. “Put some clothes on.”

But maybe it’s exactly what she needs to bring her out of her pain.

“Nah, I think I’ll stay like this. Enjoy the cool breeze on my skin.”

Her eyes narrow into bullets. “You wouldn’t dare. Vampires can’t walk in the sunlight.”

“No, but it’s one of the reasons I picked this area of the forest. The trees are thickest here, and besides, the gods decided to bless us with a cloudy day. Doesn’t seem like I need to shift into my wolf after all.”

“In your wolf form, you can walk in the sunlight?”

I smirk, happy that she’s asking questions. “Yes.”

Ask more.

She doesn’t.

“You could still put some damn clothes on.”

“I could, but why would I when it irritates you so much? Afraid you’re going to like what you see too much and betray Ambrose?”

“I’ll never betray him.”

“Because he’s your mate?”

“Because I love him.” There it is—the truth.

My stomach sours. Not because I want her or truly think she’s my mate. I think the gods are playing games with us. Lumi is nothing more than a way to break the curse to me. But because I can’t imagine anyone loving Ambrose.

“Well, then, my being naked won’t be a problem, then.”

She huffs. “Wolf shifters.”

My smile broadens.

“What?” she asks.

“You called me a wolf shifter, not a vampire.” I start walking, and she follows in step next to me.

“Whatever, you’re still an asshole either way.” Her eyes turn to the small village nestled among the trees. When I turned vampire, we found the castle I now call home nestled in the trees, but the rest we built home by home. Each is as unique as the next.

“You could join the Bloodmoon pack if he ends up not being your mate.”

Her head snaps in my direction, and she rubs her hands over her arms as if she got a chill at that thought. “Never. I barely survived Moonlight’s initiation. I would never survive yours.”

I narrow my eyes at her, trying to read her, and I once again am pushing into her mind. But whether she realizes it or not, she’s blocked me out. There’s a solid door up where I can usually just stroll right through her mind.

“What was Moonlight’s initiation?”

“Not as bad as yours.”

“I doubt that, since ours is a simple vow after you’ve been granted the alpha’s permission. And since I’m the alpha, you already have permission. So a simple, yes to the question of if you’d like to join the Bloodmoon pack and be loyal to us is all it would require.”

Her eyes widen at me as she stops in her tracks, staring at me like she’s never seen me before. She’s not gaping at my naked body. Just peering into my jet-black eyes.

I open my mind, hoping she’ll probe to find the truth like I did with her, but she doesn’t. She probably doesn’t realize she can do it yet.

“I’m telling the truth. I don’t like to lie.”

“No, you just kill innocent people and send your vampire friends to torture me.”

I wince at the pain in her words.

She starts walking again, her gaze fixed on the empty houses as we walk. The pack went hunting this morning.

“Visit a seer with me.”

“No,” she says.

“We have to know how to break the curse. It’s the only way you get rid of me.”

“No, a stake through the heart gets rid of you. And the only ones who need to know how to break the curse are me and Ambrose.”

“Did you tell him?”

“What?” She snaps as she stops.

“Did you tell him everything you know about the prophecy?”

“I told him everything I was told by a seer. The rest is just dreams.”

I raise my eyebrows. Now we’re getting somewhere. “You’ve had dreams about the prophecy?”

“I’m not telling you anything.”

I sigh. “What is Ambrose’s curse?”

Her face pales. “I’m never telling you that.”

“That bad, huh? If I knew, could I destroy him?”

She growls. “I’ll never let you hurt him.”

I scoff. “Your frail, human body couldn’t stop me.”

“I could.”

“Fine, don’t answer me. I know he has a personal curse, just like all the witches. And I know each Moonlight pack member has their own curse as a result of their alpha being a witch. Don’t you want to know what the vampires’ curse is? What mine is?”

“No, I hope whatever it is is very, very…” she stops as if something has interrupted her thought.

“Very, very?”

She shakes her head as if she can focus again. “Painful.”

“You have to ask if you want to know.”

But Lumi isn’t listening to me. Her mind is elsewhere occupied, which could only mean one thing—Ambrose is communicating with her in her mind.

I test the waters, gently pushing against her mind, but I’m locked out.

They are talking.

Which means he’s close by. I don’t think the bond has limitless abilities to communicate from any distance.

“We should head back,” I say, turning toward the castle.

She nods, reluctantly.

We walk back in silence until we reach my home. When we reach the grounds, I turn toward the woods.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Going hunting with the rest of the pack in the north woods. I trust you can find a way to occupy your time while I’m away.”

“You’re not going to lock me up?”

“No.” And before she can question me further, I shift, running into the woods toward my pack. I don’t stop until I reach Sylara, and then I shift back into my human form.

She shifts into her human form next to me.

“Where is Lumi?” she asks, staring behind me like she expects her to come running up behind me.

“She’s going after Ambrose.”

“What? Are you crazy? You’re just going to let her escape with him?”

I’m not sure if Lumi is my mate. In fact, I’m pretty sure we’re not. The only reason I can communicate with her in her mind is that we need to find a way to break the curse first. We are missing a giant piece of the puzzle that only we can discover together.

Ambrose is her mate.

There is only one thing I’m more sure of than the fact that I’m not her mate. “She’ll come back.”