Blood Moon Read Free Page A

fingernails bit into her jeans. The gaping wound, where her heart had been patched over so many times after Lukas’ death, ruptured. Her soul bled, and each ragged breath she heard him draw clawed the hole wider.
    The whole room seemed to be consumed by Lukas’ presence. Escape was impossible, and she knew it, even as she searched for an exit. She had to get out. If she didn’t, there wouldn’t be anything left to save. 
    Lukas moved across the room, crouched in front of her, his hands on either side of the chair. His mismatched, unearthly stare met hers, but she couldn’t make the tears stop.
    “Leave us.”
    It wasn’t right. His voice both soothed and tore at her frayed nerves. The others moved from the room. Her opportunity to run passed as they pulled the door closed with a soft click. She couldn’t have torn her gaze from Lukas if her life depended on it. Hesitantly, as if he too were afraid, he smoothed one calloused hand over her cheek, thumbing away the wetness. At his touch, her whole body jerked like she’d been struck. Every place his fingers touched tingled, and warmth began to shimmer in her soul.
    “I need to hear you say the words. Are you Aria Lagreve?”
    She drew a deep shuddering breath, captured his hand against her face and rubbed her cheek over the palm. “No.”
    Pain and anger flared in his eyes. His features hardened, and he tried to pull his hand away. She stopped him, reaching out with one shaking digit to trace the scar along his cheek. “When you died, I was Aria MacLeod. We were following tradition, doing the human ceremony as well as the shifter ritual, remember?”
    Lukas’ features softened slightly. “You were supposedly killed a year ago, when you tried to escape from Haemon.”
    She pulled her hand away, unsure of herself and the man crouching before her. They were not really the same people anymore. When they parted, she’d been rebellious, but very sheltered. The last eighteen months had changed many things about her.
    “I did escape, several times. And he nearly killed me every time I made the attempt. But I’m not dead. At least, I don’t think I am.”
    An awkward pause fell between them, and slowly, like a mirage shimmering in the desert, the reality of the situation came to her—Lukas didn’t die the night they were almost married. She shuddered and renewed tears snuck from under her lashes, until the impact of the thought ripped at the tenuous hold she had on her emotions.
    Lukas was alive.
    He had been all along.
    The temperature in the room dropped several degrees; her tears froze into biting pinpricks of cold on her cheeks. Beneath her cotton shirt, the necklace she wore turned to a block of silver ice between her breasts. Lukas’ breath fogged between them, but his face remained passive. The only show of curiosity was an arched brow. There had been a time when he could have hidden nothing from her. She was not the only one who had changed.
    “Where have you been?”
    Lukas winced. Inwardly, she flinched as well. She hadn’t intended her pain to be quite so easily read.
    His gaze turned away and his face twisted; in anger or shame, she wasn’t sure. Questions hung in the frosty air between them, her words making the chill worse. Her magic flared out, without her control or consent, in times of high emotion. She thought she’d gotten the power under control, but apparently, it still needed some work.
    The hard planes of his face forced her to sit still even though shock began to recede. Too much stood between them, and yet she wanted nothing more than to feel his arms around her, as if they’d only been apart a few days. Instead of a year.
    But the time for that kind of forgiveness had passed. Torture, hunger, paranoia and fear had reshaped some parts of her personality. At times like this, she feared she’d never be capable of opening herself to anyone again. Even to him.
    Lukas had been the last thing she expected. It was the most amazing and most