THE RIPENING (Dark Side of the Moon Book 1) Read online

  “I simply refused to hide behind this isolated sham of an existence that you call a life.” Luther continued to pretend that his brother wasn't present. It was easier than taking his head off. “I had no intention of foregoing my duties to the clan.”

  “Whatever your intentions were,” Marilyn returned sharply. “You seem to have neglected them. Or do you need to be reminded that you are currently mated to a human, which ends our line.”

  “Mother-”

  “Luther, you have more control than any of us in your natural form. How could you have let this happen?”

  “Maybe there's some way to undo the bond. I could reverse the pact. Yuna could leave here and I could mate with another.”

  “She can't leave here knowing what we are. She'll go to the media the first chance she gets.” Malcom's father's voice was, to say the least, mildly outraged.

  “She knows the location of our den. She could lead anyone here. She could lead hunters here.”

  “Mother, when's the last time any of our kind has even seen a hunter? We've been more than proficient at getting ourselves killed for the past century.”

  “So you thought you'd just see us out the door, right? What about honor, Luther? What of blood?”

  Whirling, Luther emitted an inhuman roar that cowed his brother only momentarily before Liam's eyes flashed bright yellow and his canines began to lengthen. “Yuna is mine,” Luther snarled, his gaze dark. “Anyone who wishes to harm her will go through me.”

  “You'll destroy the entire clan to protect a human?”

  “If I must!”

  The entire room was seeped in deafening silence.

  Oddly, since mating with Yuna in the clearing, Luther had been consumed not with ideas of how to undo what he'd done, but of how the woman who had been the light in his world was now bonded to him forever. Sure, he'd given into his baser instincts to her taste, her smell, and her essence, but there had been a very conscious part of him that had poured his soul into her last night. He had felt no better sensation in his life than the aftermath of their bonding, knowing that she was his, that no man but him would ever touch her.

  Spilling his seed within her, being beside her, seeing her bare form bathed in the moonlight-it called to everything that comprised him- both his human and canine sides.

  But what he'd done had dire consequences. As much fulfillment as she brought him, Yuna could not give him pups. If he remained bonded to her, it would mean the end.

  “Luther, she must die. The council will decide no different. You are only delaying the inevitable.” His mother's voice, while steady, was not devoid of empathy.

  The thought- the most minute notion- of Yuna's enrapturing green eyes lifeless before him stole his breath. Hanging his head, the auburn-haired man fought to keep his emotions in check. “And who will do it, Mother?” He demanded lowly. “You? Or will it be you, Father? Is there anyone other than the man who has nothing to lose who would be willing? Hunting a deer, eviscerating a rabbit... these things all pale in comparison to the taking of a human life.”

  “I'll do it,” Liam snarled at his back. “Someone has to be brave enough to save us.”

  “What if...” Luther exhaled hotly, deciding to try another tactic. “What if Yuna could somehow produce viable pups.” Almost immediately, Marilyn's face twisted. “Wasn't there once a time where pairings with humans could produce our kind?”

  “Absolutely not. Out of the question.” Malcolm's voice boomed through the room authoritatively.

  “But isn't any option better than-”

  “He said no, Luther.”

  All heads turned to see Viola silhouetted in the open door. She had an unreadable expression upon her face, fingers twisted together- and she smelt of Yuna.

  Luther was on her in moments. “Let me see her.” His grip on the long-haired woman was tight enough to bruise, but still she only stared up at him, expression neutral. “You can't keep me from her.”

  “Hands off my mate, brother.” Liam's warning came dangerously soft over his shoulder.

  “I'm fine,” Viola replied succinctly, before addressing her brother-in-law. “I think it's best if you don't see her now, Luther. I've informed her of the particular situation she's in and she needs time to absorb it.” After a tense moment, Luther loosened his grip and turned away from her.

  Back to his family.

  They were a part of him, just as they shackled him. He could no more turn from them than he could cease being what he was.

  And Yuna... would she even want him anymore when she realized what he'd done? The position he'd put her in?

  “Liam,” Viola brushed past him to cross the room and take his brother by the arm. “Come with me, please. We need to talk.”

  “Not now, Viola.” Luther dimly heard his brother stave off her attempts at conversation as he left the room to walk blindly through the halls.

  He passed several other members of the clan as he wandered, lost in thought, ignoring the scathing looks they gave him. He wasn't even Alpha yet, and they were already judging his decisions. There was a time when their belief in his capabilities would have meant everything to him, but that had been before the previous night.

  What were centuries of tradition and secrecy worth, he realized, when they isolated you from the world developing around you and the plethora of people in it? What were laws when they made you monsters?

  Out of nowhere, his mother's visage rose in his mind.

  Her face... her expression when he'd spoken of humans having wolf pups... he'd never seen quite that look before. Far from being affront at the very subject he'd mentioned, it almost suggested knowledge of such things.

  The thought made him frown.

  More secrets, and more lies.

  A week passed, and the tension in the den only increased until the very air one breathed was thick with malice. Between nightly transformations and the daily presence of a human in their midst, every member of the Douglas clan was exhausted. Liam and Luther were tearing one another apart at every given opportunity despite their parents' vain attempts to mediate.

  Viola and Liam had gone through some unseen falling out and were no longer speaking, which only further increased the younger Douglas brother's ire until he was growling at everything that moved.

  Atop an atmosphere crackling with discontent, every member of the den was preparing for the visit of the Elders. The five most influential of their kind were rarely seen outside the land of origin. While many of the clan present were affronted that Luther, their future Alpha, would be the cause of such drama, there were others who were eager to catch a glimpse of the elusive five.

  Yuna remained isolated in her cell in the lower levels. Though Viola brought her food and water every day, Liam's mate wasn't very good company, especially as she hadn't opened up again since their first and only conversation. In the cool darkness, she had more than her fair share of time to think of what might become of her. Admittedly, going a full seven days without seeing Luther, without being able to talk to him about his clan and their unfathomable rules, without being able to kiss him or touch him... or even tell him goodbye, was killing her. Slowly.

  By the end of the week, she was at the point of hoping that the council would arrive quickly, so that the whole thing could be over and done with. Waiting was always the worst part.

  The young woman thought that it might be late some night on the seventh day- all she had to tell the time with was Viola bringing her meals, and embarrassingly, a vessel in which she did her business- when her door unexpectedly opened. All lights beyond her room had been turned off, so the hallway was pitch black.

  There was a beat in which the doorway gaped wide, and Yuna tensed. If someone from the clan had come for her head early, there was nothing she could do. She barely had clothes, let alone anything with which to defend herself. She slid backwards into the corner of the room, making herself as small a target as possible. Not, she considered, that it would help. Every one of the Dougl
ases had excellent night vision.

  “...Yuna?”

  The dark-haired girl's breath whooshed from her lungs.

  “Luther?”

  “Both of you be quiet. You'll wake everyone.” The young woman jumped as Viola's voice cut through the darkness to join her brother-in-law's. “You have two hours. The Elders will be here tomorrow so if you're not out by dawn, we're all going to be punished.”

  “Thank you, Viola.” Luther's gratitude was as genuine as it was grave, and Yuna nodded her support, knowing the older woman could see it in the darkness.

  “Two hours.”

  The door slid closed quietly, and immediately the air was charged with the presence of the man she loved. She reached for him, blindly, and within seconds his arms enfolded her, and her senses filled with the clean, spicy scent of him.

  God, it seemed like forever.

  “Yuna, I'm so sorry.” His low baritone in her ear was the most welcoming thing she'd ever heard. “This entire mess is my fault. I should have been honest with you from the very beginning.”

  Yuna clung to him tightly, burying her face in his chest as she bit back a stressed deluge of tears. “You know I wouldn't have run from you, Luther.” She managed, taking a deep breath to steady herself. “I'd never run from you.”

  “You'd have been in danger all the same,” he replied lowly, a large hand curling into her dirty raven curls. “No less danger than you are now. But at least there would have been no secrets between us.”

  “I think you're forgetting...” the young woman rebutted lowly as she raised her head to look up at him. “My dad had a shotgun.”

  Her attempt at deathbed humor drew a half smile from Luther; even in a marble cell, awaiting what was probably a death sentence from his family, she was still a sucker for that smile. “He did, didn't he?”

  Yuna laughed weakly before laying her head against his chest once more. A sudden flare of heat in her shoulder caught her off guard and she gasped as it spiraled deep into her belly, kindling a slow throbbing in her womb. “What...the hell?” She managed as she pulled away from Luther to grasp at her arm as though she'd been burned.

  When she met Luther's gaze, she was surprised to see an expression that mirrored her own in heat and intensity.

  “It's the mark.” The blue-eyed man explained huskily before he reached out to grasp the edge of her sweater and tug at it until it exposed her right shoulder.

  Yuna's mouth dropped open. She'd admit that she hadn't paid much attention to the wound since Viola had told her it would heal on its own. Secretly, a naive part of her had hoped that if she'd ignored it, perhaps it would disappear altogether.

  Instead, her shoulder had closed into a deep red and purple scar that gleamed in the low light of her cell. The skin was smooth as a newborn's, but she could clearly see pinpricks of color that represented where Luther's individual canines had bitten deep.

  The memory made her shudder a moment before she looked back at him. “The mark is making me hot for you?”

  Her blunt question made Luther's lips quirk slightly in amusement. “You were already hot for me. The bond intensifies the sensation when I'm close to you.” As if to demonstrate, he stroked his fingers over it in the lightest of touches.

  Yuna's thighs clenched as a heady wave of warmth rolled over her, making her slightly lightheaded. “Oh, God.”

  Though exploiting their new-found connection was more than enough, in Yuna's opinion, to keep them busy for two hours, Luther stopped after only minutes, making the young woman eye him in expectation.

  “I want to let you go,” he murmured hoarsely. Yuna's head jerked up to meet his gaze, which was tortured. “To give you a chance. You could run.”

  “Luther,” she cut him off softly as sorrow welled in her breast. “They'd catch me, and they'd punish you.”

  “Yuna, I won't let them kill you.” His whisper was so fierce that for a blind moment, the young woman let herself believe that everything was going to be alright- that he could somehow protect her from centuries of tradition and the unyielding laws of his kind. But one look in his eyes told her that he felt just as desolate as she did.

  The fact of the matter was that they didn't have many options. Yuna had been alone, in the semi-darkness of her cell for a week. She'd had a long time to think, and a long time to contemplate Luther and his amazing, frightening kin.

  There was something unexplainable by man.

  A phenomenon, hidden from everyday eyes.

  Sure, their ways might be slightly barbaric, and she might think that Luther's brother was a complete asshole, but the fact of the matter was that he was an asshole for a reason.

  His people were going extinct, and he was acting in the only way he knew how.

  If there had been any way, any at all, that Yuna might have been able to save her parents’ lives, she would have. For years, she'd imagined confronting the hit-and-run driver who'd taken their lives and emptying the chamber of a gun into his head.

  Fortunately for both herself and for him, the man was locked in a maximum security facility somewhere in Texas on a life sentence.

  But her desires, did they make her any different than Liam, really? Taking something from someone who'd stolen from her?

  “Are you glad you did it?” The inquiry escaped her on a whisper and Luther's eyes narrowed as he gazed down at her.

  “Did what?”

  “Are you glad you marked me...it wasn't a mistake?”

  Almost immediately, the man took her firmly by the shoulders- sending bolts of arousal streaking over her skin- and brought her close, lowering his head until their eyes were locked.

  “You are mine, Yuna. You'll always be mine. There could be no mistake.” The intensity of his gaze took her breath away, and the young woman raised her hands to take his face between them as her heart swelled.

  “Luther-” he cut her off as his mouth fused to hers.

  The kiss filled her heart with utter and complete love for him. How could she have ever doubted this man? As her tongue slid against his lithely, he groaned, pulling her into his lap a moment before he spoke against her lips.

  “If they won't agree to hear my terms... to spare your life... I won't take the strain.”

  The young woman's eyes snapped open.

  She must not have heard him right. “...What did you just say?” Luther's deep blue eyes flashed yellow for the briefest of moments.

  “Unless they agree to negotiate, I won't become Alpha.”

  “But...” Yuna searched vainly for words as her thoughts whirled. “Viola said there wasn't anyone else. If you don't become Alpha, who's going to head the next generation?”

  “There won't be one,” her lover replied, his voice resigned as he released her to lean back against the cold wall of the cell. “It will end with me.”

  “Luther, you can't. Your kind are dying out. They'll go extinct all the quicker.” Yuna placed a hand gently on his thigh, her gaze soft even as her mind was clouded with confusion. She couldn't imagine what he must be going through, but ending his species couldn't be any kind of reasonable answer.

  “Maybe we're not meant to continue.”

  The auburn-haired man's low statement drew the woman's gaze upward to his.

  Yuna had known Luther her entire life. She knew that when he felt strongly about something, he tended go after it with his entire being. However, she also knew that he was far from obsessive. The expression on his face wasn't of one so crazed with adoration that he was willing to maliciously lash out against his own family. He'd never been like that - and he hadn't changed - this she was sure of. So she remained silent, and waited for him to continue.

  “Look at us, Yuna. We're well into the 21st century and we're keeping someone prisoner underground. We're ruled by a set of laws that are supposed to protect us, but is based on an outdated system that isolates us from the world. You can put whatever mystical, ancient spin you like on it, but the fact is that our ways are archaic. Christ, my f
amily is contemplating murder simply because I've bound myself to someone who's not one of us.”

  “If I can't give you viable children-”

  “What if you could?”

  Stopped cold in the middle of her protest, Yuna stared at Luther in utter shock. She was almost certain that she hadn't heard him right; yet it was beyond her to ask him to repeat what he'd said. For a moment, she returned to the conversation that she and Viola had had shortly after she'd been imprisoned.

  The dark-eyed woman had been pretty clear on the fact that humans couldn't provide children of their kind. All the talk about Yuna not being a viable female had inscribed that particular information deep into her consciousness. She'd caught herself, more than once, angry at the Douglas' selective language-and even more so at herself for only being what Luther wanted- not what he needed.

  But apparently, that wasn't the whole truth.

  “How?” She found herself demanding. “How could I?”

  “I don't know,” Luther admitted, covering her hand with his own. “But my mother does. Her expression when I mentioned the possibility was unbelievably transparent. She knows something... and I'll get her to reveal it before the Elders.”

  “If there is a way for me to have wolf children with you,” the young woman mused, trying not to let herself become too excited at the prospect, “Why would she hide it? Wouldn't that be the ultimate solution?”

  “Why indeed,” Luther's reply was low and slightly forlorn. “This family has far too many secrets, and far too many laws. What we need are explanations and adaptations. If we can't adapt... we might as well be done for, even if I do become Alpha.”

  For a moment, Yuna was silent, contemplating.

  Luther had a point.

  As good as the Douglases were at hiding, she herself was living proof that they couldn't hide forever. If they did do away with her, how long would it be before someone else came along?

  The young woman bit her lip.

  The small spark of hope that was kindling inside her was almost more than she could bear. If they could just get the Elders to listen, and Luther's mother to talk... she might be spared. Even more, she and Luther might have a future together.