Dance Of The Hunter’s Moon
(Sakana Series Bk #3)
Amanda LeMay
Blurb:
Jules Havarr is a Breeder. For her, it’s a problem. Smaller than other wolves, she grew up feeling inferior to her pack mates. It didn’t help that males tended to avoid her, or looked down on her as though she were unworthy of attention. When a visiting Breeder extends an invitation to breed, Jules accepts his offer, even though it means leaving her home, friends, family, and pack behind.
Breeding at the Moon Dance is an honor she can’t refuse.
That is, until the moment she meets Sorin Campion, and a rare and ancient bond binds them together. She knows it in her heart, feels it deep in her soul. This male is her sakana, and she’s all in.
The only problem? The Breeder whose invitation she recently accepted is Sorin’s twin brother.
Sorin is a dead wolf walking. He’s suffered tragedy and heartbreak that left a lasting reminder of all he’s lost burned into his flesh. He’s lived the past few decades barely existing.
Can the sakana bond he shares with Jules awaken him from his misery, and bring purpose and hope back into his lonely life?
While exploring their love for one another, Sorin and Jules are tested by a dangerous ongoing threat to their pack. A dark and vengeful enemy may tear them, and their new found happiness, apart.
Surrounded by the rest of the pack as we waited for word from our Alpha, their heightened emotional state was almost overwhelming. With their anxiety battering at me from all angles, it made it difficult for me to deal with what was going on in my own head. The fear and apprehension the pack put off as a collective seemed to fill the air with a strange, bitter taste. It pressed against my skin, soaked through my pores, and rose up in the back of my throat like a sour tang I couldn’t wash away.
Standing in the hall, waiting for my mate, away from the others, I was finally able to catch my breath.
Sorin was on his way. He’d shut his emotions down. And that was okay. I might not have been able to share his emotions, but I felt his power…energy…whatever…and it lifted me, relieved the uncomfortable weight of feeling everything.
It had to be an Alpha thing—another effect of Sorin’s choice that threw me off balance.
The low, whining sound of a car engine came up the road, and with it came Hemming’s Alpha presence. Tipping my head to the side, I listened as the tires sloshed through the mud until it pulled up right next to the door Sorin, Taber, and I had entered through only two nights ago. Car doors opened and closed. Quiet voices murmured. The alarm pad at the inside of the door beeped as someone punched in the security code from the outside. The lock disengaged, then the door swung outward.
Cassia came in, her head bowed, her mother’s arm firmly around her shoulders as she led her shuffling daughter through the hall. I didn’t want to feel what came off Cassia, but knowing she’d been forced to witness what had been done to her friend, I was compelled to open up and focus on her anyway.
I flinched away at what hit me: guilt. Crushing, numbing, guilt.
Of course, she would grieve that way—she’d survived. Whether she carried physical wounds or not, the worst wounds of all were hidden inside, along with a thousand and one different forms of the question why.
I could relate to that. I’d watched my father fight for his life and die before my eyes. And even though no one held me down and made me watch, I didn’t look away.
Still…challenges were part of our culture.
Revenge murders were not.
And that was what Rina’s murder was—retaliation for her taking out one of their brothers. Why they didn’t kill Cassia, we might never know.
I took in a breath and sighed as Hemming came in from out of the darkness, Neeru at his side, both shifting to their human forms just inside the doorway. Seff’s shaggy brown wolf trotted through next, three other wolves behind him, all moving directly to their left and into the showers. No one spoke as they flipped the water on to rinse the mud from their arms and legs.
I pushed away from the wall. My gaze never left the door as I waited for my mate to appear. He was right there—outside the door—pacing.
Hemming’s muddy hand touched my forearm as he passed. “You and Sorin got fifteen minutes. Then I need you both in the dining room.”
I nodded.
Fifteen minutes? Fifteen minutes for what?
On silent paws, Sorin appeared. He slipped through the door and it closed quietly behind him. His big head swung around; his eyes landed on me. A dark brown mask framed his copper eyes and came to a point at the tip of his nose. The brown fur blended into buckwheat honey, the same shade as the hair on his head, as it traveled over his back to the tip of his tail. White belly, legs, lips, and jaws made up the rest of his fur, though, currently, most of his fur was splattered with mud.
Damn, my mate was enormous.
Thick legs, thick shoulders, thick mane around his neck. I wanted to fall to my knees and hug him like crazy, clamp my arms around him and never let go. The wolf in me wanted to roll around on the floor, lick him all over and submit to anything he needed, even if what he needed was to vent his anger by drawing blood. A shiver raced down my spine at the thought of his fangs piercing my flesh. Not that I was afraid. I was so far from fearing anything Sorin might ever do to me.
His head cocked to the side as he sniffed the air, then looked down the hall past me to Taber, and nodded.
“Seff,” Taber shouted. “Let’s go.”
“Just finishin’ up,” Seff called back.
The sound of running water splashing against bodies and wooden slats shut off abruptly, leaving only a quiet drip-drip-drip. Three males emerged, towels wrapped around their waists. Seff appeared from around the corner, tucking the ends of his towel in as he looked at Sorin. He paused for a second while he and Sorin locked eyes and held one of those silent convos for a second or two, before giving a short nod of his head. Seff’s brown eyes moved to me. His lips parted as if he were about to say something, but he didn’t. He didn’t smile, either. Without a word, he clenched his jaw and stared at the floor. I watched as he walked past me. Then he and Taber left the hall.
What the rogues had done to Rina, he’d seen it, but kept the lid on his own emotions nearly as well as Sorin did. I listened as the almost silent footsteps took them out of the room beyond, leaving me and Sorin alone.
Around the corner from where I stood, water came on. I moved into the hall of showers. Sorin stood there, the water raining down on his naked, human body. He’d braced his hands on the wall in front of him, his head bowed deep between his shoulder blades. I set his sweats on top of a stack of clean towels and took a step toward him.
“Sorin—”
“C’mere.”
I didn’t walk.
I ran.
I slammed my little body into his wall of muscle. His arms wrapped around me and pulled me under the hot shower as his mouth claimed mine. Soft lips and warm tongue and I couldn’t care less that I was getting soaked. I smoothed my hands up and down his back, feeling his muscles ripple beneath my fingertips.
He whispered against my lips as he grabbed the hem of my T-shirt and yanked it up over my head. “Need you. Need you now.”
