Page 26 of Broken Moon

“Tell me,” he ordered, as westrode into his office.

I gestured at the computer onhis desk. “Can I use your computer? I’ll show you.”

He nodded, and I sat down inhis comfortable chair, shivering slightly when he leaned over me to look at themonitor. “Just bring it up. I’ll read while the doctor looks at you.”

“I told you I’m good,” I said.

“You were injured working forme. It won’t hurt to be examined.”

I sighed, then gave in. “Fine.”I clicked the keys, scrolled through the results, and finally brought up what Iwas looking for. “This,” I said. “This is the creature we’re up against.”

The images were onlyillustrations, but there was no doubt it was the creature haunting the woodsand killing the wolves.

“Exsoloup,” he muttered. “Theseimages do look similar to the creature in the woods. I heard stories when I wasa child, but never thought they were real.”

“Apparently they’re extremely rare,”I told him. “The wolf’s bogeyman.”

His shoulder brushed mine as heleaned closer, and as I tried to concentrate on the exsoloup’s story, I wasdistracted by the realization that if I turned my head just a little, I couldslide out my tongue and taste the alpha’s skin.

I’d lost my mind, apparently.

I glared at the screen, forcingmyself to remember how I’d felt when Jared had stood at his father’s side andwatched my mother and me being pelted with rocks and forced from Gray Shadowland.

It did help. I stiffened andmoved a little away from him, and I know he noticed. He said nothing, however,just silently read the story of the exsoloup’s origination.

It was believed to haveoriginated in France. The creature was a wolf who’d begun a relationship with asorceress. The sorceress fell in love with him, got pregnant, and when she wentto him with the joyful news, she found him with another. He spurned her,telling her he’d never intended for her to be his one and only.

“A little stupid to fuck with asorceress that way,” I murmured.

“Maybe he didn’t know she was asorceress,” he replied.

She lost the child shecarried—whether deliberately or from the shock was unclear—and as the monthswent by, she became obsessed with her lost love. She grew more and more bitter,stopped seeing people, stopped taking care of herself…nothing mattered to herbut the wolf.

And getting revenge.

I shuddered when I read thatbit, commiserating with the sorceress. I, too, had dreamed of revenge, thoughit was locked up tight in a dark corner of my mind.

The sorceress had cooked up aspell—a curse, really—and when it was ready, she’d sneaked up on the wolf as helay sleeping, or so the story went, and hit him with the curse. It took hisshift. He would always long to shift, but he was cursed to live the rest of hislong life as a human. A human with a shifter’s needs, desires, wants.

Shit. Now I felt sorry for thefuckingwolf.I well knew the agony of a wolf losing its shift.

But in a surprising twist, thewolf’s mother was as full of magic as the sorceress. She was a witchwolf, and inher grief at her son’s pain and loss, she gave him the ability to take what hecouldn't have. When he sucked the life force from a wolf, he became a wolf fora little while, able to find his shift and run until the power wore off—then hewas back to the monster.

He became like the creaturewe’d seen, hiding in the shadows, sucking life from wolves, alone, despairing,unable to shift but full of the agonizing need to do so, and his only reliefcame from killing others.

He took it, the selfish son ofa bitch.

Who knew how the rest of theexsoloups came to be? There were only two theories in the article. One of themsaid the creature had raped one of his victims but let her live. Another saidhe’d fallen in love with one of his victims, gotten her pregnant, and theylived happily ever after.

But I knew monsters didn’t geta happy ever after.

Anyway, an exsoloup had come toClinton County, and it had found the wolves. I imagined the creature traveledthe world looking for victims. Wolves weren’t that numerous, really, but ourcounty happened to have two packs. A veritable feast was at his fingertips.

“I’ll have to kill him,” I said.

“If this article is to bebelieved,” the alpha said, stepping back, “youcan’tkill it.”

I frowned and peered at therest of the text. Only a demon possessed the power to kill an exsoloup. Theoriginal sorceress had apparently put that into the curse as a way not to givethe wolf relief in death, but to give the wolves reprieve should he become toopowerful.