Come Moonrise by Lucy Monroe Page A

but it was
drowned out by the eeriest growling she had ever heard.
    She sat bolt upright and looked toward the
window again. Another wolf was there. This one even bigger than Ty
and he looked mean. His eyes had that same human quality as her
lover's, but they were filled with a repudiation she had never seen
in Ty's.
    He bounded off the bed, putting himself
between her and the window. He growled in unmistakable warning at
the other wolf.
    The wolf barked back and then bared his
fangs.
    "What's happening, Ty?" she demanded in a
voice she couldn't quite keep steady.
    " My pack leader is not happy with our
mating ."
    "You said he'd have to accept it. That there
was no other option."
    " There isn't ." But the words didn't
ring true. They sounded desperate.
    King barked viciously and she flinched
beneath the quilt. "Don't lie to me, not even to protect me. I have
a right to know what is happening. He looks like he'd like to rip
my throat out."
    King's attention shifted from Ty to her and
his huge wolf's head nodded. He disappeared from the window and she
sat in paralyzed fear, not understanding what that meant. A second
later, the unmistakable sound of the front door opening could be
heard and then King walked into the bedroom.
    His naked human body gleamed pale in the
moonlight.
    Ty growled again, moving with blurring speed
to position himself between them again, his muscles coiled to
spring.
    King ignored his son and his own nakedness,
locking his attention solely on her. "Pack law states that until
you die, my son is mated."
    "So you want to kill me?" she asked, her
body trembling with the implication of the big man's words.
    "You trapped my son into a mating he did not
want."
    Ty barked and it sounded like he was
disagreeing, but she couldn’t know for sure.
    "I didn't know," was all she could think to
say.
    Suddenly another wolf jumped in through the
window, landing only a couple of feet from Ty and she screamed. She
shoved her fist in her mouth to stop another sound from emerging as
she recognized Duke, but that recognition gave her no comfort. Was
he here to help his father get rid of the unwanted complication in
Ty's life?
    "He told you to leave him alone," King
accused.
    "He made love to me like he would never get
enough," she responded, knowing only the unvarnished truth had a
hope of saving her now.
    Ty couldn't win against both of them.
    "If you touch her I will leave this pack and
never come back," a feminine voice sounded from the doorway.
    Ty's mother was here...in human form...as
well.
    King spun to face her. "What the hell are
you saying?"
    "I watched you mete out pack justice on your
best friend, a man you loved like a brother, because he broke pack
law. I hated it...I hated you for a while after you did it, but I
understood the justice. It's been our way of life for millennia.
But what you are proposing isn't justice, it's murder and you will
have to go through both your son and myself to commit it."
    "She tricked him into the mating, that has
to be punished."
    "He withheld the truth from her even though
she loved him. What did you expect, King? She needs him as much as
I've always needed you. They made love. How that happened isn't as
important as the fact that it did. They're mated and you have no
right to undo that mating just because it angers you."
    "She's a human."
    "So is part of you as much as you'd like to
forget that."
    Suddenly, Frankie realized that by staying
in the bed, cowering, she was feeding the bad opinion King had of
her. So, she stood up, but Ty wouldn't let her go near King.
    She looked at him, her own eyes filled with
a love she wasn’t sure he would ever accept she felt as readily as
his mother did. "I'm not afraid of your father."
    " You should be. My mom's not exaggerating. He killed his best
friend for breaking pack law ."
    "You saw it?" she asked.
    " Yes ."
    "You can hear my son in your head?" Carolyn
asked.
    Frankie looked at her. "Yes. He said mates
could do that