Beneath A Rogue Moon: The Brotherhood of Ruin, page 27
“Yeah, probably,” Jessie conceded.
We said our goodbyes and started for the door when Jessie stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. Leaning in close, she whispered in my ear. “I take it this means you took my advice and hooked up with him after all.”
It was almost impossible not to laugh. “I guess I did.”
My mood darkened a little as I climbed on the back of Ryce’s bike after leaving the bar. I knew the next stop wasn’t going to be half as enjoyable.
Despite dreading this visit, I was strangely calm when Lexi answered the door of their apartment. Even though he was worried, I’d asked Ryce to stay at the bottom of the stairs. There were some stands a person had to make on her own.
“What the hell are you doing here?” my sister spat out the moment she got over the shock of seeing me on her doorstep.
I didn’t have a chance to answer before my father pushed her out of the way. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away,” he snarled, his face beet red. “I told your sister you’d come crawling back before the week was out. That the second you realized you couldn’t hack out in the real world, you’d come crawling back, begging for forgiveness.”
“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, Dad. But that’s not why I’m here.” While it was clear he was expecting me to play the part of the repentant prodigal daughter, that wasn’t what was happening. “Though I want to apologize if you were worried about me. I would have contacted you sooner to let you know I was okay if I could have.”
“O-Okay?” My father stammered. “You ran off to play harlot with a common criminal, and you think we were worried about you being ‘okay’?”
I shook my head. “Ryce isn’t a criminal, Dad. He’s my husband.”
“Your what?”
When my dad’s face quickly turned from red to purple, I was glad I’d used the human term and not ‘mate’.
“Oh, you’ve done it now, Kayla,” Lexi shrieked in the background. “This is the last straw. I won’t have your filth in my house. In fact, I ought to call the cops.”
I shot her a patient smile. “I’m sorry you feel that way. I promise I won’t bother you long. I just wanted to let you know that I’m moving on with my life, so it might be hard to contact me for a while. If you want to reach me, you can leave a message at the Red Apple Tavern on the edge of town.”
They stared slack-jawed at me, not knowing what to say next, and for the first time, I realized I wasn’t afraid of them anymore. The only thing I felt for them was sympathy.
Love, family—these things weren’t supposed to be conditional. They were bonds that brought harmony to the world. All the worlds.
“I hope you’ll be happy,” I said, meaning every word. “As happy as I am now.”
And then I left, the last of my ties to my past breaking free and drifting away with every step.
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
KAYLA
The raven scryer’s hand rested lightly on my belly, her eyes closed, and her brows knitted in concentration. Even though I was hesitant, Ryce and I had traveled all the way to Obsidian Keep to see her—though this time, we got to travel on the marked trail.
Her small workroom was silent. The only sound was my anxious breath echoing off the stone walls. I wished I could tell her to hurry up. She’d been in the same hunched-over position for the last five minutes, and I had run out of things to look at to distract me from the tension. There were only so many tapestries, scrolls, and shelves lined with crystals and feathers that I could make out from my position.
Eventually, though, the woman opened her eyes. They were like brilliant gray marbles in a nest of wrinkles, giving the impression she saw much more than she let on.
“Girl!” Her voice boomed—at total odds with her frail and spindly body.
Ryce let out a whoop and kissed me hard while the scryer’s assistant ran to the balcony to address the crowd gathered below.
“It’s a girl!” the assistant bellowed, his voice magnified by magic.
Cheering erupted, going on and on, accompanied by the blast of horns and firecrackers. The child in my belly was the first reason for hope this world had had in a long time. And while I would’ve rather this moment had happened in private with Ryce, I understood that, in a way, our daughter belonged to all of Evergreen.
The scryer receded to her desk to confer with her assistant before recording this momentous occasion in a massive leather-bound volume that had been gathering dust for decades. Blythe took her place next to the divan that served as an examining table, her eyes shimmering with tears of joy.
“This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for,” she said, squeezing our hands.
The door was thrown open, and Tyr and Arran entered the room. They had wanted to be present for the entire ceremony, but Blythe forbade it with a single imperious word. I’d almost laughed watching the raven king and new bear chieftain ducking their heads and leaving without a word. Maybe one day, Blythe could teach me that trick.
“Congratulations to the happy couple,” Arran said. “You’ll make excellent parents.”
“Way to get the job done,” Tyr added with no less enthusiasm. “Does this mean Arran and I can get women now too?”
“Absolutely not,” I said sharply as I sat up. “You guys, you can’t just kidnap women and drag them back here against their will.”
This should have been obvious, of course.
“Don’t worry,” Ryce said in response to their perplexed expressions. “I’ll teach you how to date.”
“Date?” Tyr asked, his face contorted like he was tasting the word and found it sour.
“Court,” Ryce translated. “Woo.”
“Ah,” Tyr nodded in understanding. “Seduce!”
“Not exactly,” I tried before waving my hands and giving up. There would be plenty of time to teach the men of Evergreen the finer points of romantic relationships.
“That’s the part I’m looking forward to,” Tyr continued. “I’ll bet you a barrel of our finest ale I’ll know in an instant which woman is for me.”
“Is that so?” Ryce asked somewhat skeptically. “What will you look for?”
“She’s got to be sturdy,” Tyr said as if it was obvious. “Big round hips for carrying our babies, meat on her bones to keep her warm in winter—and no whining.”
“I’m only interested in the very best woman,” Arran offered without anyone asking. “Beautiful. Graceful. Intelligent.”
I didn’t even try to hold back my laugh. “And what makes you so certain someone like that would be interested in you?”
“Oh, I’m not concerned about that,” the raven king said with a wicked smile. “Seduction is quite simple. You only have to promise someone what they desire most. Once they’re eating out of your hands, they’ll do anything for you. Anything.”
“Okay, that’s definitely not what we’re talking about,” I protested.
Ryce broke in as I sputtered with indignation. “Maybe slow down a minute, brothers,” he said tactfully. “No need to rush things. There are plenty of women out there, I promise...and plenty of time to fall in love with them.”
“But—“
Ryce squeezed my hand to stop me from arguing. “Don’t worry about them, love. They’ll be fine...with a little help.”
“Really? Are you planning on being their wingman?”
“What’s a wingman?” Tyr asked.
Ryce ignored him. “Nah, I’ve got my hands full. And not just with you and the baby and fixing up the house, either.”
Blythe nodded solemnly. “It’s going to take a lot of work to rebuild Lupine after years of neglect,” she said. “Grimm will need your support as he takes over as the new lord.
“I promised him I’d do everything possible to help,” Ryce assured her.
“You’ll have the support of the ravens,” Arran promised.
“And the bears.” Tyr wasn’t joking around anymore. “And with a newly appointed Council, we’ll all have to work together more than ever.”
“But you’ll figure it out,” Blythe said, beaming. “This is a return to the way things were meant to be. Our worlds were never meant to be severed. It’s why there has been so much strife and ruin. But we will find a way to be whole again by coming back together.”
Ryce looked at me tenderly, the two of us sharing a private thought without speaking. Because we, too, could only be whole when we were together. Though I never would have believed in such a thing before, I had come to understand that some people were truly meant for each other.
Ryce took my arm as I slid off the table. Though I was only a month along, he was already acting like I was weighed down and aching.
“We’d better get on the road,” I said, not wanting to spend the night in the raven keep. Even though I knew Arran was our ally, the place still gave me the creeps.
Besides, the little shack had grown on me, even while Ryce was still busy building the extra rooms and plumbing he’d promised me. And there was no place in the world I wanted to be more than back under my own roof...in my own bed...in my mate’s arms.
Thank you for reading Beneath A Rogue Moon, the first book in the Brotherhood of Ruin series. There are so many more stories on the way. Keep reading for a sneek peek of Tyr’s book, coming Sept 1st, 2023
Available for preorder now:
Beyond the Shattered Veil
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Beyond the Shattered Veil
Meredith
I was bored. Dear God, I was bored.
Unfortunately, that was nothing new. These days, while I was working, every hour, minute, and second seemed to drag.
"Yeah, like this is work," I muttered to myself before quickly checking that my headset mic was muted. The last thing I needed on a night like tonight was for my family to overhear a comment like that. Fortunately, the dot next to my name on the monitor was indeed red.
I barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief before squawking from one of the monitors demanded my attention. I scanned the various video feeds, squinting through my yawn to see which of the dozen night vision field cameras showed the disturbance. I found it easily enough. One of the perimeter alarms hanging from trees around the camp had been tripped. They were connected to motion-sensor cameras, optimistically carted from site to site by my dad just in case something interesting happened to wander near the camp.
Switching my audio channel back on, I pulled my mic closer to my mouth. "Uncle Milt, it looks like an animal tripped the perimeter sensor in section three. Can you check it out?"
For a long few seconds, there was no answer. I was just about try again when my headphones crackled to life with the sound of wind, background static, and the unmistakable burble of a guy taking a wizz.
"Uh, sorry, Mer-bear," my Uncle Milt’s voice filled my ears. "I'm a little busy at the moment."
Urg. I let my head fall back against my shoulder blades, my eyes rolling up to the heavens beseechingly. What the hell had I done to deserve this?
All my life, I'd dreamed of working in the movies. I'd gone to film school, earned my degree. Cinematography, editing, sound and production design—I'd studied them all. But instead of working my days away on a studio lot in Hollywood, I was hunched over a tangle of cables and screens in a camping tent in the Siskiyou Mountains, listening to my uncle pee.
Needless to say, life had not worked out the way I had planned.
"Okay." After letting out a deep breath, I tried again. "Well, when you finish your business, can you check out sector three? Whatever tripped the sensor, it was big."
"How big?" my brother, Matt, broke through on the comms. "Like Bigfoot big?"
No, I wanted to shout. Not Bigfoot big...because Bigfoot doesn't exist!
But instead, I closed my eyes, rested my head in my hand, and rubbed my aching temples. "I don't know. I didn't see what set off the alarm. The only way we'll know is if someone goes over there and checks it out."
Chances were it was a deer or raccoon. Nine out of ten times, those were the kind of animals that tripped the sensors. But on a few occasions, it ended up being a larger nocturnal predator—a wolf or even a bear. What it never ended up being, though, was the one thing my family and I were supposedly out here to catch.
Bigfoot.
God, how I wish I could tell you that was a joke. But that was our job—professional Bigfoot chasers.
Like every wild adventure my family was ever dragged into, creating a cryptid-hunting video channel had been my dad's brainchild. It came to him the day after I graduated college, and he sweet-talked me into working on his pilot episode by saying that I could think of it as a thank-you for all the support he gave me through college.
I never dreamed it would amount to anything, but I shouldn't have underestimated my father. He always had a true talent for spinning bullshit and convincing people it was gold.
The day I posted that first video, it only got a handful of views. The next day, it was pushing five thousand likes and a smattering of enthusiastic comments. By the end of the week, the damned thing was in the top five most-viewed videos in a search for 'Bigfoot.'
"Just help me do a couple more," my dad wheedled, "until I get the hang of it." But a couple more turned into an entire summer, at the end of which I was making enough to get my own place, buy an almost-new Prius, and pay for my health insurance, which was frankly better than any of my friends from film school were doing.
And that's when I knew Dad had me hook, line, and sinker.
It didn't take long for the rest of the family to jump on the bandwagon after that. My brothers Matt and Briggs, Uncle Milt and his kids, Ken and Dave, all joined my dad on camera while I stayed on the technical side.
So far as I knew, none of us, except for Matt, actually believed in Sasquatch. But what good was the truth matter when lies paid for mortgages, braces, pickup trucks, and jet skis?
Early on in our venture, I'd overheard my dad and uncle worrying that the river of cash would dry up when they failed to produce an actual, verifiable sighting. But the opposite had happened. The occasional grainy footage of a thermal hit—in reality, just a mountain lion or wild boar—was enough to send our audience into paroxysms of swooning delight. Sometimes I thought we could film an episode in the pharmacy department of the local Walmart, and none of our subscribers would mind.
God knew it would have been a hell of a lot easier than my usual routine of filming all night, catching a few hours of sleep on an inflatable mattress, and then editing everything together the next day from the passenger seat of Dad's truck while he led us to the next Sasquatch hotspot halfway across the country.
Of course, hotspot could be a subjective term. For instance, tonight, we'd set up camp just outside of Vidalia, Oregon, where a couple of months ago, two drunk loggers had stumbled out of a roadside bar and into what they described as a "Bigfoot brawl."
Dad had read about the incident in some shady online article, and that was good enough for him. We were off.
Eventually, the sound of Uncle Milt zipping up his pants played in my ears.
"All right, Mer," he said with a satisfied groan. "I'm off to check out that motion sensor."
"I'm headed that way, too," Matt practically shouted in his exuberance.
"Stay at your post, Matty," Dad gently chided my brother. While he liked to think of himself as a self-appointed sergeant, in reality, he just didn't have the bite.
A fact that was made crystal clear from the sound coming over the radio of my little brother's loud footsteps as he raced through the dark forest. "No way! I'm not missing out if it's really him this time."
I logged down the time stamp on the recording—2:34 a.m. While I could argue that my little brother was the most gullible member of the Ives family, he had a knack for soundbites. That one would be the perfect teaser for this video's intro section.
I had just started to look back up when a blur on one of the monitors caught my eye.
"Um, Uncle Milt," I said hesitantly. "Where are you right now?"
"Still heading toward sector three," he answered.
"Why?" Dad asked.
"It's probably nothing," I answered. "I just thought I saw—"
The same blur blew past another camera—one closer to the camp. The hairs on the back of my neck started to stand on end.
"Oh my God," Matt cried out loud enough to send any animal in a three-mile radius running for cover. "It really is one this time, isn't it?"
"No," I said, shaking my head. "It can't be. There's no such thing as—"
"That's enough, Meredith," Dad interrupted before I accidentally recorded proof of my doubt. "You know as well as the rest of us that autumn is the best time to find a Sasquatch. It's their last chance to bulk up before going into hibernation."
"Right," I said, my eyes glued to the screen showing the next infrared trail camera closest to me.
It didn't matter that I was only half-listening. Every video I edited for our channel contained a version of that nugget of bullshit, and astonishingly, our subscribers never questioned it.
In the winter, Reggie Ives told his followers it was the best time of year for Bigfoot hunting because the huge brutes were desperate for food. In the spring, he claimed they were likely to catch a distracted beast during mating season. Summer brought a bounty of easily available food, which according to Dad, made them somnolent and lazy.
Worry must come through in my voice because Uncle Milt checked in. "Everything okay?"
"Yeah, all good. Just a…hang on a second."
"If it's coyotes, make a lot of noise, 'cause—"
"Holy shit," I yelped, jumping back from the camera as something big walked in front of the camera.
Walked.
But what I was seeing on the video feed wasn't a coyote. Whatever the creature was, it was covered in dark fur, was nearly seven feet tall, and was walking on two legs. Bears were known to do that occasionally, but never for more than a few seconds at a time.
