Hunt Me! I Crave the Chase (Spooky Boys #3)

That he’d chickened out at the last second.

And I couldn’t stand that.

“No,” I said softly, shaking my head, blowing smoke up toward the cloudy sky. “Say what you were gonna say. It’s cool.” It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.

Blair waffled, but when I flashed him another smile—this one apparently more convincing than the last—he was able to move forward.

“You know I don’t blame you, right?” Blair said softly, and ice filled my veins. Immediately, revulsion burned through my body. The pizza in my stomach threatened to come up. But still, I smiled.

“Of course.”

You should blame me.

It was my fault.

It was all my fault.

“I think…it’s time to move on,” Blair said softly, reaching out and squeezing my shoulder, his grip tight. “Don’t you?”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.

I deserve this.

I deserve this.

I can’t.

“Okay,” Blair blew out a breath, grinning at me, the tension in his shoulders slipping away. “Good.” He leaned against my shoulder for a second, the warm heat of his body lending me strength as my thoughts spun out of control. “You deserve to be happy.”

I don’t.

I don’t.

I don’t.

“I know,” I bumped him back and he snorted out a laugh. “Fuck.”

“Corny as fuck,” Blair shrugged, “but…I dunno. I thought maybe you needed to hear it.”

“Thanks,” I took another bite of pizza so I wouldn’t throw up. Blair put the joint out, and we sat in silence for nearly twenty minutes before we’d calmed down enough to leave.

And then I went hunting again. First for my dog. And after that, for somewhere quiet to fall apart. Somewhere with a brick wall, and only one exit, so I wouldn’t have to worry about watching my back.

The day my moon mother betrayed me I was sixteen. The full moon was supposed to rise the following night and my skin itched and itched and itched. Pain ached in my veins, poisonous and all encompassing, and the world felt foreign—full of shapes I didn’t recognize, visions through unfamiliar eyes.

That’s how I knew something was wrong.

Because the moon had never hurt me before. She was my constant companion, hanging high or low, watching over me as I pranced through puphood to adolescence. Her steady glow had lit my fondest memories—nights rolling around in the leaves with my brothers. Hours chasing and running, with the scent of wet dirt in my nose, and pine needles beneath my paws. She had lent me light when I needed it most, lit my way when I was lost and lonely. Given me a family, a community, a home.

She was soft, cool blue edges—a second mother who looked down on me from the sky.

It had never occurred to me that she could turn her back on me.

The full moon had brought comfort before.

It meant time with my family when we were all one. Four paws, our instincts, and fur—the rest of the world forgotten as we became, for one night, what we were meant to be.