Accepting the Moon: Prequel (Moonrising Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

well-defined, shirtless chest. His sculpted torso was lean and would put any male model that I had ever seen to shame. The faded blue jeans he wore fit him extremely well and his feet were bare. There was nothing feminine about him, but he was so handsome he was pretty. An Adonis reincarnated perhaps.
    The clearing of a throat snapped me out of admiring my captor, and I glanced over to see Jaxon with his hand held out to a couch. He raised an eyebrow nervously, and I looked back to the other male. He was waiting for me to obey him; that was clear now. When he‘d offered me a seat, he had actually given me an order to sit down, his seductive voice only making it sound like he was giving me an option.
    I inhaled deeply as I sat on the edge of the cushion.
    The corner of Adonis‘ mouth twitched in amusement. I found that irritated me profusely, but I wasn‘t sure if it was my anger or the lust that he was stirring in me that caused me so much agitation.
    My hands curled into tight fists on my lap to keep from fanning my blouse. It was hot in the room all of a sudden.
    “My name is Phoenix. I hear you‘ve met Jaxon. He informed me of what occurred with the werewolf leader and his pack—”
    Despite how much I wanted to cry, I laughed instead. “Werewolf?”
    Phoenix‘s eyes darted to Jaxon. “I thought you said she knew.”
    “She saw him change. It doesn‘t mean her mind accepts it. She‘s in denial.”
    “Wait, you‘re saying that werewolves are real, and that a man I have been married to for over twelve years is one of them?” I said, and didn‘t feel like laughing anymore. I actually felt a little dizzy.
    The two men stared at one another for a long moment before Phoenix looked back to me. “Not just a werewolf, Mena, but the werewolf. He was the pack leader. We‘ve been trying to discover his true identity for over a decade, so we could ruin him publicly, but he covered his tracks well.”
    I sat there and tried to process what they were telling me, that my husband turns into a monster once a month. They didn‘t look crazy, but they sure sounded like it. I shook my head. Werewolves weren‘t real. But if they weren‘t, then what the hell had Marc turned into?
    I locked eyes with Jaxon and remembered an earlier question I had asked him that had gone unanswered. “Why would you want to turn me into one of them?”
    He wasn‘t the one who answered.
    “You already are one of them,” Phoenix said, and I reached out and grabbed the arm of the couch to steady my swaying body. “Actually, you are now the one, Mena. You became one of them the moment your husband bit you, and you became the pack leader a second later when you put a silver bullet through his heart. To become a pack leader, you have to take the life of the current one.”
    I couldn‘t breathe.

Chapter 9

Phoenix
    The girl intrigued him. That was a fact, perhaps even more so than any other female he had ever met before. And that was saying a lot for this one.
    Jaxon had been right: she was enchanting, but Phoenix had killed plenty of beautiful women, as well as not, in his long life. Her being the new werewolf pack leader only made him want to drain her of the enemy blood that much more.
    Was he toying with her? Maybe. Mayhap it was the way Jaxon had begged him to spare her life that kept him from breaking her neck then and there. Could be. Jaxon had never really asked him for anything, which was why he still held second in command status.
    The guy had said it was his fault entirely the girl had been bitten in the first place, but Phoenix knew that to be untrue. He was the only one in the area strong and fast enough to take on the pack leader. And that‘s when Phoenix realized why the girl‘s heart was still beating: she was a human girl—the wife of the pack leader no less—and she did something he himself had been unable to do since the male had defeated the previous pack leader: kill him.
    She couldn‘t stay here, he decided. She