Lunar Marked (Sky Brooks Series Book 4) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Shed’ squealed for what seemed like hours but had only been a few minutes. She’d carried it everywhere and the purse, which was the monetary equivalent of what I put down on my house, had become her most treasured possession. It was odd that she would leave it. Maybe it was symbolic, leaving the baggage of the Midwest Pack behind, but something about it didn’t fit. I stared at the purse for a long time but didn’t point it out to Gavin—he was already too intense. I had no idea what extreme he would go through to look for her if I gave him more to fixate on.
    “She wouldn’t just leave us,” he said, voice low with resolve. He needed to believe that, and part of me needed to as well. It was about acceptance. If there were ever a time we were exposed there would always be people like her who didn’t care. We were human—that’s all she saw.
    “Have you spoken to her parents?” I was just stalling.
    “Not yet.”
    “She might have gone home. It’s home, she might not have felt the need to pack a bag,” I offered.
    I’m not sure if he believed it, but he wanted to. It was better than her being taken but it was more hurtful. If she had indeed left in a rush, she was running from us—from him. I’d always considered her an adrenaline junkie, riding the wave of danger by affiliation. The rules changed when she was hurt because of her association with us and the people who dwell in this world.
    He nodded. “Yeah, she might have. She said she missed her brother.” He didn’t seem any more convinced than I did.
    Gavin’s eyes narrowed as he raised his head, inhaling and slowly surveying the area. My focus landed on the jackal moments after his as it started to retreat back into the thicket, the spark of its eyes the only thing that shone through the dusk. Gavin darted, moving fast toward the animal, which turned and flitted around the trees. It was just barely seconds ahead of Gavin, whose speeds were faster than I had seen anyone run. Winter was fast—very fast—but Gavin seemed just as quick. That was another thing that I filed away along with his skill of moving in silence. Two things that didn’t bring me any comfort.
    I waited by the car, and when he returned, his breathing was heavy but substantially lighter than I would have expected after running at that distance and speed.
    “Why did you go after it?” I asked.
    “Were-jackal” was all he offered, as though it should have meant something. It didn’t.
    “So?”
    “We’ve never had any around here. It’s new. I think it was watching you.”
    G reat, another person that seems to just watch me. Logan did it often, but he didn’t do anything. Just an odd demon, in whatever form he had chosen that day, staring at me—not staring, leering. Added to the list was a jackal.
    “Why?”
    “When it comes to you, who knows,” he snipped.
    There it was. His general disdain for me had reared its little head. He ducked into his car and I expected him to speed away, but instead he followed me home and waited until I was in the house before he left but not before doing a cursory look around my home, out the back, and in the greenhouse. He even searched near my neighbor David’s home.
    “That has to be exhausting,” I mumbled, walking into the house.
    “What has to be exhausting?” Steven asked from the couch. He must have parked in the garage because I hadn’t seen his car. My heart jumped and I wanted to ask him if he’d changed his mind. But out of my peripheral vision I saw the packed boxes on his bed, and I felt that the world was too heavy. I tried to ignore them, but it was hard.
    His feet were propped on the coffee table next to a bottle of hot sauce and a bag of dill-flavored potato chips. He had convinced me to try his little concoction that didn’t seem fit for consumption by anyone. At what point in his life did he decide those two things should ever be near each other at any given time? But Steven considered it a genius idea, a