Moon of the Terrible (Seasons of the Moon) Read Online Free PDF Page A

since he told Rylie, “Don’t watch.”
    She tried to do as he told her—it would only be worse if she got mad and gave Pagan what she wanted. So Rylie had only peeked twice. She regretted both times.
    He remained silent as Pagan pinched his shattered thumb. “Well, this is no fun,” she said, dropping his arm. “You’re not getting angry at all.”
    Seth breathed hard through his nose. His skin was ashen gray, almost the same color as Eleanor’s. “My mom trained me to withstand torture,” he said without a hint of emotion. “You can thank her for it.”
    Pagan snorted. “Great.”
    She slammed her fist into Seth’s face, knocking his head into the wall.
    Rylie wasn’t expecting it, and the shock made her wolf instantly take control. “Stop it!”
    “That’s a little better,” Pagan said. “That’s more of the animal I want to see. I think we’re warmed up now—don’t you?”
    Rylie strained on the end of the chain, her hand swiping uselessly through the air.
    She roared her frustrations.
    “Rylie!” Seth shouted, jerking on the chain that connected them. “Calm down!”
    “Well, don’t do that . Things are just getting good!” Pagan said.
    The door at the top of the stairs opened. A brunette man wearing a black polo shirt gestured. “I need you, Pagan,” he said.
    Rylie was surprised enough to see someone new that she immediately stopped fighting. She sniffed the air. The man wasn’t a werewolf—so not Cain.
    “Hold onto that thought, blondie,” Pagan said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
    She went upstairs, and the door shut behind her.
    Only then did Seth groan.
    Rylie sat at his side, careful not to touch his arm. “That was amazing,” she whispered. “How did you do that?”
    He cradled his hand against his chest. “You kidding? That was no worse than sitting through my anatomy finals.”
    It was probably meant to make her laugh, but the wolf didn’t think it was funny. Seth’s pheromones smelled sick and heavy—like wounded prey. She found herself staring at his broken fingers.
    Her stomach growled. When was the last time she had eaten?
    “Are you okay?” Seth asked, stirring her out of her reverie. She slumped against the wall.
    “Yeah. I just… I don’t know how to get out of this without changing.”
    “What if I picked the locks on our shackles?”
    Seth held up two of the silver pins that Pagan had laid out with her other weapons. Somehow, he must have slipped it away from her stash while she was torturing him.
    Rylie’s relief was instant, dizzying—and brief. “But your fingers are broken.”
    “I’ll walk you through it,” he said. She pulled her sleeve over her hand and let him drop the pins into her palm.
    Footsteps beat against the floor over their head. It sounded like Cain’s people were pacing.
    Rylie’s heart sped as she peered closely at the lock.
    “What do I do?” she asked.
    He described the process to her—pushing each of the tumblers into place with the first pin, and then using the leverage of the second pin to turn the lock.
    Rylie tried. She really did. But she couldn’t even imagine the inside of the lock based on his descriptions, and she wasn’t nimble enough with her shirt over her hand. Especially not when the wolf felt like it was still circling inside of her skull.
    She slipped and burned her fingers on the silver. The pins dropped to the floor. Her eyes burned. “I can’t do it. I can’t, Seth.”
    He rested his unbroken fingers on top of hers. “There’s one other thing we can try. It’s crazy, but we’re running low on options.”
    “What?”
    “Bite me,” Seth said.
    Rylie stared at him. “ What ?”
    “You heard what I said. Bite me.”
    The implications of his order dawned on her, and with it came a creeping feeling of dread.
    She shook her head fervently. “No, Seth!”
    “Look, think of it this way,” he said. “If you can infect me, all my wounds will heal within hours. Best case scenario, I heal