Unleash The Moon (The Preternaturals Book 6) Read Online Free PDF Page A

next
full moon he would reach his full power. If there was any chance at
all, it would be on that night.
    He’d forgotten about the twenty-eighth birth moon.
But one day in a dream after he’d eaten the drugged meat, Aunt
Greta of all people had shown up, telling him the harrowing story
of what her twenty-eighth birth moon had been like.
    It could have just been a dream, but when he woke,
he remembered. Aunt Greta wasn’t mated in the same way his kind or
the demons or vampires were mated, but she lived with a man who was
much the same as a mate, a sorcerer named Dayne. Had he somehow
made it possible for the werecat to deliver the message? Or was it
a coincidence—his own subconscious reminding him that there might
be a way to escape this place after all?
    Was somebody out there still hoping and believing
Noah was alive? He wanted to believe they hadn’t given up on
him.
    In the early years, he’d only been a child. The idea
of escape had seemed like a lofty dream. It was a comforting story
he told himself to fall asleep, and then, once asleep, it became
more real and played out in vivid color.
    But each day when he woke, it became the impossible
feat once again. These people were powerful. They’d created a
fortress of their city that no preternatural could get inside, and
a fortress of their prisons that no preternatural could get out
of.
    As he’d grown older and wiser, he’d begun to see the
cracks in their security, the way they believed too much in the
stuff they sent in with the canned air, the drugs they gave them,
the cheery robotic voice that worked daily to brainwash a bit more
of their soul away.
    Noah wouldn’t let them succeed. He thought about his
parents, about Aunt Greta, about Sydney. He trained his mind daily
to stay stronger than his captors even if he seemed obedient, even
if it seemed he would never attempt escape because he never had
before.
    “ Please remember, keep
fraternizing to a minimum while in the fitness yard,” the cheerful
robotic voice said over loud speakers. The speakers sat atop very
tall fences crowned with barbed wire.
    Noah didn’t have to shift yet under the moon, but
when it was full, he wouldn’t have much of a choice—particularly on
his twenty-eighth birth moon. One would think if it was the night
he’d reach the height of his power that he’d be able to control the
shift when under the moon, but it didn’t quite work that way. The
moon overwhelmed most of them, even the strongest, unless they’d
just fed.
    He ran laps around the yard. They didn’t have to
tell him not to fraternize. Others would betray you when it would
save their own neck or when it most suited them. If you told
someone your thoughts or feelings or plans, they were out there.
And in a place like this, that was bad. He wouldn’t speak to
anyone, and was only grateful that as a werewolf, nobody could
force their way inside his mind.
    They watched all therian interactions closely. But
they didn’t worry about Noah and had long ago figured out that he
wasn’t about to form any tight bonds. In their minds, it probably
meant he’d succumbed to his fate—accepted it so he wasn’t a threat
to them. In his own it meant he didn’t have to worry about busting
anybody else out to take with him.
    He wouldn’t allow himself to get attached. To any of
them. He’d have one shot, and friends would only be dead
weight.
     
    ***
     
    Sydney sat in the passenger side while Jacob drove.
She still wished she could have left him at the compound, but he
was a dead man either way he went: coming out here into the wild
with her or staying behind.
    It was only a matter of which way he wanted to die,
and he seemed to have chosen with Sydney. If it might be any
consolation to the human driving the old-fashioned truck, she’d be
killed right along with him. He was stronger than her, and a better
fighter. So if he died, she did. Unless she accidentally drained
him first.
    When the humans had reinforced the cities