Read Online Gray Moon Rising: Seasons of the Moon by S M Reine - Free Book Online

with blood and her teeth fell onto her tongue. “Rylie, this is not the time. Get a grip.”
    Taking long, shallow breaths, she silently counted to fifty. When she got to ten, her fingernails had loosened again, and by the time she got to thirteen, the claws began to emerge. Her tailbone snapped. Her back arched, and she gripped her face in bleeding hands. Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one… get a grip, Rylie!
    The numbers weren’t calming her. Focusing on human things wasn’t calming her. And when the wind shifted to bring the smell of four wolves outside the car to her through the vent, that definitely didn’t help.
    Abel grabbed her wrists. “Stop it!”
    “I can’t,” she whimpered.
    A clump of hair loosened from her head and slithered to the floor. Her scalp itched as fur emerged in its place.
    Panic filled Abel’s eyes. He shoved her back against the seat, using his weight to hold her down. “I don’t want to shoot you,” he said with none of his usual bravado.
    Abel was interrupted by an explosion of motion outside the car, even more violent than Rylie’s motions within.
    The werewolves attacked the deer. They fell on the herd like a storm of teeth and claws. The deer tried to run, but they weren’t fast enough. Nothing would have been fast enough to escape the fury of a werewolf pack.
    It turned out that deer could actually scream.
    The sound of death was enough for Rylie to blink out of her own skull, like flicking a light switch, and the wolf took her place.
    Calm spread through her and pushed away the pain. The wolf sniffed at the human that had it pinned back against the bench seat of the Chevelle. His body was strangely bald, and those were hands on her legs instead of the proper paws, but it was her pack. He was not her enemy.
    The wolves outside, on the other hand—those smells were completely new. And they smelled sick. Their growls and yips as they tore into the deer were too savage, even for werewolves.
    She thrashed underneath Abel’s weight, trying to free herself so she could confront them.
    “Stop moving!”
    She ripped a paw free—her body was all wolf now—and shoved. His back struck the driver’s side door.
    Abel reached for her again. She snapped, and her teeth sunk into flesh. He cried out.
    Satisfied that he knew who was in control again, she turned her attention to more important things.
    The wolf slammed her body into the glass by her head. It cracked. She did it again, and again.
    The windshield shattered and sagged inward. She pushed through it with her head and shoulders, and her paws scrabbled for traction on the dashboard. The safety glass scraped uselessly against her fur. One more hard shove, and she was through.
    With all four paws planted on the hood of the sedan, she was taller than the other wolves, and could get a good look at what they had done.
    One of the deer had run off, but the rest were not so lucky. The wolves were feasting.
    Rylie threw back her head and gave a short howl that echoed through the trees. The feasting wolves froze and turned four pairs of luminous gold eyes toward her just before she leaped at them.
    A half-second later, a black SUV burst into the clearing.

N INE
    Collisions
    The Union tracked the werewolves they had shot for a couple of days. The silver poisoning took effect as soon as the bullets hit, but it was several hours before the effects got nasty.
    First, they fought with each other over the source of the gunshots. One of the women insisted it was an unseen farmer trying to get them off his land; the other said it was an assassin. The man only rambled about paranoid things, mostly the government and mind control.
    Second, the paranoia began overtaking the women, too. Their rationality faded. They jogged across the farms with jerky, twitching motions until running got too hard. They lost coordination. The man fell down and couldn’t seem to get up again.
    Third, they got hungry.
    They limped into a field of cows, continuing to argue and