Read Online Sixpence & Whiskey by Heather R. Blair - Free Book Online Page B

When he died, Luna lost her mind, and she never got it back.
    Fairy-tale creatures have our own form of law. One that might be rather loosely applied and subject to interpretation, but once the Council hands down a sentence, it’s ruthlessly carried out. When they got enough complaints about Gil running rampant—after the pack refused to mete out justice—they took matters into their own hands. Or my mother’s hands, as it turned out.
    While not much of a team player normally, Mom agreed to be the Council’s executioner in this instance. I didn’t realize it then, being young and blinded by my friend’s pain, but I know now she did it to spare Luna what pain she could. I hated her for it at the time. So did Luna.
    Mom caught Gil by using a morphing spell she’d always refused to teach me, or my sisters. Her excuse was that it was too dangerous to run with wild things. Once she got close enough to Gil’s wolf, she transformed back and bound him in iron. Iron forces a werewolf into their human shape, and holds them there. She took his life with a silver athame that is still in her room, locked away. I know, because she warned me never to touch it. It’s imbued with Gil’s spirit now, and the spirit of a crazed and vicious alpha male is not something to be trifled with.
    I sometimes wonder if she took his soul, too, but I never could bring myself to ask.
    Mom brought his body back to the pack. They couldn’t eat him the way they normally do their dead because of the moon madness, so they burned him instead. I was there, I saw the pyre.
    I snuck in that night to see Luna, casting invisibility to get inside their lands. A spell I was barely capable of at the time. She attacked me as soon as I showed up in her room at the lodge. She didn’t call the pack down on me, but I was lucky to get out alive; a trio of older teenage wolves picked up my scent and nearly ran me down before I hit the perimeter.
    Luna has vowed to tear out my mother’s throat. God knows I feel for her, but the whole bloody mess put quite the damper on our relationship. Then her pack crashed my twenty-first, almost killed Sy and tried to get their fangs on me. She wasn’t part of the alpha hierarchy then, but she damn well was when they went after Thomas several years later.
    Now she’s top dog. Her and her lovely mate. My teeth grind together. If the pack really is targeting Duluth, it’s because Luna is ordering it.
    She breaks the silence first.
    “I never could sneak up on you, Sephie. It always pissed me the hell off.”
    “It still does.”
    She laughs then, a wild, animalistic sound that raises the hairs on the back of my neck. “Yeah, it fucking does. I could never hide anything from you.”
    “I don’t know about that.” I give her a sidelong look and catch the flash of a toothy smile. I don’t like that smile, not at all. “Hearing some things that make me concerned.”
    “And I hear Frost is back in town,” she shoots back. “Maybe you should be more concerned about keeping an eye on your ex-lover.” I resist the urge to flinch, but it’s a close thing. Everyone knows what happened between me and Jack. FTCs are a gossipy bunch.
    “Jack doesn’t scare me.”
    Luna’s lip curls at the obvious lie.
    “And I do? Hell, I’ll take that as a compliment. But you can bet he’s scared of you , baby witch.” My hands tighten on the bridge. She hasn’t called me that in years. Not that we’ve been prone to regular conversations, but I’m confused. Why the hell does she think Jack would be scared of me? “They’re all scared of you. Weak and sneaky with it. But not me. I’ll give it to you straight. You best be careful. Shit is coming down, Persephone.”
    I stare at her. Luna’s always needed to be the baddest badass around. Comes of being a female alpha, and her methods of attaining that come of what happened to her dad. Or so I tell myself. I kick a pebble off the bridge and into the shallow water, watching the splash