Midnight Moonrising (Moonrising #2)
By: K.S. Haigwood & Anne Conley
Chapter 1
Mena
Sharp January winds whipped my dark hair around my face, tangling the tresses and briefly blocking a reality I didn't care to face from my eyes. However, the cutting breeze wasn't what was chilling me to the bone. The icy gusts were actually quite warm compared to what I was being forced to deal with on this day.
Marc's funeral.
Over a hundred people crowded around the green canopy that covered the pastor, a dozen or so close friends and family members, including myself, and a coffin holding a dead werewolf pack leader.
Of course, Marc was no longer a werewolf. I had taken his life, as well as his position of pack leader, after he bit me and infected my body with lycanthropy. In other words, I was supposed to grow fur, two additional legs, a long snout, razor-sharp teeth, and howl at the moon every four weeks.
Keep the dog jokes to yourself. It hasn't happened—yet.
My predicament wasn't burying my husband, though; it was that I had to act like I actually gave a damn about the man that lay, still and lifeless, in the box in front of me. I had never been a very good actress, and lying had never come naturally to me, like it had Marc, so saying I was a bit nervous was an understatement. I just prayed the people who didn't know who my husband really had been would overlook my odd behavior as my own way of grieving. Nobody did it the same anyway.
Most of the warm bodies at the cemetery were my pack. The rest were lawyers and their spouses, people who worked at the firm and maybe a few—very few—family members.
I could tell a dozen or so of the seventy-eight pack members hated me and what I had done to their previous pack leader, but the majority seemed elated with the change in leadership. I hadn't had time to talk with any of them much; I had accepted the moon on Friday, and the funeral for Chris, the werewolf who had challenged me and lost, had been on Sunday morning, and now Marc's ceremonial occasion was today, Monday.
I was expected at the courthouse the following morning to give a statement to the press about how Marc was such a stand-up guy and always put others' needs before his own, blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda—
I know what you're thinking. Why would they ask his wife to do something like that so soon after his death? That was actually my doing. Waiting a whole week wasn't going to happen. I needed it all behind me. Dead. Buried.
I stared at the beautifully crafted oak wood box in front of me, and thought, Literally, I need you buried.
I had changed so much in the past three days that I almost didn't know myself anymore. I knew it was her, my wolf, inside me, giving me strength mentally as well as physically. She had that whole 'no nonsense' attitude about life: if you can't do anything about it, then don't worry about it. She actually blocked that particular emotion from my brain, refusing to let me feel concern over things that were out of my hands.
Like Marc.
Like Chris.
I had murdered them both. Of course, both occurrences had been in self-defense on my part, but I doubted any judge would see things my way if I was ever accused. I couldn't tell the truth, and I didn't believe even my wolf was a good enough liar to keep us out of prison.
We couldn't go to jail. We wouldn't go. There was no possible way to hide my wolf from the system; my blood was tainted and different from any human's blood.
As it turned out, the coroner who had examined Marc and Chris, was one of my pack members, and had labeled Marc's death as homicide. The pack had removed all his belongings from his body, so that it appeared he had been robbed before or after the murder occurred. The examiner wrote Chris's death off as a vehicle accident fatality. They put him behind the wheel of his own vehicle and shoved a shard of glass through his chest where the dagger had punctured his heart, and then rolled the vehicle off a cliff. I was sure glad the coroner wasn't one of the few who didn't like me.
"Don't look, but we've got company—the bad kind," Daryn, a pack member, whispered by my ear.
I struggled to keep my attention focused on the pastor as he went on and on and on about how God had taken Marc from this Earth, 'too early, much too young,' the pastor said. That was crap; I had taken Marc from this world, and if you asked me or my wolf, it was much too late.
I couldn't fathom who Daryn imagined to be the bad kind of company. I had thought vampires were the only enemy to werewolves, but I had formed an alliance with the High Vampire of Montgomery, Alabama, and it was daylight to boot, so he couldn't be talking about Phoenix or any of his clan.
"Who is it?" I whisper-shouted over my shoulder, but Daryn didn't answer.
"Mrs. Hoke?"
Startled, I looked up to the pastor who was now standing in front of me. He smiled kindly and bent at the waist to take my hand. "I am deeply sorry for your loss, Mena. Marc is at peace now. Take comfort in the fact that he is with his creator. May the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit fill you with comfort and peace that passes understanding. I am always here for you and your family in this time of despair, so please do not hesitate to contact me if you need anything. Go in peace, my child, and be comforted by the love of your God. I know Marc is smiling down and watching over you."
I just bet he's smiling, I thought, but what I said was, "Thank you, Brother Thomas." The idea that Marc was watching me gave me the heebie-jeebies, and a chill skittered up my spine. Could they not bury the body already?