Cade looked up from under the thick straggle of his hair, grimy from the muddy puddle he’d been using as a pillow when he woke up. He curled his lip back from his teeth. It wasn’t a smile.
“Did I ask you?” he rasped, voice cold and very precise. “And if I did, was that when I told you that you could fucking touch me?”
The man looked embarrassed and a bit offended as he pulled his hand away. “I’ve never seen a wolf be sick before,” he said. “Not after they shifted, anyhow. That’s all.“
“Now you have. Change your life?”
The man glared at him as he stepped back. “I hope you choke on it,” he said over his shoulder as he stalked away.
“You too,” Cade muttered as he pulled himself together and stood up straight. “Fuck.”
It happened.
Nobody liked to talk about it—it wasn’t exactly nice dinner party conversation to have with your null neighbors—but that didn’t mean they didn’t know. Sometimes, during the full moon, you ate someone you knew. A neighbor. A spouse. That one asshole from the HOA that wouldn’t shut up about your lawn. Not often. Most nulls either stayed locked up this time of the month or were Night Shift and could take care of themselves….
That was the wrong train of thought.
Cade’s stomach wrung itself out like a filthy flannel and found a last handful of puke to add to the puddle on the ground.
It happened, but you weren’t meant to know. The wolf took the details of the night’s menu with it, and unless someone found an earring jammed in their back tooth, they never knew. Suspect, sometimes. A guilty itch that gnawed at them when the cops arrived to inform the neighbor's widow. A shared, queasy “maybe” when the papers reported on a body found in the same area you’d woken up in. Not for sure, though.
Legally, though, the cause of death in those cases was “the moon.” It made it easier to face the widow when you dropped off a casserole, to get on with your life.
It turned out it wasn’t so easy when you’d killed the man you loved.
Cade snorted, and a sour mix of stomach acid and puke stung the back of his nose. No. He couldn’t shed his guilt by pretending this was some tragic moon-crossed romance like Bonnie and Clyde. It had been a crush and the taste of Marlow’s breath on Cade’s tongue and maybe a date one day. He’d liked Marlow.
Then Cade had torn him apart and gulped down the soft bits.
Fuck.
Tears stung Cade’s eyes. He scrubbed them away impatiently on the back of his hand. Crying never helped anyone.
“Grief is just self-pity in a fancy coat,” the memory of his dad’s voice clipped out harshly in Cade’s mind. “Anyone really gives a shit; they get mad.”
Cade twisted his mouth into a joyless smile at how easily that came back to him. He’d tried to unlearn his dad’s lessons for years, but scratch the surface and there they were. This time, though, his father had a point.
It might have been Cade who killed Marlow, his teeth that sank into the flesh he’d kissed earlier that day. That just made him the weapon. Whoever had forced them off the road and left the moon to do his dirty work for him, they were the murderer.
And once Cade didn’t have a bit of Marlow’s liver caught between his teeth, that might actually feel true.
His stomach cramped again, but he’d milked the last bit of bile out of it already. Nothing came up. Cade spat again—the back of his tongue tasted foul—and wiped his mouth as he stepped away from the puddle of puke. He headed back into the street and stalked toward the nearest liquor store.
First of all, he needed cheap sweats and a bottle of whiskey. Those were easy. Then he’d work on answers… and payback.
When he found out who was responsible for what happened to Marlow—for what they’d made Cade do for them—he’d show them why he always did his own dirty work. It was illegal to use the moon as a deadly weapon, but only if Night Shift found out what you’d done.
Lem was good company for a black mood. He didn’t ask a lot of questions, and he liked to talk about himself.
“…Beth is awesome. Don’t get me wrong.” Lem sprawled along the gray leather couch that took up one wall of the office, his boots propped up on the arm. His self-centered ramble was a comfortingly familiar background drone. “But what if I miss cock, you know?”
Cade pulled a gray Henley on over his head and tucked it into the waistband of his jeans. His cheap sweats had been tossed in the trash to be burned. Usually, he’d just have them laundered and thrown into one of the clothes banks around the city—for the indigent or people who couldn’t afford to replace outfits they lost the night before—but the cheap fleece was stained with blood and sweat.
In the eyes of the law, Cade hadn’t done anything wrong. It still felt like evidence. He wanted it gone.
“You broke up a year ago,” he pointed out to Lem. “If you want cock, take your feet off the leather and go get it.”
Lem snorted and moved his feet but nothing else. “I mean if we got back together, obviously,” he said. “Keep up, old man.”
