Page 19 of Moonlight & Mayhem

Moon looked terrified, and Mayhem straightened slowly. “What?”

Howler pointed at the monitor. “Every time she touches you, your heart rate slows down.” Moon released him, and his heart rate climbed. Howler’s face went dark. “They knew that this would happen.”

Moon whispered, “What would happen?” she asked.

“They knew about the mate bond,” Howler said.

Mayhem’s wolf growled. “How?”

“That’s what we need to find out,” he said. Howler paced in front of them. “The attack was too specific. Mayhem was targeted. They infected him instead of killing him. Then they followed him here.”

“To Moon,” Mayhem said. Howler nodded.

Moon backed away. “No.”

Mayhem watched her. “Moonlight, Howler’s right.”

“No.” Her scent filled with panic, and Mayhem moved toward her. “Don’t,” she said, holding up her hand to stop him. He did, not because she ordered him to stop, but because she looked terrified of something he couldn’t see.

“They weren’t trying to kill you,” Moon whispered. Mayhem said nothing as her gaze dropped to his blackened veins. “They wanted you brought here.”

Howler’s expression hardened. “To Dark Chaos.”

Moon shook her head. “To me.” The room went silent, and Mayhem’s wolf surged. Moon opened the journal again with shaking hands. She scanned the page and then stopped as all the color drained from her face.

“What?” Mayhem demanded. She didn’t answer. “Moon.”

Her eyes lifted. “If this is the same ritual⁠—”

“What ritual?” he asked.

She swallowed. “The carrier isn’t the weapon.”

Mayhem stared at her. “What is?”

Moon’s voice barely carried. “The mate.” Mayhem’s wolf roared, and somewhere beyond the walls of the Dark Chaos clubhouse, a wolf howled. It wasn’t Silverfang or Dark Chaos, but something else. Something was waiting out there for her.

Mayhem turned toward the sound. His body might have been poisoned, and his wolf might have been trapped, but one thought burned hotter than everything else. They hadn’t infected him to destroy Silverfang. They had infected him to get to Moon, and whoever had made that decision was about to learn exactly why his road name was Mayhem.

Moon

Moon had spent most of her life healing things she understood—broken bones, bullet wounds, knife wounds, silver poisoning, and even the occasional shift gone wrong. There was comfort in knowing what she was facing. An injury had a beginning and an end. She could assess the damage, decide on a treatment, and work until the patient was stable. But this was different. This was old magic wrapped around blood and instinct, and Moon hated every second of it.

She stood in the middle of her clinic with her grandmother’s journal open in her hands and read the same sentence for the fourth time. The carrier is merely the bridge. The bonded mate is the vessel.

Her stomach twisted. “No,” she whispered.

Mayhem heard her. His gaze had been fixed on her since Howler left the clinic to find Tempest. He sat on the edge of her exam table, shirtless again because she had needed to restitch his side, one hand braced beside him and the other curled into a fist. The black lines beneath his skin were still there, but they were fainter now. Moon hated them because they represented the unknown for her.

“What does vessel mean?” Mayhem asked.

She didn’t look up. “I don’t know.”

“Bullshit,” he said, sounding like he was accusing her of being a liar.

Moon’s eyes snapped to his. “I said I don’t know.”

“You know enough to look like you’re about to throw up,” he countered.