Free Promised at the Moon by Rebekah R. Ganiere Page B

water, trying not to think of how good it had felt having Asha’s arms around him as they rode. The press of her body into his back had set his wolf yipping in delight. When she’d told him to go faster, his smile couldn’t have gotten broader. She was truly amazing and infuriating and…and not for him.
    They sat in silence, listening to the waves crash and staring at the moon. There were so many things he wanted to know.
    “How did you find me?” she asked.
    “Cara told me you’d gone to the beach party. I read the flyer Clint gave you before I gave it back to him.”
    “Why did you come?” She gave him a sideways glance.
    He picked up a handful of sand and let it slip between his fingers slowly. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
    “It’s your job.” She gave him a sheepish grin. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.” She pushed her hair away from her face. “What about Deena? Why aren’t you guys out tonight?”
    “Deena’s a friend, nothing more. She and her husband Michael are the ones who found me in Los Angeles and helped me out. She was just passing through and stopped to see how I was.”
    “Oh. I just thought… Well, you looked really nice.”
    He laughed. “Yeah, I wash up okay.”
    The silence hung between them like a barrier of ice.
    “Where are you from originally?” she asked.
    Liam swallowed hard, remembering the faded and peeling house he’d grown up in. The uneven wooden floors that hadn’t seen a sander or coat of stain in almost a hundred years. The dead grass and shriveled rosebushes out front.
    “Kansas.”
    “Wow. What made you choose California?”
    He’d never told anyone. “They said California was where dreams were made.”
    The waves crashed, bringing with them the smell of salt water, fish and seaweed. Memories washed over him like the tide and a part of him wanted to tell her about his past. To warn her about who he was.
    “My father was a brutal man,” he said. “He ruled our pack with an iron fist and used that fist on everyone who disobeyed. When I was fourteen, he used that fist on my mother one too many times. She died, because there was no one out there willing to take her in. No pack member willing to go against my father. When I turned sixteen, I got on my bike and rode.”
    “You know that wasn’t your fault, right?”
    “I was fourteen. I should have done something before it was too late.”
    “You were a kid.”
    His gut tightened at the kindness in her words. He picked up a seashell and tossed it. “Yeah, well, now all I can do is help others and try my damnedest not to turn into that monster.”
    “You aren’t like him.”
    He blew out a heavy sigh. He never talked about his time in Los Angeles. “You don’t know what I’m capable of. When I lived on the streets I did terrible things just to survive. Horrible things.”
    “That doesn’t make you a bad person, Liam. And it doesn’t make you him.”
    “I worked for a drug dealer as an enforcer. I used my strength to hurt people. Lots of people. Some good, some bad, but in the end that didn’t matter. By the time Deena and Michael found me, I had become him. It no longer bothered me when I hurt people, and it was so easy too, being stronger and faster than normal humans. So, I just…did.”
    He couldn’t even look at her as shame hovered over him like a thunderstorm waiting to rain down. He couldn’t bear to see the revulsion in her eyes. He waited for her to curse at him. To scream that he was awful and to take her home.
    She grabbed his hand. “You did what you had to.”
    He looked up at her face bathed in moonlight. She wore a soft smile, and her eyes held sorrow. His heart puffed up like an overinflated balloon. Was it possible that she could see past what he’d been?
    She stared at him for a long time before she gazed out at the ocean again.
    “I was eight when Daniel’s pack moved into our area from Tennessee. My father had been pack Alpha for close to a decade at that