Free Gray Moon Rising: Seasons of the Moon by S M Reine Page A

Rylie to have turned back. It had to be someone else. It had to be.
    Eleanor’s order rang out like a gunshot: “Get her.”
    She slammed the doors shut and climbed back into the main compartment of the SUV as it peeled off again. Seth followed.
    There were two wolf bodies stacked by the side door of the vehicle. The bottom one had brown fur that was almost black. The other was a dirty red color. Even though Seth knew that they had been killed before he had seen Rylie, he was still relieved to see that neither was gold.
    “I’ve got her!” Jakob reported, and Seth shut his eyes to pray.
    “Convene by my coordinates,” Yasir ordered.
    Seth didn’t breathe until the other SUV joined them. Everyone unloaded.
    Eleanor shoved past him to run to Jakob first. Seth elbowed her. She shot a nasty look at him and raced him to the body, but the team was in the way.
    “Move it!” Seth said, and Stripes seemed so surprised to hear him yell that he obeyed without questioning. He moved aside, letting Seth see inside the SUV.
    But it wasn’t Rylie between the seats.
    The girl had curls that were long and honey-blond. Her olive skin was dotted with freckles, and smeared with enough blood that he couldn’t tell if she was wounded or not. He knew that if she opened her eyes, they would be brown and shot through with gold.
    She was only wearing shorts and a t-shirt, so he pulled off his jacket and laid it over her curled body, which was a lot thinner than he remembered.
    He had found Bekah Riese. And she was unconscious in the hands of the Union.

T EN
    Expert Advice
    The Union picked a spot by the brook to camp for the night. They parked the SUVs before addressing the bodies. Stripes broke teeth out of the jaws of the werewolves they had killed, stamped numbers into the bone, and the team buried the bodies. Seth dug one of the graves himself. He whispered a prayer as he dragged the black-furred wolf into the ground.
    Once the graves were concealed, they discussed what to do with Bekah.
    “Nobody saw her change, so I don’t think she’s one of the werewolves. I bet she’s a camper,” Stripes said.
    “Nobody asked you what you think. You’re not here for what you think . It’s obviously another wolf converging!” Eleanor said. She had been even more irate since finding Bekah. She had clearly hoped that Jakob would find Rylie.
    Her moping was making Seth angrier by the minute. “We have no way of knowing that,” he snapped.
    She glowered. “Who else would be out here?”
    Jakob was cleaning mud from under his fingernails with a knife. He had gotten messy digging graves. “We saw a wrecked car. Bet that’s where she came from.”
    “Do you see any signs of a car wreck on her?” she asked.
    Everyone standing around the SUV turned to look at Bekah again. She was asleep between the seats with her wrists and ankles trussed together. Having so many ropes for such a short girl looked ridiculous, but if she tried to break free, it still wouldn’t be enough. Each of the kopides studied her like she was on a slide under a microscope. Seth knew that they were trying to decide if that tingling at the back of their necks was because Bekah was a werewolf, or if it was from one of the other bodies.
    “There is a lot of blood,” Stripes admitted.
    “Because she was eating deer!” Eleanor said impatiently. “She ran with the wolves. She’s covered in blood. What other confirmation do we need? Let’s get over this and shoot her.”
    Stripes gave an incredulous laugh. “Shoot her? Really? She’s just a kid.”
    Jakob rolled his eyes. “You’re such a sissy.”
    “Well, it’s true! She’s got to be, like, fourteen,” he said. Yasir gave him a hard look. Stripes was too smart to challenge him. Instead, he stared at his feet as he shifted uncomfortably. “My sister’s fourteen.”
    “Waste of Union funds,” Eleanor muttered.
    Yasir finally spoke up. He had been organizing their collection of teeth beside the camping stove