Free Wolf Moon by A.D. Ryan

tensed and
wary. “And sometimes it feels like the only way to fill that void is by
distracting yourself with something else…some one else.”
    “You sound like you’re
talking from personal experience,” I blurted out.
    Jackson shrugged, turning
around and leaning against the railing. “About fifteen years ago—when I
was turned—I lost my wife and seven-year-old son.”
    I gasped, slapping my
hand over my mouth. “I’m sorry, I had no idea.”
    “Not something I go
around advertising,” he said monotonously. “We were out at a movie one night,
and on our way home, the car somehow got a flat.” He laughed humorlessly.
“Pissed me off, too, because we’d just had the damn things replaced. I was out
changing the tire when I heard glass shatter and my wife and son screaming. I
stood up and saw two men hauling my family out of the car.
    “At the time I had no
idea what I was seeing. I figured they were just some common criminals…but
their teeth…”
    “Vampires,” I whispered,
and Jackson nodded.
    “I charged them, but they
were so fast and strong. I was too late. My son and wife were dead before I
reached them, their necks snapped and bleeding out from where they’d been
bitten. I tried to fight the men, but they quickly overpowered me. I finally
just gave up and was about to accept my fate when three large wolves came out
of the woods and an all-out war began.”
    I was hanging on his
every word, my heart hammering and my breathing heavy.
    “I got caught up in the
struggle between them all, and somewhere along the way, I was bitten. Marcus
didn’t mean to, but in the thick of it, he’d smelled them on me and mistook me
for one of them. He knew the second his teeth penetrated my skin what he’d
done.
    “By the time the fight
was over, Marcus shifted and took care of me. None of what he said mattered to
me in the wake of my family’s murder. All I wanted was to join them.”
    “I’m so sorry,” I
whispered, shaking my head as I fell back down to the bench.
    “No need to be, kid. It
was a long time ago.” Jackson crossed the gazebo and sat next to me. “Anyway,
my point is, sometimes the grief just gets to be too much and we need to be
able to shut it off in order to function. You’re not a horrible person for
doing that. If you didn’t, it would eat you alive.”
    “H-how…” I sighed. “Maybe
this is stupid, but how long before the pain stopped?”
    “Stopped?” Jackson
offered me a surprisingly kind smile. “The pain never stops, Brooke. You’ll
never forget those you’ve lost, but you have to remember the good times you
shared instead of how they died. And while the grief you feel is very, excruciatingly
real, they’re gone. It’s not an insult to their memory to seek solace in the
arms of an old lover. It’s an insult to not go on with your life.”
    His heartfelt attempt to
empathize with me left me breathless. In that one moment, I felt closer to
Jackson than I’d ever dreamed possible. To know that he’d gone through
something eerily similar to what happened with David connected us in a way I
couldn’t describe.
    Jackson patted my
shoulder and then stood up. He was just about to leave the gazebo when I called
out to him. He turned around, eyebrows raised quizzically. “Yeah?”
    “Why did you do it?” I
asked, and when I saw the confusion in his eyes, I elaborated. “Why did you…bite
me?”
    “Bite you?” He was silent
for a minute, looking somewhat nervous, shocked, and unsure of how to answer.
“Brooke, I didn’t…” He exhaled heavily before catching and holding my gaze.
“Believe me when I tell you that what happened to you was an accident,” he
finally replied. “What you have to understand is that when we’re in our wolf
form—particularly when a vampire is near—we’re disoriented and
sometimes we make mistakes.”
    As he explained this, I
recalled the feeling he described. I’d experienced that confusion both times
I’d shifted and a