Free To Crave a Blood Moon by Sharie Kohler Page A

lycans closely over the rim. Finished, she set the cup back down on the tray and carefully wiped her mouth. “Why so concerned that I eat?”
    The lycans exchanged looks, smiling. “You don’t know anything, do you?” Annika shook her head. “This is really too delicious.”
    Sebastian clenched his hands, a low growl rising from his chest. They would tell her now. He couldn’t stop them. No matter how much he wanted to.
    His feet shuffled backward on the cold floor, sinking into the shadows as if distance would protect him from the coming revelation, from the look in her eyes when she learned the truth.
    â€œWe have to keep you alive and well so that our Sebastian here”—Annika’s smile deepened, her lips an obscene stretch of glossy red as she paused for dramatic effect—“can feed on you.”
    Ruby blinked and stared at Sebastian for several moments, her eyes blank. She opened and closed her mouth several times as if preparing to speak. “That’s impossible. He’s not one of you. His eyes…” She motioned to his body where he lurked in the shadows.“He did not change last night. It was a full moon. He’s not a lycan. You’re wrong.” This last she uttered with absolute conviction. His disgust with himself twisted inside him, a dark, living serpent that he could not escape.
    â€œYou didn’t think your lover boy here was some sort of prince, stuck in a dungeon with you? Is that why you let him fuck you?” Annika laughed then.
    Sebastian’s fingers curled into fists, yearning to strike.
    Yusuf joined in her laughter. “More like a firebreathing dragon with an appetite for damsels in distress.” He wrapped an arm around Ruby and this time she did not even flinch from the unwanted closeness. Sebastian cursed beneath his breath. Why did she not speak? Move? No matter how she felt about him, she should care that a snake held her so close. Where was her self-preservation?
    â€œLove,” the lycan breathed near her ear. “He will feed… on you. He’s brethren… even if a mongrel cousin. A dovenatu.”
    Her lips barely moved. “What’s that?”
    Yusuf’s lips pulled into a cruel smile. “He’s a half-breed. He can shift at will, not just during moonrise, although the compulsion is certainly stronger then. Along with all other instincts.” Yusuf lifted his head and called out cheerfully in his direction. “Thatright, Sebastian?” Turning back to Ruby, he continued, “And he doesn’t have to feed, but starving as he is…” He clucked his tongue in mock sympathy. “Instinct, that part of him that’s lycan, will demand it. That’s where you’ll come in, love.”
    She flinched. Those honey-brown eyes turned on Sebastian, burning into him with such horror, looking at him as if he were the same as they. A predator to be feared, reviled.
    â€œRuby,” he said, but the sound of her name hung, suspended, and he could think of nothing else to say. What explanation could he give? He had spent a lifetime running from the beast. Hunting and killing as though that could change what he was. But the beast was there, inside him, ready to come out when survival demanded. Like now.
    â€œIs it true?” she demanded.
    He stared, unspeaking.
    She charged forward—probably not the wisest course given what she had just learned. “Damn you. Don’t stand there staring at me, feeling guilty about the fact that you’re going to
kill
me! Eat me like some kind of m-monster.” She choked on the last word.
    He cocked his head to the side. There she went again. Reading his mind, his heart. It’s like she was his damned conscience! How did she do that? Was he so transparent? He’d never thought so before.
    â€œYou never thought I had the right to know? And after we—we…” She couldn’t manage the words. Her