Free Blood Moon Harvest (Seasons of the Moon) by SM Reine

O NE
    Proposal
    The longest journey was always the one going home. And it only seemed to take longer when Seth knew that his girlfriend was waiting for him… with his brother.
    His years studying pre-med seemed to take torturous decades. But even slow time marched forward, and his endless, aching days at the university did pass.
    July came, and Seth finally went home.
    He stood in the middle of the Gresham Ranch house’s living room, drinking in the sights, sounds, and smells he had been missing all semester.
    Aunt Gwyn’s furnishings were looking even more beat up than usual. After a few months of having werewolves play-fight, eat, and sleep on her couches, they were looking more like very sad piles of leather and wood than actual furniture.
    A vase of blossoms decorated the mantel. Dried scales, taken from shedding rattlesnakes, were hung by the door. Everything smelled a little bit like wet dog, even though Seth knew Gwyn was anal about cleanliness.
    But it was home. Home .
    Rylie’s jacket hung on a hook by the rattlesnake scales, nestled in Abel’s duster. Seth tried not to look at them as he stacked a pile of lumber from the shed by the windows.
    Preparing to fortify the ranch wasn’t enough to dampen his relief at being home; where werewolves were concerned, the threat of impending danger was pretty homey, too.
    Once he had everything set down, he pulled a hammer and nails out of the closet, set them on the coffee table, and considered the room’s entry points.
    The kitchen. The front windows. The hall. It wouldn’t be too hard to secure, if things got ugly.
    He was about to go looking for Rylie when he realized there was one entry point he hadn’t considered: the fireplace. Seth kneeled and glanced up the chimney. It was probably too narrow for a human to squeeze inside, but he wasn’t certain that they were dealing with humans. Better to board that up, too.
    As he straightened, the pictures on the mantel caught his eye. There was a picture of two wolves among the school headshots of Bekah and Levi, and the Gresham family photos. One of the wolves was slender and gold; the other was a hulking black beast. Seth would have recognized Rylie and Abel anywhere. He had spent more than enough nights running with them as a human.
    He picked up the picture of the two wolves. They were seated beside each other, shoulder-to-shoulder. They looked like yin and yang.
    Seth’s jaw clenched. He set the picture back down a little too hard.
    He unpacked his suitcase in Rylie’s bedroom. She always saved the bottom two drawers of her dresser for him, even though he never had enough to fill them, and their laundry would end up all mixed together by the end of the week anyway.
    Seth put his guns in the safe under Rylie’s bed, but left it unlocked. And then he pulled the last item out of his bag—a small jewelry box.
    There was a gold ring inside, which he had bought at a shop in the town where he attended college. He hadn’t been planning to buy a ring for Rylie that day. He just happened to be passing the window when it caught his eye.
    Rylie wasn’t the kind of girl who would be impressed by a diamond ring, but what he saw was something different, something special—a milky white rock that Seth had instantly recognized as a moonstone. It was bordered by clusters of tiny, sparkling diamonds. It looked like the full moon and the stars in the sky.
    Perfect for Rylie.
    Seth had found himself going into the shop, and a few minutes later, he had walked out with a lighter wallet and the ring in his pocket.
    That had been over a month ago, and he had been thinking about the ring ever since. He spent a lot of time just opening the box to stare at it and contemplate what it meant.
    He closed the box again, put it in his pocket, and went looking for Rylie.
    Abel was sitting on the back patio, sharpening a hunting knife.
    “How’s it going?” Seth asked, pausing at his side.
    His brother glanced at him. “Fine.” That one word