Blue Moon: Blood Moon Trilogy #3 Read Online Free Page A

remembered how his tone would turn serious just before something bad happened, interrupting the conversation he had tried to start. He’d been telling the truth about trying to tell me.
    Realizing this, I pulled my mangled hand away and clutched it to my chest as I sank to the floor. I could barely hold it closed, indicating I’d likely broken a bone or several. I fell to the ground, tears burning my eyes. I tried to keep them from falling as I thought about Nick and how worried he must be—how worried the whole Pack must be—and how I might never get to make things right.
    The fact that the Pack had been searching for this place—for Cordelia—for years with no success didn’t bode well for my own rescue. I knew that, even if acknowledging that only meant I was admitting defeat.
    The first tear fell down my cheek as nausea rolled in my uneasy stomach. I clutched it as I dry-heaved. Had I actually eaten something in the past few days, perhaps I’d have something to throw up, satisfying the urge. Instead, it left me queasy and weak.
    Finding I needed strength, I closed my eyes and visualized Nick’s face. I tried to imagine our reunion. How he would find me—or I, him—and he’d pull me into his arms, kissing me and telling me how relieved he was that I was okay. Not that he would have to tell me, of course. I would be able to sense it. He was always pretty easy to read. He would tell me I was safe, that he’d never let me go…
    Thinking about Nick gave me a renewed sense of determination. Sniffling and wiping the tears away with the back of my hands, I stood up and looked at the shards of rock around my feet. Most of them were small and pebble like, but there were a couple larger pieces, long and jagged. I could use them as weapons or to try and pop the pins from the cage door hinges.
    The iron door at the end of the corridor scraped against the cavern floors again, and I shoved a long, jagged piece of rock into the pocket of my over-sized jeans. The parasite told me my turn was coming…was that time now? If it was, I planned on being prepared.
    Soft whimpers accompanied the heavy footfalls. I smelled Cordelia—she was bleeding and her fear was heady—as well as the toxic scent of her torturer. He reveled in her misery, and the wolf stirred inside me finally. She sensed his joy at harming one of her own, and she wanted to rip him apart. I suddenly hoped he’d open my cage door and try to take me next.
    When they rounded the corner, I recognized him as the same man who had taken her. Cordelia’s hair was damp with sweat, and it hung over her downcast face like a curtain. She cradled one of her arms against her stomach, and I could hear the soft drips as her blood fell to the ground from several lacerations. Her neck, from what I could see of it behind the collar and her hair, looked red and raw, and her eyes were swollen from crying. What had they done to her? This was more than just watching her transformation for their sick and demented “research.”
    Once at her cell door, the vampire tossed her inside. She stumbled before collapsing in the dark corner, breathing heavily. She didn’t turn to me. Didn’t speak. She instead slumped to the floor and curled up into the fetal position, stunned or in a state of shock after whatever she’d just endured.
    When the vampire turned around again, his eyes looked me up and down, almost appraisingly, and he smirked. Something about his smile—even with the fangs—hit me, and I suddenly knew where I had recognized him from: Scottsdale. His name was Jason Smith, and he was one of the four victims whose deaths I had been investigating before I took an extended leave of absence.
    Shocked, I took a few steps back away from the cage doors, realizing this was bigger than I thought; if he was here, maybe I wasn’t just dealing with Gianna’s leftover coven members. Maybe the vampires we’d killed in the ambush last week weren’t the last, but were actually a small