Huntbound (Moonfate Serial Book 2) Read Online Free

despair, my body taunts me with its reaction to him. “I didn’t fight it. I…you—”
     
    I can feel his pulse thumping through his skin. His werewolf heart beats with ten times the strength of a human one. “Artemis.”
     
    My heart squeezes at the way he says my name, and at all the nameless promises hidden within it.
     
    “How did you do it?” I whisper. “How did you end my dream?” Leveraging my elbow, I manage to wobble upright until I’m staring at him. I trail my fingertips over the downy ends of his platinum hair.
     
    And I almost gasp.
     
    His eyes were once a frozen cobalt, but they’ve melted into a kaleidoscope of patterns. Blue, green, purple, even wisps of gold dance across his irises. “From the moment I first saw you alone in the forest, Artemis, I knew that you were mine. I knew that I wouldn’t let you suffer, no matter your past. But you…” He shakes his head and closes his eyes. “You’re less certain. Even now. So here we are. “
     
    I trace his lip with my thumb, not sure why I feel wetness pricking at the corners of my eyes. His mouth is velvety and slightly moist. I half expect his tongue to dart out and lick me or his teeth to worry my flesh, but he doesn’t move at all.
     
    “And where are we, Orion? Really?”
     
    I wait for him to deflect the question. But after only a moment he answers. “This was the safe house where my father kept me for two years.”
     
    “Safe house?”
     
    “Yes.” Numbness, longing and pain flit through his eyes in a storm of magenta and emerald. “In the early days, your government hadn’t decided yet whether to simply brand us like cattle or exterminate us entirely. And with your drones scouring the forests we had to hide somewhere.”
     
    “They weren’t my drones,” I protest.
     
    I don’t know why that fact seems so important. Maybe it’s because in some sense they were. The drones, the Tracker app, all of it was the result of my parents’ murder and the fact that my face was plastered all over social media.
    Just like it’s my fault that we’re still stuck here. Shame burns my cheeks bright red. Everyone I love always ends up hurt, and somehow I come out unscathed. Lawrence has been kidnapped and his lover has been killed and what do I get, a mate who wants nothing more than to help me?
     
    And when he does, he ends up stuck in his nightmare.
    As I stroke the underside of Orion’s chin I notice that even though the rest of his body is hairless, his face has a light dusting of tiny hairs as soft and bright as freshly fallen snow. I drag my hand lower down the column of his neck, luxuriating in the sensation, until my fingers trip over something rougher and almost wet.
     
    When I bring my hands away, I can see that underneath his neck is a long, angry red line. A scar. And not an old one, either.
     
    Orion flinches, but doesn’t lower his chin.
     
    Gently, so gently, I stroke the area around his wound, wishing there was something more I could do to heal it. But I don’t have magic powers. “How did you get it?” I whisper.
     
    For the first time Orion looks at the room around us, but he can’t look for long. The moment his gaze hits the door he closes his eyes again. “Werebeasts weren’t meant to be confined. It eats away at us. Will drive us mad if we don’t have a distraction. And there is no better distraction than pain.” He grits his teeth. “Although cutting me was never my father’s favorite method, because in the end it might weaken me. Other ways, like poisoning the room with silver, or keeping it just below freezing, I could come to tolerate or even grow strength from.”
     
    Oh, God. I dart my hands away, a sick, hot guilt burning in my chest. Now the tears really do come, stinging my eyes. His is a kind of suffering I can never even hope to understand. Let alone fix. If it’s even possible for anyone to fix it.
     
    And yet.
     
    As I reach out and touch him, tracing the scar with the barest,