Read Darkmoon (#5) (The Cain Chronicles) for Free Online Page B

idea excited him. “But he hasn’t been around for a few days, so I’m free to roam. Have you been watching the news?”
    No, she hadn’t been watching any TV, but she had heard more than enough from Bekah. She didn’t want to hear it from Abel, too. “That’s what you want to talk about? The news?”
    “Seth says I’m not supposed to be talking with you at all. He says…” His eyes flicked down her body and fell on her stomach. “He says I’m not supposed to ‘upset’ you.”
    “But we have to talk someday. We have to talk about… everything . I mean, we’ve been at the same ranch for weeks, and we haven’t seen each other or spoken since the wedding.”
    He bowed his head close to her neck and inhaled deeply. The exhale was hot enough to send shivers down her spine. “I’m not the one avoiding anything, Rylie.” His voice was a fraction deeper than before.
    She folded her arms, as if they could act as armor between her and Abel. “Stephanie thinks that I might already be more than four months pregnant. She’s trying to get the hospital to let us do a scan.”
    That seemed to kill a little of Abel’s confidence.
    “Five months?” he asked. She could see him attempt the mental calculations. “No. That’s not right. We started mating on the night the barn burned.”
    Rylie’s cheeks flushed. “You mean our wolves were mating.”
    “There’s no difference between us and our wolves.”
    “Except that I have no control over my behavior when I’m changed. I can’t even remember anything I’ve done. If we did…mate…then it wasn’t something I chose,” Rylie said. “Like the winter I got silver poisoning, and I murdered all of those people—”
    Anger contorted Abel’s features. “You think mating with me is like murder?”
    Rylie couldn’t stand that much emotion from him. She paced a few feet away to give herself room to breathe.
    Being around him was a little bit like murder. She was dying on the inside, struggling to keep her heart beating, fighting a battle against herself. Every time she was around Abel, it was like her human side died a little bit more and gave the wolf that much more room to conquer.
    That was the problem: as much as she loved Seth, her wolf loved Abel, too. And even worse was that her wolf felt like it needed him.
    “That’s not what I’m trying to say,” Rylie said, too delayed and too feeble to sound believable. “But we don’t even know if you and I were mating.”
    Abel took her arm and spun her to face him. “You want to talk? Let’s talk. Let’s lay it all out right now.” He pulled her against him, and she thought for a second that he was about to kiss her. “Cain had pictures of us mating.”
    All thoughts of kissing vanished in a wave of shock.
    “ Pictures ?”
    “He took them on the night of the barn fire.” Abel’s eyes searched her face. “I dominated you. I owned you.” He bit out every word with a growl. “We mated.”
    She felt like she was going to faint. Rylie was suddenly grateful for his grip on her arms, or else she might have fallen over in the snow and ash. “What do you mean by…dominated?”
    “I bit you. I pinned you down, and I took you. The Alpha. Do you know what that means?”
    She swallowed hard. “It means that you beat me in battle. Does that mean… Are you the Alpha now?”
    “Werewolf packs have two Alphas,” he said. “A female…and a male. A mating pair.” Her face fell, and her heart felt like it was going to beat out of her chest. Seeing her expression made Abel’s eyebrow furrow. “Is it that bad? The idea of being with me?”
    Rylie shook her head and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “No, Abel. It’s not. I just…” There was no way to explain it in a way that Abel would understand. He saw them being together as inevitability. She saw it as having a choice taken from her. Just one more part of her life lost to some stupid werewolf curse.
    She sagged against the wall, sank to