Moon Sworn

I’m okay.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t sound convinced, and he didn’t let go of my arm. In fact, he looked like he expected me to keel over at any minute. “Why don’t we just get you back home, and I’ll call in the doc to have a look at you.”

He guided me toward the plane, his grip on my arm gentle and firm.

“I thought you said Dunedan didn’t have a hospital.”

“It doesn’t, but it has a doctor. Has to. It’s a tourist town.”

I guess so. I grabbed the guide rail and climbed the steep steps into the plane. There were only two seats in the back. I took the one away from the window and wasn’t entirely sure why I felt safer doing that.

“Nice to see you in one piece, little lady,” the pilot said, handing me a bottle of water. He was a rough- looking man with a bulbous nose and scraggly gray beard. “The laddie here was extremely worried about you.”

I glanced up at the laddie in question and raised an eyebrow. He took the hint and said, “Hanna, this is Frank. He runs the local pub and owns the plane.”

I held out my hand. “Hello, Frank. Thanks for coming out to rescue me.”

He laughed, flashing teeth that were yellow-stained and crooked. His hand wrapped around mine briefly, his grip firm and strong. “Wouldn’t be neighborly to let our newcomers get themselves lost the first few days they hit town, now would it?”

“I guess not.”

I began to sip the water and it was the sweetest thing I’d tasted in a long while. Which wasn’t saying much given the state of my memories.

Evin drew the steps inside the plane then closed the door and sat down in the remaining seat. As the plane’s propellers roared to life, he said, “We arrived in town a day ago. Your accident was reported this morning.”

Which didn’t really explain the state of the various wounds on my body. I might be a wolf, but I was one who apparently couldn’t change, so why were there so many half-healed wounds on my body? The one on my shoulder looked bad, and it surely should have taken more than a day to heal without a shape change. “What was I doing alone in the car in the middle of nowhere?”

And why couldn’t I remember hitting a roo?

He shrugged. “You said you wanted to be alone for a while and went for a drive.”

“An odd thing to do if we’d only just arrived in town, wasn’t it?”

His sudden grin crinkled the corners of his eyes and warmed his bright eyes. “We’d been cooped up together for ten days in that car. We may get on like a house on fire, but ten days is a long time. So no, it wasn’t surprising.”

“Why were we traveling?”

His smile faded. He studied me for several seconds, his expression serious and eyes suddenly sad. “You don’t remember?”

Something caught in my throat, and I had an image of that truck again, and that crumpled black car, rolling over and over. I licked suddenly dry lips and said, “Remember what?”

He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Maybe it’s better if you remember in your own time.”

“Remember what?”

I grabbed his arm, my fingers tightening reflexively. He winced and, for a moment, seemed surprised by my strength. Which struck me as odd, given he was my brother and should have known what I was. What he was.

He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Jesus, Hanna, I don’t know if it’s the right time—”

“Tell me,” I demanded. “What don’t I remember? Why are we here?”

“He’s dead,” he said abruptly, but with sympathy in his expression. “Your soul mate is dead. Hit by a truck and crushed.”

I stared at him. Just stared at him, as the words rolled around and around in my brain. My soul mate is dead.

Yes, I thought. Yes. The emptiness was there, deep inside. It felt true and right. I closed my eyes, again saw that truck, that black car, and felt the rising pain—a pain so deep it felt like my heart was being torn apart. He was dead. The man who couldn’t be killed was dead.

Tears stung my eyes and suddenly I was sobbing and shaking uncontrollably. Evin took me in his arms and held me tight as the plane roared into the night.

W e landed on an airfield that was little more than a strip of dust beside a ramshackle collection of aging buildings. By that time, I was numb. The tears had stopped and there was nothing left except emptiness and an odd sort of disconnect.

I stared out the window, taking in the scenery. There was little enough to be seen. Not because it was night, but because there was nothing there. No tower, no guide lights, and certainly no terminal. Frank taxied around to one of the few large buildings in the immediate area, then killed the propellers and twisted around to face us. “If you’re feeling like a drink later, lassie, the first one is on me. Sounds as if you could do with one.”

I forced a smile. “Thanks. I just might take you up on that.”

“Do.” He flung open his door and climbed out, quickly disappearing inside the old hangar.

Evin opened the back door and lowered the steps, climbing down before turning around and offering a hand to me.

I paused on the top step and looked around. There were buildings and houses in the distance, their lights twinkling like stars, but I’d been expecting a city and Dunedan obviously wasn’t anywhere near that large. The air itself was rich and clean, and smelled ever so faintly of the ocean.

This place, like the man waiting at the bottom of the steps, was unknown to me.

“You coming?” Evin said.

I placed my hand in his and let him help me down, but he didn’t release me, keeping hold as we walked around the back of the building. An old blue Toyota four-wheel drive was parked at the far end, and it looked as beaten as I felt. Obviously, we couldn’t afford to hire anything better.

Evin opened the passenger door, waited until I climbed in, then slammed it shut and walked around to the driver’s side.

“Why did we come to Dunedan?” I said, as he reversed the car and pointed it in the direction of the buildings.

He glanced at me. “Because you wanted to get away from everything. Friends, family, everything.”

Well, I’d obviously succeeded, because I couldn’t remember anything. And how much more “away” could you get? “But why here?”

He shrugged. “You took a pin and poked it in a map. This was the nearest town to that pin, and here we are.”

“Why did you come with me?”

He smiled. “Because, sister, we do everything together. Besides, Mom would have had a fit if I’d let you come out alone in your condition.”

Mom. It was a word that raised a surprising amount of emotion—and not all of it was good. Yet I couldn’t even picture her face. “What do you mean, my condition?”

He hesitated. “You survived your soul mate’s death, but you were being treated for severe depression. Which was why I was looking for you so frantically. I thought you might have gone off your tablets and tried to kill yourself again.”

I frowned. His words had the ring of truth, and yet, there were lies there, too. Or was I merely seeing problems where there were none? I rubbed my forehead wearily, and wished the aching would stop. I’m sure it would all make so much more sense if it just didn’t hurt so much.

“Meaning I’ve already tried to kill myself?”

He grimaced. “That wound on your shoulder is from a gunshot. You only missed because I managed to grab the gun in time.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire …

And yet, the wound was a gunshot wound. Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe it was my internal voice that was lying.

“How did I get hold of a gun?”