Come Out Swinging (Reach for the Moon Book 2), Sam Hall [leveled readers .TXT] 📗

Because Dad, his life was cut too short. I’d been robbed of an opportunity to make amends, but he was older, had lived, loved, had a child, but Mason… My teeth clamped down tight so hard, I felt my fangs grind as they appeared. Because I might face down a massive beast, but it wasn’t the scariest predator in the room.

Inevitable, relentless reality tracked me persistently, crushing any hope and dream I might cling to, and finally, it crushed him. Mason, every memory and every experience, that was what it was eroding from me with its endless breath, wearing me smooth until there would be nothing more than a husk of me left.

He’d told me to let him go, said he needed to, but I couldn’t accept it, none of it. I was not gonna sit a vigil for my mate while his body still breathed. I wasn’t going to watch another person I loved slide between my fingers. Nance, the town, they would not take one more thing.

And neither would this motherfucking wolf.

I moved in a fluid sequence of kicks and strikes, something Zack and I had practised so many times, spinning faster and faster towards the giant wolf. It loomed larger and larger, those silver eyes spreading so wide, it felt like I was about to kick the moon.

And I did.

“NOOOO!”

I didn’t shout or scream the words, they rose up within me, an equal and opposite force that swelled and swelled until it burst outwards. Out of me, out into the darkness, filling every damn inch of its inky depths, forcing its way down the throat of the wolf, resonating through it, seeming to grow and grow, not trail away like any normal sound. Because it wasn’t my voice, it was me.

My love for them, for us, for him. For Mason.

“GIVE HIM TO ME!”

I screamed like a rabid fishwife, any kind of decorum or grace long gone. I couldn’t, I didn’t have any left. It couldn’t end this way. I was done with shitty, truncated, unfulfilling endings. I was fucking tired of trying to work my way through accepting the unacceptable. I was going to get Mason back, then I was going to finally start shovelling the metric fuck ton of emotional bullshit we’d created and get down to it—us.

We were going to come together, I was going to hold him in my arms. I was going to wrap myself tight around him, and then I was going to bite deep, claiming him as mine. We’d kick Nancy’s butt, make Lupindorf a democracy, and then fuck off into the city, where Mason would hate every smog filled moment. Except he wouldn’t, because we would be together.

When I blinked, I realised I’d told the wolf all of this in a series of rasping, hacking breaths, and then when I fell silent, I heard it. A low rumble at first, this sound I could feel from my head to my toes. Like mine, it rose and rose, getting louder and louder, so much so, my hands clapped over my ears, desperate to protect them. But I looked up to see the wolf transform, lighting from within, growing brighter and brighter, until she came. Monolithic, maternal, looking down at me with blank, silver eyes filled with that terrible love only mothers seem to possess.

“Time to return, little wolf, daughter of mine. The nix, the ulva are rising, and you will rise with them. You have your six. Now it’s time to claim them, all of them.” Her smile was gentle as a feather and as sharp as a razor blade, but as it cut through me, she faded and the world returned.

Machines were beeping, staff were barrelling through the door, Zack was trying to prise my hand free of Mason’s, and the man himself? He sat up in bed, just gasping in breaths for one, two, three seconds before looking around.

“Paige?” Mason croaked out, and that was it. I swept in, wrapping my arms around his shoulders, being careful not to hold him too close but wanting to with everything I had.

“Mrs Klein! I need you to step back so we can examine your husband,” the doctor said sharply, the nurses shooing away the guys with deep frowns.

“Mrs Klein?” Mason’s smile was so bright and intense, it felt like it speared straight through my heart. “I like the sound of that. I like it a lot.”

Chapter 21

“You don’t need to hover,” Mason said.

The doctor had reluctantly discharged Mason after a series of checks. Once his blood pressure stabilised and all his other vitals were fine, he was allowed to go, but they weren’t happy about it. The humans wanted to watch over him for longer, like they were with Bridget, and make sure there was no sign of concussion.

We stood now in a hotel room we’d booked. It was the off season for tourists so we were lucky to get a couple cheap, but right now, we were in the one, ringed around Mason.

“I’m fine,” the man himself said. “I shouldn’t be.” Those dark brown eyes met mine, burning deep with something I wasn’t ready to interrogate. I heard his snort of amusement as my eyes slid away. “But I guess Paige is done taking no for an answer.”

“So is anyone gonna tell us what the fuck happened?” Declan asked, sinking down onto a bed, looking paler than normal.

“Fuck, mate…” Zack said, stepping close to his brother. He shook his head, staring at the other man, the silence stretching out longer and longer before he wrapped an arm around Mase’s shoulders and hugged him. “I know you’ve got that white knight shit going on, but don’t fucking do that again.”

“You woulda done the same if you’d felt it,” Mason retorted, but he returned his brother’s thumps on the back.

“Probably, but being the one doing the self-sacrificing seems a lot easier than watching someone’s swan dive.”

“We need to do that research, find out what that was.” Mason held his brother at