Black Moon Pack Book 2: Falling for Dakota
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Isabel S. Knight
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Eric’s been walking through centuries numb to it all—his vampire life reduced to shadows and silence. But then he meets Dakota, a fiery, unpredictable she-wolf who crashes into his world like a thunderstorm. Her spirit is wild, her gaze impossible to forget, and her presence? It awakens something long dead inside him. As old loyalties claw at his past and a forbidden bond pulls him toward an uncertain future, Eric must choose between the coven he’s bound to and the woman who makes him feel alive again. Because when death falls for the living, nothing stays unbroken for long.
Chapter 1
Book 2: Falling for Dakota
DAKOTA
That jerk! He just left me! He left me in the middle of the night, in the middle of the woods, just like that, and I was having a total meltdown after he disappeared.
Actually, no, I was having a tantrum.
That striking but superancient vampire just left without saying goodbye.
I had to run after him to see him one last time, and he just whooshed away.
And what the hell did that even mean? He’d come back for me soon? Who did he even think he was?
I mean, sure, he was some fancy coven leader, but the hot-and-cold demeanor thing he did was giving me a freaking migraine, and now he was just gone?
Okay, fine. To begin with, we were not even in a relationship, but still…
We fought side by side, and he held my hand the entire time I was recovering after the attack.
So, yeah. I think my reaction to this whole thing was valid.
I think.
I paced back and forth inside my room, trying to calm the raging wolf inside me.
What was I expecting anyway? A grand gesture? For him to say that we were mates?
I didn’t know much about vampires, so I didn’t even know if they had mates, too.
Oh, wait, yeah! Sure, they did.
I forgot about that for a minute. But how could they tell if someone was their mate, and what if, for him, I was not his mate?
Did their senses work the same way as wolves did when they found their mates?
Could he distinguish the scent of his mate from the rest of the people around him?
I really should learn more about vampires soon.
I breathed heavily through my nose, caging in my emotions.
For normal human beings, this was simply a minor setback.
It was not a big deal because people could work long-distance relationships, but for a wolf such as myself, it was a painful experience to be far away from his or her mate.
It burned like lava.
The thing that irritated me the most was that while I was keeping an eye on him before we found out about his true identity, the spell, or whatever they call it, masked his scent from everyone. That was why I didn’t pay much attention to him.
Although I had to admit that he was eye candy, and his mysterious side always called to me.
Then one day, inside our home office, his scent hit me like a forty-foot tidal wave, and I just lost it.
I’d been keeping this a secret for months now, and I felt like I could no longer handle this on my own.
But who could I talk to about this? Storm? Amara? My parents?
Would they judge me or stop me from pursuing this?
And what about Eric? Did he know that I saw him as my mate?
If so, would he accept me as his?
Gaaah! This was really frustrating.
“I can hear your rapid heartbeat and smell your anger all the way downstairs,” Amara said as soon as she entered my room without knocking, making me jump a bit.
I didn’t utter a single word, but instead, I nibbled on the nail of my thumb. Shit. How do I get out of this?
She was staring at me like I was some specimen ready to be dissected.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, concern etched on her face.
I shook my head vigorously and sighed. “Nothing.”
She bit her lip and knitted her brows together.
“Dakota Alexandra Black, do I have to compel you to tell me the truth?”
My brows shot toward the ceiling in shock. “You can compel people?” I asked in disbelief.
“Vampires can. I’m half-vampire, so yeah,” she answered with a smirk.
“Seriously, though, will you tell me what’s wrong?” she asked.
I took my precious time thinking about whether or not I should tell her what was eating me up.
The truth was, I was scared of how they were all going to take the news.
Like, what if they wouldn’t approve at all? Were we going to be the modern-day Romeo and Juliet?
Okay, I was getting off track.
When I didn’t say anything again, she crossed one leg over the other and did the same with her hands as if she were a prim and proper noble.
She waited patiently for me to say something without letting her eyes wander anywhere else.
Basically, she just held my panicked stare like a statue.
Her blue eyes stared directly at my gray ones as if she were trying to read my thoughts, and it was unnerving.
I slowly made my way toward my bed and sat next to her. I twisted the hem of my shirt a couple of times before clearing my throat.
“I’ve found my mate,” I began, and she immediately gasped.
I held my hand up to stop her from talking, and her mouth closed. Okay…where was I? Ah, yes.
“And it’s complicated,” I finished with a defeated tone.
“How so?” she asked, letting her hand slip on top of mine as her way of comforting me. God, I love this woman. Every clumsy, sweet, caring, and awkward bit of her.
“It is so because…” I let the words hang while I positioned myself so that I was directly facing her, and she did the same.
“He’s…well…he’s Eric.”
Her mouth popped open as her eyes darted from side to side, trying to focus on both my irises.
“Come again?” she finally asked, looking shocked as hell, and I sighed once more.
“You heard me,” I said. I sounded confident, but that was a far cry from what I was feeling right now.
In fact, I wanted the world to open up and eat me whole so that I didn’t have to face the days to come.
The side of Amara’s lips slanted upward, showing a demure smile. She was definitely keeping her wide grin on the down low for my benefit.
“Did you tell him?” she asked, and I shook my head in response.
“Why didn’t you?”
Umm… Let me count the reasons. I rolled my eyes as I straightened myself back to how I was sitting before.
I wasn’t really sure if she was just feigning innocence or if she genuinely didn’t know the answer to that, so I decided on the latter.
“Because, like what I said just now, it’s complicated,” I huffed before leaning my head on her shoulder to seek comfort because I felt like I was so screwed right now.
Absolutely, irrevocably, unbelievably screwed. Yup, that’s me!
