All Hallows' Moon

Praise for

Six Moon Summer

“This was a fantastic werewolf tale from SM Reine. Packed with tons of adventure, teen angst, a touch of romance, and twisted with paranormal, it makes for a perfect read!” —
Coffee Table Reviews

“Reine has made her own rules about the werewolf mythology; it's unique and refreshing. This is a great book for all you YA lovers who are looking for something totally new to read.” —
Coffeemugged

“Just when you think that there isn't another twist in the werewolf story, along comes Six Moon Summer... This is a solid debut book for writer SM Reine. Fresh and fast paced.” —
Me, My Shelf, and I

“Amazing.” —
EJ Stevens, The Spirit Guide Series

Other Books by SM Reine

SEASONS OF THE MOON
Six Moon Summer
All Hallows’ Moon
Long Night Moon
Gray Moon Rising

THE DESCENT SERIES
Death’s Hand
The Darkest Gate
Damnation Marked

The good girl has become a very bad werewolf...

Rylie survived her transformation. She moves to her aunt’s ranch in the hopes she can enroll in a new high school and quietly continue her life-- except that she transforms into a monster every new and full moon and struggles to control her murderous urges.

Without many werewolves left, it’s hard to stay in hiding. A family of hunters—Eleanor, Abel, and Seth—recognize the signs and follow Rylie to her new home. They want to stop her before she murders someone, and the only way to do it is with a silver bullet. Seth soon realizes the werewolf is Rylie, the one monster he failed to kill. Worse yet, he’s still in love with her.

Torn between family and love, Rylie struggles to reconcile her feelings and control the wolf within while Seth fights to do what’s right. But what is right—obeying desire or duty?

Prelude

The Cage

The werewolf should have dominated the night, but humans had taken charge with guns and silver. The beast was cut off from the moon by iron bars and helpless to fight. Few human things made sense to her primitive mind, but one thing stood out above everything else: She had been caged.

The wolf thrashed, shrieking when her flesh touched upon silver-laced iron. She tried to jerk away, but there was nowhere safe to flee. The hunters had placed her upon a bed of wolfsbane.

A pair of legs moved into view, and the wolf smelled the familiar odor of leather. It would have been comforting if he hadn’t been aiming a rifle at her face. She whined.

“Do it already, Seth,” snapped a woman. “I will if you won’t.” The wolf’s strength waned, and she flung herself at the cage one last time. Her flesh sizzled. She collapsed.

The rifle swayed as Seth knelt beside her.

“Shoot it!”

“I’m sorry, Rylie,” he whispered.

And then he squeezed the trigger.

One

Homecoming

When the sun sank beneath the hills, the trucker turned on his headlights to illuminate the road. Night fell quickly in the middle of nowhere. There weren’t any streetlights for miles, much less city, so he knew it would be black in minutes.

His passenger bounced her knee and drummed her knuckles against the window. She was fixated by the passing landscape even though there was nothing to look at but long grass and the occasional tree. Her blond hair was pulled into a messy bun and her fingernails were chewed so short that her thumb bled.

The trucker watched her from the corner of his eye. She was starting to tremble.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded a little too quickly. “Yeah. Sure. I’m fine. Is this as fast as we can go?”

He chuckled. “I’m in a hurry too, sweetheart, but I’ve gotta go the speed limit. Another speeding ticket could make me lose my job.”

“Going slow could make you lose more than that,” she muttered.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

A rabbit bounced past the headlights, and her head whipped around so she could stare at the place it vanished. There was something unnatural about the way she moved. It was like everything startled her. The trucker wondered if she was on cocaine or meth or something else. Nobody acted like that unless they had taken drugs—or if they were nuts.

He suspected there was something wrong with his mysterious passenger when he picked her up at a truck stop two states back. How many cute teenage girls hitchhiked on semis? Just prostitutes. But this kid was no hooker, and the trucker wouldn’t have done anything if she was. He had a son her age back home. His picture was taped to the dashboard.

The girl seemed pretty normal for the first few hours—quiet, but normal—but she got more nervous as time went on. Now her skin was flushed and her pupils were too wide.

“You ever going to tell me your name?” he asked. It was the first time he’d tried to talk with her since Colorado.

“Rylie. My name’s Rylie.” She raked her fingernails up and down her shoulder, leaving red tracks on tan skin.

“Pretty name. I’ve got a niece named Kiley. She’s in the chess club at school, and...” He trailed off as she shuddered, hugging her backpack against her body. “You okay?”

“Moon’s coming soon.”

“Yeah?” He leaned forward to look at the sky. All the trucker could see were clouds. “How can you tell? Won’t there be a new moon tonight?”

“I’m in a hurry. There aren’t going to be any cops out here. Can’t you...?”

“Relax,” he said. “We’ll get there when we get there.” He watched her from the corner of his eye. “How old are you? Sixteen? Seventeen?” She didn’t respond. “Drugs seemed like the cool thing to do when I was your age, but they ruined my life. I lost my family and spent years in rehab. Addiction is brutal.”

Rylie looked startled. “I’m not addicted to drugs.”

“I didn’t think I was addicted either, but—”

“No, I mean, I’m not taking anything. Okay?”

“Okay, okay. You’re not addicted. Then what are you running from?” he asked.

“Nothing. I’m going to live with my aunt. She moved out here from Colorado a couple of months ago, so I’m going to work on her new ranch.”

“And your aunt lets you hitchhike?”

She lifted her chin stubbornly. “Nobody
lets
me do anything anymore.”

“Uh huh.”

She wasn’t going to talk to him about her problems. No big deal. The trucker remembered being in her place years ago. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it all that much, either. Getting past his denial was the first step to recovery.

They drove on in silence, and she kept scratching herself. Probably meth. It looked like meth.

Even though he knew he couldn’t help her until she was ready to help herself, he had to try. “I could drop you off at a hospital if you want,” he suggested.

“I’m not going to a hospital!” she snarled. Her eyes flashed a reflective gold, like an animal.

“Holy mother of—”

Rylie looked out the window again, cutting him off with a slam of her knuckles against the glass. “My friend Tyler says speed limits are suggestions.” She had calmed down and sounded normal. Not growling. Not like...

He was imagining things.

He patted his pocket in search of caffeine pills. The trucker hadn’t slept in over a day, and now he was hallucinating. But his pockets were empty. “Maybe I’ll go a little faster,” he muttered. He’d get the kid to her aunt and pull over to catch some sleep.

The trucker rolled down his window, letting the cold air slap him in the face. When the clouds parted, there was no moon. It was a dark night.

Rylie groaned and doubled over.

“Hey there,” he said. “You okay?”

Her fingernails dug into her sides. “I’m—ugh—I’m
fine
.” Rylie shoved her backpack to the floor of the truck and pressed her forehead to her knees.

She arched her spine. It ridged under her t-shirt like it could tear the fabric.

“You don’t look fine.”

“I need out. Stop the truck!”

“What? But—” A sign whizzed by, indicating that the next town wasn’t for fifteen miles. “There’s nothing out here. I can’t drop you off; you’d get eaten by—”

She lifted her head and slammed it down again. Something made a popping sound, and it reminded the trucker of the time he caught his arm on a passing trailer and wrenched his shoulder from the socket.

Rylie snapped her head to the side. Her bleeding gums stained her teeth and the skin around her nose was stretching—her nose was breaking—

“Jesus Christ!”

“Stop the truck,” she growled. “
Now
.”

He swerved and tried to press himself against his door to get away from this
thing
—
it wasn’t a teenage girl, not anymore
, her blond hair was falling out in huge clumps on the seat—but the huge cab of the truck was suddenly too small.