Daughters of Artemis Read online

  Publisher’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher has no control over and does not assume responsibility for any third party websites or their content. The uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

  Copyright © 2011 by Storm Moon Press LLC

  "The Fullness That Love Began" copyright © 2011 by Marie Carlson. "The Fire of Her Eyes" copyright © 2011 by K. Piet. "Luna's Mate" copyright © 2011 by Shashauna P. Thomas. "To Pierce the Sky" copyright © 2011 by Erik Moore. "Protect the Moon" copyright © 2011 by Della R. Buckland. "Sacrifices" copyright © 2011 by S.L. Armstrong. All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Nathie

  http://www.creationwarrior.net/

  Interior art by XonkArts

  ISBN-13: 978-1-937058-28-9

  ISBN-10: 1-937058-28-X

  The Fullness That Love Began

  Marie Carlson

  The Fire of Her Eyes

  K. Piet

  Luna's Mate

  Shashauna P. Thomas

  To Pierce the Sky

  Erik Moore

  Protect the Moon

  Della R. Buckland

  Sacrifices

  S.L. Armstrong

  About the Authors

  Fiona's fingers curled around my ankle.

  My legs burned, thighs to calves, threaded with long red scratches. They would heal too fast—they were already healing as I stared down at her—but for a few minutes I had her marks on me, and I was thrilled.

  "You look," she started to say, and twisted around to face me, but she didn't let go, "far too satisfied with yourself."

  "What if I'm satisfied with you?"

  "Well." Her lips were narrow and chapped, but I loved how they looked when she smirked. "That's different then, isn't it? In that case, you don't look nearly satisfied enough."

  I stretched, pushed my hands high overhead, and arched my back. Her gaze dropped to my breasts, and I watched the heat of desire pass through her eyes like flash fire.

  She skimmed her hand up to my knee and dug her thumb into a bruise forming just above it. I gasped and rocked my hips, pressing my thighs together for the pressure. Her grin grew wider, more wicked, and she bent down to press biting kisses against the curve of my stomach. Her scent was everywhere mixed with mine, seat and musk and the jojoba oil she put in her hair.

  "Come here," I growled and pulled her up for a kiss. She settled between my legs, her hands fisted on either side of my head; I kissed her hard and sucked her lower lip into my mouth. She tasted like me, and I loved the way we mingled on her skin and her tongue.

  She pressed her thigh to my cunt and rocked forward and back against me. I was so on edge, every bit of my body felt tight and ready, and if she kept it up, I was pretty sure I'd come just from that friction.

  I grabbed her wrist and forced her hand down between us. "Fuck me," I ordered, shoving my hips up at her.

  Fiona twisted her fingers against my pussy lips, spreading my wetness, teasing me. I snarled and squeezed her wrist, tiny reminders that, no matter how often we switched off topping each other, in the end, I was the one in charge.

  She laughed, but obediently thrust her fingers inside, three at once. I held her hand in place and ground my body against hers, sparking every place we touched. She pinched my nipple, squeezed it tight, and spread her fingers wide inside me, stretching me until I throbbed.

  Our alarm snapped on, too loud for our sensitive ears even at its lowest setting.

  "Damn."

  "Don't stop."

  Another laugh and she pulsed her hand against me. "I have to get ready for work."

  "Do not stop." I ground the words out through gritted teeth, so close to coming it hurt. I held my breath until my head spun from it, all my attention on my throbbing clit and full cunt, on the way I teetered closer to the edge with each passing second.

  The alarm continued to blare. Fiona turned her arm a little until she could press her thumb against my clit in hard, sloppy circles. That was enough; that was exactly what I needed.

  "Good girl," I gasped and came.

  She worked me through it, twisting her fingers inside me. When I was done, sweaty and limp and sated, she slipped her hand free, casually wiped her fingers on the sheet, and smiled down at me.

  "You're gorgeous like that." Fiona leaned forward, kissed my calf, and rolled off the bed, her body bending in inhuman ways. I tugged the comforter up and watched her cross to the en suite. I loved peaceful mornings like this, waking up with her and the sex we had, the way she looked stretched out in our bed. I couldn't decide if I liked her best right after she woke, post-sex, or her dark skin dewy and clean from her shower.

  Not to mention every minute of the rest of the day.

  Once the water started running, I headed downstairs to wash my hands. Our house was mostly windows, but I didn't worry about my nudity. We had a privacy fence, and plenty of bushes planted up against the walls, but I didn't actually care if the neighbors got a peek. They'd already seen everything we were.

  We had a breakfast ritual. Fiona had lots of rituals I didn't share, but this was one I did. She was very particular about her food and ate the same thing every day: special cereal, yogurt, three scrambled eggs, a banana, and half an orange. I ate the other half, but the rest of my meal varied. I'd eat whatever was around, especially meat cooked rare.

  The ritual, for me, was making sure everything was in its place. I poured her cereal, scrambled her eggs, cut up the orange, and grabbed some cheese and chicken from the fridge for me. Thawed, it only took a hot skillet and a couple minutes to make it warm and pink and perfect.

  Fiona only bought yogurt in individual servings; less environmentally correct, but she swore it tasted better that way. I teased her about it frequently with the threat that she was the reason we would end up with no place to run, but she just laughed and pointed out all the ways she made our household, and the entire pack, go green. Each house had multiple recycling bins; we only bought recycled paper products, and just earlier this year, Fiona finally stopped the pack from buying Styrofoam cups and plates for our summer cook-outs, no matter how much cheaper and easier they were to use. She made sure we left no trash behind if we took anything into the woods with us, we adopted a stretch of highway to keep clean—as a human neighborhood, but it made me laugh every time someone thanked us for taking care of that part of the road, the humans with their gratitude not knowing what monsters lurked in their midst—and Fiona picked up litter whenever she saw it.

  She was subtle about changing things. She didn't nag or order, just took her time and convinced us it was what we wanted to do all along, or at least what was the right thing for us to do, even if it was a pain sometimes. I controlled with strength and orders and a healthy dose of fear, but Fiona had her own charm.

  I moved everything to the table and, when I heard the water shut off, added the milk to her cereal. She drank water, but I couldn't function without my soda.

  Sometimes, I felt trapped by the patterns of our life, but the morning ritual was more often comforting than not.

  She came downstairs naked, her dark skin slightly damp and a towel wrapped around her head. My stomach grumbled, and I shoved her toward her seat. She slammed her heel into my calf hard enough to raise a brief welt, but dropped into her chair and tore into her food. We ate fast, voracious. Wolves are always hungry, even w
hen they don't need to hunt to survive.

  After, Fiona went upstairs to put on unscented lotion and get dressed, and I did the dishes. If I left them sitting in the morning, by the time we got home at night, the stink of them would be too much.

  "Walk me out?" she asked. She didn't look like herself when she went to work; I was used to her naked, or, at the most, wearing shorts and tank tops. Today, she wore pinstripe trousers and a long-sleeve black shirt, probably layered over a camisole. The long sleeves were for her human coworkers; when she shut herself up in her office, she would take it off. The building was always cold, the humans complained, and so she had to incorporate it into her outfits.

  I threw on jean shorts and a sleeveless cotton shirt. All it had to do was keep me from being arrested for indecent exposure.

  I didn't know how she stayed at her job, but she had worked there for years. She claimed she liked being around regular humans; they made her feel energized. She dealt with technology, new inventions, thousands of people, and dressed up every single day. I had to face down werewolves pissed off and frequently bordering on rabid and was naked most of the time. She loved her work, but I preferred mine.

  Of course, her job came with a 401k, health insurance—not that we used it, between our rapid healing and being unable to let human doctors get their hands on our blood—and a retirement plan. If I was very, very lucky, when I retired, I'd get to stay alive.

  I walked with her to the end of the block. We lived on a short street with a cul-de-sac and the shuttle bus her work provided picked her up on the corner.

  "The Seattle wolves are coming into town," I told her. My flip flops made satisfying thwacking sounds against my feet. I walked silent so often that when I could make noise, I rejoiced in it. "I might be late."

  "I'll call in delivery on my way home," she offered, and then, before I could remind her, "and I'll make sure to get extra, just in case."

  "I'll try not to need it," I promised, and she grinned. She hated it when I brought my work home. I didn't blame her; she'd lost three coffee tables to it and a gorgeous wolf sculpture. I was still trying to find a suitable replacement.

  Her ride was waiting, so she gave me a quick, chaste kiss. We weren't out to upset anyone, but I saw no reason at all we couldn't indulge in some of the same discrete public displays of affection that straight couples did.

  After all, I wasn't humping her leg in the middle of the street. What more could they want?

  I waited until the shuttle was out of sight, carrying her away from my world and into the human one, and then headed back to the house. The Seattle wolves weren't arriving until early afternoon, but that meant I had to compress an entire day's session into one morning to clear my schedule for them. I had a lot of audiences scheduled, too, just my luck.

  Sometimes it was a pain in the ass—usually mine—to be pack leader.

  The problems I resolved:

  Kyle, who lived in the house next door on the right, wanted hunting rights for his extended family. He was having an anniversary party in January and needed to provide a hunt for his man's father, his own brother, and his woman's parents. Four extra

  people might not seem like a lot, but four extra werewolves was a heavy load for any hunting grounds to handle.

  Luckily, part of their visit fell over the full moon—the wolf moon, appropriately enough—so I invited them to join our run and agreed to talk to the pack leader across the border. If they all had valid passports, Canada was a good hunting option, and there was still time to make arrangements.

  One of the things I liked best about Kyle was that he always planned ahead. It wasn't very wolf-like—I had worked hard and been groomed my whole life to be pack leader, but still slipped into think about now instead of planning for then—but it was much appreciated.

  Dean, one of the weaker wolves just a couple years older than me, was accused of bringing human women around the neighborhood too close to the full moon. We'd just come off October's and I didn't remember smelling any strangers, but I assigned a couple wolves to look into it.

  He didn't bother to keep a straight face while I questioned him. His grin was so wicked, I figured he was trying to rile me up. I wasn't easily shaken—one of the reasons I'd lasted so long as pack leader was that I could keep my temper—so his efforts were futile, but I still gave it some thought.

  Possibly, he just wanted some time in the dungeon with me. We had scened together more when we were younger, before Fiona started sniffing around me and I got too busy with pack responsibilities, and if he was feeling abandoned, he might very well look to stir up trouble in order to make me mad enough to beat him again. Or maybe he was using it as terribly dangerous pick-up lines: Hey, baby, what's your sign? I was born under the sign of the wolf. Want to see what big teeth I have, the better for eating you with? Let's go howl at the moon. What's a pretty girl like you doing wearing such a bright red coat?

  I made a note to pencil in some time with him just in case. If it turned out he was bringing humans around, whatever the reason, he was going to be in trouble, and his punishment would not be me binding and beating him, because he would enjoy the hell out of that. If he wasn't, though, we could have some fun.

  Lily asked for her man to join the pack. It shocked the hell out of me, because I still thought of her as the twelve-year-old cub stumbling over her own two—or four—feet. She had grown sleek and predatory, and I could feel the power pulsing off her.

  She was going to be trouble in a couple years, hunting for a higher spot in the pack hierarchy, maybe even for pack leader. I'd keep an eye on her. Maybe even groom her to be my successor, depending on how long she was willing to wait. I wasn't ready to step down, and the only way to force a leader out was a dangerous, often deadly, bloody fight, but if she could be patient, she might be the successor I needed. Her dad and my dad were good friends, even though my dad went off to join a different pack a few years ago when he found a new woman. I liked the pup—the full-grown wolf—even when she was an annoying, yappy thing chasing her own tail and tagging along with the older wolves.

  She was a born wolf, too. That's probably part of why I liked her so much. Didn't mean I'd give her an inch if she challenged me, though.

  Her man was quiet and let her do the talking. He had all his papers in order, recommendations from his pack leader and other alphas, and proof that he could contribute to my pack, both money and time.

  I'd call to check the sources, but after I gave him a good sniff and watched the way they interacted, I was pretty sure he was in.

  And then came the Seattle wolves.

  They weren't at all what I expected. They had a fairly new pack leader, a strong wolf named Rafael. He'd only been in power here a couple years, and I'd never had the occasion to meet him. As geographically close as the two packs were, we did a good job of pretending the other didn't exist. Rafael was older, I smelled the age on him, but not so old he smelled weak. His skin was tough like leather, too much time working in the sun damaged even a wolf, and his hands were callused. He had a thin upper lip and stubble on his cheeks. His black hair was silvered at the temples, and his dark eyes were pretty, with startlingly long lashes.

  I took in all of this very quickly, scenting him while his delegation approached, and I nearly squirmed in my seat at the combination. He was hot as fuck, and everyone in the room could smell my response. He tested the air as he approached, a natural thing for a wolf to do; I knew the moment he caught my scent, because his eyes darkened, and he smirked at me.

  Hot as fuck, but I kept it professional. No visiting alpha was going to rattle me, not even one who made me want to throw him to the floor and mount him right there in front of both our packs.

  Rafael brought me a complaint from the Seattle pack and a personal request. The Seattle wolves accused us of poaching on their hunting grounds north of the city. We hunt to the east and the south, leaving the north and the west to them. He had no proof it was us, of course, because none of my wolves woul
d be so stupid.

  Really, he had no proof it wasn't a natural animal, except that the carcasses were left, easy to find, the meat gnawed but not eaten. Sounded like a wolf message to me, even if wolves didn't normally waste their food, but Rafael swore he'd put his best bloodhounds on it—the wolves in a pack with the best noses—and they smelled wolves around the kills.

  I listened to everything he had to say, and then I sat for a few minutes, silent and ponderous, perched in my chair at the head of the room. A long time ago, I learned that most wolves were like humans in a way, maybe because so many of them used to be human. People were uncomfortable with quiet spots in conversation; if you sat patiently enough, they would fill the silence.

  Rafael crossed his arms over his chest and watched me watch him. I cocked an eyebrow, crossed one leg over the other, and smoothed my hands down my thighs. He dropped his gaze, watching me touch my own skin.

  I wasn't the only alpha smelling like want. I bit hard on my tongue, hiding my smile.

  Unfortunately, as fun as his desire for me was, my trick didn't work; he stood and silently regarded me.

  "I'll put some bloodhounds on it," I said at last. He lifted his chin, showing his throat, a move that might have looked submissive if I couldn't see the confidence shining in his expression. He might want me, and he might blame my pack for the kills, but he wasn't scared of me one bit.

  "And if you find anything? If you're truly innocent, will the Microsoft Monsters help me stop whoever is poaching on my hunting grounds?"

  My lips twitched, but I managed to bite back my smile. Officially, we were the Eastside pack, but the Seattle wolves frequently called us the Microsoft Monsters even though only some of my wolves work there.

  "When my bloodhounds find who is poaching, my hunters will help you stop it." I pushed confidence into my words, into my thoughts; my entire body needed to exude it, so if he looked at me, if he smelled me, he would see how much I believed in my wolves.