Beauty's Beast - By Jenna Kernan Page 0,35

their own kind would attack them. Every adult Ghost Child they had ever met had been kind and nurturing.

These Ghostlings were bigger, nearly half Aldara’s size, and imposing in such a large group. Still Samantha did not feel afraid. She listened when Aldara explained about her but could not really understand what was said.

“They know where the Betas are,” said Aldara. “And they’ve agreed to leave with me. To find our parents.”

Samantha glanced to him and found his gaze pinned on her.

“I can’t leave her,” he said, speaking to Aldara while looking at Samantha.

And then she understood. Aldara and Alon, even these little ones, could all fly. She was holding them back and endangering them all.

“But there may be more of them,” said Aldara.

“More reason to stay.”

Aldara glanced from her brother to Samantha and sighed. “You will follow?”

He nodded. “As quickly as we can.”

“We’ll go to the Beta Pack first. Then find our parents.”

She stepped forward to hug her brother and then turned to face Samantha. “Thank you for healing my wounds. I owe you a favor, but if you get my brother killed you answer to me.”

With that mixed message delivered, Aldara made a clicking sound in her throat. The Gamma Pack gathered about her. She pointed to the sky. They nodded their understanding.

Then, right before her eyes, Aldara evaporated into billowing gray smoke and rocketed into the blue. Each of the Gammas poofed into smoke and followed their half sister.

Samantha gaped in wonder as she witnessed their retreat. They could fly!

Alon watched them until they disappeared.

“I’m sorry,” Samantha said.

“We have to hurry,” he said.

How long until the souls of the Ghostlings walked the Spirit Road and reached Nagi in his shadowy realm?

How long until her enemy found her?

* * *

Alon wasted no time getting Samantha back to the house. Fifteen minutes later he was back in human form, dressed in boots, creased trousers and a gray pinstriped shirt with cuffs rolled to the elbow. His mussed hair and untucked shirttails spoke of his rush. He hustled her out to the garage and threw a small duffel into the bed of a red Ford pickup truck. She strapped on her shoulder restraint and he led them out of the mountains, driving as fast as the twisting switchbacks would allow. Samantha had never learned to drive and was relieved that Alon had.

Twilight painted the sky purple. Samantha held on to the armrest and braced her feet on the floor, trying unsuccessfully to keep from banging into the door frame. Many switchbacks later, the road, and Samantha’s stomach, leveled on the valley floor and the sky opened above them, giving her a view of the stars emerging one by one. First the Holy Star, Venus, twinkled bright and then Winter Maker, the cluster called Orion by many, appeared, still clinging to his place in the heavens.

As Alon drove, Samantha told herself to keep her attention out the window, but she could not resist snatching quick glances at him. He was handsome again. She could not get her mind around the reality that this stunning, sexy man was that terrifying, vicious creature who had so effectively used his claws to puncture the heart and lungs of his challenger.

His third form called to mind the ones who had attacked her family. It was a comparison that lifted the hairs on her neck. Had they done the same to her father? Alon thought so.

He wasn’t one of them. This was Alon. Still she inched farther from him and clung to the armrest.

He had been right not to show her his third form. How had she ever kissed him? How could she have fallen for his looks when she knew what he was inside? He’d been born that way. This, what she now saw, was not his natural form. She, on the other hand, had been born human and only later grew into her second shape.

Her entire life had been filled with the terror of being found by Nagi. Always she feared his ghosts and lately his evil monsters. Alon was one of them.

She had not always balanced her fear for her family’s safety and the urging of her heart to do what she was meant to do. What would Alon do with her if he knew that she was also a Seer, one of the three Halflings whom Nagi most wanted dead?

She shivered.

“Cold?” he asked and fiddled with the air system.

She was cold right through to her heart. What did she do now?

She closed