Dark Moon Falls: Cade Read online

  Cade

  Dark Moon Falls

  Melanie James

  Contents

  Summary

  Books by Melanie James

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Review it

  Recommend it

  Summary

  Ivy Winters is fresh out of college and has her whole life to look forward to. With her fated mate by her side, she planned on grabbing destiny by the balls, or so she’d thought.

  When her family’s misfortune threatens to destroy both her and her new mate, all hell breaks loose. She finds herself fighting for her freedom, and the freedom of the only man she’s ever loved.

  Cade Roberts returns to Dark Moon Falls wanting nothing more than a peaceful, quiet life after leaving the military. An impromptu road trip to pick up his best friend’s bratty sister turns out to be more than he could have ever bargained for.

  Books by Melanie James

  Dark Moon Falls

  Cade

  Black Paw Pack

  Fur Ever Yours

  Fur Ever Witched

  Black Paw Wolves

  A Hot Piece of Sass

  Twice the Sass

  You Bet Your Sass

  Watch Your Sass

  Your Sass is Mine

  Twisted Tail Pack

  His Twisted Tail

  Bearly Twisted

  Her Twisted Heart

  Twisted Desire

  Twisted Fate

  Twisted Lies

  Literal Leigh Romance Diaries

  Accidental Leigh

  Serious Leigh

  Hopeful Leigh

  Haunting Leigh

  Joyful Leigh

  Disastrous Leigh

  Tales from the Paranormal Plantation

  Gertie’s Paranormal Plantation

  Back to the Fuchsia

  When you Witch Upon a Star

  Hex U

  Karma Inc. Files

  Karma Inc.

  Mission Impawsible

  Shame of Clones

  Darkness Series

  Conjuring Darkness

  Unleashing Darkness

  Riverton Romance

  A Valentine’s Surprise

  A Deadly Obsession

  Éveiller Drive

  Ava & Will

  Kara & Dave

  Laura & Alan

  Jamie & Brad

  Ashley & Jeff

  Valerie & Greg

  Stand Alone

  Snowflakes, Exes & Ohs

  To all those who have had to fight for true love. Don’t ever give up. Your love is worth it!

  1

  Cade Roberts stepped out of his Jeep and tried not to wince as his prosthetic leg nearly buckled under his weight.

  “Son of a bitch.” Cade steadied himself against his vehicle.

  Today was a bad day. The pain was once again all too real.

  “Suck it up, buttercup,” his wolf spoke in his mind.

  “Shut the fuck up,” he warned his wolf. He was not in the mood for bullshit today. Especially from the animal he shared his life with.

  He made his way across the parking lot. Each step coming easier than the last as the phantom pains started to fade.

  “Good morning, Mr. Roberts.” A pretty blonde behind the front desk smiled as she greeted Cade.

  “Good morning, Stella. Any messages for me?”

  “Yes. Mr. Winters would like to see you in his office when you get settled.”

  Cade sighed. Just what he didn’t want to deal with first thing in the morning. “Thanks, Stella.”

  It wasn’t that Cade didn’t like Ezra, he did. In fact, Ezra was actually one of his best friends. He just didn’t want to deal with him today. They’d grown up together, partied together, hell—they had even lived together for a brief time. But whenever Ezra called Cade into his office, shit was about to hit the fan. Cade knew that. Dealing with a shitstorm was not the way he wanted to spend his day.

  He approached Ezra’s office with caution and lightly tapped on the door to announce his presence. It was nothing more than a formality, Ezra would scent him long before he’d ever get a chance to knock.

  “Cade, come in,” Ezra called out.

  “Stella said you wanted to see me. What’s up?”

  “I’m supposed to pick Ivy up from college tomorrow. She’s finally coming home, but I’ll be in meetings all day. I need you to run up to Portland and bring her home,” Ezra said.

  “You mean you want me to spend hours in a vehicle with Ivy. The same Ivy who hates my guts and told me she hoped I developed a case of mange and all of my fur fell out? Yeah, I think I’ll pass on that. Can’t you just send a car to pick her up?”

  Princess. That’s what he used to call her—among other names when they were growing up. She used to hound the living hell out of him on a regular basis. Cade and Ezra always tried their best to ditch her, but she’d always found them. No matter how hard they’d tried to hide, she was always right there up their asses, bugging the fuck out of them.

  “My mom would have my head on a platter, and you know it. It’s bad enough I can’t be there in person and I have to send you as my proxy, but I’m sure you can get the job done.”

  Now he was confused. “What do you mean ‘get the job done’? How hard can it be to pick up one girl and her shit from college?”

  Ezra pulled a Ziploc bag filled with a purple powder from his desk and handed it to Cade. “There’s something else I need you to do while you’re there.”

  Cade’s heart sank. He knew exactly what the powder was and what it was used for. It had been years since he’d seen the substance. The last time he’d been asked to use it had been on a human girl who Ezra had fallen madly in love with. His family, being who they were, had put a stop to the relationship as soon as they’d caught wind of it. The girl had lost all memories of Ezra. Not a single drop of familiarity had remained for the man she’d once loved. Ezra had been heartbroken, but couldn’t refuse his family’s demands. He’d known better than to get involved with a human. Cade had offered to give the girl the powder for Ezra. A decision he still regretted because somewhere, deep down, Ezra still hated him for doing it.

  Now, here he was again, holding that same damn powder. The look on Ezra’s face told Cade all he needed to know. He still hadn’t forgiven Cade for taking away the love of his life all those years ago.

  “Who is the powder for?” Cade asked.

  The sudden thought that Ivy had fallen in love with some human guy pissed him off. Pissed his wolf off. He had no idea why. It wasn’t as if he’d even liked Ivy or gotten along with her. Hell, he hadn’t even laid eyes on her in over six years. Why did it matter if she had been in a relationship or not? Either way, he’d do what had to be done. He always did.

  “There is enough powder here for each of her roommates. My parents were pretty damn explicit when they talked to Ivy. She’s expecting this, so it’s not like you will be surprising her with it.”

  “Still seems archaic.” It wasn’t as if the practice of erasing a human’s memories was pack law or anything. Some of the older families used to do it on a regular basis, but nowadays … it was pretty much frowned upon. Having human friends or lovers was pretty much the norm.

 
; “Would you expect anything less from my parents?” Ezra asked.

  “Nope.” If he’d learned anything from Madeline and Joseph Winters over the years, it was that looks, and appearances meant everything to them. Madeline did not put up with flaws in anyway, wolves were a far superior species and should not mix with humans. In other words, there were to be no permanent relationships with humans. Period.

  “So, will you do it? Will you go pick up Ivy and give her roommates the powder?”

  “Tell him no. Walk away,” his wolf said.

  Fuck. “Yeah, I’ll do it. But you owe me. Big time.”

  2

  “What do you mean you’ve never had anyone talk dirty to you before? Not even while you were having sex? How is that even possible?” Katrina asked, completely puzzled by the conversation.

  “Oh, my God! Are you kidding me? Especially not then! It would be too weird. Way too weird. I can’t even imagine what the hell you would say.” Ivy chugged her soda, wishing someone would talk about something other than sex.

  Normally, it would be a fun conversation, but her friends were three sheets to the wind, and she was stone-fucking-cold sober. Being the designated driver was a real bitch sometimes, but it was her turn to babysit her friends, making sure they were safe from all the assholes and perverts. After all, this was her last hurrah with her girls. Tomorrow, she’d be heading home for good. Back to Dark Moon Falls. Her classes done; her degree complete.

  Now she just needed to figure out what the fuck she was going to do with the rest of her life.

  “Thank God!” her wolf said in her mind.

  The animal inside of her, the one she had been born with and was part of her very being, hadn’t enjoyed their years away at college. The parties, the boys. None of it. Her wolf wanted to be home with her pack, free to run the forest whenever the hell she wanted. She was tired of being cooped up in a cramped apartment, having to hide who she was, pretending day in and day out she was just another boring, normal human.

  “Ivy? Are you okay?” Katrina asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

  “You kind of spaced out there for a minute.” Katrina finished her beer and pushed it off to the side of the small table.

  “I guess I was just thinking about going home tomorrow and how much I’m going to miss all of you.” Ivy glanced at each of the girls, Katrina, Amy, and Eunice.

  “Awe! We’re going to miss you, too. We’re going to have to come visit you in Dark Moon-wherever-the-hell-podunk town and whisk you away for a day or two in the city,” Eunice said.

  “That’s actually funny, and yes! Please do. I’ll be bored out of my mind within hours of being home.”

  “Can’t you stay here in Portland with us and find a job? There are plenty of schools here looking for teachers,” Amy begged.

  Ivy would love nothing more than to stay in the city she’d called home for the past four years. To stay with the friends she’d come to love as sisters.

  “I wish I could, but my brother will be here first thing in the morning to pick me up. Besides, it’s not like I’m moving across country or anything. It’s only a few hours by car, and you guys can visit me anytime!”

  Ivy tried as hard as she could to keep the fake smile pasted to her face to reassure her friends she would see them again. She knew the words she’d just spoken were a lie. She could taste the untruth on her tongue. The fact was she would probably never see them again.

  Black Moon Falls was only a few hours away by car—that much was true, but it might as well be a continent away. Going back to her pack meant abandoning all human relationships she’d formed while she was in college. She’d known at the start of the friendships and had tried to keep her distance at first. But one by one, each of the girls in front of her had won her over, and each had earned their own special place in her heart.

  Her brother was bringing with him a magical powder that would slowly strip them of their memories of Ivy. First, they would forget the name of the town she had told them she’d lived in. Then slowly, as the days and weeks passed, they would forget small details, like the color of her hair or eyes. Then her facial features, before forgetting her all together.

  It sucked. Ivy didn’t want to go through with the plan, but she had no choice. It was what was expected of her. To go home and take her place among her people. Arguing with her family would do no good. They would get their way in the end. They always did.

  She felt like she was losing a piece of her heart—her soul. Saying goodbye to her friends was harder than she’d ever imagined it to be.

  After she’d finally managed to get everyone back to the apartment safe and sound, she opened a bottle of the cheapest whiskey they had on hand and drank like there was no tomorrow. It was moments like this when she truly hated her parents.

  “They only want what’s best for us. For the pack. You know that,” her wolf said reassuringly.

  “Yeah, I get it. It doesn’t mean that I have to like it. No one else in the pack lives by these old-ass rules. Why do we have to? Even if my friends ever made it to Black Moon Falls, what would be the big deal?”

  Ivy downed a shot of whiskey, followed by another. The burn from the liquid settled in the pit of her stomach and started to numb the feelings of despair plaguing her. Having to say goodbye forever to her roommates was more than her heart could handle.

  Her friends were not a threat. Not to her, her family, or her pack. Why her parents had to be such assholes about this, she had no idea.

  “You have to go through with this. There is no avoiding your parents’ decree,” her wolf said.

  “I know. Trust me, I know. It just sucks. I just don’t know why they are forcing me to choose between who I am and the people I love.”

  There would be hell to pay if she didn’t follow through with the demands set by her mom and dad. It was bad enough she had to go home and tell them she had no intention on working for the family business. That once she’d gotten to college, she found she not only despised accounting, she sucked at it. She’d switched her major to elementary education, and in doing so, found what she truly loved to do.

  Her parents would have known this had they ever asked her how she was doing at school or had bothered to show up at her graduation. But neither of those things had happened.

  “It’s going to be brutal when Ezra picks us up tomorrow,” she said to her wolf.

  The animal whined in her mind.

  She took another large gulp out of the whiskey bottle and repeated until all of her worries disappeared.

  3

  It had been years since she’d thought about Cade Roberts. Let alone had a dream about him. Yet there she was, dozing in and out of consciousness. His unmistakable scent of raw, wild male hung in the air. It was almost as if he was in her apartment, which was a sheer impossibility.

  He hated her.

  She hated him.

  It had to have been the inevitability of going home that reminded her they could no longer act as if they lived on two separate planets.

  She’d had the biggest crush on him growing up, but he’d always pushed her away. Considering their age gap, now that she looked back, she could understand his reluctance to want to be around her. Ivy smiled at the thought. Cade and Ezra used to get so upset with her for following them around like a lost little puppy dog.

  Maybe he had forgotten all about her in the years they’d been off doing their own thing. He’d left Dark Moon Falls the day after her sixteenth birthday, and she hadn’t seen him since. Not that she’d wanted to see him again after that. Thanks to him, her party had been destroyed, and it turned out to be the most embarrassing day of her life.

  Cade enlisted in the military, and a few years later, she had left for college.

  But here, in the privacy of her dream, she could admit the truth—every part of her still wanted Cade Roberts. To know what it felt like to have his arms wrapped around her. To know his kiss, his touch. There was no way in hell she’d ever say tho
se things out loud, but in her dream. Hell yes!

  “You smell just like I remember. All hot and sexy,” she said. After all, it was just a dream. Why not go for it?

  “And here, I was afraid you’d forgotten all about me.”

  Oh God, that voice of his was deeper than she remembered, but oh so hot. She’d wanted to stalk him from time to time, but his accounts were all set to private and it pissed her off. There was no way she was about to send him a friend request. The one picture her brother had posted of him and Cade together told her the skinny, lanky boy she’d fallen in love with all those years ago was long gone.

  “How could I ever forget about the only boy I ever really loved?” She whispered the admission. Even though it was just dream Cade, she still had a hard time speaking the absolute truth.

  “That boy is long gone, Ivy,” dream Cade said.

  “He’s not gone, he just grew up into the hottest man I’ve ever known.”

  “How do you know? It’s not like you’ve even opened your eyes to see me. I could be all fat and flabby, and missing limbs for all you know,” dream Cade said.

  Something about what dream Cade said bugged her. What did he mean if she would just open her eyes? She pulled the covers up to her neck and snuggled deeper into her dream.