Thomas Durling escaped his small-town upbringing for over ten years, until a single phone call drew him back. Told his mother has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s, he returns to the small northern Michigan town he once called home to find a mute stranger taking care of her in his stead.<br><br>On the surface, Andre seems harmless enough, but Thomas has enough problems trying to deal with his mother’s illness. He doesn’t need a gorgeous young man to distract him, especially in a town that drove him away once already with its homophobia.<br><br>But Andre has nowhere else to go. A wolf without a pack, he’s been on the run since witnessing his father’s murder, always looking over his shoulder, never looking ahead. Taking care of Thomas’s mother has given him a welcome sanctuary, as well as a place he can call home for a couple months. He wants to stay, but more importantly, he wants to help, even if Thomas isn’t ready to accept that they could actually be friends ...

Moon-Touched

His step was lighter when he returned to the truck. The aches from his shift were gone, he was far enough away from Remus to make him difficult to track, and there was a church in this tiny spot on the map that seemed to embrace strangers.


It might have been a decade since Thomas Durling had last driven the road into Mellowbush, but time had chosen to ignore the town, leaving it so similar to his last visit, his stomach churned in rebellion. The Amoco upgrades still hadn’t been finished, which meant Rudy was probably still driving down to Mt. Pleasant to hit the reservation for gambling every weekend, and the pothole that had ripped out his transmission the last time he’d visited had been filled in and then broken down again, the darker concrete at its jagged edges defying anybody to object. He avoided it easily, but the urge to keep on going when he hit the four-way stop had him clutching at the steering wheel until his knuckles hurt.


Chapter 3