Page 14 of Black Moon

“Of course, Alpha Grove,” I said.

And half the eyes in the place turned to look at me, some lit with anger and refusal, others with shock—as if they hadn’t realized that if their pack alpha was dead and gone, another would need to rise in his place, and soon. Some looked downright pleased by it.

And Linden? His shoulders went absolutely rigid. He didn’t turn back to me, but gave a stiff nod and continued toward his table.

When I went to grab my messenger bag from the booth’s bench, I had to lean around a group of young alphas who’d gathered around Skip.

“Excuse me,” I said for the third time, increasingly snappish. “I saidexcuse me.”

In the end, I shouldered through them and had to pull the strap out from under an alpha’s thigh. Before I got too far, though, Skip grabbed my arm.

“Where are you going?” He’d practically leaped out of his seat, ignoring his would-be courtiers to catch my eye. It’d almost be charming, if I were the kind of omega who wanted the concentrated attention of any alpha.

“I need to check in at the motel.”

“It’s kind of early,” he griped.

I looked out over the dining room, the wolves gathered in their dark mourning clothes. “It seems to me like your pack could use a bit of time to itself. I’m sure I’ll see you soon.” Brokering no argument, I shifted the strap of my bag over my head. “Thanks for showing me around today, Skip.”

“At least let me walk you to your car.”

“No, thanks. Really. I’ve got it.” I waggled my keychain in the air, complete with a small canister of pepper spray. Grovetown didn’t seem like the kind of place I’d need to use it, but better safe than sorry. “Stay with your people.”

He frowned, not entirely satisfied with that. “Well, I’ll catch up with you soon. What are you doing tomorrow?”

Already, I was headed to the door. “Not sure yet. But I bet we’ll be seeing each other.”

Honestly, it was beginning to seem like I was going to see more of Skip Chadwick than I wanted to.

7

Linden

Iclosed my laptop and pushed my chair back, rolling my neck back and forth, rubbing ineffectively at my shoulders.

A day and a half, I’d been looking at what other packs had tried, to halt the inexorable forward creep of the Condition. Most of what I’d learned was just how good the Grove pack had things.

Of the nearly two dozen omegas in the pack, we only had two with regular symptoms—Skye and his mother. Most packs had an illness rate that looked like the opposite of ours, and some, like the Reids, had lost their entire omega populations.

I’d found more about packs like them starting wars because of the inherent emotional instability of alphas than I had about successful treatments for the Condition. In fact, it seemed as though the healthy eating regimen I had Skye on was more successful than any treatment that was being tried nationally.

So instead of giving Skye hope about getting him better, I was faced with the opposite responsibility: I had to talk to him about the option of making his experience public, in hopes of helping other omegas.

Apparently, that he was alive at all was impressive, given his ongoing health struggles. He’d had a major attack as a preteen, collapsing at the state fair and having a seizure that had left him bedridden for days, and it seemed that most omegas who had an attack like that didn’t recover. Heck, most women who came down with the Condition during pregnancy, as his mother had, weren’t able to carry the baby to term.

I suspected he was going to be all for making his case public. Heck, he’d probably be willing to start a blog of every single thing he did if it would help people. It was who he was—omega caretaker to an extreme that few omegas were.

“You look like death warmed over,” Zeke said, coming through the door as I was rubbing my eyes.

I shrugged, and it made my tense shoulders twinge. “Feel like it too.” I waved at my closed laptop. “Birch was right. We’re complacent. I’ve been treating Skye’s symptoms for years without trying to find a deeper cause for the Condition. I’ve been treating it like his illness is a given, instead of really trying to get him better.”

Zeke threw himself into the chair opposite my desk, staring at me. “You serious right now? You and that boy talk about every damn leaf he puts in his mouth. You know more about what he eats than you know about what you eat. As for what causes it, you gonna figure that out on your own here in this state-of-the-art small-town clinic?” He looked around skeptically, taking in the plain walls, the practical equipment, but he had a point. For any serious testing, I’d have to send patients away to a big hospital, and, well, no werewolf I knew wanted to be poked at and prodded by curious human doctors who didn’t really know anything about our physiology.

In medical school, that’d been elective.

“But that doesn’t get us closer to a cure. It’s just keeping him from getting sicker. And he has relapses. It doesn’t always work.” I rested my hands on the laptop, staring at it. “But apparently it’s at least as good as anyone else is doing.”

He raised a brow and waited.

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