Page 29 of Black Moon

Colt

So, at this point, I probably had to admit that I was acting a little over the top with Linden Grove. It wasn’t that he wasn’t sexy, or that I didn’t want to luxuriate in peeling his sweaters off his warm body, but if I was coming at a guy I barely knew this hard, that meant one thing: my heat was right around the corner.

Still, there was way too much to think about to dwell on boinking or annoying hormones.

There was an omega who’d been taken, kidnapped, and—and Linden seemed to think he was being hurt by the Reid pack. That was what really struck hard, because alphas weresupposedto be all about the greater good, looking after their pack. Sure, they needed omegas, but we needed them too.

The balance between alphas and omegas should’ve worked out okay for everybody. Once, there were plenty of omegas and betas, and just enough alphas to keep packs safe, but the Condition and modernity had shifted pack dynamics in the last few decades.

Brook Morgan’s kidnapping was a stark reminder—far more efficient than remembering Dad and Chase could be self-involved asshats half the time—that no matter what instinct and tradition claimed, some people were just bad.

And it didn’t sit right with me to do nothing while an omega was in trouble. This felt deeply unfair, like all omegas had been cursed. It wasn’t enough to deal with the Condition, we also had to deal with the fallout among unstable alphas who forgot we were people too.

The more I thought about it, the angrier I got, until I was pacing back and forth in my motel room, absolutely embittered that I had no one to take my frustration out on.

Clearly, Doctor Grove was too nice to yell at. But you know who wasn’t?

Skip Fucking Chadwick.

Now that I had the full picture of what was going on in this pack, it seemed all the more insidious that Skip had invited me here. Sure, I thought I had a place in covering the news, in exposing truth for the sake of justice.

But that wasn’t why Skip had finally answered my requests. He’d brought me in as what now appeared to be a place filler. He wasn’t interested in my work, hadn’t once asked about the Condition or what I meant to write about, hadn’t offered any real advice.

He’d been all too happy to parade me around in front of his pack, put hands on me to convey that there was something here going on. And yeah, it’d seemed at every turn like I was fighting the presumption that I was in Grovetown at Skip’s behest, and in support of him.

And he hadn’t once mentioned Brook. Maybe he, like the rest of the pack, didn’t want to expose any vulnerabilities to an outsider.

Or maybe it was something else.

When I texted him the next morning to see if he wanted to get breakfast, he’d invited me to meet him at Chadwick’s Grille.

It was his mother’s restaurant. He said breakfast was on him.

I was seething by the time she sat us down with menus and kissed her son on the cheek. No sooner had she walked away than I snapped at him.

“Why didn’t you tell me about Brook Morgan?”

Across the booth, Skip blinked at me. “What about him?”

“An omega has been kidnapped from this pack, and you don’t think that’s at all relevant to me?”

“Is it?” he asked, flipping open the menu, though I couldn’t see how his mother could own the restaurant and there be a single thing on the menu he hadn’t tried.

“Well, for one thing, it seems like this entire episode is predicated on the Condition and the way it’s affecting local packs.”

Skip shrugged. “A guy was taken off the street. We don’t know what the Reid alpha had in his head when he did it.”

I felt my dry lips pucker, and I pushed my menu away. “Sure. There’s absolutely no way to guess what kind of criminal intent an alpha might have in absconding with another pack’s omega.”

Suddenly, Skip was smiling at me, his bright teeth flashing. “You’re cute.”

“Excuse me?”

“When you’re pissed, you use all those big-city words. I bet your senator daddy sent you to one of those fancy private schools, huh?”

My smile tightened, and I gripped the edge of the bench so I didn’t fling myself across the table, leading with claw and fang.

“He sure did, Skip. I’ve got that big-city edjumacation. I’m glad you can get a laugh about it. But right now, what I’m actually concerned about is why you did not bother to mention, one single time, that there was an omega taken from your pack.”

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