Page 3 of Black Moon

Skye’s tiny hand landed on mine. “Linden.”

I shook my head, ignoring him and continuing to count. My father’s face had gone blurry, and I refused to know why. I wasn’t crying. Just ask my father. Alphas don’t cry.

Except you couldn’t ask him, because he was dead.

“Linden. He’s gone,” Skye said, and a broken howl echoed through the room.

My howl.

My father was dead. Our alpha was dead.

I collapsed, barely keeping myself from landing on top of his body, but Zeke was there to hold me up and help me down. Just as he’d spent decades doing for my father. Here was someone else I’d failed, letting his best friend die.

I tried to shake it off, breathing deep and looking up at him. “Brook?”

He clenched his jaw and shook his head. “We didn’t even get close. They knew we were coming.”

Of course they had known. There had been no chance we would let them kidnap one of our people, one of our family, and do nothing.

And now, we not only had a crisis, a pack member who needed us to get him back. We had no alpha to plan how to do it.

2

Colt

Archibald Walsh was, without question, the most boring person to ever grace a fundraising gala. He was a stout man with a reddish face who’d polished the balding spot on the top of his head to a high shine, and the only thing that was getting me through a conversation on the marvels of modern agricultural biotechnology was the chilled glass of champagne in my increasingly tight grip.

“I tell you, my boy,” he said, wrapping a hand around my bicep for emphasis—or for other reasons I didn’t want to think too hard on, “it’s revolutionary. By the end of the decade, why, we’ll have wiped out world hunger.”

“Oh, I doubt that very much, sir,” I said sweetly, casting a smile his way. It was my mother’s smile—all appeasing, hiding fangs. “The issue with hunger and poverty has never been a lack of resources, but a lack of willingness and of empathy. Though Idohope your dream for the future proves correct. I can’t wait to see such a utopia come to life.”

The man turned even redder, his lips pursed and slick after he wet them with his tongue. By the time he’d begun to dab his sweaty brow with his embroidered handkerchief, my brother, Chase, was swooping in to rescue the man. Almost every guest at this event was human, and no one knew better than Chase that the Dohertys must be on their very best behavior.

“My dear Mr. Walsh! How wonderful you’ve been able to clear your schedule to spend a night on such a noble cause,” Chase practically shouted, clapping the man on the shoulder as he cut between us.

When he stepped back, he wrapped his arm around me—a smooth gesture, but understood. His heavy alpha arm bore down on me in an effort to make me shrink back and bite my tongue. I stepped forward and shrugged him off.

“Mr. Doherty, yes, yes, I couldn’t pass up an invitation sent directly from your father’s office. I was quite pleased to come.” Walsh stuffed his handkerchief back into his pocket and smiled.

Chase stood a whole head taller than me, even though I was pretty tall for an omega. I simply couldn’t compete with a natural-born alpha; if my brother had wanted to, he could’ve tossed me over one of his broad shoulders and jogged to Norfolk and back.

“I was just telling your brother that thePostought to write a piece on all the good work that the Sterling Corporation has been doing lately.”

“What a grand idea,” Chase gushed, giving my arm a shake. “You’ll talk to your editor about that, won’t you, Colt?”

“Oh, definitely. Absolutely I will.” She was at the party too, and no doubt she’d get a good laugh about doing anything of the sort.

From the sudden stoniness in Chase’s dark blue eyes, it was clear he picked up on the sarcasm dripping from my tongue.

Mr. Walsh did not. No one ever expected an omega to have an opinion of their own, particularly not him. The first time we’d met, he’d made the absolute flub of asking me about my heats—his intensity making it quite clear he was waiting for the day that I lost my mind and the only thing to save me would be the raging power of his cock.

“Archibald, it’s been a real pleasure to see you.” Chase leaned in to shake the man’s hand. “I’m afraid I need to borrow my brother for just a moment. Family drama. You know how these things go.”

“Of course, of course.” Archibald waved us off, all too amenable with an alpha’s will pressing in on him.

“You like that it even works on humans?” I asked through my teeth as Chase led me away, a firm hand between my shoulder blades.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He smiled at the people we passed, leading me toward a table where a server was ladling out crystal glasses of punch.

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