Page 32 of Black Moon

When we walked back into the game/war room, everyone was waiting. Watching. They had to know what Zeke had been asking of me. I clenched my jaw, looking at the members of my pack who might be dead in a few hours. Some of them were barely adults. Lane couldn’t be more than twenty-four.

But Zeke was right. They needed faith more than they needed one more fighter.

“Everyone ready?” They all nodded, almost in unison, and again, Zeke was right. They were all looking at me. Waiting for me. Maybe I wasn’t Alpha Grove just yet, maybe I never would be, but for them, right now, I was. “Then it’s time. Go get Brook back.”

They didn’t cheer or anything so war-movie-like, but again, they nodded. There was a ripple of movement, a murmur of assent, and they turned to the back door, where the vans were waiting.

“I’m expecting you all to come back in one piece too,” I called after them.

Expecting was probably the wrong word. I’d never much been a religious man, but I thought maybe praying was a better way to put it.

16

Colt

The Cider House was the quietest it’d been since I got to town, and I didn’t think it had a damn thing to do with people having somewhere else to go. It was Friday night, and any bar—especially one so central to pack politics—should’ve been full to capacity.

I was sitting at the counter, nursing another cider, with my notebook open on the countertop. I hadn’t expected to get much work done—honestly, I was just feeling antsy. My heat was coming up soon, and I didn’t really want to be alone in a motel room just thinking about it.

Unfortunately, that meant I was keeping company with Skip Chadwick and his cronies. Or, well, not keeping company. They were sitting at the same long table at the center of things, where they usually set up for the night.

But I could hear them behind me, Skip’s voice loud, like he had a bullhorn pointed right at my back.

“Need another drink?” Talin asked, glancing past my shoulder at the table of rowdy werewolves.

“Absolutely. Maybe more than one?”

She gave me a sympathetic grimace, and it was weird to realize that if I’d asked her to get involved, she would have. The werewolves I’d grown up with weren’t like that—wouldn’t help just out of the kindness of their hearts. With the Doherty alphas, everything they did was trying to prove something about how big or strong or important they were.

Talin didn’t act like she had a single thing to prove, just narrowed her hazel eyes at the long table. “You boys calm down, or you’ll be drinking out in the cold all night, you hear?”

There was a rumble of assent, but my ears pricked as Jack McKesson whispered across the table. “Don’t know who she’s going to call in. All the enforcers are off after the Reids. Ford went out before it was even dark, said he was going to see Linden.”

Okay, as much as Skip’d been grating my nerves lately, I couldn’t let a scoop like that lay there.

I spun around on the bar stool and narrowed my eyes down at them. “They’re going after Brook, tonight?”

Shiloh was working that night too, but she’d kept quiet and out of the way, for the most part. She’d hardly said a word to me, and now, the way Talin was orbiting around her, making sure she was okay—it all made complete sense.

The left side of Skip’s mouth rose in a little smirk when he turned toward me, and he lifted his shoulder. “Might be. Wouldn’t know. Seems like the Groves are just as secretive as ever, not letting the rest of the pack in on pack business.”

Goddamn, this guy was bound and determined to make my eyes roll right out of my head. “Sure. I bet that doesn’t have anything to do with anyone in the pack being untrustworthy, looking out for their own interests before they spared a thought for Brook out there alone and scared.”

I budged off the bar stool and put money on the counter for my drinks and dinner. “Thank you, Talin. I think I’m going to head out.”

She nodded, pursing her lips as she eyed Skip. But Skip Chadwick couldn’t have made me leave anywhere I didn’t want to stay.

More importantly, there was news happening out there on Reid territory, and Linden Grove might’ve had me sitting on my thumbs waiting for them to save Brook, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t start building my story.

If there were members of the Grove pack out there looking after their own, I wanted to know about it.

Jack had said that his brother had gone down to Linden’s, and sure enough, when I drove by with the windows down, it smelled like at least a dozen pack members had been there not long ago. I picked up their scent heading west, and drove.

There weren’t many roads out of town, and heading that way, it wasn’t long before I found a handful of vans parked on one of those gravelly drives where hikers and birdwatchers would pull off to walk the paths into the woods.

Thank god, my Prius was discreet—a dark silver color—and quiet. I inched over the gravel drive at the edge of the two-lane highway. If there were any Grove wolves nearby, I didn’t want them hearing me and getting distracted. I was only there to observe, and, sure, maybe I’d stopped to get the wooden rifle out of my trunk just to be safe.

No, it wasn’t a gun. It was a big hunk of wood that looked a bit like a gun, but it was for practice. There were about three things I did in my life that my father approved of, and color guard was one of them.

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