Page 37 of Black Moon

Omega smells very good, my wolf nose informed me, as though I hadn’t already come to that conclusion.Tart and deep and beautiful and perfect to sink our teeth into.

And okay, maybe I hadn’t been thinking that before, but as a wolf, my mind was a lot closer to its basest instincts. The ones that didn’t give a damn about clinics and blogs and politics. Just the thought of those things made it—made me—want to growl in frustration. We weren’t interested in all of that. We only needed to run and hunt and fight and fuck and—

Protect, the wolf interrupted its own litany of preferred activities when the smell of something wrong reached our nose. Of omega in distress and blood and adrenaline. Of Reid and strange alpha.

We bared our teeth and pushed harder, faster. Run. Hunt. Fight.

As I rounded another tree, two figures came into view. I was primed for a fight, ready to tear apart any alpha that got between me and my omega, but this wasn’t that.

It wasn’t a fight, or Colt running from an alpha, at all.

It was Colt, one supporting arm around...Brook.

His eyes went wide when he caught sight of me, and he froze for a second, uncertain of the strange wolf running toward him. But Brook...Brook’s whole face crumpled, and he fell to his knees, reaching out his arms toward me as a sob escaped him. “Alpha,” he whispered, and fell against me as I rushed up, wrapping his arms around my neck and crying into my fur.

Oh shit. Did he think I was my father? I mean, like I said, Grove alphas tend to look the same in shift. And of course he’d have expected my father to come for him, not me.

But hell, it hadn’t been either of us. It had been Colt Doherty.

I looked up at him, and somehow, even never having seen me shifted before, he seemed to know it was me, because he’d calmed slightly. He was looking back in the direction he and Brook had come from, understandably nervous.

As much as I wanted Brook to be comfortable, even if that comfort came from thinking it was my father who had come for him, we needed to move, immediately. I took a step back, tugging myself slightly out of Brook’s grip and tossing my head back toward the cars.

They both took the cue and headed off in front of me. They also kept looking back, as though they needed the reassurance I was behind them.

As we hurried back toward the cars, I considered my options. I could call Zeke and let him know to come home, but calling when they were in enemy territory was a terrible idea. If they were hiding and Zeke’s phone started singing “Doctor Feelgood”—his ringtone for me, which was a lot less funny than he thought—they’d be jumped for sure.

And that was only if he had it on, as he should not, and got the message at all.

But I couldn’t let them keep going, heading into the territory of an enemy pack, looking for someone who wasn’t even going to be there. The best-case scenario there was a lot of unnecessary bloodshed that didn’t result in deaths, and I didn’t trust we’d get that.

Nope. It was time to do things the old-fashioned way.

When we broke out of the trees onto the small path where the cars were parked, I turned my head to the sky and howled.

Here. Come here to me.

Then I paused a moment and did it again.

Brook had once again fallen to his knees beside me, clinging to my neck. As much as the enforcers would need me human, to explain things, I didn’t want to change and dress, since he clearly needed the comfort of a four-legged pack member.

I couldn’t begin to understand how he felt. I could smell the blood and pain and fear, and see the mating bite on his neck, but I’d never been through anything so awful. When my mother had died of the Condition, I’d gone wolf for a week and refused to leave a pile of her clothes arranged in a nest on my bed—and that was the worst trauma I’d ever lived through.

This was so much worse than that.

Brook needed, and deserved, every scrap of comfort we could give him. Plus, Colt could explain what had happened well enough, right?

A few minutes after I howled, howls echoed through the woods, heading toward us. I returned it with another howl of my own, and nudged Brook, tossing my head in the air to go again. He bit his lip, took a deep breath, and added his own voice to mine.

The return howl from the pack was filled with a kind of fierce joy; I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard anything like it before.

When tiny little Claudia, in wolf form, broke from the trees a few moments later, she made a beeline for Brook, almost bowling him over. He traded clinging to my neck for hugging her, so I figured furry comfort was covered, and I could shift back to human to handle things better.

I stretched, stood, and shifted, then grabbed my car keys and unlocked the door so I could dress. It wasn’t a huge deal, being naked in front of one’s pack, but I had a feeling Brook would be more comfortable with me clothed.

As I was pulling my underwear on, I heard his low voice tinged with surprise. “Linden?”

And oh hell, did I not want to have to explain this to him. Maybe we could wait to tell him about my father. But no. Lying, even by omission, wasn’t going to help make him feel better. In the end, it would only imply that I thought he bore responsibility for Dad’s death, when he so very clearly did not.

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