Page 64 of Black Moon

And why? He was angry at the appearance that the omega he’d “brought into the pack” had chosen me over him.

In a way, I supposed he had.

Huh.

But no, it wasn’t like that. It wasn’taboutthat. Alpha egos didn’t matter for a damn in making someone comfortable enough to share themselves in a vulnerable state like heat. I was safe. Comfortable. Soft, even.

And I was just fine with that, even if my father thought it made me a bad choice to be pack alpha.

When Colt dragged me in for a kiss, though, I felt like a goddamn superhero. He’d come to me unhappy, and I’d made it better enough for him to want to kiss me again. Since I’d never stopped wanting to kiss him, I would take anything he was willing to give.

While trying to convince him to stick around because of Brook, of course. I liked to think I was a reasonably clever guy, and I could already see how this was going to backfire on me.

First of all, using Brook, even if he did actually want Colt around, was reprehensible. The way he’d already been so used and hurt by asshole alphas, he didn’t need one who was supposed to be his friend using him too.

I should tell Colt I wanted him to stay for me as much as for Brook.

As soon as he stopped kissing me, which would hopefully be never.

There was a rustle behind us, the door opening again, then Claudia’s voice. “You guys can come back. They made up.”

Colt pulled away, face flushed, and gave a little huff that sounded like mixed embarrassment and amusement. He went to stand up, but I leaned in a few inches, cupped his cheeks with my hands, and pressed our lips back together. He still tasted like the last of Rowan’s pie that we’d eaten for breakfast, and that spicy sweetness that was all Colt.

Only ever Colt, the wolf in me insisted, and I pretended not to hear it. Neither Colt nor I needed that kind of pressure.

“I guess so,” Skye said, chuckling behind me. “But should we actually come back in here? I mean, I’m all for live entertainment with my meal, but I think this might be illegal.”

“Only if we pay them,” Claudia said, then hummed. “Or maybe not even then. Honestly, I don’t know how prostitution laws work.”

“Seriously, you two?” Brook asked, and I could practically feel them freeze up. Colt pulled away, worried eyes darting over to the doorway behind me. Even Claudia, empathetic person that she was, couldn’t know how Brook would react to things involving sex.

But even in the midst of all this, Brook was still Brook. He just huffed again when Claudia and Skye went quiet, and asked me, “Do you guys want us to go?”

Colt pulled back, straightened his spine, and walked around me. I turned to watch as he snatched a bag of food out of Claudia’s hands, then motioned to the chairs. “Sit. Eat. I’ll act like a grownup if you will.”

Claudia’s response was to stick out her tongue at him, so I guessed that answered that question.

It only took a few minutes before we were spread out across half the clinic, eating. Skye and Colt in chairs in the waiting area, Claudia on one bed, and Brook on the end of his own.

I sat against the edge of my desk and unwrapped my sandwich, content to eat and act as though nothing had happened. I, of course, was the only one.

“Skip pull some bullshit?” Claudia asked, licking soup off her fingers from where she’d been dipping her sandwich into it.

Colt narrowed his eyes at nothing in particular, glaring off into space for a moment before he turned to her. “No surprise?”

She shook her head. “Nope. He’s a grade-A dick. The only surprise is that he thinks he wants to be alpha.”

Brook almost choked on his sandwich. “Skip Chadwick? Wants to be alpha? Why? Has anyone told him that being pack alpha involves, like...work? And not just reliving high school football glory?”

“He probably thinks it’ll be just like reliving high school football glory.” Claudia paused to take a bite of her sandwich, then pointed it at Brook, as though using it to punctuate her point as she continued. “He saw Aspen Senior at pack meetings, drinking cider and telling stories about the past, and he thinks that’s the whole job. Show up and be the guy with the biggest dick and the most charisma.”

Brook chuckled, but the surprise answer was the tiny scoff from Skye. “Well, if that’s the criteria, Skip should know he doesn’t qualify.”

Everyone turned to stare at him in shock, and his cheeks pinked. “What?” A moment later, his eyes went round. “Not like that, you perverts. I go to the gym sometimes for my cardio, and he practically lives there.”

Claudia started to chuckle, and a second later, everyone else was laughing along. Even Skye, though he did shake his head again, mumbling “perverts.”

When the laughter died down, Brook lifted his chin in Skye’s direction. “You’re right. We all owe you an apology for even thinking you’d have taste that bad. Not that he’s bad to look at, but there’s not a whole lot of anything there.”

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