Page 15 of Black Moon

“I thought I should look at what other packs are doing again—see if there have been any advances since Skye and I put together his diet plan. Hoped maybe someone was doing better, was closer to a real cure than I was.” We sat there in silence for a moment, Zeke stubbornly refusing to ask the question we both knew I wanted to answer. Finally, I let out an explosive breath. “No one has anything. Not a damn thing. Skye’s strict diet alone is doing more good than anything they’re trying.”

“So what you’re saying is that you’re doing fine, whether you think so or not. Sounds like a Grove to me.” He tossed his feet up on my desk, and I didn’t even have the wherewithal to complain or tell him to put them down.

A quarter of all werewolves were sick. That sickness was contributing to the emotional instability of another quarter of our population. If we didn’t find out what was causing the Condition and fix it, omegas would die out, and alphas would end up killing each other. Beta wolves would be left alone to fend for themselves. That was, if they survived the inevitable pack wars.

Frankly, it was a wonder that Brook’s kidnapping was the first incident of its kind our pack had experienced.

Time for me to stop wallowing and get back to what was important. “Any word on where the Reids are holding Brook? Has anyone seen him?”

The way Zeke’s jaw set gave me the answer. He shook his head and tried to glare a hole in the edge of my desk. “They can’t get close enough to find a damn thing. I think we’re going to have to just go for it.”

“We’ve already lost one good wolf to this by going in without a backup plan. And it’s going to get a lot of innocent people hurt if we do that, Zeke.” I could just picture it. A bloodbath on both sides, innocents caught in the crossfire.

Zeke dropped his feet to the floor and leaned in toward me. “The only innocents in this fight are ours, Alpha.” I winced at the title, but he didn’t so much as pause before continuing. “I don’t give a damn whether they were involved in the kidnapping, every member of that pack knows they’re holding an omega against his will. There’s no way they could not know. The smell of omega in distress is fucking horrific, and our people are catching it on the wind looking for Brook. They know their alpha’s kidnapped someone, and they’re not fixing it. It’s on all of them.”

And what could I say to that? I didn’t think it was as simple as Zeke did, but he wasn’t wrong. To watch an injustice happen and do nothing to stop it was to take part in it. Part of me wanted to compare it to how I hadn’t found a cure for the Condition, but it wasn’t the same, and even my prodigious guilt complex couldn’t make that leap.

And we couldn’t just wait indefinitely, hoping for someone to grow a conscience, or for one of our own people to catch sight of Brook. There was no telling what the Reids were doing to him. Wehadto get him back, and it had to be soon.

Zeke was right in every way that mattered.

The human authorities wouldn’t involve themselves in pack matters. They’d proven that the year before when two of the biggest packs in Wyoming had torn each other apart in a situation that was disturbingly similar to the one we currently found ourselves in, kidnapped omegas and all.

If we went in planning for a fight, claws out, would we end up like those packs? The few survivors mopped up by human law enforcement and jailed for endangering human lives?

That didn’t matter, in the end. It couldn’t, because we would not leave Brook there, with people who had treated him as a thing to be stolen and not a person who got to have a say in his future.

“When’s the new moon?” I finally asked him.

One corner of his lips quirked up in a smile. “Friday.”

An end of the month new moon. There was a term for that, I thought—the second dark of the moon in a month.

I considered for a moment. “Late that night. They’ll still be on their guard. They know we’re not giving up. But after two in the morning, they’ll have minimal guards, and with the new moon, we’ll be harder to spot.”

He steepled his fingers under his chin, nodding. “The guys have a couple routes they think will get us farthest into their territory before we’re noticed. I’ll make a map, and we can decide on Friday.”

“Not before then?”

He shrugged, but the tension in his shoulders stayed put. “Not saying I think anyone’s spying on us. I don’t. But it’s easier if nobody knows till the last minute. Then nobody lets it slip to their aunt, who tells the lady down the street, who just happens to be friends with the Reid alpha’s second.”

That, of course, was when the biggest gossip in the pack walked in.

I’m not saying Skye is a bad person, or that he’d ever tell the Reid pack we were coming for Brook, but he’d almost certainly tell one or both of Brook’s sisters, wanting to be reassuring. And as Zeke said, things tended to get around. Once one person knew, it wasn’t much of a leap to two, then four, and eight, and suddenly the Reid pack was there to greet us when we came for Brook.

Already, Skye was looking at us with interest. He knew very well what our main focus was at the moment, and like everyone in the pack, he wanted to see Brook home, safe and sound.

So it was time to make sure he didn’t know anything—or if he’d heard anything, that he was quickly and completely distracted.

“Morning, oh fabulous assistant of mine,” I said with a bright smile. “I have bad news, but also good news. I was looking for something to help with your Condition, but it seems like you might be the healthiest omega who’s dealing with a chronic case.”

His eyes went wide, and he looked down at himself, small and slender in a way we could never seem to change, as though he expected his body to have grown in the last five minutes. “Me? Really?”

“Really. So I was thinking about what we could do, and it occurred to me—how would you like to be internet-famous, Skye? I’ll bet a lot of omegas dealing with the Condition would love to hear about your diet and exercise regimen.”

He looked like I’d just crowned him Miss Werewolf America, his eyes gleaming with unshed tears and a tremulous smile on his face. “You really think I could help people?”

“I know it, kiddo. So how about we spend the morning building you a blog?”

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