Page 2 of Black Moon

“But I should try harder to eat.”

“I think you being too worried to eat right now is understandable. Yes, you need to do it. But being hard on yourself isn’t going to help.”

Temperature: fine.

Blood pressure: too high, naturally. My own blood pressure was too high, and I wasn’t suddenly having to worry about the possibility of being kidnapped. I was just setting the cuff down when brakes squealed outside, immediately followed by shouting, and doors slamming.

Skye jumped down from his bed again and started busily putting things away, preparing for...

But no, nothing could have prepared either of us for what was coming.

My father’s second in command, Zeke, covered in blood from head to toe. Claudia Wilson, holding the door for him, also bloody, her clothes torn and hair everywhere.

And in Zeke’s arms, my father. Zeke and Claudia weren’t covered in their own blood. It was my father’s.

Aspen Grove Senior, a man in his sixties, was built like my brother, his eldest son. Near six and a half feet tall and muscular—a towering oak of a man.

Covered in blood, held in Zeke’s arms, he looked tiny.

Zeke looked at me, eyes as wild and terrified as I felt, and I pointed at the middle bed.

I knew before they’d even gotten him to the bed.

I was no ER doctor, but I’d done my time in an emergency room during my residency, and sometimes you knew the outcome before you started.

Still, you had to try.

“Skye,” I called to my frozen assistant, who was still standing beside his bed. When he hesitated, I looked up to meet his eye. “You’ve got this.”

And just like that, he did. This was what he’d been training for, practically since childhood. He’d spent more time in the clinic than anyone but me.

But when they bring you a patient with his stomach torn open, his guts slowly leaking out all over the clinic floor, it doesn’t matter how stone-cold calm you are. It doesn’t matter how many ribs you crack doing CPR. Doesn’t matter if you do have a shiny new defibrillator that works exactly like it’s supposed to.

Even the adrenaline only woke him for a moment.

My father’s eyes flew open, glancing down at himself, and then up to my eyes. “Your brother. Call Aspen. You...need—” he said, his voice a hoarse, broken whisper, and he cut off to try to gasp for breath.

Then his eyes closed again, and he was gone.

Call Aspen.

Fucking Aspen.

My older brother. The man who was supposed to be alpha after Dad, who had spent his whole youth training for the position. The man who had been gone when I got back from med school, and who hadn’t spoken to any member of the pack in nearly ten years, as far as I knew.

The asshole had abandoned us, and he was my father’s last thought.

My father’s last concern.

His last concern ever, because he was dead.

My father was dead.

And he’d been right all along. Jesus Christ, he’d been so right. I was completely useless. As dubious a value as a doctor was to any pack, I’d had my chance to justify the cost of my long, expensive education, and failed completely.

And my father was dead because of it.

I pushed harder, climbing up over him to get better leverage, counting compressions.

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