Page 65 of Black Moon

“Like a blowup doll,” Claudia agreed, then cocked her head. “Do they make blowup dolls with small dicks? I mean, it would make sense, right? Not everyone wants a giant one.”

“Speak for yourself,” Brook mumbled.

The look on his face in that moment was pure Brook, straight out of my childhood. The Brook who’d just said something wicked and knew it, and both wanted acknowledgement for his wit, and wanted no one to look at him.

That was the moment I realized that maybe we had a long road ahead of us, but we would get there. Brook would be okay, as long as he had our support getting there.

“So how often do you guys do pack meetings?” Colt asked, out of nowhere, when we’d all gone back to our silent eating.

Claudia raised a brow at him but answered immediately. “Once a month or so. Why?”

“Any other time a lot of the pack gets together?”

“Any Friday night at The Cider House,” Brook suggested.

Colt nodded, eyes narrowed in thought. After a moment, he looked back up at Claudia. “We should go this Friday. You and me. Talk to some people.”

She raised the other eyebrow to match the first. “Some particular reason?”

Colt shrugged. “If Skip’s going to accuse me of being a political pawn, I might as well at least be involved in the politics.”

“Our problems aren’t your responsibility,” I said, and he just offered a sweet smile in return. I didn’t know if I wanted to kiss him to distract him, or...no, I just wanted to kiss him.

34

Colt

Never in my entire fucking life had I wanted to give anyone advice on public relations. Since I was a kid, I’d done the photoshoots, the interviews, the videos for Mom’s Instagram Story featuring Dad, Cait, Chase, me, and a fuck ton of magazine-worthy dinner spreads.

We were supposed to be the perfect family. We had the perfect life. And Senator Conroy Doherty was, without question, the most perfect werewolf—the most perfectalpha—that our people could ever hope to have represent them in national politics. Obviously.

But the thing was, Linden Grove wasn’t pretending to be any of that. He didn’t claim to be perfect.

He was just a nice guy who had a collection of hand-knit sweaters from a pack who loved him, who wanted to do his best to help the people around him as much as he could, who’d been put in a shitty situation by a bunch of other alphas who postured but didn’t follow through.

His father had relied on his brother, discounting the ways that Linden gave his whole heart and every bit of his energy to the pack.

His brother had disappeared, leaving Linden to pick up the pieces.

And now, Skip Chadwick was trying to take the Grove pack away from...the fucking Groves. Just, seriously?

So while each one of those jerks was one more tick in the “alphas are overrated” column, while Linden was standing there, looking after an omega who’d been taken by another pack, looking after me and not getting mad even when I lashed out at him, clearly valuing Claudia’s input and Skye’s experience rather than just his own opinions, it was clear that not all alphas were impossible to deal with.

Some—one—was simply wonderful.

And he was so damned unassuming that he’d spent the entire afternoon dodging my suggestions about how to solidify his position in the pack. Instead, he asked Skye questions about his blog, he even tried playing that racing game with Brook—all to escape the possibility of having to campaign.

Thankfully, Claudia was right there with me, and by the time evening fell, we had a game plan. We were going to take Skip down.

Okay, and maybe I was feeling a little vengeful at the guy for treating me like a pawn and not the queen I was.

Not like that.

Drag queens were awesome, but I didn’t have the dedication or, quite frankly, the skill.

I was talking about the chess piece. You know, moves everywhere on the board—

Whatever. Point was, with two omegas backing up Linden, it wouldn’t matter if Aspen Junior ever came back. The Grove pack would stay where it belonged—in the hands of the one alpha I’d ever met who truly deserved people’s faith.

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