Page 32 of Harvest Moon

I couldn’t help the way my eyes rounded. “Aspen?”

Aspen Grove? Like from the tackle box sitting in the garage of Grove House, waiting for its owner to come home?

He noted my expression, and his face fell. “Yeah, that Aspen. Are things really that dire?”

“Dire?” I parroted again. This time he quirked a brow at me, so I continued. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I mean, I know Aspen Grove is the guy no one thinks is ever coming back, but I don’t know if that’s dire or not.”

He sighed and nodded, dropping his pack to the ground. “Linden ever figure out he’s the one who should be alpha?”

“Yes.” I paused and considered only after answering. Linden Grove had seemed confident and assertive enough as alpha. By all accounts and my own meager experience, he was good at it. “I mean, I think so. He is alpha, and the pack is prospering as far as I can tell. I’m new in town, though. I’m Claudia’s cousin.”

He cocked his head at me, and I realized he probably wouldn’t know who Claudia was. He’d been gone such a long time. But he surprised me, nodding. “Birch’s wife. That makes sense. He would bring someone into the pack whose family would be worth having along.”

“Yeah, Birch is pretty great,” I agreed. “And Claudia is too.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” He turned back to the valley, a half-smile on his face, and the expressions flitting through his eyes were almost more interesting than the view. Sadness, concern, hope, fear... maybe guilt?

Well, he had abandoned his pack for a decade. But what had he said?Linden ever figure out he’s the one who should be alpha?

Should be. Thereby implying that Aspen shouldn’t be.

I tried, and failed, to imagine being Aspen—being in a situation where my pack expected something of me that I was the wrong man to give. Especially something as important as being the pack alpha. My heart squeezed in sympathetic anxiety at the very notion.

“Are you coming home?” I asked him, motioning out toward the valley. “Like, to stay?”

He bit his lip, sighing and staring with the kind of longing most people reserved for true love, and Claudia reserved for chocolate ice cream. “Do you think they’d have me? After I abandoned them all these years?”

Looking back to the town, I considered the way I’d been treated since my arrival. The way everyone had welcomed me with open arms, offered me anything I might need to make myself at home in their community. They’d been so completely open, from Colt helping to carry my stuff to Rowan and Linden offering me the camping equipment—oh hell, the camping equipment that should actually belong to this man.

I had a very hard time imagining those people turning anyone away. Well, unless there was a lot more to the story of his departure than I’d heard, and there almost certainly was. Not to mention that abandoned family was prone to holding grudges.

Still, there was only one possible answer. “I wish I knew them well enough to say for sure. I think they’d like to have you back, but there’s only one way to know.”

His sad smile said he’d already thought as much, and then we both turned back to stare into Grovetown.

18

Ridge

When I came down to breakfast on Thursday morning, Henrik and Barbara were obviously on edge. She was cooking more food than twelve people, even werewolves, could eat, and he hadn’t even bothered opening his paper.

“Everything okay?” I asked as I poured myself coffee.

Henrik gave me a tight, uneasy smile, but Barbara outright huffed at the stove. When I pulled my chair back, the sound muffled by the threadbare rug under the rustic kitchen table, she swirled toward me, hands on her hips, a forced smile on her face for me, though something was clearly bothering her.

“Everything’s fine, sweetheart. Nothing for you to worry about.” But there was a harried look in her eyes, so I sat quietly and sipped my coffee, waiting for her to continue.

She pursed her lips, waved the wooden spoon around, and pushed sizzling bacon around in the pan again, frowning. “Just think going into town yesterday took it out of Ford.”

Henrik leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “He’s still got days like this—you know what it’s like, when you just need to be on your own a bit?”

I nodded. Wasn’t often that kind of feeling knocked me out of doing what needed doing, but I could understand why Ford would feel like that, especially after what he’d said about Cliff yesterday.

“It’s hard for Barbara,” Henrik continued. “Alphas always want to fix everything.” When he smiled at her, it was downright adoring.

She huffed through her nose and swatted her spoon through the air, but the little smile she gave the bacon when she turned back around looked almost pleased.

“But there ain’t no fixing what Ford’s going through,” Henrik said. “Hard on an alpha, losing a mate.”

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