Page 78 of Harvest Moon

“Lex?” Ridge asked. “What are you doing? You should lay back down and—”

“Going to talk to the alpha, of course,” I answered, turning to face him and teetering precariously as though I was trying to walk in heels and not just on my own two feet. “If he’s still here, we need to talk this through right now.”

He set the bowl of grapes beside him on the bed and came over to hold me up. “You can barely stand, Alexis. You’re exhausted and still not yourself.”

“All the more reason to take care of this right now,” I answered.

His brows drew together in confusion, and I didn’t have a real answer for the unasked question. No, my exhaustion wasn’t actually a reason to do it right now. Whatever. There were plenty of reasons to do it now that did make sense.

The hurt in Ridge’s big deep green eyes, mostly.

That could never be allowed.

So I finished tying the drawstring in my sweats and headed for the door. “Right now,” I told Ridge. “We’re not waiting to talk about things anymore. Especially not with each other, but not with pack members either. We talk this out now.”

He followed along after me, and I paused in the hall, spinning to look at him. “And if they insist on going through with it, then when the baby comes and Claudia is okay, we’ll”—hell, I didn’t even want to say it, but—“we’ll go. We’ll find somewhere you can do your job, on your terms. Whatever it takes.”

His eyes went as wide as saucers at that, and he opened his mouth like he had something to say, but nothing came out. So I spun back toward the dining room, paused and braced myself on the wall when dizziness washed over me, and kept right on going.

Claudia and Linden were indeed sitting at the dining room table when I got there, looking over piles of papers and speaking in low tones. They both looked serious, and not terribly happy.

Good.

Maybe that meant they weren’t too keen on selling.

“You can’t be serious about selling to Sterling,” I said, and they both looked up at me, concern written across their faces.

“It’s a little soon for you to be on your feet,” Claudia said, and went to push herself up.

Linden put a hand on hers and lifted a brow at her. “He’s probably better being up than you. I did say we could discuss this in your room.”

She motioned to the papers. “And I told you I didn’t want all this crap on my bed.”

Linden sighed and looked back up at me. “It’s more complicated than just whether we like the idea of a corporate-run farm,” Linden told me, his tone entirely sympathetic. “The Hills tell me Ridge is doing a wonderful job, and they’re very pleased, but do you think he can run an entire farm all on his own? Because Barbara and Henrik aren’t as young as they used to be, and as much as I like Ford, we can’t count on him sticking around after they pass.”

Just like Ridge’s father, they didn’t think he could run the farm all on his own. And the truth was he probably couldn’t.

Heck, even if I offered to quit producing my podcast and just work on the farm, the two of us probably wouldn’t be enough.

“Isn’t there anyone else in the whole pack who wants to work on a farm?” I asked, and Linden’s sympathetic frown was answer enough.

A whole pack of two hundred people and wolves, and no one wanted to be a farmer. It was almost unbelievable.

I dragged myself over to the table and dropped into the chair across from the alpha, glaring at the papers.

Sterling Corp. I was quickly coming to dislike them, with their bottles of water and their snack cakes that Claudia kept trying to sneak when Birch and I weren’t looking. What did they need with tiny little family farms like the Hills’?

Chemicals, Ridge had said. I shuddered. Maybe not everyone was as put off by the sound of that as I was, but it had to make a difference, didn’t it?

“You know they’ll be spraying pesticides in the valley if you sell to them, right?” I asked, meeting and holding the alpha’s eye. It felt ridiculously audacious, but this was Ridge’s whole life. I had to make them see.

Linden did frown at that, glancing down at the papers. “They didn’t specifically mention that, but I suppose it makes sense.”

Claudia leaned in. “Would that hurt the apples? Surely they wouldn’t spray something that could hurt people.”

“They’ve done it before,” Ridge said helpfully. “We studied it in school. Back in the sixties, they used this stuff that caused cancer and killed animals, and they didn’t want to stop using it even though it was killing people.”

Linden nodded. “DDT. Do you really think modern pesticides would affect the grove? Or werewolves in general?”

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