Page 17 of Harvest Moon

“Nah,” I said gruffly. “Alexis is gone. Moved to the Grove pack. Don’t suspect he’ll be back any time soon.”

9

Alexis

As much as I loved Claudia, it took a few days to settle in at her house. It felt a little like I was ten, and I’d gone to a sleepover at someone else’s place only to find their parents out for the night.

There was no bedtime, no knock on the door in the morning saying it was time to get up. No mom telling me to eat my vegetables and drink a glass of milk with every meal.

That first morning, when all I found in their refrigerator was half-empty takeout boxes and a bottle of ketchup, I knew I had my work cut out for me. Claudia had stumbled into the kitchen mumbling something about coffee, and I stepped between her and the weird coffee-contraption.

“Pretty sure you should be limiting your caffeine intake,” I told her.

What? Yeah, so I’d been reading every expectant-mother website I could find, what of it? There’s a lot of good information out there.

Oddly, less about how werewolf pregnancies were different from human ones. The only website I found about that felt... I dunno, clinical and cold, and I didn’t like it. So I went back to the cute pastel human-run sites about cutting caffeine and nitrates—whatever those were—and eating a healthy, balanced diet.

So I’d dragged her out to the grocery store, where she’d let me buy anything and everything I wanted . . . but also, had slipped in chocolate and frozen waffles and a container of danishes.

Clearly, I had work to do. Maybe I’d be able to get her to come on a walk with me. That was good and healthy.

But at the grocery store checkout, it started.

The older woman ringing us up smiled and greeted Claudia by name. Claud introduced me. And a moment later, the woman was leaning toward us, irritation in her eyes.

For a second, I thought I’d have to protect my cousin.

“The McKesson boy was causing trouble again,” the woman told Claudia matter-of-factly. “Bad enough all that trouble with Skip and the alpha, but now he’s antagonizing his poor brother. Like Ford doesn’t have enough to deal with.”

In an instant, Claudia’s calm amusement drained away, leaving a stiff, tense woman I barely recognized. “What happened?”

The woman motioned to the front window with a box of whole-wheat spaghetti. “Had a screaming match right out there in front of the shop. Now, I couldn’t make much out, but—” She lowered her voice and proceeded to give Claudia a blow-by-blow of the argument, and if she didn’t remember it word for word, she had to be pretty darn close.

By the time we were rung up, the story was done, and Claudia had gone into full professional mode. She was silent as she helped me pack the groceries into the car, and it was making me freaking nervous.

“Claud?” I finally asked as we finished.

She looked up at me and mustered a tiny smile. “Sorry, hon, no rest for the wicked. I’m gonna need to check up on Ford. He runs a little close to the edge on a good day, and a screaming match with his brother can’t have helped.”

Then she drove me back to her place, dropped me and the groceries off, and left again with a wave and a “don’t worry about lunch, I’ll find something while I’m out.”

Another giant chocolate ice-cream concoction, no doubt. Or nothing at all.

I hated that I was turning into my mother a little, but... it was no wonder she wasn’t feeling well.

We got through more than a week like that. Sometimes, Claudia managed to eat breakfast before she got called to handle pack business. Most of the time, she didn’t. Never once did she complain. Nope, she just grabbed her danish and ran for the car.

Finally, one day I woke up and Birch was there for breakfast. This managed to change literally everything. The three of us sat down at the kitchen table and ate the eggs, sausage, and pancakes I made. Birch raved about the blueberry pancakes, and Claud absolutely devoured them.

I felt accomplished.

Somehow, Claud’s phone didn’t ring through the whole meal.

“We should take Alexis over to meet the Morgans,” Birch suggested toward the end of breakfast. “I know Brook is older than him, but maybe they’ll find something in common.”

“You just want Alexis to take Brook out on his hikes,” Claudia shot back, but without malice. She turned to me with a tight frown. “Brook is... going through some things. Birch is worried about him because he seems to be sort of retreating.”

I wasn’t sure how running off into the woods would help with that, but maybe they just wanted him to be hanging out with someone instead of alone. I could do that. Heck, having a friend other than Claudia seemed to be a good idea, since she was gone most of the time.

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