Page 27 of Hunter Moon

For the first time, Aspen scared me.

“I have to go.” I spun and marched straight for the house, locking the door behind me.

“I’m home,” I called out, voice high and tight, but only so I could escape to my room that much quicker, avoid explaining to anyone why my heart was racing and Aspen Grove was standing outside on the sidewalk.

Down the hallway to my room, I managed to hold it mostly together, but when I stood there in the same bedroom I’d grown up in, I stared at those damn flowers Aspen had given me, sure I hadn’t done enough with my life to have landed myself here, panicking because the alpha who was supposed to be mine was riding the edge. A couple petals had fallen from the daisies onto the shelf as the flowers wilted, but there was nothing I could do to stop that.

Still, I took the vase off the bookshelf and to the kitchen where Shiloh was busy making dinner.

She looked at me when I came in, a little furrow to her brow that was getting all too familiar, but she didn’t say anything as I carried the vase to the sink. Gently, I lifted the flowers out of the way and refilled the water, dropping a little fertilizer in there and giving it a stir before putting the flowers back in.

No matter how careful I was, I still ended up with almost a dozen more fallen petals on the counter. I stood, staring, feeling strangely like I needed to pick them up and put them back in place, until Shiloh touched my arm.

“You okay? If those are dead, we can always get more.”

I didn’t know why, but that was what did it. My breath shook, my arm tensing and spasming toward my chest, sloshing the water on my T-shirt.

I buried my head in the flowers and knew she was right. These were dying, but that knowledge tore my heart out.

“If they die,” I rasped, my voice hiccupping, “if they die then it’s—it’s really... o-over.”

Even as I squeezed my eyes shut, tears leaked down my cheeks. I couldn’t breathe. This last thing, having to let go of even the idea of Aspen, was too much.

Shiloh eased the vase from my arms and set it on the counter. She wrapped her arms around me and pulled me down to cry on her shoulder, combing her fingers through my hair and telling me in soft whispers that it was going to be okay, and I was okay, and everything was okay.

If she noticed when the pasta boiled over, she didn’t say anything, and neither one of us moved for a long, long time.

15

Aspen

The soldier lifted his head from a clump of bushes just up the beach, gun in his hand, our demolitions expert, Murphy, in his sights. Before I even acknowledged the reaction with my brain, I was shifted, rushing the man, all teeth and claws.

He barely had the time to glance in my direction, my motion distracting him from Murphy, his eyes widening. Then I was on him. Clamping my teeth down on his neck with my full strength, feeling skin and muscle and bone give under my grip.

The first man I ever killed had screamed. Once. And then he’d been gone.

Not a week had gone by in the years since when I didn’t have dreams about it. Sure, some were the kind where I failed and he murdered my whole unit. But more, especially at first, were that moment, exactly as it had happened. The feel of blood in my mouth, flesh tearing, and that awful cut-off scream as I killed a man.

In the months after that, no one had mentioned it. Most of the people in my unit had been older than me, or more experienced. I’d assumed they had seen killing a man as rote and uninteresting, but the truth had been something else. They hadn’t wanted to think about it any more than I had.

But after the mission, once, Murphy had tried to thank me. His intentions had been good. I’d saved his life, and he wanted me to know he was grateful. But it had been the last thing in the world I’d wanted to remember.

And that was what I’d just done to Brook. I’d reminded him, intentionally or not, of one of the worst moments of his life.

I closed my eyes, trying to slow my breathing, to calm my racing heart. I was in control, not my feral instincts. I was not a fucking monster. Not Maxim Reid.

I would never injure Brook.

Except that, well, I had. I’d frightened him, when he was so vulnerable after dealing with fucking Reid so recently.

My claws fought for escape again; hell, my whole wolf. I wanted to strip and run into the woods and—but that was the problem. That was what had frightened Brook. My wolf was too close to the surface, and I was struggling to control it, and that scared him.

It was understandable.

Oh, not him being afraid of an out-of-control wolf—that was a no-brainer. If it hadn’t made him at least nervous, I’d have been more worried about his sanity. Brook was smart, and he knew feral wolves were dangerous, and he’d just been hurt by one recently.

No, it was understandable that I was struggling with control. I’d broken with the military, which had been my home, my life, and the closest thing I had to a family for a decade. Come back to the family I’d spent that decade dreaming of. And they didn’t much want me back.

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