Page 35 of Hunter Moon

All of this was throwing me right back to my teenage years—sitting on the couch in the living room, Mom and Shiloh and Harmony all sitting around, staring at me. We were all in stasis, waiting for the sound of Aspen’s car out front, the doorbell.

Only this time, everyone was expressing varying degrees of worry and anger—from Harmony’s heavy scowl and thin-lipped frown, to the hollow cheeks and furrowed brow on Shiloh’s face. Mom looked particularly tired.

And I couldn’t stop shaking my leg, sure as I was that I’d sit there all night, that I’d upset my family, and Aspen wouldn’t actually show up.

It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him, exactly. I just hadn’t convinced myself that he was reallythere, like, in Grovetown. So many years, I’d spent looking at that barn at the end of his street, sitting in The Cider House thinking he’d show up at any second with a big Aspen grin, and he’d been gone the whole time.

I’d been stuck waiting for him, and now I was stuck thinking he was gone, so that I didn’t even trust the sound of his Mustang pulling to a stop at the curb in front of our house. Didn’t trust it, until he walked right up the path to our front door and knocked, the sound a sharp, full rapping of his broad knuckles on the locked wooden door.

“I got it.” I threw myself out of my seat before Shiloh could move for the door. She’d positioned herself closest to it, and it seemed to me that made her the most willing for it to open. Mom and Harmony had their backs to other walls, their eyes narrowed on the door.

I tugged the door open and there Aspen stood. He had a thick gray coat, but under it, his T-shirt clung to his muscular chest. He was a big alpha, ran hot, and I used to love tucking my hands under his arms on autumn hayrides at the grove when it got cold, burying into his warmth every chance I got.

“’Evening,” he said with a short nod of his head, first to me, then toward my family behind me.

“Hey,” Shiloh said, her voice a whisper.

“Aspen,” said Mom, polite enough, even with her lips in a thin line.

Harmony didn’t say a word, but when I looked her way, I saw her glaring at Aspen. Her hands were gripping the arms of her chair, her fingers stark white. The color drained out of her face.

There was trouble coming, all that anger she’d spent the last couple months stuffing down for my sake finally bubbling over at the sight of him, so even if we’d only made it to the edge of the living room, I was already touching Aspen’s stomach, trying to turn him back toward the door.

“So we’ll be at the Grille—”

At the same moment I started talking, Harmony pushed herself out of her chair and came stalking across the carpet toward us, but all her rage was focused past my shoulder, right up at Aspen. He was more than a foot taller than her, and she didn’t back down in the slightest.

“You have a lot of fucking nerve coming back here, pretending everything’s how it used to be,” she snarled.

I was still pushing Aspen, trying to get us to the door before things got ugly, when he took up my hands and stilled them. With a squeeze, he let go and faced Harmony, no emotion in his expression at all.

“I don’t think that,” he said lowly. “I messed up. Nothing’s how it used to be.”

She jammed her finger into the center of his chest. “Damn fucking right it’s not! You were with Brook when Dad died. You knew how many people in the world he had to lean on, and still, you fucking left.”

Aspen looked down, his lips caught between his teeth, his tongue moving just behind them. “I did.”

“Right! You did. You left, and everything went to shit. You were supposed to be here for us—here forhim. If you’d stayed, been his actual mate instead of some puffed up toxic G.I. Joe knockoff, none of this would’ve happened. Reid never would’ve gotten his hands on him. He was hurt, he wasraped, because of you.”

My breath caught, panic batting around inside my ribcage, but I couldn’t breathe enough to fall apart. I was like a statue, staring at my sister’s knees, shame rushing under my skin. The scar on my shoulder, where Maxim Reid had torn my skin with his sharp fangs, burned under the collar of my shirt.

“Harmony,” Mom hissed.

I didn’t look up, but I heard Aspen’s slow inhale, saw his fingers curve into his palm. It didn’t look like he was making a fist, just hiding his fingers, and I imagined claws sprouting from his nail beds.

“I am sorry me being here is upsetting, but Brook and I have plans. As long as he wants me here, this is where I’ll be.” He paused, long enough that I felt his eyes on me.

It took me a second, but I nodded. I did want him there. I’d asked him to come pick me up, and I knew it was going to be awkward, but I couldn’t have imagined this, how awful it’d be, the way shame boiled under my skin and made it impossible to meet anyone’s eyes. Did Aspen know? I hadn’t told him, but—but Linden had been there, had seen. And even if he wouldn’t tell... the whole pack knew by now, all those worried looks, full of sympathy.

Everyone knowing I was some pathetic, desperate, broken, lonely thing, and Aspen would see it too.

Aspen’s attention returned to Harmony. “If you’d like to have a private conversation with me about this, I’ll be at The Cider House tomorrow around four. You can come by, and we’ll talk. But tonight, Brook and I have plans, so we’re gonna go.”

He didn’t drag me around to the door, just turned toward it and held it open for me. I couldn’t get out fast enough, the cold air hitting my face as I rushed outside.

I pulled it deep into my lungs, and when I let it out, my breath shook. Tears stung in my eyes, and I had to rely more on the sound of Aspen crossing the lawn and opening the car door for me than on sight. Everything was just a shadowy, stinging mess.

I sank heavily into the passenger seat, and it was tempting to draw my legs up and make myself small.

---