Page 6 of Hunter Moon

My head shot up, and I stared at him in shock. “Flippant?”

He buried his face in his palm and sighed. “Of course.Of courseit wasn’t on purpose. I guess at least one Grove sibling needed to be a walking stereotype.”

I flinched, and tried to hide it by rolling my shoulders back and nodding. “Yup, that’s me. The big brainless muscle-alpha. If you don’t lead me straight to a point, I’ll never see it.”

His look at that was sharp, but he didn’t contradict me.

Linden was pacing in the parlor, and he looked a single step removed from muttering to himself. When his mate and I walked in, his head snapped up. “Colt. What—” Then he looked over at me, and back at his mate. “He didn’t need your help.”

“No,” Colt agreed. “And even if he did, you’re my priority here. I don’t even know him.”

Lin sighed and hung his head. “I’m being an ass.”

“No, you’re not.” They both turned to me, surprised. Maybe I was succeeding in not being flippant. “You’re being angry, because I gave you reason to be. Lots of reason.”

“You abandoned us,” Lin whispered, and fuck me, but I wanted to hug my little brother. Instead, I took hold of the archway molding, holding myself in place and upright, and nodded, so he went on. “I didn’t know what to do. He—the last damned thing he ever said was that I should call you.”

I winced at that. It shouldn’t have surprised me. Dad had always been the most stubborn of us—even more stubborn than me. He’d decided I should be alpha, and refused to see any different. It was why I’d left. But what the hell could I say?

Don’t be flippant, his mate had said. In the end, it was easy.

“I’m sorry. I was a selfish asshole. I abandoned you and Ro and Junie, and there’s no excuse for it. Nothing I can say that’ll make it better.”

Lin’s jaw clenched and released as he stared at me, eyes narrowed and hands balled into fists, but he didn’t cuss at me any more, or jump forward and hit me again. Just breathed, slow and steady, before nodding. “And you say you’re back. To stay.”

I cringed with realization. What if the navy made me go back? “That’s myplan,” I hedged, but hedging wasn’t going to do it. He glared at me—he’d always been the smart one. The guy who could see through bullshit like he had special glasses for it. “I put in my resignation and asked for it to be expedited because of the pack situation, but they’ve got the right to make me go back.”

“That’s crap,” Lin shot back, but his mate squeezed his shoulder.

“Technically,” Colt said, slow and calm, “it’s true. Resigning from the military can take up to a year. I’m not going to defend him or take his side, but him being here does mean that he’s trying.”

Lin finally sat down on one of the fancy red sofas in the room, motioning to another one as he looked at me. “Okay, Asp. You say you’re staying. Tell me how the navy thing works.”

“It doesn’t,” Colt muttered, and I couldn’t help but think maybe he had family in the military.

Still, I swallowed down the smile that threatened and met my brother’s eye steadily as I explained exactly what I was expecting from the navy.

It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t a hug and an apple pie. But it also wasn’t a door slammed in my face, and for now, it had to be enough.

4

Brook

Ispent the night in the woods like some kind of half-mad neckbeard asshole. I couldn’t go home and grapple with knowing that Aspen was there too, in Grovetown, and hadn’t spared a single thought for me. That was way easier to deal with on four legs. As a wolf, I could feel sad, feel pain, but I couldn’t put cruel, biting words to those feelings. Words I could repeat over and over in my head until I believed them. Words like “broken,” and “lost,” and “useless.”

Sick thing was, I was too scared to run away for real—not at night, not knowing the pack was already distracted. I stayed at the edge of the woods, close enough that someone might hear me if I howled, because I was afraid of going out alone, smelling too much like what I was—an omega.

Even in Grovetown territory, it’d become all too clear that I wasn’t safe, and rushing out on my own mindlessly? Well, that was just going to cause more pain.

When the sun started coming up, I trotted back home. Nobody looked too closely at me—the human members of our pack weren’t all that good at knowing a werewolf on sight, and the streets were pretty sparsely populated anyway, most people still home sleeping or getting ready for the day.

Not at the Morgan house, though.

When I shifted back to open the door, everyone was waiting on me in the living room. Mom was sitting on the couch with her chin in her hand, her fingers stretched over her mouth. When I came in, she glanced up at me and quickly away. Shiloh was at the other end, her hands tucked under her knees. I shut the door, and her nose flared and went white, but she swallowed down her anger at me for making them worry. Again.

Not Harmony.

She tore off her robe and threw it at me. “Don’t just stand there naked in the doorway.”

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