Page 69 of Hunter Moon

Maybe if I bought her some ice cream, to make up for it.

I held up a finger. “I’ll be right back.”

By the time I made it back with a pint of butter pecan, the groceries were all rung up, and they were waiting on me.

“Sorry, forgot something. Couldn’t go back without this.” I handed the container to Marge, who’d been working part time at Isaac’s for as long as it had been around, and she rung it up without comment.

No doubt she’d have been happier if it had been a gallon of lube, so she’d have a juicy story to tell, inveterate old gossip that she was. She was almost as bad as the Hagen sisters who ran the B and B.

“A few things,” Brook said, eyeballing the ice cream. “Was any of this actually on Harmony’s list, or are you just trying to buy her affection with her favorite ice cream?”

“Oh, is this her favorite kind of ice cream?” I asked, widening my eyes in fake shock. Of course it was Harmony’s favorite kind. It wasn’t all that much compared to buying Shiloh a car, though, so if it got a smile out of her, I’d call it a miracle.

Brook just smiled and shook his head as I paid, turning to grab the bags. “Put the cart away. You old sucker.”

“Always,” I agreed as I pushed the empty cart over to the entrance, waved to Marge, and then followed Brook out.

I was only half a dozen paces behind him, but he was giving me the impatient eye, waiting at the trunk of my car. We’d just set the bags in when I caught a whiff of an unwelcome scent on the breeze, and both of us froze, if for different reasons.

“Baby, can you get in the car and lock the doors?”

For a moment, he gasped for breath, then a whole-body shudder took him. “You’re leaving?”

Leaving?

In what universe would I ever leave him to face this alone?

In this one, of course, because that was exactly what I’d done.

I took him by the shoulders and turned him toward me. “Never. I am never leaving you again. But help me out. Can you smell how many there are?”

He took a tentative sniff, glancing around as though the entire Reid pack was going to leap out from behind the car at any moment. Then he met my eye. “One. There’s just one. Him.”

“That’s right, just one. I am not leaving you. Not now. Not ever. But I am going to put myself between you and that motherfucker. I promise you, baby. He’s not getting anywhere near you. None of them are.”

Also, maybe I’d maul him a bit. The wolf was champing at the bit to tear Cain Reid’s throat out. Maybe he hadn’t given us a real reason for it—you don’t usually murder bullies—but this was so personal. Even if he wasn’t the one who’d laid his hands on Brook, he was the one who was still here, still trying to hurt my heart.

If it had been Maxim, I’d have killed him on sight that very first night, right in the middle of dinner with Lin. This guy was like the sleazy game-show-host version of Maxim.

But Brook knew him by scent. Froze up at the mere hint of it.

So maybe Cain Reid hadn’t been the biggest monster under his bed, but that didn’t make him any less a monster.

“I have a right to the item I ordered,” the man’s smarmy voice carried to my ears, from the same direction as his stink—the hardware store. “Just because your alpha has given me some arbitrary ruling doesn’t mean your pack can simply steal from mine. I have a right—”

The voice that cut him off was more growl than man, and the violence in it made even me shiver. “You have a right to get the fuck out of my store. Out of my town.”

I turned to see the Reid backing his way out of the hardware store, followed by a Cliff Reynolds who was clearly in the grip of his wolf. His lips were curled back from teeth that were far sharper than any human mouth had ever held, and his fingers were tipped in claws. Claws he was seconds away from tearing into Reid with.

Fuck.

“Baby,” I said, looking down at Brook. His eyes were glued to the Reid, so I took his chin in my hand and turned his face to me. “Please get in the car and lock the doors. I’m going to go get rid of him, and I’ll be right back. Okay?”

Brook’s eyes darted back toward Reid before settling on mine, finally truly focused on me, his tongue reaching out to wet dry lips as he nodded. “Please,” he whispered, the sound ragged and almost incomprehensible. “Please don’t die.”

I leaned in and pressed my lips to his, bumping our foreheads together, then grinned at him as I pulled away. “Not even in his wildest dreams, baby.”

I waited for him to head for the passenger door, but then I was loping off toward the hardware store and goddamned Cain Reid. It was like the asshole was begging for me to beat the shit out of him, and I wasn’t much in the mood to turn him down again.

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