Page 75 of Hunter Moon

The sound of scratching at the back door overwhelmed the sizzling drip of the first coffee to run through the maker. My shoulders shot rigidly around my ears.

I’d been jumpy—had every reason to be jumpy, damn it—but then there was a low, pitiful whine beyond the door. Air rushed into my lungs as I remembered to breathe, and with it, I pulled in Aspen’s familiar scent.

And blood.

Adrenaline rushed my veins, and I was yanking open the door before my thoughts caught up with me.

There Aspen was, enormous and gray. His hazel eyes were familiar though, and the second he saw me, the strength went out of his front legs. He swayed, rocking his weight into my hips, nearly toppling us both over in the middle of Mom’s kitchen.

I grabbed the ruff of fur around his neck and braced myself. If we were going down, fine, but we’d do it gently. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “It’s going to be okay. Mom!”

She came running through the house, ears as pricked for the sound of my fear as mine had been for a threat. I was holding Aspen up with one arm, my other hand combing through his fur, finding it matted and wet around his back leg.

But that wasn’t right—Aspen was a were, and an alpha. I’d never been fucking shot before, but I was pretty sure a guy like him could take it, pop the bullet out, and heal over... fast. Even the scars Maxim Reid had given me, all but the mating mark, hadn’t taken long to heal. And Aspen was—he was Aspen! Untouchable. A force of nature.

One that was currently nuzzling into my thigh and whining.

“Brook?” Mom gasped, looking Aspen over. The Grove alphas all had a similar profile—big and gray and impressive. Even Rowan shared their coloring, if not their bulk.

But my mouth was dry. I couldn’t answer her. They had to have gotten him somewhere else. A leg wound wouldn’t ever bring him down, but as I raked my fingers through his fur across his chest and belly, I didn’t find any other wounds—no other reason for his eyes to roll, his tongue to hang out pink and dry as he panted.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face in his fur, sinking to my knees. “I need you to be okay, Asp. I need you.”

Mom was on the phone, talking briskly. I didn’t concentrate enough to hear Linden on the other line, but that’s who she’d call—our pack alpha, the only doctor around who specialized in our kind, and Aspen’s brother.

Good. Good.

I might not be much help in this kind of crisis, but Linden had trained for it.

“No,” Mom said, frowning down at us when I looked up to meet her eyes. “No, we can get him there.”

But hauling Aspen Grove around was no easy feat. Thankfully, we were both werewolves. No omega would have an alpha’s brute force, but the two of us managed, Mom careful to support Aspen’s back legs and hips, me balancing most of his weight as we carried him to Dad’s old truck—not perfect, by any means, but the bed was open to the air and it was a short drive of a couple blocks to the clinic.

In almost any other circumstance, I’d have walked it—had walked it, every time I’d snuck out to see Aspen in high school.

When we got him settled on an old blanket from the cab, I hopped into the truck bed with him and tossed Mom the keys. Dad’s truck was finicky, the blue paint peeling off, the radio crackly. There were only two people in the whole world who could reliably get it going—me, and Mom.

She drove us slow over to the clinic while I kept Aspen’s head in my lap, blinked tears out of my eyes that had nothing to do with the cool wind on my cheeks, and told him about everything I wanted.

One of Isaac’s apartments for the two of us. Pack kids hanging off his ridiculously burly arms on runs. Birch Wilson was finally having one—a little pup who’d love Aspen because he was big and strong and badass.

I told him I wanted a tattoo of home, just like his, but I wanted a tree. An aspen tree. And if it had a brook winding all around its roots, all the better. I wanted daisies on my shoulder to cover the scar.

I wanted so much more fucking time than I was afraid he had, because if Aspen wasn’t okay, there was no safety left. No hope.

We pulled into the clinic’s parking lot, and Linden came jogging down from the front door. “What happened?” he demanded, a harried edge in his voice.

His hands were still steady as he reached for Aspen though, his arms strong as he hauled him up and out of my lap.

“I don’t know. He just showed up. He’s hurt. Like a bullet wound on his back leg, but—” But how could one small bullet be enough to shatter my whole world?

I rushed to keep up with Linden, Mom taking up the back. Skye was there to hold the door open as Linden marched in and set his brother on a flat bed at the back of the clinic.

“The bullet’s still in there,” Linden said.

That was all Skye needed to spring into action, providing instruments as soon as Linden reached out his hand. A pair of long, bent tweezer-looking things holding a misshapen, bloody bullet.

Linden leaned in, sniffed it, and crinkled his nose.

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