Page 83 of Hunter Moon

This was how Aspen Senior had died—guts spilling out on Linden’s clinic table. I hated,hated, putting him through that again, but Dante Reid didn’t deserve to die.

I knew that as well as I’d ever known any damn thing, and if he survived to tell us what’d happened to him, the rest of the pack would see it too—that he wasn’t like any other Reid, that he wouldn’t have tormented us the way Cain had.

“Lin’ll do what he can,” I muttered.

Aspen nodded, his hand wrapping tight around mine. “Nothing we can do to help right now. We should go home. Clean up. Try and get some rest.”

I sucked in my cheeks. This was my fight, and it felt wrong to abandon it until it was over. Dante had shared something horrible with me, and I didn’t want to leave him alone.

I didn’t want to stand there, helpless, while he died either. Couldn’t take it.

Aspen was right. Linden would need a break at some point, and the best thing we could do was get ready to try and pick up the slack when he did.

“You need Lin?” I asked, looking over the spots where blood had soaked through and stained his shirt.

He shook his head. “Had worse. You?”

My lips twitched, but I swallowed down the edgy laughter. “Me too.”

He met Zeke’s eye, looked down at Claud, leaning against her mate. “Y’all let us know if anything happens, okay?”

We got away with their promises to keep us in the loop as much as we needed to be, and dragged our feet the couple blocks back to my place just as Shiloh and Harmony were unpacking Dad’s truck.

We were lucky—relatively unscathed, all things considered. Maybe alphas, even ones like the Reids, had an instinctive urge not to fight omegas, but I’d rather think that we were just damn badass.

When Harmony scented us on the air, her head popped up. She spun, wide eyed, and next thing I knew, she’d crashed into me. It was only Aspen’s arm around my shoulder that kept me standing as she squeezed me tight.

Then, her arm shot out and wrapped around his waist too, dragging him in and clinging to us both. We weren’t Dad, but—but we were important to her anyway. Even Aspen. Even though he’d messed up. “I’m so glad you’re safe. When you went off after the Reids—”

“It was just one. Somebody hurt,” I assured her, pressing a kiss to her dark hair and meeting Aspen’s eye above it.

But he wasn’t looking at me. Color had risen over his cheekbones, and he was staring down at her. To some degree, at least, she counted him among the things she was thankful were still around.

Did that make things perfect? Hell no. But I smelled the flood of belonging and satisfaction in his scent and squeezed his hip. They’d get better, and no matter how mad anybody was at Aspen, so long as he kept showing up for us, that’d go away.

After all, it was almost impossible to hate the guy, big-hearted, well-intentioned puppy that he was.

Harmony leaned back, looking us over. “Bleeding?”

Aspen shrugged. “We’re okay. Nothing a shower and some sleep won’t cure.”

“Or a steak. And onion rings,” I said, ready to drown all my feelings in a basket of something deep fried and terrible for me..

“Not mashed potatoes?” Aspen asked.

I shook my head. “Onion rings. We’ll work on that. But you two need any help?”

Shiloh waved us off. “Talin’s in there relaying everything to Mom. We—you know—figured the easier thing would be unloading the car. No reason to make it go faster than it has to.”

We were lucky when Mom let us slip past, and the shower was wonderful. There were scratches and scars, bites, but nothing on either one of us that was concerning enough to stay up. Alpha or omega, wolves healed fast.

Once I got to sleep, my bare skin pressed against every inch of Aspen’s I could reach, I would have been happy to stay knocked out for days, but the early morning’s golden sunlight was slanting through my bedroom window when I heard a buzz and Aspen sat up. Somebody was trying to reach him, and he seemed determined not to let anyone feel like he wasn’t available again.

Even, unfortunately, when I groaned into the pillow and buried myself in his warm, clean scent.

He laughed softly, his rough hand dragging over my shoulder, sweeping down my back in a firm press that made me arch into his touch. His hand slipped below the blankets and he gave my ass a squeeze that made me shiver. With one eye, I peeked, but he was smiling down at his phone, his hand on me nothing more than casual comfort.

“What is it?” I asked. I liked that smile on him. Whatever disaster we had to navigate next, I wanted to see that smile more, so I’d better figure out what I needed to do to replicate it.

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