Page 15 of Hunter Moon

But it wasn’t just that Claudia was an omega who’d shown signs of the Condition during pregnancy and seemed largely to have recovered even before giving birth. Claudia Wilson was the heart of the Grove pack—or maybe the teeth. All our hopes and dreams were tied up in how well she’d do as second, how much she could change in a pack that was already pretty damn good.

Point was, she was the first omega second that a Grove pack alpha had ever had. From the outside, it seemed like she could beat back anything, and if she succumbed to the Condition, that only made it scarier.

Though she must’ve been sick of answering questions about it, Claudia smiled generously at Mom.

“I’m feeling much better, really. Alexis has been a big help, and between him and Ridge making sure there’s not one single Sterling snack cake around, and Birch handling everything else, I think things have finally smoothed out. Now it’s just a matter of—” Her eyebrows bounced. Mom covered her mouth with her hand to hide a giggle. “You know, in a couple more months.”

My face went hot. I’d always wanted kids, a big family, but I was never going to be sorry that I didn’t have to give birth. Never.

“I know Isaac’s been removing Sterling stuff from the shelves,” I hedged. Alexis had told me about that. He was all bent out of shape that Sterling might be hurting wolves, particularly after they’d targeted his podcast for advertisements.

Truth was, I thought he felt a little guilty for growing up poor and right beside a family farm. His whole life, he’d eaten what was near at hand—no extra cash for eating out or all those prepackaged snacks. Now, what’d always felt like a deficit turned out to be, at least in his mind, an advantage, and one he hadn’t earned.

When things went right after having to struggle for a long time, it was hard to trust it. I got that.

“Colt’s working on a way to get word out about the potential hazards of consuming Sterling products. Said he doesn’t want to bring a defamation suit down on the pack, but between his connections with thePostand his family’s political network, he thinks he can do it in a way that doesn’t endanger Grovetown,” Linden said stiffly.

As a doctor, it had to be driving him crazy to balance the needs of healing sick people with protecting our pack. It wasn’t like we had a team of lawyers on retainer, or like any of us new how to navigate major public fallout.

Made sense to let Colt handle it. He’d basically been born and raised to deal with that kind of thing.

“He wants to get his father involved.” Linden grimaced, and I could just imagine how much he loved that. I hadn’t been there when Linden confronted Maxim Reid, but word had traveled around town about what had happened—and how Senator Doherty had stood there and decried our pack for brawling in the street like beasts. It was almost funny—Linden was the least violent alpha I’d ever met. It wasn’t that he wasn’t capable, but it wasn’t in his nature to fight.

He and Senator Doherty had butted heads, and Colt standing by the Groves and, specifically, by Linden had cast the whole event as some kind of Romeo-and-Juliet fantasy for the town gossips to swoon over. It didn’t hurt that Colt had something of a reputation as town hero after finding me in the woods.

Hell, it was a reputation well deserved.

I’d only known Colt for a couple months, but it was clear his stubbornness and resilience were tempered in the forge of an overbearing alpha father. That was just the sort of alpha Aspen had always been afraid of becoming, but Senator Doherty really took things to the next level. It wasn’t just his family or a pack he wanted to lord over, but werewolves everywhere. As nightmarish as that sounded to me, there were some benefits to stepping back and letting the guy handle politics.

I stared down at the table and shrugged. “Eh, the senator wants to play a tank, I say let him.”

“Play a tank?” Linden asked.

Claudia smirked. “You know, draw attention. Shield us from the worst of it. Anyway, I agree. Last thing Grovetown needs right now is a media circus.”

We all went quiet for a second. She was right—the last couple months had been hectic. Between the trouble with the Reids and Aspen Senior dying, we were in desperate need of some time to heal. The pack was stronger than what’d happened to us, but it’d take time to settle.

It wasn’t until I looked up to see Aspen standing right there at the table, that I realized his return might count in the list of major upsets the pack had faced recently. Our last alpha’s first-born son, returned when Linden was still finding his footing? Yeah, that could cause problems.

Of course, I knew better than anybody that he wasn’t there to mess things up. He always damnably tried to do the right thing, even if that meant stringing me along for years. Even if it meant leaving. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing for me, or for his family, but from Aspen’s point of view, he’d clearly found a way to justify it.

Aspen had never wanted to be Alpha Grove. Linden taking the position meant it was safe for Aspen to return. He wasn’t there as Aspen Senior’s heir, but as Linden’s brother. It’d just take time for people to realize that.

I froze, turning toward him while my mouth went dry. And with my horrified stare locked on his, every other person at the table turned to look at him.

“Lin, Mrs. Morgan, Claudia, Brook.” Aspen’s gaze landed on me and stuck. His eyes were lucid, clear. He didn’t look like he’d been drowning his sorrows with day drinking, at least.

In his hands, in front of his hips, he was holding a little glass vase filled with blue and purple flowers with round centers and long petals in a circle all around. They kind of looked like mini sunflowers, but not quite.

Okay, so I’d never been much of a flower guy, but these were nice. The colors were bright and unique. They didn’t smell all perfumey and over-the-top like most flowers did.

“I wanted to give you these,” Aspen said, holding them out across the table in front of Mom.

The tightness at the corners of her mouth had me half convinced she’d knock them out of his hand, but that wasn’t her way. Even if she was pissed at Aspen, she wasn’t cruel, and there was something fragile there in the way Aspen licked his lips, in the hollows of his cheeks and the white-knuckled grip he had on that vase.

I reached out and took it, a smile I didn’t try too hard to master spreading across my lips. It was instinct, my wolf’s reaction to being given a gift—anything, even flowers I didn’t particularly care about—from my mate. A pathetic, needy response to hope I’d spent the last ten years trying to crush, that bubbled up so easily at the tiniest show of care from a man who’d abandoned me.

Aspen Grove had brought me flowers. That quick, and my heart was right back to fluttering, a warm pleasure spreading in my chest as I pulled them toward me.

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