Page 18 of Hunter Moon

Wasn’t even trying, really.

So I sniffed my way through the human campsite, getting as much of a feel for the scent of them as I could, and I followed it. It led around in circles, across and up a river, and back on itself more than once—all those tricks popular culture tells people to use to throw off scenting from werewolves and police dogs, that don’t actually work.

Or possibly just a long hike, I tried to point out to my too-alert instincts. It was a perfectly respectable hike, for the most part. The walking upstream for a few hundred yards was a little weird.

And suspicious.

But honestly, what was I expecting? Werewolf traffickers? Such things existed, but if they were going to attack someone, they’d be more likely to attack the Reid pack, since they were more vulnerable than the Groves had ever been. The chaos of losing all the pack omegas, and then their alpha? Not many packs could survive such a thing.

I supposed it remained to be seen whether the Reids would.

Good riddance, after what they’d done to Brook. They could all rot, for all I gave a fuck.

The trail ended, abruptly, at a tiny back road that could barely be considered a road—more a worn path that had been driven regularly at some point in the past, but was mostly grown over. The smell of exhaust mingled with the camping humans there, not more than a handful of hours old, along with a quartet of indentations in the soft ground by the path, where a heavy vehicle had sat overnight. A big truck, given the depth of the indentations and distance between them.

Following the path back to the highway told me nothing—it was just another county road, reasonably well-travelled and maintained. No one lived nearby, and there were definitely no cameras around. The trail ended, and I was helpless to do anything but return to my run.

So I did, but my instincts were on alert.

Humans had been in the valley. Trespassers. And I had no idea why they’d decided to hike into Grove territory, spend a night at a campsite, then cover it and move on.

There were dozens of possible reasons. They might be trying to save money on a long road trip, not using hotels. They might be on the run from something or someone, even the law. They might not have even realized it was private property.

But for some reason, I couldn’t get my instincts to stand down. I was headed back to camp, growling softly to myself for no damn reason, when I heard a new voice. Immediately, my hackles were up. Bad enough there had already been someone in my territory overnight, was there someone else invading now?

I slunk through the trees in the direction of the voice, but as I did, my suspicion calmed.

Alexis. It was Alexis talking. Alexis was pack, and he was welcome in our woods. He was a sweet puppy, and one of ours to protect.

“I know it’s no, like, Call of Duty or whatever, but come on. You’ve got to admit it’s pretty nice out here.” I was vaguely aware that Alexis sometimes wandered through the woods recording his own voice, but this sounded like he was talking to an actual person. “Right?” He prodded. “Green and beautiful?”

For a moment, there was nothing, so I thought maybe that was how he talked to people on his podcast, weird as it was.

But the response, when it did come, froze me in my tracks.

Soft and low and melodic, it was the voice I’d spent a decade dreaming about. Brook. “It’s nice. But I don’t really play Call of Duty. It’s probably not ‘cool’ or whatever, but wandering around killing people is boring.”

How very Brook. Killing pixelated people wasn’t horrible and wrong and oh no, video game violence. It wasn’t exciting, drawing out his competitive streak, because Brook didn’t care to compete most of the time. Nope. Killing video game people was boring.

How had ten years passed, and left him exactly the same?

Not just his voice and his hair and his eyes and his beautiful face, but his personality. How had he escaped Maxim Reid still being so entirelyBrook?

Because he was attacked and injured, not hit by a magic spell that made him into someone else, you asshole.

I’d always thought things like that were supposed to change people. Make them afraid, make them jump at shadows and change them so much they were hard to recognize. But no. He was still Brook. He was justhurtBrook.

Fuck, he probably did jump at shadows, but like the time when we were kids and we’d watched a horror movie, he hid it, buried it deep down, because he didn’t want to inconvenience other people with his feelings.

Just like when his father had died, and he’d wanted to keep being a teenager, hanging out with me and Lin, picking apples and doing absolutely nothing of value. Of course he had. But his mother and sisters had needed him to do something else, so he’d done that instead.

Brook had never been the guy to complain that the world was making him change. He just took things in stride and made the adjustments.

That didn’t mean they didn’t hurt him.

Like you abandoning him, you mean?

I huffed out a breath and almost banged my head against a tree.

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