Page 20 of Hunter Moon

Head low, a wolf walked through the trees, sniffling close to the dirt.

I wanted to snarl and yell at him, ask what the hell he meant by this fresh new abandonment, but all that anger went out of me with a sigh when I saw how scared he looked, how low, like he’d pissed on the carpet and we were going to swat him with a magazine.

Aspen looked just the same on four legs as he always had—enormous and gray, with darker spots of fur above his shoulders and across the bridge of his nose. There was a bit more silver worked into his fur than there’d been before, but that wasn’t enough to make him a stranger to me.

He was the same enormous jerk who could outstrip me—or hell, the whole pack—on four legs. Big, powerful, and right then, chagrinned, with his head down beneath his shoulders, his tail hanging limp against his back legs.

I crossed my arms and glared at him. “What the hell are you doing out here?”

He made a low sound, his nose practically touching the ground. Alexis kept his mouth shut, his teeth pushing into his lip to hide a smile.

“I’m serious, Aspen,” I said, snapping more than I intended to. “I need an actual answer.”

Begrudgingly, he shifted. Then, he was standing there across the ashy fire pit, stark naked.

Alexis stared. There was no sense in it—werewolves weren’t exactly known for their modesty—but jealousy spiked through my brain and I pulled off my jacket before I thought about the cold fall wind so high on the mountain.

I tossed it to him, and Aspen snatched it out of the air and held it in front of his dick, bunched up in his enormous hand.

“Sorry,” he said stiffly, his lips a thin line, his eyes hard. That didn’t hide the faint color in his cheeks—not from me. “Wolf brain. An answer?”

It wasn’t totally out of the question for a werewolf to be a little off when shifting fast between one form and the other, but Aspen had never been dazed before. That—and the campsite, the rabbit, the nest of discarded clothes—all of it worked together to make me worry that Aspen was losing control.

On his own, isolated from his pack for so long, maybe he was getting that alpha edginess—the kind that devolved into the chaos and anger the Reids had shown, when it went unchecked for too long.

Aspen wasn’t like that. He hadn’t been. But my Aspen had disappeared so long ago, what the hell did I really know about who he was now? We’d said half a dozen words to each other. It wasn’t enough.

“I want to know what you’re doing out here,” I demanded, crossing my arms against the chill in the air. I wasn’t going to let him see me shiver up here. And Aspen, well, he wouldn’t hurt me. I could be fucking annoyed at him, and that’d be fine.

“Staying. I’m staying in Grovetown—”

“Outside of Grovetown, naked and wild in the woods.”

Alexis snorted. We both ignored him.

“Things aren’t settled with Lin yet. So I’m staying out here. Out of the way.”

“Eating bunnies,” I snapped.

Finally, Aspen shrugged. His gaze dropped to the ground for a second. When he looked up again, he narrowed his eyes at me.

“Wearewerewolves. It’s part of who we are. I mean, what’s the fucking point of us at all if we can’t stand a couple nights in the wilderness?”

“A couple nights?” I asked.

Aspen didn’t answer, so I looked at Alexis sharply. He was still biting his lip when he shrugged. “It’s been more like a couple weeks.”

“A couple weeks.” The words dropped heavily out of my mouth. I stared at Aspen, standing there holding my jacket against his crotch, all his muscles and tattoos on full display.

And you know what? I couldn’t handle this. Time to tap out.

I spun and walked back down the way we’d come. Screw the view, and screw the idea that I had to jump in to try and help a guy who’d left me without a word. Why should I help him? Just because I was an omega and he was my—an—alpha. And screw his flowers that I’d put on my shelf as soon as I got home, changing the water carefully with some of Mom’s fertilizer so they stayed fresh as long as possible, because I wasn’t a flower guy, but even a gift that didn’t fit from Aspen was better than thinking he didn’t care about me at all.

Not even enough to come into town and say he was back. Not enough to figure his shit out and make amends.

Because damn it, I deserved an apology. Two decades—one spent in love with him, and one listless and unmoored—and he’d left me behind. He didn’t have to love me or anything, but he owed me more than nothing. And I owed myself more than trying to drag him out of the woods while he played out some bonkers mountain-man fantasy.

“Where are you going?” Alexis called, scrambling after me.

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