Page 3 of Hunter Moon

Frowning, I stepped out to see what the commotion was. After so long spent keeping to myself, hiding out in the clinic or at home, I didn’t have the slightest idea what could be wrong, from town scuffles over fancy canoes to another run-in with a rival pack, but it’d already drawn a crowd.

I didn’t have a clue, until I saw the two Grove brothers practically growling at each other in front of the local bar, there in the middle of the street for the whole damn pack to see.

Now, the strange looks, the cut-off conversations whenever I went into Chadwick’s Grille for lunch—it all made sense. Aspen Grove had returned, and no one had bothered to tell me.

For a second, memories flashed through my mind. The way Linden’s lips pulled back over his fangs in a snarl could almost have been a smile. A brotherly tussle before we all met up for onion rings in The Cider House.

But I blinked, and that fond vision disappeared. There in the middle of the sidewalk, Linden was bearing down on Aspen, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. Aspen’s own were thrown up placatingly. The young, bright-eyed man he’d been dissolved into the mask of a grizzled warrior, and my wolf whimpered mournfully in my head. Everything I’d lost, carved into every line by Aspen’s hazel eyes, the frown lines that framed his full lips.

It’d been ten years since I’d seen the man, but I’d have known him anywhere. His quick, clever smile still haunted my dreams. Or it used to.

It’d been a while since I’d had a good dream.

Even from this far away, I could tell he was different. Aspen had always been a big guy—an alpha proper, the kind of elite fighter an ancient pack might’ve wanted defending them from wooly mammoths or whatever. He was his father’s son, more than Linden was, certainly more than Rowan, though Junie might’ve matched Aspen Senior’s temper.

Now, Aspen looked like his father had when we were kids, enormous and dangerous, the gray just starting to show at his temples. He had more tattoos than he’d had a decade ago. I could still remember the fit Aspen Senior’d thrown when he’d gotten the first one. Wasn’t fitting, he said, for an alpha to go around looking like a thug.

All those expectations, he’d heaped on Aspen’s shoulders—shoulders that were now round with muscle, but lean, like he’d learned to go without in all that time he’d been away. The navy made him hard, sharpened all those soft places the pack had given him. Made him look wild.

When we were young, it was his mom’s cooking, then Rowan’s, all those pies, that’d softened up that hard muscle. He’d been big and strong, which suited me just fine, because I had a square jaw that didn’t fit an omega, stouter limbs, wide hands built for turning wrenches. That he was bigger than me was the first thing that’d made me feel, well, like everyone said an omega ought to feel—soft and sweet and cared for. His arms had been long enough and strong enough to hold me tight.

Like a deer in the headlights, I stared at them as Linden dug into Aspen, willing Aspen to look away from his raging brother and see me.

I had a sick feeling that he wasn’t the only one visibly changed. Aspen knew me better than anyone, and he’d know right away that I was broken. But if he could look past that and just... justseeme, I had the strangest sense that it’d change me—make me like I’d been before, when he’d still been around.

He had to feel my gaze on him, right? For longer than I’d wanted to admit, I’d pinned as many of my hopes and dreams on Aspen as his father had. When he’d left, it’d taken a good long while for it to sink in that he wasn’t coming back. When it had, I’d had Shiloh and Harmony to think about. I’d had to work. There was no sense looking for a mate when I had my family to look after.

So I’d spent the last decade holding onto an absurd, childish fantasy. Now, the longer I stood there looking at him, the more I realized he’d been around for days—long enough for people to whisper gossip behind my back—but he hadn’t bothered to look for me.

He seemed to know Alexis just fine, willing to put himself between Linden and the young omega. And sure, Lex was Aspen’s type—easy-going, young, active. He had that podcast,Omega and the Great Outdoors. That was exactly the kind of thing Aspen would be into.

Alexis was a good, solid mate—if you ignored that he was already in love with that farm boy at his side.

Aspen held his hands up, standing between Alexis and his brother. “I swear, Lin, I’m back, and I’m not leaving again unless you make me.”

Of course—because Linden could make requests and demands of him, but not me. I hadn’t even gotten a goodbye.

Linden’s eyes narrowed. He leaned in toward his brother and hissed, “What about Brook?”

Well, damn. Someone was thinking of me after all.

How the fuck did that make everything so much worse?

Everyone standing on the street, outside the businesses that made up the heart of Grovetown, collectively caught their breaths. More than one set of eyes turned toward me, but my throat closed up and all my focus narrowed to one point—Aspen standing there, a blank, confused frown on his face.

A second passed with nothing. A single beat of my heart.

Then Aspen said, “What about Brook?”

Not even a thought. He hadn’t come back to see me. Hadn’t come to visit. It wasn’t like I was hard to find. I’d lived my whole life in the same house I’d grown up in, worked the same job I’d taken on in high school after Dad died.

He just hadn’t been interested in finding me. Whether I was broken or not, Aspen Grove had moved on. I was the pathetic jerk who looked back on a teenage romance with rose-colored glasses, thinking I still had a place in the heart of the only guy I’d ever loved.

My heart dropped like a rock into my belly. My fingers went numb, a cold sweat breaking out under my arms, making my palms slick. The rag fell out of my shaking hand, and I did the only thing I could do—I bolted.

Ran as far as two legs could carry me, and when that wasn’t enough, I shed my clothes at the side of the street and fell to four legs, letting the claws of my wolf form scrape asphalt as I rushed to escape. I’d go anywhere—anywhere, so long as my pack couldn’t find me.

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