Page 57 of Hunter Moon

My breath caught sharply, I shut my eyes, counted to ten, and finally, I slipped out from under the car and scowled up at him. Sitting low to the ground while an alpha towered over me? Wasn’t great for my head right then.

“I appreciate what you’re trying to do,” I said tightly. “But you—I mean, everyone—everyone in town knows what I’ve been through. Right?”

He nodded. As much as I might’ve wished to keep some things to myself, there was no stopping the gossip mill in a town this small.

“So, you get how, going through heat, being that vulnerable with an alpha I’ve never been with before, could be a bad idea?” Under other circumstances, I wouldn’t have been so blunt about it. I didn’t like to talk about heat or—or bring my personal life into the workplace at all.

Hell, I didn’t like the idea of even having a personal life after Aspen left.

Joseph’s scowl deepened. “I do. But I thought maybe you’d feel safer with someone there you know. Someone you can trust.”

I grimaced, looking away, and shoved a new oil filter at him. “Nope. This car needs an oil change.”

Reaching for a rag, I wiped my hands clean and headed for my locker. There, I grabbed my wallet and water bottle. Finishing the day wasn’t in the cards, and—and maybe if the garage could get by without me for a while, all the better.

35

Aspen

First off, I thought I deserved a drink for not shifting and launching myself at Joey’s face.

Yes, I know, eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves or whatever, but I wasn’t eavesdropping. Hell, I was just parking in front of the grocery store when my ears, always tuned to the sound of Brook’s voice, picked up the sound of our mate giving clipped, irritated responses. Lies, no less. Assurances that he was fine when that tone, on Brook, meant the opposite of fine.

By the time I managed to pick out Joey’s stumbling invitation to hop on his dick, Brook was already giving him the brush off.

It was Brook’s words that stopped me in my tracks, though, and I’d like a little acknowledgment for that. For clearing that bar on the floor, being a decent person, and not killing Joey for hitting on Brook while Brook was still trying to get through what had happened to him at the hands of the Reids. While Brook and I were clearly trying to work out our issues, and a third person could only complicate things.

Being that vulnerable with an alpha I’ve never been with before, Brook had said, and fuck my entire life.

My years away hadn’t dulled my senses any, and the scent announcing that Brook was days away from heat hadn’t escaped my notice. That had been why I was going to the grocery store. If Brook was going to be alone and going through heat in the next few days, I’d wanted to take care of him in any way I could, and a care package had seemed like the best way to do that. I’d planned on putting together a bag with his favorite foods, a box of that relaxing tea he liked that smelled like dirt, and maybe a takeout container with some of Wanda’s bread pudding, to keep him company. I’d have bought him a video game, but I wasn’t familiar with what he did and didn’t have.

Contrary to my occasional actions, I wasn’t an unintelligent guy. I knew I had no right to ask to help Brook through his heat. I knew generally, if not specifically, what he’d been through, and how that might mean he didn’t want any part of an alpha’s help with his heat. Hell, how it might mean he never wanted another alpha to touch him as long as he lived.

But then he’d said it.An alpha I’ve never been with before.

And that was a whole different thing, wasn’t it? It wasn’t “I don’t want any alpha right now,” or “I’d prefer to never have another heat or sex again for as long as I live.”

It felt deliberate. Like he’d made a point of leaving a loophole just for me.

Okay, well maybe not just for me. I didn’t know if Brook had been with someone else while I was gone, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that he’d left that loophole, and while I wasn’t going to be a smug asshole who thought I had a right to slip through it, well...

Well what?

If I so much as offered, there was a level of entitlement to that, wasn’t there? A certain amount of pressure.

And no one got to pressure Brook, least of all me.

So I shook off my momentary hesitance, marched myself into the grocery store, and bought what I needed. I’d been a little worried that in the grocery store’s Sterling purge, Isaac might have gotten rid of some of Brook’s favorite things, but no. And just maybe, that was an indicator of something deeper—even when given the option to eat Sterling food, Brook hadn’t, and he had always been one of the healthiest omegas I’d known. Could it really be pure luck that Brook hadn’t enjoyed any tainted foods, or did he just know on some primal level, that he didn’t feel right when he ate them?

No way to ever know.

Me, on the other hand... half my grocery staples were apparently out of bounds now. If it was convenient, precooked, and tasted good, Ambrosia grocery no longer carried it. Figured.

I nabbed an extra bouquet of daisies on the way out. Heats tended to heighten emotions, and I didn’t want him to go through it any more than he absolutely had to, so making sure the flowers weren’t going to die while he was in the middle of it seemed sensible.

I set the bag in the passenger seat of my car and went over to the Grille to see if Wanda would sell me a whole pan of bread pudding. Being Wanda, she got an amused twinkle in her eye and told me she’d check what they had.

I turned when she went into the kitchen, and found Brook standing just inside the doorway, arms wrapped around himself, looking at me. He seemed to be considering turning around and walking right back out, but so far he was hanging in there.

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