Page 8 of Hunter Moon

“Oh! Brook, hey! Um...” He looked over his shoulder into the parlor, and I imagined Linden and Aspen sitting in there glaring at each other, put out at the interruption. “Come in?”

I followed after him, but there was no one in the parlor. As far as I could tell, there was no one in the whole house but us.

How did that feel worse?

“Are you looking for Aspen?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder as he led the way toward the kitchen at the back of the house. It’d been years since I’d hung out there on the stool at the counter with Aspen, but nothing in here had changed. The furniture was all nice, the only sign of their dog a weighted blanket on the end of the couch with a circle of her black and white fur.

Point was, everything was beautiful. Cozy, but expensive. Welcoming, but intimidating to a kid who’d gotten everything second hand.

I sighed. “That obvious?”

Rowan laughed, shrugging. “I dunno. I think if there’s a line of people who want to sock Asp, you should be pretty near the front. And Linden’s already got a punch in.”

Blinking, I stared at the back of his head. “I don’t want to hit him.”

Rowan went around the counter to where he was chopping up small green stalks of chives, and he set back to work. “Wouldn’t blame you, you know. I kind of want to hit him.”

I didn’t believe that for a second. Rowan was gentle. He even put his sweater-wearing healer of a big brother to shame on that front.

“No, I—I just wanted to talk. Is he around?”

Rowan swallowed, staring down at his cutting board. “No. He... left after talking to Linden last night. I don’t know where he’s staying, but Linden didn’t offer him a bed and I didn’t get the impression Aspen would’ve taken it if he had. It’s just, you know, alpha stuff.” He waved the knife through the air like it didn’t matter, then mixed the chives in with some yellowy egg mixture. “I don’t think he went far? Linden’s already at the clinic if you want to swing by and ask him.”

I sighed, sinking into a familiar stool and dropping my head in my hands. Last thing I wanted was to go on some pathetic manhunt for someone who clearly didn’t want to be found. Things would just have to be awkward.

“No. It’s fine.”

When Rowan answered, I could hear the grimace in his voice. “It’s really not, but okay. I can let him know you came by if I see him.”

“Seriously, don’t bother.” I met his eye, determined not to seem like the wistful loser I felt like, and forced a smile. “So, what are you cooking?”

That seemed like an awful lot of breakfast if Linden was already out for the day, but Rowan had always worked out his feelings with food.

“Quiche. It’s, like, basically breakfast pie. I thought I’d bring it over to Cliff this morning. With everything going on, he’s been kind of—”

I didn’t notice I’d looked down until he froze. But everything going on? A lot of that was me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

He was at my side in a second, his hand clutching mine. “Nope. You haven’t done a single thing wrong, Brook.”

Rowan’s smile wavered, and I noticed then that his eyes were bloodshot, like he’d been losing sleep. I held onto his hand. Weirdly, I thought he might need that as much as I did.

He glanced away toward his mixing bowl and sighed. “It’s just—you know how alphas get? Everything that goes wrong seems to ratchet up the pressure, like they have to jump in and fix it. Or get ready to fight. And alphas with omega mates, well... having a home, that safety and security, it lets them diffuse all that. But I’m not a—” He wasn’t an omega. Rowan was the only living beta Grove, and I didn’t remember there being an omega in that direct line since the town’s founding. “I don’t know. It’s something chemical, and I can’t give that to Cliff.”

Cliff owned the hardware store downtown. We sometimes got tools from him, and he’d been by the house to fix things, but I didn’t know him well. By and large, I’d kept some distance from the Groves in the last decade, and that extended to the alpha Rowan was in love with.

“He loves you, though,” I said, squeezing his hand. “Omega or not, you and Cliff chose each other.”

Rowan laughed, but his eyes were wet. When I let his hand go, he moved around the kitchen and went back to work. “I know. You’re right. He’s just been on edge lately. It’s got me scared, and with Aspen all the sudden back, just when the pack’s accepted Linden as alpha—I don’t know. If I can just keep everything calm—”

As much as that wasn’t his job, and Cliff’s state of mind wasn’t his responsibility, there was no sense pretending things were that simple. Alphas without omegas struggled. Every Reid pack omega had died of the Condition, and the pack had gotten wild and dangerous without them.

I didn’t think Cliff was like Maxim Reid, ready to take his anger and frustration out on everyone around him, but it was easy to see why Rowan worried.

He forced a grin as he whisked his eggs. “If you stay, you can have a piece for breakfast before I take it over?”

And while I’d already eaten a bunch of Harmony’s pancakes, I didn’t want to leave Rowan alone right then. I could totally make space for breakfast pie.

---