Page 64 of Cold Moon

Skye laughed. “It’s fine. You can stay here. Play with your new toys. This isn’t a big deal.”

I frowned, my wolf disliking the idea of leaving Skye alone. But that was just the last vestiges of his heat. Linden Grove was completely trustworthy, and if he wanted Skye tested, that was for the good of the pack.

I didn’t want to be another overbearing wolf who tried to tell Skye he was too fragile to go out on his own. And okay,fine, I wanted to get my hands on that brand-new microscope.

“If that’s okay. I mean, I can—in here, if I can isolate the solution again, maybe test its properties in a more controlled environment—”

“Then you’ll have something we can compare our results to,” Linden announced with a clap of his hands.

He shrugged out of his coat and hung it on the rack behind his desk. There, in his thick, hand-knit sweater, he looked entirely harmless. Or maybe I’d just realized that no Grove posed any threat to me—not while Skye was sort of possibly definitely throwing around words like “love” in relation to my sorry ass.

“You sure you don’t want me to come?” I asked Skye.

He waved a hand through the air. “It’s fine. Super boring, really. And the whole hospital smells like rubbing alcohol. No reason for you to suffer through it. Go titrate some poison, or whatever. I’ll let you know when we’re on our way home and we can get dinner.”

Plans. I had full-ass plans for the future that included dinner with the most beautiful man in the world.

“Sounds great.”

Before they even left the clinic, I’d shut the door to the lab and started to get to work.

I was right—even here, where the room was entirely clean and there was no risk of cross contamination, the same solution in the Sterling bottled water was on their lettuce, in their cereal boxes, in everything.

I just didn’t know what itdid. And I couldn’t test it out on anyone. It only affected omegas, and the risks were too high. It wasn’t an indiscriminate poison. It was either so perfect or so perfectly random that it only affected our omegas.

Which meant it targeted something in the difference between alphas and omegas, and I didn’t know what the hell that was.

Maybe Linden’s testing would shed some light. Reasonably, there were plenty of differences in anatomy between humans and werewolves—our claws, our distended fangs, the way our eyes adapted to changing light, our stomachs and digestive systems primed to eat raw meat in a pinch. Then there was the remus gland—that part of our brains people thought was responsible for the shift—but no one knew much about it other than that it’d developed in werewolves and not in humans.

A hard, thunderous rapping knocked me out of my swirling thoughts. I jerked up, and there, on the other side of the sealed door, glaring at me through the glass panel, was Archer Sterling.

I sighed, but there was nothing for it—wasn’t like he couldn’t see me there, purposefully ignoring him.

I stuffed my supplies safely away and washed my hands before I opened the door.

“Yeah?”

He marched right past me into the room. “I was looking for your alpha. Where haveyoubeen?”

I blinked. “None of your business. I had a personal matter.”

“Bet you were rutting, huh? Grandfather always says werewolves are slaves to their beasts, or whatever. So, finally come out of it to make yourself useful?” He sneered at me, crossing his arms. “Where’s the doctor?”

This fucker was going to be lucky if I didn’t break his fucking nose.

“He’s out. What do you want?”

Archer raked a hand through his copper hair. With a huff, he dropped his hip against one of the counters. “I just—I need someone to take me through it. Show me your work again.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You believe there’s something wrong here, don’t you?”

His glare returned full force. “No. But I am... open to the concept that I might be wrong. My grandfather, he—” Asher’s nose flared. He looked away, and I smelled the dull, sour scent of shame. “He hates werewolves. Likehatesthem. You. So, just—fucking take me through it again, before I change my mind.”

And that was it, a chance. I might’ve wanted to snarl at him, bare my fangs and make him scared. But he was offering me a chance to explain my proof, show evidence. And I had it.

Or I had something.

And by the time I’d shown him how pervasive the Sterling solution was, explained again the fast, dramatic responses of not only Skye, but Claudia Wilson, Archer was frowning, taking notes on a piece of paper he’d grabbed from the printer.

---