Page 1 of Strawberry Moon

1

Ford

We’d never had an impressive TV at the Hills’ farm, just the same old one Henrik had watched the late-night news on for the past twenty years, big and clunky and built into a cheap wooden cabinet. It’d never been a draw for any of us, but the night of Jedidiah Sterling’s arraignment, every one of us was packed into Barbara and Henrik’s living room, crushed together in every spare bit of space to see what became of him.

That included Alexis’s parents, the Menas, tucked together on the recliner where Henrik usually sat. The man himself had taken up a place on one side of the couch, gripping his wife’s right hand.

I sat on Barbara’s other side, stiff as a board, staring at the journalist with the orange banner scrolling under him:Sterling CEO arraignment, accused of murdering hundreds of thousands.

So many, including my mate and Barbara and Henrik’s daughter, Lily, and our child.

Ridge was sprawled out on the woven carpet, his own mate tucked between his legs, leaning back against his chest. I couldn’t stand the sight of them, a little smile tugging on Ridge’s lips as he dropped his chin on Alexis’s shoulder, his arm wrapped around Lex’s middle, like there wasn’t a damn thing wrong in the world so long as they had each other.

That wasn’t fair of me. The two of them knew as well as anybody that there was plenty wrong. Alexis’s cousin and our pack second, Claudia, had almost died of the Condition. I was just jealous they both had someone to lean on when things got hard, much as I knew either one of them would’ve been there for me in a second if I’d asked.

Maybe I wasn’t even jealous. Just sad.

And fucking angry.

Jedidiah Sterling had stolen my happily ever after and buried her six feet underground in the shade of an oak tree she’d carved our initials into back when we were teenagers. I’d seen happy years out on this farm, growing old with her, and he’d stolen every single one of them from me until all I had left was my anger and my stubborn devotion to Lily’s parents—’cause I knew—I knew she would want me to look after them when she couldn’t.

“We’re going to take you now inside the courtroom, where the judge is ready to read the charges against Mr. Sterling,” the reporter announced.

The cameras shifted, switching to a stream of the courtroom itself, of the judge’s somber face and of Jed Sterling sneering as his crimes were laid before the court.

It went on and on. The charges ranged from drug manufacturing and fraud to manslaughter and first-degree murder. There was even an attempted-murder charge against his own grandson.

The man was a monster. Maybe he’d lost his mind, but there were plenty of people who were sick or mentally ill who weren’t also complete pieces of shit.

My wolf wanted to leap through the television screen, fangs bared and claws out, and tear the man in half. That kind of quick death was too kind for Sterling, but damn, it would have felt good.

I didn’t notice my leg was shaking under my clenched fist until Barbara reached over and settled her hand on top of mine, working her fingers into the curl of my own until I had no choice but to let my hand spread flat on my thigh so she could squeeze it. She didn’t say a word, and I felt that thrum of an angry alpha beside me.

This was hard for her too.

I linked my fingers through hers and squeezed her hand back.

The room fell silent when the judge asked for Sterling’s plea. I expected something short and overmanicured by his team of lawyers, but when his upper lip curled, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

“Not guilty,” he said, and the camera zoomed in on his wrinkled face. His eyes were sharp with malice, and his jaw was set firmly. His lawyer, by his side, sucked in his cheeks like he knew what was coming.

“I demand to know what right dogs have in a court of law. Human law. American law,” Sterling said, his voice ringing out like the bastard thought he was delivering the Emancipation Proclamation instead of starting in on an unhinged, bigoted rant.

“I can tell you one thing.” He raised his hand, his skin mottled with age spots. “We free Americans, the humans who built this country—we deserve to defend what’s ours. We must stand our ground.” His palm smacked the table in front of him. He tipped forward. “Drive back the monsters and beasts that would take what belongs to us. Rutting, growling, drooling dogs that think they’ve some right to what’s ours!”

His lawyer tried to hold him back. The judge told him to sit down. But my ears were ringing so loud I couldn’t hear the bang of his gavel. Red tinged the edges of my vision, and I had to work to swallow down the knot of rage that choked me.

“They play at being human, but they’re not like us. They’re cursed. Beasts.Abnormal.”

That searing need to shift and defend my pack almost dulled my senses to the chaos that broke out then. He said something else, but he was breathing hard all of a sudden, grasping his chest. He braced on the desk, not out of some attempt to make his point by throwing his limbs around, but to keep upright.

A young man with copper hair vaulted over the partition between the spectators and the rest of the courtroom, rushing to Sterling’s side.

And then the cameras in the courtroom cut off. We were back to staring at the journalist from before, who looked wide eyed and shocked. He touched his ear.

“There’s been some kind of disturbance in the courtroom. They’re sending people out—”

I couldn’t take it, the stress ratcheting up until the snarling in my head was clearer than any reasonable thought, drowning out everything else.

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