Page 31 of Strawberry Moon

I had a feeling, though, that Grove pack gatherings wouldn’t be anything like those parties. I mean, at the very least, everyone there was going to strip naked and turn into a wolf. That alone had to make it a little less formal.

On the other hand, that also made it scarier.

When I’d been to doctors after the shooting, they’d prescribed anything and everything they thought I might have a use for, wanting to make the poor fragile billionaire comfortable. For the most part, I’d ignored it.

But when the first full moon after the bite had come, when daylight had been fading, and the squirming mass in my chest had been getting bigger by the hour, well... I’d panicked, okay?

I had taken a dozen pills prescribed by the doctors. Sleeping pills and muscle relaxants and tranquilizers and just... To this day I couldn’t say if I was trying to calm down, or trying to overdose.

I’m sure a tiny part of me hoped that I would simply not wake up the next morning. I wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore then, right? No more trying to fix the horrors my grandfather had wrought, no more trying to figure out how to be a werewolf, no more being the very thing I hated most in the world. And that had been before I’d become a billionaire on top of everything else.

But I’d woken the next day. Ill rested and miserable, like I’d gone on a bender the night before—which, well, a dozen pills in, I supposed I had—but alive.

And without having to deal with the whole wolf part of it.

Linden had since told me that not all werewolves turned on the moon—not unless they wanted to—and that there was no turning into a mindless beast ever, but that hadn’t changed things. Not for me, anyway. Every full moon, without fail, I took a handful of pills, and slept fitfully until moonset.

I’d had to up the doses last time, too, because they had started wearing off too soon, leaving me wanting to run and howl and... well hell, I didn’t know what, which was the heart of the problem.

Linden had invited me to pack runs before. He’d stopped short of demanding it, but there was no way to miss the concern in his eyes when he asked, the plea in his tone that said he was worried about me.

This time, though, the squirming mass in my chest that I’d learned to identify as werewolf instincts wouldn’t let me ignore it.

Alpha wants us, it had insisted, over and over again during the week as I worked.

And that Friday afternoon, staring at the half dozen pill bottles on the counter in my little lab, it was squirming so hard that I felt ill.

No. No pills. Alpha!

I wished that it meant Linden. Not that I wanted to avoid Ford, but Linden had proven himself steady and supportive, and I didn’t have any doubts about him at all. Linden would take care of me if it was within his power.

Ford was still a wild card. He’d been nice to me twice out of the half dozen times we’d met. As much as the wolf in my chest wanted to rely on Ford, wanted to run to him and snuggle up next to him, I couldn’t have faith in him. I’d trusted the wrong people too many times in my life, and it had never turned out well, starting with my own grandfather.

Everything in me kept insisting I could trust Ford, but could I really? And what happened if I did, and like my grandfather, he shot me in the chest?

Okay, fine, he wasn’t going to do exactly that. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t completely eviscerate me without even trying. And he had every reason to want that, after what Sterling had done to him.

I sat there, staring at the little orange bottles, for half the afternoon. Alternately, on the counter a few feet away, sat my car keys. The drive to Grovetown wasn’t even a long one. I’d been invited.

But what happened if I did go, if I let the wolf take over, even for this one night? Would it ever give Archer back?

I had a handful of pills out and was staring down at them before I’d thought it through, and that was when my phone started ringing.

Linden.

Shakily, I answered. “Hey. What’s up?”

“Archer,” he said, voice soft and kind as ever, but there was a note of something else there too. Command. “It’s time. Come to the pack meeting.”

Shakily, I set the pills down on the counter with a clatter, then wiped my sweaty palm on my jeans. “Okay.”

23

Ford

It’d been a damn long while since I’d bothered showing up for a pack run. When I was a kid, they were awesome. Joyful. Families had a good time chasing each other through the woods, hunting rabbits, being wild.

And when I was a teenager, well, it wasn’t rabbits I hunted anymore. Lily’s smile would spread her full, pink lips. When she caught my eye, she would shift—damn, she was beautiful when she shifted. Nobody did it like her. That graceful ripple of fur over skin. Limbs changing. The gentle, easy drop of her padded feet to the forest floor.

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