Page 4 of Strawberry Moon

And of course, Linden Grove. My friendships with Dante and Skye were complicated and confusing, but with Linden, it was even worse.

He was a real father figure for most of his pack, despite not even being forty yet. He was nurturing and helpful and fatherly. He was the Grove pack alpha; how could he not be? Technically, as someone bitten by a member of his pack, that made me a part of his pack too.

But also, I was still—and always would be—the grandson of the man who had hurt every werewolf in the world.

Linden never treated me like a... like a wolf in sheep’s clothing? That wasn’t quite right. A monster in wolf’s clothing, more like. Linden treated me a lot like he treated Dante: like I was a sad, broken creature who might collapse at the slightest insult.

I couldn’t say he was wrong.

I felt like I’d been drifting through existence since Skye bit me. Not because I didn’t like being a werewolf. I’d hardly started to skim the surface of what it meant to be a werewolf, and if I were being honest, I’d been avoiding trying to learn. I still hadn’t ever shifted into a wolf, and I’d taken to sedating myself on the full moons, unwilling to deal with my wilder instincts.

They would hate me if I let them out, I was sure. Why would any werewolf not hate me, including myself?

So with all that baggage, all that stress, why did coming into Grovetown feel like coming home? I only knew about a dozen people there, but just breathing that fresh, green, apple-tinged air made my shoulders loosen. I rolled my car windows down every time I reached Grove County limits, just to take it all in, and let go of all the stress I carried in my muscles.

I pulled into the clinic parking lot, right between Linden’s SUV and the tiny hybrid Dante had bought in the spring, and it was just...

It was the only place in the world I felt at all right. At all home. Pulling into the space and turning off my car felt like slotting the last piece into a thousand-piece puzzle, and being able to just stand back and admire it.

Except that wasn’t why I’d made the drive to Grovetown. I hadn’t finished the puzzle, only found a likely first few pieces, and I needed Dante to help me find the rest.

Together, he and I were going to make sure that the loss of the omegas my grandfather had murdered didn’t destroy any more packs.

I pulled the cooler out of the passenger-side footwell and headed for the clinic. Dante was waiting for me inside, practically hopping in front of a bemused Linden’s desk.

They both turned to look at me, Dante hopeful and Linden interested. Had Dante not told him what I’d been working on? Well, if he hadn’t yet, I would now. I held up the cooler, so Dante could take it from me. “I don’t think it’s right yet, but it’s a start.”

He took it and headed immediately for the lab, while Linden continued to watch. Finally, he turned to me with a raised eyebrow.

“We’re going to find a way to simulate omega pheromones synthetically. It’s not—It doesn’t fix it. But it’s a start, right?” And dammit, my vision went blurry at the question, my voice cracking at the end. I had known I needed Linden’s approval, but until that moment, I hadn’t realized just how much.

He gave me a wide smile that made that squirming mass of wolf instincts rise up in me, begging to be patted on the head.

“That sounds amazing, Archer. It’s a great idea, and I’m sure you two together can do anything you put your minds to.”

3

Ford

In the months since Jedidiah Sterling’s death, nothing had gotten better. Werewolf packs across the nation—across the world—were still struggling to survive, alphas battling their baser instincts while omegas struggled to stay healthy.

Sure, Sterling claimed they had removed the toxins from their products, but who could believe that? It’d fostered a deeper distrust between the werewolf and human communities than there had already been.

And that distrust and anger seethed in my chest. It wouldn’t let me go.

All the while people like Ridge and Barbara thought things were getting better, that there might be some relief from all we’d suffered. They were wrong. Lily had died. No changing that.

And in June, on the anniversary of the day I’d lost my mate, everything was every bit as shit as it’d been for the last seven years without my family, without my rock, riding the edge of my alpha urges.

Every year, it was a struggle not to slip into my fur and take to the woods. But like every other day, I shoved that bullshit down, grunted my way through breakfast, and picked up the first chore that kept me busy and as far away from people as I could manage.

By midday, I was sitting on top of the tractor, the mower attachment on, blades whirling. The sun was high in the sky. The temperature wasn’t too bad, unless you sat under its beating rays for a while. And after a couple hours mowing the land between the Hills’ farmhouse and the road, my sweat was soaking through my thin gray T-shirt. My jeans had picked up the scent of cut grass, flown blades of it clinging to the hem of my pants above my boots.

But damn if I weren’t glad to get away, the white noise of the whirring blades buzzing in my head so I couldn’t think too hard about anything, and my heart couldn’t throb too painfully.

I was still mad, ready to spit—or claw and snarl. That was the alpha-wolf way. And I hadn’t figured out what to do with all that anger but swallow it down and try to get through the days, minutes, and hours that stretched out ahead of me, no relief in sight.

Approaching the gully near the road, I couldn’t help thinking about those Sterling men, the lawyers they’d sent to try and buy the Hills’ farm from the Grove pack trust. They’d wanted my home. They’d driven through my town and tried to take what was mine, to get a little closer so they could hurt more of the people I loved. Destroy more of my pack.

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