Page 7 of Strawberry Moon

But underneath all that, deeper and stronger and... my notebook hit the table when I dropped it, entirely focused on taking in more of that scent. Man, my brain told me. It smells like man, after a day’s honest labor. Clean sweat and musk and—

The instincts in my chest swelled again and this time I could barely keep them contained.Alpha, they told me.It smells like alpha.

Except that Dante and Linden smelled plenty like alpha, so why was this scent different. I looked over at where Doctor Grove had the man, Ford, laid out, and tried not to hear the crunch of setting bone. He grimaced, but didn’t cry out, and the wolf instincts surged up again.

So strong. Strong alpha.

Want.

What the actual fuck.

5

Ford

The last thing I wanted when I was hurt was an entire fucking audience, but it wasn’t just Doc Grove and Skye in the clinic. Dante was there too. Behind him, some redheaded stranger I didn’t recognize. And sure as fuck, Ridge and Mr. Mena weren’t going to leave me there injured in the middle of the clinic.

I wished they’d go back to the farm, back to work, so there’d be two fewer sets of eyes looking my way.

Linden cut up the leg of my jeans, pulled them clean off so I was laying there in bed number two in my boxers and a T-shirt, sweaty and covered in grass and blood. He did his best to clean the area around the wound before he set the bone, but there was grass everywhere, and even after he’d pushed the bone back beneath the skin, there was work to do. Alcohol to dab. Stitches to sew.

With the worst of it done, I dropped my head back against the pillow and closed my eyes. The muscles of my stomach were still clenched from the sensation of Linden sewing my skin back together, but with the small sound of a snip, he was done.

I let out a breath and melted into the mattress. “Thanks, Doc.”

“Anytime, Ford.” His voice was low and mild as ever, but I heard the tension in his voice when he turned to the others. “Ridge, can I have a word with you? Outside.”

I opened my eyes in time to see Ridge nod. He gave me an uncomfortable little smile as he led the way into the parking lot with the doctor and Mr. Mena.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what that was about. I’d gotten used to the mumbled, worried conversations at the edges of my hearing. Was I going to be all right? Was I losing my tenuous grip on my control? Had this happened because I rode too close to the edge?

Well, literally, yes.

Figuratively too.

But when they left, Skye and Dante backed off. They were young, hardly more than kids, and Dante Johnson didn’t do angry alphas.

And I was a quintessential example of just that.

The stranger, though... he hung back, his eyes caught on me. With the others drifting away, all the work of saving my leg done for the moment, I felt the weight of his intense stare.

Then it hit me, his scent, full of desire.

It was strange, for an omega to look at me and not immediately see how broken I was. Hell, I was there in the clinic, my shin bone literally in pieces. Didn’t get much more broken than that.

“Help you with something?” I asked, my voice gruff from the shouting I’d done under the tractor, the pain I’d swallowed down since.

The guy swallowed. I watched his throat bob, then saw his tongue dart between his lips like he desperately needed a glass of water.

“No, I’m... sorry. About your leg, and, um...” He was looking at me with his brows pulled down, his eyes wide and intense. His pulse jumped, beating so loud in his chest I could hear it from across the room.

And every heartbeat sent a wave of his scent, like sunlight and soft peach skins, crashing over me. The guy was worried, but under all that, his interest was what caught my attention. Made my mouth water like I wanted to sink my teeth into that peach, taste his juicy sweetness.

That was what happened when you took a wolf, trapped him apart from his pack, and told him there wasn’t a mate for him anymore. They were dead, and he was alone.

It was what happened when a were went seven years without a fuck. Without so much as a good hug.

His head got all screwed up, and he laid there on a bed in the clinic and thought about grabbing the nearest omega up in his arms and sinking into him, how good that’d feel, how he wouldn’t be lonely for just a little while.

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