COLD MOON

WOLF MOON RISING BOOK FOUR

SAM BURNS

W.M. FAWKES

Copyright © 2021 by FlickerFox Books.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Content Warning: violence and physical recovery, bullying, anxiety, discussions of mental health, alcoholism of a parent, former (off-page) child abuse

Cover art © 2020 by Natasha Snow Designs; www.natashasnowdesigns.com

Editing by Clause & Effect and Amy Pittel for LesCourt Author Services

Proofing by Kate Wood; katewoodproofreading.com

CONTENTS

1.  Dante

2.  Skye

3.  Dante

4.  Skye

5.  Dante

6.  Skye

7.  Dante

8.  Skye

9.  Dante

10.  Skye

11.  Dante

12.  Skye

13.  Dante

14.  Skye

15.  Dante

16.  Skye

17.  Dante

18.  Skye

19.  Dante

20.  Skye

21.  Dante

22.  Skye

23.  Dante

24.  Skye

25.  Dante

26.  Skye

27.  Dante

28.  Skye

29.  Dante

30.  Skye

31.  Dante

32.  Skye

33.  Dante

34.  Skye

35.  Dante

36.  Skye

37.  Dante

38.  Skye

39.  Dante

40.  Skye

41.  Dante

42.  Skye

43.  Dante

Sneak Peek of Captured

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Also by Sam Burns & W.M. Fawkes

Also by Sam Burns

About Sam Burns

About W.M. Fawkes

1

DANTE

I had always liked caterpillars.

It was something to do with their metamorphoses, how they were able to change shape, fly away from where they were born, beautiful in all their delicacy. They could change, and they could escape. As a werewolf—a creature of transformation myself—I should have been able to do the same.

But I was beginning to suspect that the caterpillar I saw crawling across the dry leaves in front of me wasn’t real. For one thing, the ground pressing against my cheek was frigid in the late October air.

For another, it wasn’t alone. There were wiggling spots all across my vision, light green and yellow. Some of them were flying, entirely unattached to the sticks on the ground or anything else. They weren’t crawling, just squirming around.

Logically, these weren’t caterpillars or anything half as nice. They were my vision getting spotty, a symptom of low blood pressure as I bled out, naked on the ground in the woods, far from home.

I’d challenged Cain for leadership of our pack. It’d been the only thing I could do to put an end to the violence and madness.

And, predictably, he’d kicked my entire ass in front of our pack. Not alone, either. I’d pushed them to change, to do better, and the pack had shown me precisely how little they cared for Maxim Reid’s only son. They’d left me with my belly torn open, bleeding from my neck and shoulder, collapsed in the dirt.

We’d fought as wolves, but as my body shut down, my form shifted. When werewolves died, we did it on two legs.

There were a number of reasons I’d never have made a fit Alpha Reid. Like my mother’s, my fur was stark white. It stood out in a fight, and I didn’t have the size to make up for shining like a beacon in the dark, inviting any and every enemy to come right at me. I wasn’t a warrior. Not like my father’d been, for all the good it’d done him.

More importantly, I didn’t understand my pack—couldn’t accommodate their needs when I was so busy shoving my own down. They wanted an alpha who’d fight for them, who’d provide. Food, safety, unwilling omega mates.

I’d never been that wolf. Instinct couldn’t win out over decency.

Except it did, every day.

Hadn’t wanted to be pack alpha either, until I heard my cousin Cain, the new Alpha Reid, had led our wayward pack out to fight the Groves. He meant to tear them apart, take their omegas, repair our pack.

They’d die. As much as I hated them for blindly following my father, ignoring the suffering and misery he caused while he slowly lost his mind, I didn’t want to lose them.

The Groves didn’t deserve that violence either. Dying for protecting their own pack? For treating omegas like more than holes to fuck and bodies to claim? I couldn’t stand by and let it happen. I’d failed them once; now, I owed them better.

With one hand, I pressed into the wound on my stomach. My palm wasn’t large enough to staunch the flow of blood, and the pressure crawled up my neck in an electric jolt of pain.

I was meant to die alone in the woods while the Reids stood face-to-face with the Grove wolves. Their alpha spun beautiful words about the faith between packs, about healing. I’d heard him speaking through the trees, too weak to crawl toward the sound or even lift my head. He’d seemed far off, but his voice was clear and captivating. Far better than the growls and snarls that followed when the fighting broke out.

Bile stung the back of my throat, and I shut my eyes tight. No more violence. If I couldn’t have a few last peaceful moments, I’d just as soon die faster. Never mind that my hand lost its strength and fell empty to the ground.

But when I closed my eyes, I saw Cain leap at me, an enormous black wolf. His claws were tearing, spit dripping from his fangs., so I opened them again and watched the caterpillars wiggle their way across my field of vision instead.

In time, the sounds of fighting faded. It was just the caterpillars left and the dull ache of my wounds, the creeping cold working its way up my limbs.

All in all, if I was going to die, imaginary caterpillars weren’t the worst things to watch.

My senses were dull, my limbs so numb and tingly that I only noticed a body crash into my back when my muscles clenched and a spasm of pain curled me in half.

Gasping, I looked up into the brightest, bluest eyes I’d ever seen. The scent of omega filled my nose. There were high, strawberry-red spots in his pale cheeks, a shock of dark hair on his head. Clean-shaven face. He looked afraid, grappling to hold my cheeks and pull my head into his lap.

I smiled up at him. “Brook. Hi.”

Brook held me tight. “Dante! What—You weren’t fighting! You weren’t there!”

I scowled. He was right—I hadn’t been there. Days, my father had locked Brook away from the rest of the pack, forcibly taken him, claimed the man was his mate. I’d never smelled anything as foul as miserable, terrified omega, and for days, I’d let Brook live with that and done nothing.

“I’m sorry. Brook, I’m so sorry—”

I wanted to tell him I should have done more, should have fought my father and saved him. Instead, I’d taken the coward’s way out. While my father was distracted, standing his ground against the Groves, I’d slipped Brook out. I’d helped him escape.

But that wasn’t enough. At least I wouldn’t have to live with the guilt much longer.

With tears in his eyes, Brook was shaking his head. “It’s fine. Don’t talk. You’re going to be fine. Help! Somebody, help!”

I flinched at the sound of his shouting. He gripped my hand hard, ignoring the slick of blood across my palm from trying to hold myself together.

“They’ll come,” he promised. “Linden’s a doctor. He’ll know what to do. We’ll get you the help you need. You’re going to be fine.”

He was saying it as much for himself as for me, but I didn’t mind. Truth told, I was fine. The parts of me that hurt were fading out. Where I was cold, where sticks and small rocks were digging into the soft flesh of my human form, I could focus on the warmth of Brook’s hand and the softness of his leg under my head.

“Brook,” I rasped. It was getting harder to breathe. It wouldn’t be long now, but I’d expected to die alone with my hallucinatory caterpillar friends. Strangely enough, Brook was the closest person I had left to a packmate—someone I’d helped once, someone I understood and who understood me, who cared that I was dying.

“Yeah?” His voice was soft and shaky. He held tight to my hand like he could pin me in my body, but we both knew it was too late for that.

“Thank you.”

I squeezed his hand, and the effort shorted out my thoughts. Everything went black, except those damn caterpillars, wiggling behind my eyelids.

Those blinked out too, and the next time Brook cried for help, I could barely hear him.

2

SKYE

In my life, I’ve spent a whole lot of time sitting around, waiting to find out what other people have done. It’s not that I’m incapable of doing anything. No, it’s that when you’re the sole chronically ill person in a werewolf pack, everyone treats you like you’re as sturdy as cotton candy in a rainstorm.

Mmm. Cotton candy.

Boy was that outside my diet.

I had it, once, at the state fair when I was thirteen. And then spent the next week in bed, unable to keep any other food down. Heck, barely able to move. Still, looking back at that day, with the corn dogs and funnel cake and cotton candy and every other kind of state-fair-style culinary delight, it was completely worth it. It was one of the best memories of my life.

And the last time I set foot outside of Grovetown.

But it was also the last time I had a serious relapse of the Condition.

In the intervening years, I’d gotten used to being treated like a breakable thing. A glass figurine, to be set on a shelf and dusted once in a while.

Well, by everyone but Linden.

He was the first person in the pack to see me as something other than an extension of my illness. He’d gotten home from college when I was nine, and instead of just prescribing bedrest and treating me like a fragile doll, he’d worked with me. We’d found my diet together by trial and error, and he’d taught me how to take care of myself. What it meant when my blood pressure spiked, and how to help mitigate it.

Usually, being a werewolf was great. We healed fast, rarely scarred, and didn’t come down with human illnesses like “the flu.” Me, though? My great werewolf powers meant that the medications humans would use to lower blood pressure, reduce inflammation, and fight the other symptoms of the Condition did absolutely nothing for me.

The Condition couldn’t be treated because werewolves were too healthy. It was an awesome oxymoron. Or it would have been, if the result wasn’t my life.

My life, sitting in the clinic, waiting while my pack went to fight for their lives.

I had all the faith in Linden and the Grove pack enforcers, but I also wanted to be one of them. I wanted to be out there protecting my pack myself. Being useful, not just sitting around in the clinic, waiting to see if my life would continue.

Or if the Reid pack was going to kill us all. Well, all but the omegas, and probably me too. An omega who wasn’t strong enough to properly support an alpha was pretty useless. I doubted they would have a place for me, and frankly, I’d prefer they didn’t.

After what they had done to Brook, an omega older and stronger than me in every way, I didn’t think I could handle the Reids.

I couldn’t even hold my cotton candy.

When the door opened, I jerked back, my mind stuck on the repeating thought of the Reids, having slaughtered every fighter I knew and loved, coming for the rest of us. Which was silly, because even if the Reids had won the fight, it would have taken them longer than that to . . .

Aspen Grove pushed his way into the clinic, a destroyed mess that could barely be identified as a werewolf laid across his arms in a bloody parody of a princess carry. My mind flashed back to a night just a few months ago, when someone had carried the pack alpha in the same way, covered in his own blood with a giant gash in his midsection.

Just like this wolf.

Linden rushed in right after Aspen, and when he met my eyes, there was nothing but calm determination on his face. He was Doctor Grove right now, not the sweet man who cringed when people said mean things to each other. I nodded to him and let myself fall into my own clinic persona. I wasn’t as good at it as Linden, but I was eighteen years younger than him, and had no professional training other than what he’d given me.

Instead of worrying about that, I pointed Aspen to bed number two, and set about prepping the things Linden would need to treat the broken man. The things other than a freaking miracle.

AGAINST ALL ODDS, an hour later, I was scrubbing myself down and changing shirts, but the wolf Aspen had brought in was alive. Linden had put everything vital back together, helped along by accelerated werewolf healing. Then we’d stitched his wounds, cleaned him up, and bandaged him.

He was a swathe of bandages and not much else, but he was still alive, and the heart monitor was beeping away, slow but steady.

I could have jumped up and down and thrown a party, except that Brook had arrived, and he and Aspen Junior were having . . . well, I wouldn’t have called it a fight, exactly, but words were being had.

Awkward.

“Well done,” Linden whispered to me. “He owes you his life.”

“You’re the one who did the stitching,” I pointed out. “And Aspen Junior brought him in.”

He jerked his head in Brook’s direction. “And Brook is the one who found him in the woods. But that only means that all of us kept him alive. It doesn’t mean that you didn’t.”

There was the doctor I’d grown up with.

Since he came home, Linden had been a massive source of confusion for me. Oh no, he wasn’t a confusing guy. Just, he was twice my age, and since my father split when I was a kid because he couldn’t deal with having both a mate and a child who were constantly sick, Linden had been the closest thing I’d had to a father.

But also, he was ridiculously good looking, and so kind that sometimes it hurt me to think about it. He was somehow my father figure and my first crush, which was so Oedipal that I didn’t like thinking about it. Or was it Electra? Not that it was a serious thing anyway, since Linden said Freud was sort of a weirdo whose ideas were outdated.

I wanted to find out for myself. To go away to college and study and find out more about them. Psychology in specific, because what’s more interesting than how people’s minds work? But of course, I couldn’t.

I hadn’t left pack territory in six years, and given my illness and the lack of human understanding of both werewolf physiology and the Condition itself, going away was dangerous. Here, people knew what to do if I collapsed.

I didn’t like that they were all half expecting me to collapse at any moment, but at least they knew what to do if I did.

Off at a human college, I’d probably end up at a hospital, being pumped full of drugs before they even realized I was a werewolf, and who knew how that would react with the Condition?

And if Alexis was right, and the Condition was caused by some unknown chemicals used on modern processed food, then what would I eat if I left home? Even my diet might fail me if I couldn’t identify where food came from.

Ugh.

The worst part, I’d discovered in the months that I’d been running my omega health blog, was that I wasn’t alone. Omegas around the world were trapped in their homes, unable to go to college, or visit friends or relatives in different states.

We all lived in fear, particularly those of us who were already affected by the Condition.

I shook my head, like I could shake off the irritation with my life. I had more important things to worry about right now—like a half-dead wolf in the clinic.

A wolf whose face I didn’t know.

I’d noticed it sometime while Linden was stitching his side closed, but it hadn’t seemed the right time to react. Since I was essentially trapped in Grovetown, and had only pack for company, I knew every single one of them on sight.

That could mean only one thing, they’d brought back a Reid, and for some reason, I didn’t think the flutter in my chest that realization caused was just fear. More like the fear from watching a horror movie. Like yeah, it was scary, but also, a little exciting.

No, I’m not suicidal. Just . . . give me a break. Every single day of my life looks like the ones before. Something new and different that wasn’t our alpha dying felt like it had the potential to be a good thing.

“So who is he?” I whispered to Linden, so I wouldn’t get Aspen Junior’s attention. He wasn’t yelling or anything, but he was clearly tense, ready to spring if the strange alpha miraculously jumped out of bed and attacked.

Linden frowned, looking at the man, then shook his head and turned to me. “I’m not completely sure, but the scent of him . . . I think he might be the member of the Reid pack who helped Brook escape.”

I blinked, turning back to the unconscious stranger. A Reid, but one who might be a good guy. But who had come to attack us too, I supposed, so that sort of erased the good of rescuing Brook. Maybe.

He was beautiful under the dirt and blood that I’d wiped away when we finished with his wounds. There was nothing striking or particular about him, it was simply that his features fit together in a way my brain liked. A square jaw, strong brow, and high cheekbones that made him seem dignified, despite the messy hair and week’s worth of scruff that looked less like a beard than a failure to shave. His hair wasn’t blonde enough to be dishwater, or brown enough to be chestnut, but . . . okay, maybe I’m easily impressed by a new face, but his was nice. Handsome. And in his relaxed state, I thought he might be in his early twenties, so mooning over him wasn’t as silly as having a crush on my much older—and mated—alpha.

Maybe it was the fact that I’d met all of five new people in the last six years, or maybe it was something deeper, some instinct I didn’t yet understand. Whatever it was, I wanted this wolf to get better. I wanted to meet him. Learn his name. Maybe lean on his broad shoulders.

Okay, that was weird, since I didn’t even know if he was actually a bad guy. Maybe “stir crazy” was becoming a real mental illness, and I needed to talk to someone about my problems. Either way, I had things to do. Kind of. I could certainly find things to do other than moon over unconscious strangers.

“I couldn’t help but notice that you didn’t bring anyone else to the clinic,” I pointed out.

He gave me a bright smile at that. “Nope. I looked everyone over who was injured, but nothing was bad enough to warrant forcing them to the clinic against their will. Some of them should come down for bandaging, but there was nothing serious. No one but him.”

And back to the Reid.

I wondered if the same could be said of his pack, that there were no serious injuries.

Or maybe, he was the only one who had survived.

3

DANTE

It hurt to breathe. That was how I knew I was still alive—everything fucking hurt. Each rise of my chest tugged at the wounds on my torso, the pain sharp after every movement, but with a dull, pervasive echo that didn’t fade.

I tried to take shallower breaths, but expending effort on anything made my head spin. Looking for something to anchor myself to, I opened my eyes.

There was a sound—the scrape of a chair—to my right. Then someone leaned over, blinking down at me.

At first, I thought it was Brook. He had the same dark—almost black—hair, pale skin, and light eyes. But Brook’s were the clear blue of the sky in late spring. These eyes were the grayish blue of Crescent Lake—the only significant body of water on Reid territory—where I’d spent summers watching water bugs skate across the surface and caught little silver fish in a big paint bucket.

The face that framed these eyes was thin. Brook’s was square and broad, his paleness a matter of his genes. The omega—he smelled like an omega, deliciously sweet like vanilla and sandalwood—leaning over me now simply looked like he spent most of his time indoors.

Perhaps they were related but, whispering through the locked door when my father was out, Brook had only mentioned his sisters to me—Shiloh and Harmony. He loved them dearly, had wanted more than anything to get back home. The love he had for them had worn me down. That, and the sounds of pain that floated through the walls of my father’s run-down old house.

The looming omega shifted his glasses up the bridge of his nose and frowned down at me. “You really awake this time?”

“Unfortunately, I think so.” I tried to press my weight into my right hand and sit up, but the torn muscle of my shoulder protested and gave out. I grunted when my shoulder hit the pillow, even that feathery softness too much pressure for the wound. Before I could try with the other arm, the omega lurched forward.

“Hold on,” he commanded, and I went slack against the pillows, grateful for the help.

His hand was delicate and thin, but warm and surprisingly firm as he reached behind my neck, bracing between my shoulder blades to lift me up. I couldn’t place why he smelled so sweet, but when he leaned close, his neck almost brushing the tip of my nose, I sighed.

He didn’t seem to notice, probably taking the sound for the relief of switching positions. Just as well. I resented the warm spread of temptation that overcame my better senses.

With his free hand, the omega arranged the pillows so that, when he slowly guided me back, I was sitting up straighter.

“Thank you—”

“Skye.” He flashed a hint of a smile my way as he lingered close.

I returned it. “Thank you, Skye. I’m Dante.”

He blinked, fiddling with his glasses again as he stood back from the bed. “Dante, like, of the inferno?”

I laughed weakly. “My pack has a thing for Biblical nightmares. Could have been worse. My cousin’s name is Cain.”

Skye grimaced. I knew that look well enough. On the rare occasion humans wandered into Reid pack territory, they were quick to leave, thinking the very worst of werewolves everywhere. We weren’t a pack open to the world, welcoming of strangers. And our isolation had only crippled us faster when the Condition hit.

No way in hell a Reid would’ve allowed an omega like Skye out and unattended to work at a clinic or anywhere else. I’d watched my father stifle my mother, keeping her at home to stop other alphas from pawing at her, until she was climbing the walls. He made all her choices for her—clearly not the right ones, because she’d died just like the rest of the omegas in our pack, afflicted and wasting away.

But the Groves were different. They were better than us. That was why they were given TV spots and media attention, why they were tied to a US Senator, why their pack had survived the Condition all these years.

“Can I get you anything?” Skye asked, his frown shifting his glasses down a little.

I licked my lips, but my tongue was dry. My throat was too, and my voice sounded raspy to my own ears. “I’d love some water.”

Skye nodded sharply. “On it.”

He was off at once and seemed to like having something to do, or maybe he enjoyed the feeling of someone relying on him. Maybe, he simply wanted to put distance between us.

Quickly, he moved to a water cooler against the far wall, his purposefulness drawing the attention of Alpha Grove sitting at his desk.

Before Skye could return, Alpha Grove rose and accompanied him to my bedside. I didn’t think he meant to deny me a drink, but with his broad shoulders between Skye and me, he effectively managed it, no doubt in the name of protecting his pack.

“How are you feeling?” he asked. His arms crossed over his chest, making it perfectly clear that he was asking out of habit and necessity more than general concern, even as he glanced toward the machine monitoring my vitals by the bedside.

“I’m fine.”

No way I was convincing anyone of that, but he didn’t question me.

“Brook says you helped him escape from Maxim Reid.” Alpha Grove wore the serious expression of a wizened pack leader, despite his dirty blond hair and clear eyes. I’d have guessed he was in his mid-thirties, but sometimes, with werewolves, it was hard to tell.

I nodded, swallowing roughly. “My father. Maxim.”

A curious frown turned Alpha Grove’s mouth down, dimpled a single line between his brows.

“I killed your father,” he admitted after a moment.

Fighting through the haze of whatever medication was working its magic through the IV drip in the back of my hand, I looked at him directly. “I know. I understand he didn’t give you much choice.”

My father had taken one of the Groves from Grovetown. When Alpha Grove’s own father had come to talk sense into him, Maxim had killed him in cold blood. Then, after Brook had escaped, my father had been livid. He’d broken everything in our house he could get his hands on, used the leg of the ruined coffee table to come after me when I tried to calm him. Finally, he had come here to threaten and demand and snarl his way to an early grave.

I didn’t miss him.

I swallowed a few more times, working my tight, scratchy throat. Skye appeared behind Alpha Grove’s arm, holding up my small Styrofoam cup with the bendy straw. “Here.”

I turned my head and took a sip. “Thank you.”

Color rushed into his pale cheeks. He nodded stiffly and stepped back.

My mouth wet, the words came easier. “Alpha Grove, I have no intention of seeking revenge for a madman. I hated my father, and he hated me. And I suspect, if you were to undo all the work you did to save my life, I’d die here in this bed.”

The alpha clenched his jaw, a muscle working behind his clean-shaven cheek. He seemed caught between telling me what I already knew—that he’d saved my life—and assuring me that he wouldn’t save it just to end it the next moment.

I’d never actually met a werewolf doctor before, but I had a feeling he wasn’t much for killing anyone.

Before he could decide how to answer, I tipped my head to the side, exposing my bandaged throat to him.

Alpha Grove’s breath caught. His eyes narrowed in the reasonable mistrust of a man who’d had his pack and family attacked by my own. Often.

But exhaustion made it all too easy to close my eyes and let him consider my offer.

“I appreciate what you’ve done for me,” I muttered. “I owe you my life. It’s not a debt I’d soon forget.”

Alpha Grove stood there for a few moments, silent as he considered me. If I stayed still, my body didn’t ache so badly.

The alpha sighed. “You should rest. I’ll check on you in a while. Skye.”

I opened my eyes to watch the omega flinch as he was called after the retreating back of his alpha. He budged up his glasses again and sighed. “Be right there.”

That was the alpha reaction I’d expected from a stranger to the pack sniffing around one of their omegas. Alpha Grove didn’t want Skye near me, and after all that’d transpired, I couldn’t blame him.

Still, Skye took a rolling table held up by only one side and slid it around my bed. The tabletop stretched over the blanket—a strangely cozy throw that looked like it might have been hand knit. He set my cup of water there.

“If you need anything”—he reached for a remote attached to my bed by a cord—“there’s a button here, so you don’t have to shout. And if you want to watch TV, this controls the channels.”

His hands fluttered anxiously, adjusting the blanket and sheet for me, scooting the water closer so I didn’t have to stretch.

“Thank you, Skye.” The way he looked after me, cared even for the enemy, was sweet, but I didn’t think I needed the television. All I needed was a month-long nap, or maybe to never move again.

He bit his lip, making a pale dimple in the soft flesh just below the edge of his front teeth. “No problem.”

He skittered off after Alpha Grove, and though the clinic was mostly made up of one large room, I couldn’t see the pair of them through the curtains Skye pulled around my bed, the area at the foot left open to look out on the TV and chairs on the far wall.

I tried not to listen to them, but it was hard to miss Skye’s harried whisper. “Do you think he’ll make it?”

I could almost imagine the purse-lipped expression Alpha Grove shot at the curtain around my bed as he sighed and answered softly, “I do. But I’m not sure what we’ll do with him when he does.”

4

SKYE

Linden wanted me to go home. Or maybe better put, he didn’t want both Dante Reid and me in the clinic at the same time now that he was conscious. Since Dante couldn’t exactly stand, let alone leave, that made me the one in the way of the goal.

On a normal day, Linden was in and out, and I spent more time in the clinic than he did, handing out the odd bandage and calling him if he was actually needed.

Today, he stayed at his desk long after he usually would have headed out to do his house call rounds, and got back from them far earlier than usual. Then when Colt arrived to take him out to lunch, Linden asked him to bring lunch to the clinic instead of going out with his mate.

Worse yet, Colt had glanced over at the closed curtain around the bed, then at me, and nodded.

I’d thought that when Colt had come, when Linden had mated, I’d have a real ally there. He was the most independent omega I’d ever known, which was saying something since our pack second was an omega, and she was terrifying. I’d figured he’d be the first person to say I could handle things on my own.

Unfortunately, Colt had pretty much turned into a second Claudia when he’d moved into Grove House. The two of them were thick as thieves, and they hovered equally, worrying over me like I was a bag of flour they had to take care of for a high school class.

“Have you eaten, Skye?”

“How are you feeling, Skye?”

“You look a little pale, Skye. Are you sure you’re okay?”

I loved them, loved that they cared about me, but I was absolutely sick of being coddled. Sick, really, of being sick.

My watch buzzed to tell me my heart rate was too high, and I let myself fall back against my chair, trying to let the tension go out of me as I breathed, slowly and steadily.

“Maybe you should take the afternoon off, Skye,” Linden suggested.

I did not scream in frustration, which I think was big of me, but my watch instantly buzzed again. “I was thinking I’d work on my blog,” I answered with a smile, motioning to my little desk with the laptop I used. “Someone in New Jersey asked about the comparative nutrition of canned, frozen, and fresh vegetables, and I’ve been working on an answer for them.”

Linden’s lips twisted down in a frown, and I tried not to visibly cross my fingers. Either he was going to tell me to take the laptop home to work on it, or he was going to get into the discussion of eating well to treat the Condition in three, two . . .

“Sterling is one of the biggest producers of processed vegetables in the world,” he said, leaning forward at his desk with a deep sigh. “As much as I’d like to be able to say that people can save time and money by eating something other than fresh, organic produce, it always runs the risk of being a problem.”

“But not everyone can afford fresh, organic produce,” I pointed out. “This guy is living in a one-bedroom apartment with two other guys, trying to pay his way through college. It’s hard enough for me to eat healthy, and I basically live next door to a farm. How’s he supposed to?”

Linden scowled his “why don’t people take care of each other” scowl. “What about his pack? Won’t they help?”

There was a tiny cough behind the curtain, and we both turned to stare at it. I’d gotten so wrapped up in the argument that I’d forgotten why I had started it: to distract Linden from his weird attempts to protect me from Dante Reid, who frankly, at the moment, couldn’t defeat a kitten in battle, let alone me.

Linden stood from his desk and went to slide the curtain aside, peeking in. “Doing okay?”

Of course he would open with that, when Dante had clearly been trying to make a comment on whether everyone had a pack that would support them.

The Reid pack was broken.

Since the fight, most of the remaining Reids had fled. Some hadn’t even returned to Reid land to get their things, just disappearing into the woods like they were looking for a girl in a red hood whose goodie basket they could steal and grandma they could eat.

The few who had stayed couldn’t remotely be called a pack.

But Dante had grown up in the Reid pack. And four days earlier, the Reids had tried to kill him. If anyone knew about a pack that wasn’t supportive, it was him.

Sure, I’d heard the quiet conversations about our Reid guest, in The Cider House the night before, and at Ambrosia Grocery over the weekend. Conversations about whether Dante had actually been attacked by the Reids, or whether he’d been fighting against us, and injured by a Grove. Whether he’d fled the battle and was now presuming upon the victors to care for him, even though he was a dangerous, feral beast.

The answer to those concerns was obvious enough to me. The people who asked that couldn’t possibly have seen Dante Reid. Soft, nervous Dante, with his sad expression and inability to look Linden in the eye. And that gash across his midsection, a wound so horrible and vicious that I couldn’t imagine any member of the Grove Pack inflicting it, except maybe Aspen—and Aspen had been quite clear on the fact that he hadn’t done it. He’d looked Brook in the eye and promised he hadn’t.

Not gonna lie, I might have swooned a little. It was like something out of one of those werewolf romance novels, except that there, Brook would have been a busty human woman, and probably had a job that let him wear stiletto heels instead of greasy overalls.

Me, I thought Brook was kind of badass, breaking all those “soft sweet omegas need to have soft sweet jobs” stereotypes. Me? Yeah, I’m a walking stereotype. Just hand me the stiletto heels, thanks.

And I’d rock them too.

Not that anyone in Grovetown would let me get high heels, because what if I collapsed again?

I sighed and turned my attention back to Linden and Dante, who were going through their usual afternoon conversation that mostly consisted of “Does it hurt here? Yes. How about here? Also yes.” At least Dante no longer made faces like he wished he could just die when he so much as breathed.

Werewolves healed fast compared to pack humans, but as far gone as Dante had been, it was going to take a long time for him to get back up to full health. Not to mention the fact that I, as someone who knew a thing or two about nutrition, was pretty sure that even before the fight that had landed him in the clinic, Dante had been malnourished.

Now, his healing body was racing through any meager fat stores he’d had, and there were tiny hollows under his lovely cheekbones. It didn’t help that his diet consisted of mostly liquid things until his insides got used to being on the inside again.

Fine, that wasn’t exactly how Linden had explained it, but I’m not a freaking doctor, okay?

“I read somewhere that some apartment buildings let the residents use their roofs for gardens,” Dante said, looking over at me. “Maybe not an easy answer, but it could work. But don’t any of those big organic food companies package vegetables?”

I sighed and let my head droop. “Yeah, but they’re owned by Sterling.”

He blinked at me, uncomprehending. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so ridiculous.

I did understand why Linden was worried about making public accusations about the corporate giant’s food poisoning werewolves, but dammit, lives were at stake. Linden kept reminding me that we didn’t know for sure, didn’t have proof that Sterling was the problem. But as long as we didn’t know, and all I was allowed to say was “try to eat organic,” people would smile, and nod, and go buy Sterling brands of frozen food.

We needed to stop tiptoeing around it, get the proof, and warn my fellow omegas that Sterling was trying to kill us, intentionally or not. Alexis had started a boycott, but in the end, that could only go so far, because so many omegas were like my reader in New Jersey. He wanted to eat better, but he could afford Sterling company foods. He couldn’t go out and buy handpicked, homegrown, antibiotic-free whatever.

From the look Linden was giving me, I shouldn’t even be talking to Dante about it. Or maybe that was just his “you shouldn’t be talking to Dante at all” look.

I sighed and slid my computer over in front of me. “Rooftop gardens, huh? Let me see if I can find anything about it for New Jersey.”

It wasn’t going to be enough for my reader—he needed an option that didn’t take that much time. But it wasn’t a bad idea to have the information, regardless.

And I supposed I could go through the corporate structure charts I’d been building and try to find frozen vegetables that didn’t somehow trace back to Sterling company farms.

Good luck, sucker, my inner pessimist jeered. He was a jerk, but in this case, he was also right.

5

DANTE

Healing sucked. I wasn’t used to being stuck in bed this long, and I’d been conscious and stuck in bed for days now, in a place that got increasingly dangerous for every agonizing second of my recovery. Sure, the alpha tolerated me now, while I was wounded, but what happened when I could walk—when I could shift?

I had never been sick or wounded this severely. It was no wonder I’d thought I was dying out there in the woods. I should have died, even felt like I deserved it, a little.

Somehow, I’d skirted the universe’s plan for me and kept on breathing, right there in the second bed of the Grove pack’s clinic, a thick remote hooked by a cord to my bed. It even controlled the small TV on the far side of the room. I’d finally gotten antsy enough to turn it on, just for the distraction.

We’d had a television when I was a kid, before Mom died. I loved watching The Magic School Bus after I got home every afternoon, before Dad got back for the night and took over. It’d been a shitty little TV, smaller and deeper than the one in the clinic, with a rounded screen that seemed to reflect every lamp in the room at once. Dad threw a liquor bottle through the front of it when I was eleven. We hadn’t gotten another.

Now, I wasn’t sure what to watch, but I was alone in the clinic and I couldn’t stand to sleep anymore. Couldn’t stand the silence either.

I wouldn’t have minded an old episode of The Magic School Bus, but the first thing that came on was an interview segment. There was a red bar at the bottom of the screen, highlighting the participants’ names: Senator Conroy Doherty, and Jedediah Sterling, CEO of the Sterling Corporation.

I would have changed the channel, except that when I read the name, “Sterling,” I heard it in Skye’s worried, exasperated voice. The company meant something to the Grove pack, and I wanted to know what.

“Are you saying you’re not responsible for the health of every American citizen who consumes your products?” Senator Doherty asked Sterling, a blond brow raised in an expression that was absolutely chilling.

Both men on the screen were wearing beautiful gray suits and nondescript ties, and their faces looked so baby smooth that they probably had someone there to shave their chins for them.

“I’m saying that, while we have no concrete evidence that any Sterling product has an adverse effect on werewolf physiology, the closed-off nature of werewolf communities around the nation would make it impossible for us to study the long-term impacts of Sterling products on werewolf health. And I would point out that through our company’s innovation in the fields of agriculture and health sciences, we’ve seen an uptick in access to fresh food in neighborhood markets, a fifteen percent reduction in the occurrence of food deserts in predominantly human communities, and we’re working with public school systems to reduce childhood poverty and starvation.”

The senator crossed his hands on the table and leaned in. “So you’re saying it’s the responsibility of werewolves alone to look after our own communities?”

“I’m saying that without evidence, there’s no reason to believe that Sterling food products pose any risk to human or werewolf well-being, and that your son’s hit piece in The Post hardly undoes my company’s decades of good work.”

“Now, gentlemen,” the moderator interrupted. He was a generically handsome brunette man with an easy smile, clearly there to turn the burner down when things got heated. “Let’s keep things civil.”

The door of the clinic opened, and I clicked off the television as soon as I saw Skye poke his head in the door. Whatever was going on with Sterling, it seemed to matter to him. I didn’t want to cause any upset—not that I thought he’d go off about it, exactly, but best not to rock the boat.

He glanced at Alpha Grove’s empty desk, and I did too. The alpha had only been in for a few minutes that morning, had left his number on a post it on my table in case I needed anything. He was making house calls—said he’d bring me back lunch though. That was nice. I was looking forward to eating something solid.

He wouldn’t like that Skye was there though. Skye and I both seemed to know that, and shared a nervous shrug when our eyes met.

I’d been in the clinic for almost a week, and Alpha Grove had hardly left Skye alone with me for a handful of minutes. Couldn’t blame him, really. He was trying to keep his pack safe, and when I said I owed him my life, he had no reason to trust that I meant it seriously.

Much as I wanted to deny that I was a threat, I wasn’t just a Reid wolf, I was Maxim Reid’s son. From where Alpha Grove sat, that made me a kidnapper, a rapist, and a murderer—or at least the spawn of one. The only way to convince him that I was anything different was to be patient and wait for him to see for himself that I didn’t have vengeance in mind, that I wasn’t like my father.

If I was different at all . . . Sometimes, it was hard to think I was anything but the place and people I’d grown up with.

“Going to work on your blog?” I asked from the bed, placing my empty hands on the blankets on top of me where he could see them. Alpha Grove had opened the curtains before he’d left so I could get a little sunlight.

Skye’s cheeks colored and he fiddled with his glasses.

“Actually, no. Or, well, not right now.” He came over to stand at the end of my bed, putting both hands on the plastic bedframe and squeezing. “I’ve been thinking, you should probably start trying to move around more.”

Alpha Grove had said as much—that the longer I stayed in bed at this point, the longer my recovery would be. Still, he’d been putting off pushing me, presumably because nothing good could come of a Reid back on their feet in his pack’s lands, and I’d—I hadn’t wanted to cause any issues. Better to be silent than to presume upon this pack and rush myself out the door.

I stared up at Skye. Sitting up was still a pain—something that apparently happened when your ab muscles got torn apart—and I hadn’t been motivated to walk either. Hell, I didn’t want to get out of bed when doing so meant I’d have to leave.

There was nowhere for me to go. If the Reid pack still existed, I had no place in it. I didn’t know if Cain was alive or dead. If I’d asked, Alpha Grove might think I cared. It wasn’t that; I was scared to go back and risk getting killed for showing my face in Reid territory.

While I was too hurt to leave, it was clear the Groves wouldn’t kick me out. But I wasn’t part of their pack, and the second they could be rid of me, it’d be wise of them to dump me on the side of the road like a box of unwanted kittens.

Still, Alpha Grove had moved and massaged my limbs to keep me from getting bed sores. And now, Skye was looking down at me with that kind, appeasing smile. All he wanted was to help, and I didn’t have it in me to deny him.

“You’re probably right,” I agreed, running my hand through my hair. It was matted in the back from days spent in bed. I’d showered carefully a couple times, sitting while Alpha Grove directed the stream away from my bandages. Damp hair and lying down all day didn’t make for a particularly stylish appearance.

Didn’t help that the only bit of clothing I had that wasn’t shredded and bloody was a hospital gown. It didn’t even belong to me.

“Great!” Skye bounced off to a supply closet, chattering all the while. “The sooner you can get up and moving, the easier it’ll be to heal. Already, your muscles have probably, you know—” He waved his hand around in the air, leaning into the closet and coming back with a walker.

A walker. Jesus.

“It might be harder than you’re expecting, at first. No big deal, Linden said you just want to go slow.”

He had a point. Just pushing myself to sit up and moving to the edge of the bed on my own had me in pain and out of breath.

Skye returned with the silver walker in hand and plopped it on the floor in front of me with a small frown on his face.

He was handsome, in a strange, graceful way—like he’d more easily shift into a bird than a wolf. His features were thin, his nose straight and long and his lips were pink and full. His dark eyebrows were expressive, shooting up when he saw me clinging to the bed’s handrail and gasping.

“You could have waited.” His voice ratcheted up with worry.

“I know. But I can do it. I’m fine.” I flashed him a smile, trying to master lungs that couldn’t get enough air.

He didn’t seem convinced.

With force, I shoved myself out of bed and gripped the walker tight. It had soft, squishy holds for my hands along the front and at both sides, but it took effort to get my hands in the right spots.

Skye lurched forward. His hand braced my arm, the other coming around to the small of my back to hold me upright. And—oh. Damn.

The gown was held together by little ties, but it spread with movement in a slit down my back. His warm, soft palm pressed against my skin.

My breath caught, and I stared right at him. His face was close, colored with effort and embarrassment, but the pink in his cheeks was beautiful. Warmth rushed under my own skin, and a flash of white—the glint of the overhead lights off his front teeth—drew my gaze down to his mouth.

He didn’t pull away, just kept his steady hands on me while I leaned my weight on the walker.

“You okay?” he asked.

I nodded. “Good. Promise.”

Slowly, he stepped back and let me stand on my own. I didn’t want to. I wanted him to stay close, wouldn’t have minded walking miles if he kept his hand on my back the whole way.

The plan wasn’t that ambitious though.

“Okay.” He stepped back so I could move around the bed. “So we’ll just walk to that wall and back, right? And if that feels okay, we’ll do it again.”

I grinned at him, my arms already aching as I put too much weight on them. “Whatever you say, doc.”

He went even redder, and damn if I didn’t wish he’d ask me for something else. Anything else. Because following his lead was the easiest thing I’d done, maybe ever.

6

SKYE

“You sure you don’t want someone to carry it out for you, hon?” Wanda Chadwick asked as she slid the bag of food across the counter. And jeez. I mean, yeah, it was lunch for three wolves, one an alpha, but the question always set my teeth on edge.

Yes, I had the Condition.

But I was still a damned werewolf. I could carry a person. Maybe, um, a small one. I could definitely carry a bag with lunch for three. But snapping at people for offering help made me look like an ungrateful jerk, no matter how tired of it I was. So I smiled and shook my head. “No thanks, Mrs. Chadwick, I can handle it.”

So I hefted the bag in one arm and headed for the barn.

Everyone was still calling it that, even though the actual Sedgwick barn was gone, replaced by the foundation that would one day be Brook and Aspen’s house. I didn’t know anything about building houses, but Brook said they were “framing” now, since the giant concrete bottom thingie was dry enough. The foundation. Or the slab. Something like that.

I just thought it was the most freaking romantic thing ever, that they were building their house together. Even if I didn’t actually want to put on a helmet and hammer nails into wood to make a house.

There was a reason people bought houses pre-made, you know?

It was only half a mile from the Grille, and I tried to walk a good five miles a day, so it wasn’t even out of my way. Because of course, I couldn’t drive.

What if I passed out?

Never mind that I hadn’t done that in years, I still wasn’t allowed to do things that might result in me dying if I fainted. Like drive. Climb ladders. Or ride a bike.

Not that I’d ever learned how to ride a bike, but sometimes it seemed like it would be convenient.

Anyway, I walked down to the barn with the food, waving to Brook and Aspen as I approached, and lifting the bag just a bit, so they’d see I’d brought something. Then I headed for the big one-piece picnic table set up on what would someday be their lawn. For now, I thought it was a sort of command center, since it had stacks of papers that I recognized as blueprints, whether I could read them or not.

The two of them broke away from their giant pile of wood that seemed to be growing daily and came over, all smiles and holding hands, and it was all I could do to hold back the wave of poison-green jealousy that threatened to drown me.

Brook deserved this. Aspen . . . well, he seemed like a nice guy, and if he was good enough for Brook, then I guessed he deserved it too. I didn’t really know him, since he left town when I was a kid and too wrapped up in my own problems to think about his, but he seemed nice enough.

“Hey Skye,” Brook said as they sat down across from me, Aspen pausing to roll up the papers and move them out of my way. “What’s up?”

“I saw you guys working this morning,” I answered as I started to pull out containers, jerking my head in the direction of my mom’s house, a few doors down. “Thought maybe you could use a lunch break.” I glanced around shiftily, then hung my head. I couldn’t blindside him with my nosiness, since it was about something so close to the Reid pack disaster that had hurt him so badly. “And I wanted to ask about Dante.”

Aspen sat down next to Brook, wrapping an arm around him and nuzzling into his neck, making Brook giggle like a man half his age and shove his mate’s head away from his neck. “That tickles, ya big jerk.” Then he looked up at me, eyes serious, but not nearly as dark and empty as when he’d first returned from the Reids’. The smile he offered me was small, but genuine. “Sit down already. We’re not going to chase you off because you want to ask about something bad. Dante isn’t bad.”

Aspen huffed but didn’t offer up an opinion; he just reached in and moved to help pass the food around. But then he opened a container to find my salad with vinaigrette on the side, and stared at it, head cocked like it was a foreign object and he’d never seen anything like it before.

“That’s mine,” I explained. He looked oddly relieved and passed it to me without comment. When the next container held a greasy burger and fries, he smiled and passed it to Brook.

It looked delicious, and I wanted it a little . . . but at the same time, looking at it made me queasy. I’d been tracking every ingredient that went into my mouth for too long to just jump off the deep end and eat a giant slab of beef and melted cheese on a bun. Plus, the Grille probably still used Sterling foods. Everyone did. Isaac at the grocery store had been eliminating them from his stock, and it had taken a lot of work to find replacements.

Oddly enough, the container Aspen settled on, happily, had the other thing I often got from the Grille for lunch; their turkey apple wrap. I’d asked Wanda for Brook and Aspen’s favorites, so I guessed that was his. Was it weird that I was proud of my usual lunch order being the same as a giant freaking alpha wolf who could probably bench press three of me?

“I love that wrap,” I told him, and he grinned.

“It’s the best, right? Fuck, I missed these apples.” Brook pushed their shoulders together, and Aspen winced a little, but turned to Brook with a private smile. He leaned in and kissed Brook’s cheek, whispering, “Missed these apples even more, though.”

It was the sappiest thing I’d seen in my life, and I was an avid fan of Hallmark Christmas movies.

Brook blushed and leaned against him. It was odd, but he looked more comfortable that way than I’d literally ever seen him before, even before the Reids had kidnapped him. Not that Brook hadn’t been awesome before, but maybe like . . . like Aspen was a part of the puzzle that made up all of Brook. He’d been okay without him, but somehow together, they just fit.

Not that I was jealous. Wretchedly, pitifully, ridiculously jealous, as only a lonely sad sack can be.

But really, Brook was six inches taller than me, with actual muscles. Not only could he fix cars, he could damn well drive them.

“Dante is the only reason I got away,” Brook said, turning to me as he swallowed a huge bite of burger. “I’m not saying the pack wouldn’t have gotten me out, but Dante got me out without anyone having to fight. He picked the lock on the room where Maxim was keeping me, and snuck me out into the woods, where Colt found us.”

For the first time since his return, Brook didn’t look small or hunched as he talked about the experience. Sad, yes, but not as though he was worried about the response from the people around him. And Aspen—Aspen didn’t even react. He just left his arm casually draped around Brook’s waist and took another bite of his wrap.

It was easy enough to see the tightness around his eyes and the twitch in his jaw that said he wasn’t thrilled with the subject, but he kept it to himself. He let Brook be Brook, and say what he needed to, and when Brook looked at him, he smiled, wide and guileless.

“So Dante is kind of . . . a good guy?” I asked. As much as I hated when people tiptoed around talking to me about the Condition, I figured maybe serious trauma like Brook’s warranted a little tiptoeing.

Brook looked up at me, and then sort of through me, eyes unfocused and staring into the distance. “Honestly? I think—I think I was there for a week, and it was the worst week of my life. And maybe Maxim wasn’t as bad to Dante as he was to me, but—”

“But he was a monster,” I finished for him.

His gaze sharpened again, focusing on me, and he nodded. “Yes. Frankly, I think Dante’s life has probably been hell, and it’s a wonder that he came out of it the kind of person who would help a stranger escape from that misery.”

Aspen sighed heavily, but then nodded. “Too many people out there who think that because they’ve suffered, other people should too.”

Brook looked up at him, and they looked steadily into each other’s eyes for a moment, before Brook nodded. “That’s it. I’m not going to pretend Dante isn’t a packless alpha, and maybe dangerous for being that, but I think in his heart, he’s a good man. And he deserves the benefit of the doubt from us.”

It took longer for Aspen to nod in agreement with that, but he still did.

I sighed and picked at my salad. I wanted an alpha who loved me so much that he battled down his angry protective instincts in order to think things through and back me up. “That’s kind of sad,” was all I could think to say.

Neither of them had a response to that.

7

DANTE

As much bellyaching as I did when Skye walked me around the clinic, he didn’t give up on me. He didn’t let me wimp out either. Three times a day, for the past two days, he’d walked with me around the room, there to guide and support me when I stumbled, close enough that I could smell the warm rush of his sweetness with every heartbeat.

Every wolf’s scent was stronger at their pulse points—on their wrists, that soft, warm spot below the edge of their jaw. And what I wanted to do was lean in, nuzzle my neck against Skye’s, and mix our scents together.

I’d settle for brushing a hand across his pale, svelte neck, but that wasn’t half as close as I wanted to get to him. I thought about wrapping myself around him, twining my arms around his waist and pulling him back until his ass fit into the curve of my hips. There, I could brush my lips across his neck.

Fuck it all, I wanted to nest with a near stranger, and that fucking scared me. I’d spent years honing my control, ensuring my instincts didn’t overcome my better judgement.

Now, I was scared that’d all been for nothing. The first omega who smiled at me, who touched me—yes, even just to help steady me as I hobbled around a clinic—and I was imagining piles of blankets and mingled scents and warm skin and the happy, low-throat sigh of someone content to be with me.

Oblivious to my absurd train of thought, Skye smiled at me and tilted his head to the side. I had to slap my wolf down before it thought he was baring his neck to me, and got the wrong idea.

“Do you want to try without the walker?” Skye asked, guileless support shining from his blue eyes.

I got the impression he liked helping people—not that it had anything to do with me specifically, but over the last week, I’d seen how some people flittered around him. He was slight, even for an omega, and young enough for people to still worry about him.

Truth told, I didn’t mind his help in the slightest.

“I could give it a go,” I agreed, as much to please him as because—

“In case you need a little support.” He offered me his hand, bracing his arm.

While I tried not to lean all my weight on him, I held fast to his hand as we walked the length of the room.

When we got back to the second bed, he put his hand on my back to steady me while I sat, and I got a whiff of his sweet, ripe strawberry scent.

Alpha Grove must have seen me lean in. I’d almost forgotten he was there, until he cleared his throat.

“Skye, it’s getting pretty late.”

With a pinched little frown, he checked his fancy fitness watch. “Right. I should start making dinner. Egg and ham tomorrow?”

This last, he asked me. Now that I was back on solid food, he’d been swinging by one of the local restaurants in the morning before coming over. They had this sandwich on a whole-grain English muffin. The thing was a little dry, but tasted pretty good, and I got the impression that Skye was a bit of a health nut.

Anyway, no matter how much I liked stuffing my face with greasy bacon, runny eggs, and thick slabs of buttery white toast, I wasn’t going to complain when a guy brought me breakfast. Hell, he could’ve brought me Raisin Bran with unsweetened almond milk and it still would’ve been damn kind of him to bother.

“That’d be amazing, Skye. Thank you.”

He pushed one finger against the center of his glasses and ducked his head—not quite a nod, but he wasn’t really hiding either. “No problem.”

“We’ll see you in the morning.” Alpha Grove brushed his hand over Skye’s neck as he passed—a subtle claiming that reminded me that Skye was a Grove. I wasn’t.

I’d been careful not to be too presumptuous—not look Alpha Grove in the eyes directly for long stretches of time, be quick to bare my neck to him, be careful where I put my hands. All said, good manners seemed to be working in my favor. Alpha Grove hadn’t kicked me out yet, hadn’t growled at me or chased me down to the edge of his territory.

Still, there was more tension in the air with Skye gone. I reached to fidget with the magazine on the little table at my bedside, dragging it over and opening it in my lap for something to do.

Alpha Grove came toward the bed. When I looked up at him, his arms were crossed. The second our eyes locked, he shifted his shoulders in a strange little wiggle and dropped his arms by his sides loosely.

“Scientific American?” He nodded toward the magazine I’d picked out of the stand in the waiting area by the door.

One corner of my lips tilted up. “Well, sure. I mean, after Miley and Liam broke up, I lost my taste for Teen Vogue. Nothing but heartbreak in those pages.”

Alpha Grove laughed. His smile was wide, his teeth straight and white. Pretty much everything about the guy was handsome, but, like, in a Land’s End catalogue kind of way. Like he was about to go fishing, but he wasn’t going to get splashed by murky pond water, because no fish would dare insult the immaculate stitching on his cashmere sweater.

“Okay, so why Scientific American? You interested in tech or something?”

I shook my head. “Not really. I mean, sure. But the first time I ever had a computer of my own was college, and I only started to get the hang of it before I dropped out. I am the proud bearer of one-third of a degree in biology.”

Alpha Grove’s eyebrows shot up. “Impressive.” Weirdly, he didn’t sound the least bit sarcastic. It was all the more extraordinary, because sarcasm was actually my first language. Somehow, Alpha Grove really did seem to think a year and a half of college was an accomplishment, probably just because I was a Reid who was destined for the gutter. “How’d you pull that off?”

The question was fair enough—Maxim Reid wasn’t the kind of alpha who’d encouraged a bunch of book learning. When I’d told him I was going away to school, we’d fought. I’d walked away bloody, thinking I wasn’t ever going to come back.

But dropping family, even shitty family, wasn’t always easy. It took more spine than I’d had at nineteen.

My sophomore year, I’d checked in on the pack over spring break, and . . . things were rough. Dad was losing it, the pack was more volatile than ever, and—and I’d needed to stay. They’d needed me—or rather, they’d needed something.

Asshole that I was, I’d thought I could actually help. Like any other arrogant teenager, I overestimated my ability to fix problems on my own. That’d turned out swell.

I shrugged. “Good grades. The Doherty Foundation has some scholarships for werewolves. The better to assimilate with, and all that jazz.”

“Really?” Alpha Grove leaned against the bed’s footboard. “I heard they only give out a handful of those scholarships a year. Super hard to come by. I applied. Didn’t even make the short list.”

They were competitive, but what did it matter? I’d lost the scholarship when I’d dropped out. Thank god I didn’t have to pay them back, but there was no clear way for me to go back to school. Without the resources to navigate the university systems or knowing how to ask for help, much less who to ask, I’d just dropped out. No medical reason. No personal reason. Just gone.

Not that I would have returned—not when it meant leaving the pack in turmoil. Or that school, being out there on my own with no pack, was a walk in the park either. I’d really struggled freshman year. I did fine with the schoolwork, but the social part was rough.

“Okay, so I had really good grades. You know what it’s like—it looks good to take a poor, mangy werewolf and give them a polish. That kind of thing plays well with the media.” And I couldn’t imagine a day in his life that Alpha Grove wasn’t immaculately put together already, with his sweaters and checkered shirts and pants that were perfectly tailored to the length of his legs.

No frayed hems for Alpha Grove. He didn’t need help from any foundation.

He wasn’t having any of my shit, either.

“Also could’ve been you put your nose to the grindstone and worked hard to get that scholarship. Can’t imagine your pack had many resources for continuing education, so it sounds to me like you made your own way when there wasn’t one open to you.”

He sounded nice. Frank. And I couldn’t stand it.

I shrank down against the pillows and shrugged. “Yeah, sure. Made my way to a third of a degree and a bunch of classes I failed in my fourth semester.”

All Alpha Grove did was hum, but he was giving me an appraising look that I didn’t like. Still, he let it go and picked my chart out of the little nook at the end of my bed.

He flipped through the pages. “Seems like you’re improving rapidly. I think it’s about time we discharged you from the clinic.”

“Oh.” So this was it. I still had bandages around my torso, looping up across my shoulder, and some stitches that needed to come out, but I was an alpha wolf who could walk on his own two feet. It was time for me to go. “Right. Sure. Definitely.”

Already, I was trying to get out of the bed and go, but Alpha Grove put a firm hand on my shoulder to keep me down. His eyes were gleaming with amusement, even though he didn’t laugh at me.

“Not this very second, Dante. I’d still like to give it a couple more days, just to be sure. But there was something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Yeah?” I sank back down into the pillows. When I thought about it, I didn’t really know what I was going to do when I left. They’d brought me here naked. What clothes they’d picked off the ground must’ve been too bloody and shredded to bother with. So I didn’t have clothes, I had a hospital gown they probably wanted me to return, and I couldn’t very well walk down the road to nowhere stark fucking naked.

Could do it in fur though.

“Do you have insurance?”

Oh.

Oh fuck.

“No.” My gut clenched, nerves rolling in an acid wave that stung the back of my throat.

Insurance. Health insurance. I didn’t even have a fucking T-shirt. How the fuck was I supposed to have insurance?

Normally, a pack banded together and paid for healthcare when they needed it. Not my pack. I’d had insurance as a student, but, well, I’d dropped out two years ago. The last time I’d had insurance was when I was nineteen, and what twenty-year-old werewolf thought they were going to have their insides exposed to the elements at random?

“I’m so sorry. I should’ve told you sooner.” As my nerves ratcheted up, my voice got strained.

“Hey, it’s okay.” With his hand still on my shoulder, Alpha Grove brushed his thumb across my neck. It was a pack gesture—not one I was used to, but one I’d seen him do with Skye and Claudia and his mate. “You were hurt. There was no way I wasn’t going to help you.”

“But I don’t have any way to pay.” My lungs squeezed hard in my chest. I wanted to double over, shove my face against my knees, but Alpha Grove was there holding me up. “What can I do? Is there something I can do?”

A soft smile broke out on his face. “You know, actually, there might be.”

“Okay. Cool. I can do it. No problem.” It wasn’t like I had anything else on my plate. I could spend some time working off my debt to Alpha Grove and his pack.

“You don’t even know what it is yet.”

“I pay off my debts,” I said stubbornly, though the Doherty Foundation might’ve laughed at that. “Sir.”

“You can call me Linden if you want.”

I swallowed hard. I wasn’t sure I’d ever manage that after my own father had been Alpha Reid for my whole life.

Alpha Grove didn’t press this either. “We have a farmer here, studied chemistry, farming tech, that kind of thing.”

“Okay . . .” Already, I was imagining barnyards and shoveling poop. That wouldn’t be so bad, compared to bleeding out in the woods.

“His name is Ridge. He’s recently discovered that some chemical the Sterling Corporation uses on their farms is toxic to omegas. Thinks it might even play a part in the Condition, but, well, he hasn’t had time to really figure out what it is. He’s busy with the farm, and figuring out the properties of that solution is a whole other job.”

“Okay.” That did sound like a lot for one person.

“Right now, what we need is proof. Everything we’ve got so far is anecdotal, but if you’re interested in science, biology, maybe you could be a second set of hands—you know, help him figure it out.”

“Oh. Um, yeah. I’m—I’d be happy to help with that.” If Alpha Grove was asking me for something, I was there.

“It’d be a huge load off. Honestly, I’ve been meaning to get to it myself, but with rounds . . .”

This was an awful lot of trust to give a guy with a third of a quasi-relevant degree, but I didn’t get the impression that reminding Alpha Grove of how useless I was would get us anywhere.

“Of course. If there’s any way I can help, especially with that, I’d like to.” What I couldn’t say was that my mother had died of the Condition, that losing all our pack omegas was what’d ruined the Reids.

I wasn’t sure I could really do much, but maybe this Ridge guy was some kind of prodigy and could point me in the right direction. I wasn’t too bad with a test tube and a lab, really.

The alpha clicked his tongue. “But I don’t know where you’d stay.”

“I’m a werewolf, sir. I can find somewhere.”

He scowled at me—not meanly, but like he might’ve if a kid had called him a jerk. “We’re not going to make you sleep out in the woods, Dante. Anyway, the weather’s turning cold. I know! Let me talk to Isaac. He runs the grocery store downtown, but also owns a couple properties. Brook and Aspen are staying at one of his duplexes while they build their new house, and I think Asp said the other half was vacant. Would that work?”

“Oh, um—” I wasn’t sure Brook would want me around all the time, considering how we’d met. Sure, he saved my life, but that was just because he was kind.

“Yeah.” Like he could read my mind, he said, “I’m sure Brook would love that. He’s been asking about you every day.”

That had to be a pretty big exaggeration. Brook had come to see me at the clinic once or twice, but his mate was always at his side, big and scowling and clearly unhappy to be there.

Hell, maybe Alpha Grove just wanted an excuse to have his intimidatingly enormous brother keep an eye on me.

“So, I’ll talk to Isaac about it, check in with Brook and Aspen, and we’ll get you checked out of here on Friday. Sound good?”

I wasn’t sure what else to say, so I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Wonderful. See you in the morning.” Alpha Grove straightened the knit blanket over my legs and left me, locking up the clinic behind himself and leaving me feeling like I’d just been hit by the most well-intentioned hurricane ever.

8

SKYE

Thursday morning, Dante was nervous.

Not like he thought I was a threat or anything—no one would ever see me as a threat—but he’d struggled to meet my eye when I’d handed over his breakfast. Then every time I’d put a steadying hand on him while we’d done our circuits of the room, he’d frozen like a man who had found himself unexpectedly under a spotlight. Every time, his eyes would dart over to Linden’s desk, whether the man himself was present in the office or not, and then away, his cheeks flushing lightly.

It looked cute, the pink stain on those high cheekbones, just enough to be seen through his natural tan. Probably, an alpha wouldn’t be thrilled to be called cute, but there wasn’t a better term. Yes, sure, he was handsome or whatever, but the bashful way he reacted to everything was much more puppy than wolf.

Not that anyone would have given me such an option, but if offered both Linden and Aspen Grove, as hot as the giant scowly alpha was, I’d have picked Linden, every time. Hot was great, but I wasn’t the kind of guy who was turned on by terror.

Besides, Dante Reid might not be enormous or terrifying, but he was a big, solid alpha. Now that he was back to eating real food, he was gaining a little of that lost weight back. And his shoulders had never stopped being broad and perfect.

I shook myself with the reminder that I was not in the clinic to ogle the patients. Yes, Dante Reid was a beautiful alpha, but he was my patient. He was there for my help, not my objectification.

Even if he did have the nicest butt I’d ever seen.

Not that I’d looked.

But you know, those gowns don’t cover a thing unless you hold them down every moment, and helping him around the clinic, I had been bound to get an eyeful. I was still just trying to be remotely professional about it.

All I had to do when Dante’s annoying gown fell open was repeat my mantra: What Would Linden Do? And it set me right back on track. Because Linden would never let a pair of beautiful eyes—or cheeks—get in the way of being a medical professional.

We were taking our third exciting stroll around the clinic for the morning, and he probably didn’t need my help anymore, but for some reason, kept taking my hand every time he got up.

Not that I minded. Yes, yes, Linden probably wouldn’t have held his hand. I’m weak, and a gorgeous man wanted to hold my hand. It wasn’t like there was no reason for it.

The door shook like it was going to open and he tensed, his head turning to stare in its direction, like he was going to be able to run away when he was still holding my hand just to walk.

“It’s just the wind,” I assured him. Odd that he couldn’t tell no one was outside. Even my pitiful wolf hearing could tell there were no heartbeats outside the door, no footsteps leading up to it, no cars in the lot. “It happens a lot in the fall, the wind hitting the door and making it seem like someone’s out there.”

He nodded, but didn’t look away from the door for a long moment. Finally, he shook his head and gave me a tiny half-smile. Ugh, I was getting so attached to those. “Sorry. I just . . . you know.”

I did not know, but I smiled and nodded. And, well, maybe I did kind of know. I mean, the guy had nearly had his guts ripped out. It was probably normal to be nervous for a while after that. I’d have probably still been shaking in my boots.

Okay, no, I wouldn’t have survived those injuries at all, but if I had, I’d still be terrified.

When we got back around to the bed, he sat down on the edge of it, heavily, glancing to me, then the door, then to me again.

I looked at the door, half expecting someone to be standing there, even though I’d heard no one approaching. Finally, I turned back to him. “Is something wrong?”

“I . . .” He squeezed his eyes shut, clenching his jaw, and took a deep breath. “I don’t have any clothes.”

For a moment, all I could do was stare at him. Was this some kind of coded message? Was he offended by the gown? Oh no, had he noticed me trying not to ogle him when the gown didn’t cover him properly, and I’d made him uncomfortable? My cheeks heated, and I glanced away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to look.”

For a moment, there was only silence. Then he asked, “Huh?”

When I glanced over at him, he was biting his lip, staring at me in utter confusion.

Oh my god, that was even worse. He hadn’t noticed, and I’d confessed and made it awkward. Go Skye.

“Nothing. Nothing at all. So, clothes. You, um, I mean, there’s the gown. That’s technically clothes. You just have to, like, hold it closed in the back. Right?” I turned and started to tidy the bed, which wasn’t really possible while he was sitting on the edge of it, but never let it be said Skye Johnson wasn’t determined.

If only determination could make the clinic floor swallow me so I could shut up. So he’d stop looking at me. And my cheeks would stop being on fire.

“But it’s not mine,” he finally said, and what?

The gown. He meant that the gown . . . what, did he think we were going to repossess it? I mean, technically when he was done with it, it would go back in the laundry and get—

“Oh my god, you mean real clothes,” I realized aloud, staring at nothing. The man literally had no clothes.

He nodded slowly, watching the side of my face. When I turned to look at him, he glanced away. “Even if there were Groves willing to go into Reid territory to get my clothes, Cain probably wouldn’t hand them over. Pretty sure him trying to kill me means I’m not welcome in the pack anymore.”

Cain.

Not that I’m one to eavesdrop—yes, that’s an utter lie, but give me a break, what else is there to do when you’re stuck in a town as small as Grovetown?—but I’d heard the name Cain Reid. He’d been Maxim Reid’s replacement; the one who had led the Reid pack when they’d attacked Grovetown.

He’d been one of the few wolves who had, in fact, died in the fight, and not just slunk off into the woods.

Somehow, I didn’t think telling Dante that would help him. If the alpha of the Reid pack had been the one to hurt Dante, I doubted a later Reid alpha would welcome him back. Plus, for all I knew, Cain had been the last family Dante had in the world, and even if they’d fought, it probably wasn’t a thing to celebrate.

Also, it wasn’t relevant to the discussion. No Grove wolf was going to go into Reid territory to get Dante’s clothes, and if the Reids had been the ones who’d tried to kill him, Dante definitely shouldn’t either.

I’d spent the last week helping the man relearn how to walk, so I was well familiar with how big he was. He was maybe a little smaller than Linden, but Linden’s clothes would probably fit him. Not that I was going to try to steal any of his precious sweaters, but I was sure he had some extra T-shirts and jeans he could spare. The guy was rich.

I shook my head and waved at the bed. “Don’t you worry about that. We’ll get you some clothes. I mean, not that you’re going anywhere right now, but I’m sure—”

“Tomorrow,” he interrupted. “Your alpha says I’m leaving tomorrow.”

I blinked at him, my brain taking too long to process the information. Linden was kicking him out of the clinic? That couldn’t be right. Linden would never . . .

Somehow, Dante turned even more shamefaced, hanging his head and not meeting my eye at all. “I already owe him a lot. I don’t, um”—his voice dropped to a whisper—“have any insurance.”

Insurance?

What the hell?

I opened my mouth, then closed it, then did it again. In my entire life, I’d known one werewolf who had medical insurance: me.

The pack paid for my insurance, in case the Condition ever had a resurgence while I was outside of pack territory. Admittedly, the point was moot, since I also never left Grovetown, but it was a kind precaution that the pack took, because the pack took care of its members.

But werewolves didn’t need medical insurance. We didn’t go to human doctors, and maybe other packs worked differently, but Linden didn’t charge.

Anyone.

Anything.

Ever.

He was the pack doctor, so he doctored the pack. Heck, I wasn’t sure he even had a billing system. He didn’t take a paycheck, because he didn’t need money. He was a Grove. I was paid out of pack funds, and I wasn’t the pack treasurer to know for sure, but I thought that was a mix of pack tithes and the Grove family’s enormous investments.

I opened my mouth to stop him, to tell him that Linden would never, ever expect money from him, and not having insurance was completely irrelevant, when he took another deep breath and went on. “It’ll be okay. Alpha Grove says I can pay the pack back, I’ll just . . . I’ll work for the pack, try to help a guy. Um, Ridge something, and everything will be fine. Alpha Grove was very fair about it.”

It was like he was speaking another language. Linden wanted him to pay the pack back? That was so far out of Linden’s personality that if Dante hadn’t seemed so serious, I’d have laughed. I was tempted to laugh anyway, assuming he just had a really dry sense of humor, but no. No, he wasn’t joking at all.

My sweet, kind, humanitarian boss had told this victim of violence that he owed him something.

I clenched my jaw but tried to smile around it at Dante. “Well don’t you worry. We’ll find you some clothes before you need them. I’m sure someone in the pack wears your size. For now, you need to keep resting.”

Half an hour later, when I heard Linden’s SUV pull into the parking lot, I gave Dante another smile as I slipped out the door and met my boss as he climbed out of his car.

He started to smile at me, then stopped and cocked his head confusedly as I scowled at him.

I had no such concern. I marched right up to him and poked him in the center of the chest. “Insurance?” I hissed, hoping my voice was low enough that Dante wouldn’t hear. “You asked for his insurance? You’re going to charge him?”

Instantly, he reached out and held a firm hand to my neck and shoulder. It was strange, how part of me wanted to throw myself at that firm, reassuring touch. I wanted to wrap myself around him and cry to him about how awful . . . he was.

Seeming to understand exactly what I needed, Linden pulled me in for a hug. I started to push away, so I could glare and hiss at him some more, but then he whispered in my ear. “It’s fine, Skye. He’s fine. I’m not punishing him, I promise. Just trust me, okay?”

“He didn’t do anything wrong,” I muttered into Linden’s chest before pushing away, staring at the ground and straightening my glasses.

“I know,” he agreed. “We’re going to have to convince some other people of that, though. Show everyone he’s a good guy. Starting with the most important person.”

“Aspen?” While Linden’s enormous, terrifying brother hadn’t accused Dante of anything, he definitely had not been thrilled to have him around. And having the alpha’s brother dislike and mistrust you was not a position anyone wanted to be in, in the Grove pack.

Linden gave a warm chuckle, wrapping an arm around me, and turning us both around to head into the clinic. “Himself, kiddo.”

9

DANTE

True to his word, Skye returned on Friday morning with what looked like an old gym bag, full and bulging. The clothes smelled a lot like Alpha Grove, but they fit reasonably well. He even brought a box tucked under his arm with a pair of new shoes just for me.

“How’d you—?” I hefted the shoes up. They were within half a size of my own.

Skye grinned at me. “Oh. I measured your feet while you were asleep.” I blinked at him, but he started laughing. “Kidding. Figure you’re about Linden’s size, right? So if his clothes fit, maybe his shoes were pretty close. Overestimated a little, and, well—I don’t know. Thought it’d be better to go too big than too small. Are they okay?”

“Perfect. Thank you.”

I felt better in real clothes, though when I could stand on my own and wear jeans like a real boy, I didn’t have the quick excuse to hold Skye’s hand.

Alpha Grove had changed my bandages that morning. He said everything was healing up like he wanted, but he didn’t want to rush. I’d come back the next week to have the stitches out. In the meanwhile, I was still supposed to take things easy.

When I was dressed and trying hard not to fidget too much as Skye tied my shoes for me—bending in half was still a chore—Alpha Grove came up, hands on his hips.

“Ready to see your new place?”

I looked back at the pillows behind me. Leaving the clinic meant leaving one of the only safe places I’d had. Still, I couldn’t move into a clinic, and I couldn’t keep living like I was wounded for the rest of my life.

“Sure, yeah. Um, thank you. Both. For everything.”

Skye smiled at me like I’d said just the sweetest thing. Alpha Grove touched my shoulder. “It’s our pleasure, Dante. Now, come on.”

He had a shiny silver SUV, and he drove me over to a duplex not too far from the center of town. Brook was out, presumably with his mate, because while the place smelled like them both, there wasn’t a sound on the other side.

I’d also expected the landlord, but it was just the two of us as Linden passed me the keys and let me unlock the door.

When I pushed the door in, I hung back.

At school, I’d lived in a dorm. With the pack, I’d lived with my father. I’d never had a place of my own. This didn’t exactly feel like mine either, but it was more on my own than I’d ever been before.

Alpha Grove guided me in with his arm around my shoulders. “Isaac’s at the store. You can meet him later, but we’re all squared away in terms of rent. Just rolling that into what you’ll owe the pack, so you don’t have to worry about it right now. That okay?”

I swallowed hard. “Sure. No problem.”

“Great! So, there’s a fridge in the kitchen. Bed in the bedroom.” As he walked through the space, I looked after him. It wasn’t heavily furnished or anything. The walls were white, and there wasn’t much in there, but there was a couch and a spindly legged coffee table, a bed in the bedroom with a pillow and everything, a fridge that didn’t look totally empty when Linden opened it. He grinned. “Benefits of having a grocer for a landlord, I guess. I’ll let you get settled in, but here—”

He pulled a phone out of his pocket, crossing the open kitchen into the living area to hand it to me. I’d had a cell phone before, but it hadn’t made it through the woods with me.

This one didn’t look like much, maybe one of those burner phones you bought at a superstore, but he passed it to me.

“My personal number’s in there. The number for the clinic. If you can’t get ahold of me, Claudia Wilson’s my second. You can trust her. I put Brook and Isaac’s numbers in there too, just in case.”

He hadn’t put Skye’s number in there, I noticed. I couldn’t exactly blame him, and he was being really generous as it was, but it seemed all the clearer that I wasn’t entirely trusted. Not yet, anyway.

“And I didn’t know if you have a bank account, but here—” He pulled a folded envelope out of his pocket and passed that to me too.

“What’s this?” I opened the thick envelope and there, stacked in the middle, twenty-dollar bills—at least a dozen of them, maybe more.

“Your paycheck.”

I stared at him. The amount of money in there made me kind of queasy, like it was against the rules for me to even look at it. “I’m working off a debt.”

“And you’ve still got to eat. Get settled. There are probably things you need or want. Yeah, I want you to help Ridge out with the Sterling problem, but we’re not going to let you go without. You’re helping us, so we’ll help you.”

“You already helped me,” I whispered, staring down into the envelope because I was worried if I looked him in the eyes, he’d see I was afraid.

“Sure. Think of it as an investment.”

“Like, you own me?” I dragged my thumb across the edge of the bills. Hell, there were probably twenty of them. That was four hundred freaking dollars.

Alpha Grove just leaned in to catch my eye and smiled. “No, Dante. Like I think you’re worth helping. So settle in. On Monday, I’ll take you out to the Hill farm to meet Ridge. Just . . . call me if anything goes wrong, if you don’t feel well, okay?”

“Yessir.”

He left me standing there, dumbfounded, in an apartment that was mine, sort of. It was a blank slate, a fresh start, and I didn’t know what to do with it.

I COULDN’T STAND the quiet for long. There wasn’t much to do in the apartment. I put my feet up on the coffee table and ate some baby carrots, flopped on the bed, then the couch, and back again, but it was lonely.

The clinic hadn’t been loud, but there’d still been people coming and going, and Skye was there to talk to.

I didn’t have any friends here, but I couldn’t just sit around. And it was getting late enough for lunch. I left the apartment, locking the door behind me—maybe I didn’t have anything to steal, but all that stuff belonged to Isaac the grocer.

I wandered around town, keeping my head down and ignoring the weird looks people gave me and the way they moved to the very edge of the sidewalk or even out into the street to avoid getting too close.

They were scared of me. I understood, but—well, there was one person who wasn’t.

Skye had mentioned Chadwick’s Grille to me a couple times. That was where he got our breakfast sandwiches. He came back with tea for himself too.

When I went in, the door rang above my head.

It was a traditional diner, clean and shiny with chrome furniture and patent leather booths. I blinked at coming in from the sunny sidewalk, and before I got my bearings, there was someone in front of me.

He smelled like alpha and anger—and while that was familiar enough, this guy was big and blond and clean shaven. He looked preppy.

Any proper Reid wolf would’ve torn his throat out, the way he was growling at me.

“You’re that Reid alpha,” the guy accused, drawing himself up to his full height, his arms hanging a couple inches from his sides like he wanted to appear bigger than he was. Too bad that alpha posturing bullshit didn’t work on me anymore. I’d seen real monsters. This guy didn’t rate.

“Dante Reid.” I stuck out my hand the way I would have if he were any ordinary human I met on campus. It was one thing to bare my neck to Alpha Grove—another thing entirely to show deference to this asshole. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

He growled low in his throat.

“Skip,” a middle-aged woman behind the bar snapped. She had lines around her mouth from smiling, but right then, her glare was narrowed at the alpha. “Leave him be.”

He hesitated for a second, his jaw clenched and chin stuck out, but clearly, this lady called the shots at Chadwick’s. He inched out of the way, barely making enough space for me to step into the restaurant.

I edged around him, and she waved me over to the countertop bar.

“Hey, hon. I’m Wanda. Forgive my son there. Young alpha—you know the drill.”

I did. Unfortunately.

“It’s no problem, ma’am.”

She grinned at me, not like she was uneasy at a strange alpha. I figured, in a town like this, with their country charm and apple orchard, she got plenty of out of towners in her restaurant.

“Can I get you something?”

“Yes, ma’am. Skye Johnson’s been coming by some mornings and afternoons, grabbing meals for me while I was stuck at the clinic. Thought I might return the favor, but, uh, maybe you can help me with what he likes?”

Her hand fluttered to her chest. “How sweet! Well, last time he had the salad, so I bet he’d be happy with the turkey wrap. You want to see a menu, sweetie?”

“Oh, um, no. No, thank you. I’ll just have whatever he’s having.”

She made a little sound and gave me that look Mom used to give me, as if she wanted to lean across the counter and pinch my cheeks.

“Sure thing. I’ll have that out in just a minute. To go, I guess?”

“If that’s not too much trouble, thank you.”

While she went to put the order in at the kitchen, I dug my cash out of my pocket. I figured one of those bills would cover the whole thing, and I tucked the rest away. The whole time I waited, I felt her son’s glare on the back of my head.

10

SKYE

Why don’t you fucking dogs just die out like you should?

It wasn’t the first time I’d gotten a nasty message on my blog. It surely wouldn’t be the last. There’d been a creepy sexual comment about omegas, someone who’d called me names implying I was unintelligent for “not knowing that diet and the Condition weren’t related,” and even just the odd “don’t u no how many carbs r in corn!?” That one, responding to a post where I had, in fact, detailed the number of carbohydrates in corn. Apparently they had missed that it wasn’t a keto blog, but one designed to help omegas with the Condition.

The suggestion that all werewolves should die was a new insult, and I couldn’t help but connect it to Colt’s article. He’d drawn a tenuous link between Sterling food and the Condition. Maybe not everyone had seen it, and maybe not everyone believed, but this . . .

I grinned. This person knew. And them being angry that I was working to keep omegas healthy, well darn it all, that meant something good, didn’t it? I mean, not for them. They were a horrible person and I blocked their IP address on the website, but if speciesist monsters were angry at me, that meant I was doing something to help.

Also, maybe it was a little terrifying, because speciesist monsters were the kind of people who bought automatic weapons and used them to murder innocent weres.

But it wasn’t like I posted my address on the website, and I didn’t even work on it at home, only at the clinic. Anyone trying to hurt me would have to drive all the way through Grovetown with their car stinking of guns, and that would get all kinds of attention.

I gave a full body shake, like I could shake off the greasy feeling of someone who hated me for the crime of being born a werewolf. That was when the sound outside coalesced into footsteps headed for the door, just a few seconds before the clinic door opened.

Turning my brightest smile in that direction, I readied my usual “welcome to the clinic,” spiel, but it cut off when the doorway filled with Dante Reid.

I almost sighed like a Belieber over the bastardized version of “Despacito,” but shook it off, flipped my laptop shut, and looked him over, scenting the air. It wasn’t the blood of reopened wounds or ripped stitches that came to my nose, but the so-familiar smell of the Chadwick Grille’s turkey apple wrap.

My mouth watered at just the scent, I was so well-trained, but I ignored it. “Hey, stranger, it’s been forever. Like”—I glanced at the clock—“three hours. Everything okay?” I didn’t manage to keep the concern out of my voice, but that was okay. I was a medical professional, after all. I was expected to be concerned for our patients, particularly ones who’d already been through so much.

“I’m fine,” he answered, reassuringly, almost before I finished asking. “I just . . . Alpha Grove didn’t give me anything to do, said I can start working on Monday. So I went to get lunch and thought, you know, I probably owe you a bunch of meals.”

I opened my mouth to deny it, insist he didn’t owe me anything, but that was part of what Alpha Grove was working on, wasn’t it? We had cared for Dante, when we’d been put in a position where some packs would not have been so kind. When, likely, his own pack would not have been so kind—even to him, let alone one of us.

As toxic as it was, people were raised to think that if someone did something for them, they were required to repay the favor. And insisting that nothing was owed didn’t remove the feeling of debt. It just added another layer of guilt, and sometimes made things even worse.

Besides, there was absolutely no way I was going to turn down an offer to eat lunch with Dante Reid. He wasn’t just kind and soft-spoken and one of the most handsome alphas I’d ever met. He actually seemed to like me. Me. Tiny, useless Skye, who was too fragile to touch to the point that his own mother rarely hugged him for fear he’d break. Linden had long been the only exception to that rule.

But now there was Dante. He didn’t treat me like I was unbreakable or anything. Just like I was any other omega in the world, and not sad, lonely, porcelain Skye.

I patted the side of the desk that had a nice chair next to it. “Well in that case, come have a seat. What exactly are you going to be doing for Linden?” I asked, to keep myself from spewing the rest of the overemotional drivel running through my head. “You said working with Ridge? Are they going to have you working the farm?”

He blanched, and we both glanced down at his midsection, but he shook his head. Sitting down in the chair nearest me, he pulled out two sandwiches, setting one of them in front of me. “I don’t think so. He said probably lab work. I’m okay at that, so maybe I’ll be able to help. Don’t know that I’d be a lot of help on a farm, even without the stitches.”

I shrugged as I unwrapped my sandwich, pausing to take in the scent of it. Then stopping to take another long sniff of the air. For the first time since he’d come to the clinic, there was a real hint of Dante’s scent. It had always been smothered by blood and antiseptic and medication, but now, he was starting to smell like man. Like alpha. Like amber and like the tall pine trees that covered Reid territory, as though they had seeped into his blood, and even now, weeks removed from being on Reid land, it was still inside him.

He seemed to take my long silence as though I was waiting for more, and ducked his head, staring down at his own food. “I’ve never been much with my hands. I, um, I like science.”

Pausing mid-bite, I grinned at him. “Me too! I wanted to go to school for psychology, but—” Darn it. Why did my whole life have to revolve around my illness? Why couldn’t I have just this one person who didn’t think of me as Skye-who-had-the-Condition, but just . . . Skye? I sighed and bit back my irritation. It wasn’t his fault. “I can’t really leave pack lands without a keeper. The Condition.”

His eyes went round and scraped down me, as though he was seeing me again for the first time. It left me raw and smarting, my eyes stinging. He wouldn’t be back for lunch again, of course. Not unless it was out of pity.

Instead of asking about my illness or changing the subject and not looking me in the eye ever again, he nodded. “That’s why the healthy diet.”

I nodded, taking a giant bite of my wrap. He mirrored it with one of his own, still nodding, his eyes staring off somewhere past my shoulder. When he finished the bite, he looked back at me. “I think what Alpha Grove wants me to work on is hunting down what’s causing the Condition. It’s what he implied.”

“Sterling,” I agreed. “We think it’s something Sterling is using on their plants. Just getting near one of their farms made Claudia collapse last month, and she’d never been sick before her second term.”

“The pack’s second?” he asked. “Pregnant?”

I nodded, then froze. Was I not supposed to mention that? Did anyone not know that Claudia was Linden’s second, and that she was pregnant? She was showing now, so anyone who saw her had to know . . .

Dante didn’t even seem to notice, just went back to looking over my shoulder, nodding some more. His eyes darted back and forth, like he was reading something, even though I knew there was nothing behind me to read.

Then he shook his head and turned back to look at me. “Sorry. I get distracted. But wouldn’t it be a heck of a thing, if you and me and this Ridge guy helped your alpha stop the Condition? I know you’d still have to deal with it some, but we could keep it from spreading to new omega kids.”

All I could do for a second was blink, and I had to swallow hard before I could answer. “Yeah. Yeah, it would.”

Maybe I was being too optimistic, but he sort of . . . well, he got it, didn’t he? He understood that stopping the Condition wasn’t a magical cure that would undo the damage it had done to me. He hadn’t made it about pitiful little me. No, he’d made it about us and helping. Not about my sickness and himself being the savior.

Even Linden had never been able to give me that.

11

DANTE

Over that first weekend, I tried to fit myself into some kind of pattern. There wasn’t much for me to amuse myself with at home, but I had errands to run on foot, supplies to buy, and the library in Grovetown was chock-full of current magazines and newspapers, had public computers, and offered more books than I could read in my lifetime.

In the morning, I got up early and went to the Grille, where I sat at the counter sipping coffee and waiting for Skye to show up for his breakfast sandwich. We ate together, not talking about much of anything, but he was the first person in the Grove pack who seemed any degree of comfortable with me, so it was nice to start the day with his smiling face to remind me I was a person and not a foreign Reid monster.

Then, we went our separate ways, him to the clinic and me to the library, where the whole building was quiet and empty, and I could skirt beyond notice of the Grove wolves who resented my presence in their territory.

In any case, if Alpha Grove was going to have me looking into the Condition, I should learn all I could about it before I started tampering with chemicals.

The Condition occupied something of a hole in my knowledge base. It wasn’t that I was uninterested exactly, only that the Condition had ravaged my pack before anyone could stop it. It’d killed my mother.

As terrifying as the idea of there being no cure was, I was also afraid to lift up that rock and see that there was something that would’ve saved my pack and my mom.

Still, my way of repaying the Groves relied on my understanding of the Condition. It was something of a relief to realize that there was no source of useful, applicable knowledge I’d been missing all this time. Well, outside of Skye’s blogs.

When I told him on Sunday morning about the research I’d done the day before, he pulled it up on his phone and showed me. I spent that afternoon on one of the library’s computers, reading every post he’d made so far.

He’d written a lot about diet and exercise, but hadn’t come any closer to the root of the problem than anyone else.

Monday morning, I was looking forward to catching him at breakfast when a shiny silver SUV parked outside my apartment. Alpha Grove was sliding out of the car when I opened the front door. He had a Pyrex container in his hands and walked straight up to the duplex’s porch with a smile on his face.

“Brought you breakfast,” he said, sticking it out. “Quiche. Rowan made it. I figured I could check your stitches before we head over to the farm?”

“Okay, sure.” I tried to ignore the sting of disappointment that I wouldn’t see Skye that morning. That meant I might not see him the whole day, and a prickle of unease tingled in the back of my head.

He picked up a messenger bag and slung it over his shoulder, then I led him into my apartment. It was awkward, having him standing there in my kitchen, inspecting my bare stomach while I held my shirt up. He replaced the bandage.

“You can come by the clinic tomorrow and I’ll take them out,” he said as I dropped my shirt. “Thank the moon for werewolf healing, right?”

His smile was generous and open, but mine felt tight on my face. It was werewolf claws that’d done this to me in the first place, and it felt weird to be too thankful when things were so messed up.

“Yeah. So, should I put that in the microwave?” I nodded toward the Pyrex on the kitchen table.

Alpha Grove shrugged. “You could. About thirty seconds is plenty. It’s also pretty good cold.”

“Great.” I grabbed a fork and put it on top of the container. “Ready?”

It wasn’t a long drive to the farm, but the land opened up before we got there—big, rolling fields of green plants and rich, dark soil. Alpha Grove turned down a dirt road and drove up to a two-story farmhouse.

There on the front porch, a big guy stood in a flannel button up, a tan coat with a zipper, and jeans that looked more practical than fashionable. When we got closer, I saw there was another guy on the porch with a computer in his lap. The big guy swung down and kissed his cheek before hopping off the porch to come and greet us.

“Alpha,” he said to Linden with a nod.

“Ridge, good to see you.” Alpha Grove stepped back, slightly out of the way when I walked around the car, and Ridge turned his enormous farm-boy smile right on me and stuck out his hand.

“Hey there. I’m Ridge Paterson.”

I took his hand, and he shook. It wasn’t over the top or threatening, but he had a firm, rough grip. I got the sense that the strength of his arm was responsible for the big shake, more than any intention he had of making me uncomfortable.

“Dante Reid.”

Ridge let me go and looked between Alpha Grove and me. “Linden here tells me you’re going to help with the Sterling stuff?”

“Yes, sir. If I can be of help, I’d like to.”

Ridge clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth. He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans and shrugged. “Well, good. I don’t have any samples to test this very second, but Lex’s folks are coming out to stay with the Hills here at the farm in a couple days. I’ve asked ’em to bring some straight from my parents’ old place. We know whatever they’re putting on stuff, they’ve done it there, so by my thinking, it’ll be fresh and easier to find and isolate the compound. Less cross contamination like you might get at a grocery store. Mind, it’s not strictly legal—stealing produce from the Sterling farm. Of course, it’s not strictly legal, poisoning werewolves, now is it?”

He grinned toothily, and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of him. He seemed like a pure-bred country wolf, but there was some kind of sharp intelligence in his eyes. Truth told, he looked a bit like an alpha wolf who’d been threatened, and even the softest alpha had fangs when the people they cared about were in danger.

“I’m plugging my ears on that,” Alpha Grove said with a laugh. “You two all right here? I should probably get back to the clinic.”

“We’re good,” Ridge said. “I can give him a ride to the meeting tonight.” Like it took him a second to remember I was there, he glanced my way. “That cool with you?”

“Sounds good.”

Truth was, not one part of me wanted to crawl my ass into a Grove pack meeting while I still had stitches and smelled like a Reid. But Ridge Paterson wasn’t making a big deal about me showing up, and I didn’t want to be rude, especially when Alpha Grove nodded.

“See you there.”

He went back to his SUV and drove off, leaving me with the awful feeling that I was stuck out here. Even still, Ridge didn’t press that vulnerability, only turned to walk out toward one of the barns.

“I can’t take the whole day off to get you situated, but I’ve got some work to do to get the tractor ready for next spring. You mind hanging out with me in the shed while I do some tinkering and I tell you what’s been going on?” He kept right on moving, expecting me to keep up.

I saw one other guy off in the distance, near some goat pens, but it seemed like an awful lot of farm for just a couple guys to keep up.

“Yeah, sure. No problem. I mean, sorry I’m not much of a mechanic.”

Ridge laughed, smiling at me again. “Don’t worry about it, Dante. We’ve each got a part to play, and it just so happens this is mine. When we go in for lunch, I’ll introduce you to Lex, my mate. He’s working on his podcast right now—you probably saw him on the porch. Anyway, his cousin, Claudia Wilson—she’s the pack’s second, if you haven’t been introduced—showed some symptoms of the Condition that came on real fast. She’s doing better . . . now that her mate’s gone on a rampage and destroyed every Sterling product in the house.”

I winced when we walked into the shed. It was dark compared to the bright morning light outside. “Doesn’t sound like coincidence.”

Ridge clapped me on the shoulder, then nodded me over toward a stool against the wall. “With any luck, you’ll help prove it’s not.”

12

SKYE

I’d known that Dante was starting work for Linden on Monday. Heck, Linden seemed to be downright excited about it. He seemed to think Dante was very smart, which wasn’t a surprise to me after getting to know him.

Linden also seemed to think there was a good chance of not just finding the cause of the Condition, but maybe eliminating it, which seemed almost silly. It was a little like saying he thought maybe we could achieve world peace. It was too much, too big, and involved too many moving parts to be accomplished so easily.

But then, Linden hadn’t grown up with the Condition, let alone trying to manage it. It was sweetly optimistic of him, and I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him what frozen things did in summer.

On the other hand, eating without my breakfast buddy sucked.

Yeah, we’d only been doing it in the office for a week, and then at the Grille itself for two days, but it had been nice. Having a friend was nice.

Ugh, I was so pathetic.

Still, it didn’t change the fact that without him, the clinic felt emptier. After finishing my lunch, I sat at Linden’s desk and put my head down, like I was a kindergartener in need of a nap.

“Feeling okay?” Linden asked when he came in, because of course he did. I wasn’t allowed to have down days. When I wanted to roll over and go back to sleep in the morning, everyone jumped to the conclusion that I was having an episode, and worried over me until I pasted on a smile and got back to it.

If I wasn’t smiling, I was sick. If I was sick, I had to deal with more hovering than usual.

So yeah. Skye Johnson, manic scarecrow. That was me.

I smiled at him. “Yup. Just weird in here with no patient now. Quiet.”

Linden looked over at the bed Dante had used for his stay, nodding. “I guess so. Things have been busy enough that I hadn’t thought much about it. Do you want something else to work on when there are no patients?”

That was actually the most spot-on question Linden had asked me in a while. While he was less likely to coddle me than everyone else, he wasn’t immune to the urge, so he wasn’t inclined to give me more work. My mother had pitched enough of a fit when he’d given me a job that she’d thought was sitting around doing nothing at all; he certainly hadn’t been willing to pile work onto it.

I still thought she’d been more offended by the fact that working gave me enough money to get my own place, and that I’d immediately done so the second I turned eighteen. It was nothing, really—one of two apartments over the hardware store, and Cliff had given it to me for a song, because having me around helped him a little. But it was mine. And I didn’t have Mom popping in to check my temperature at all hours “just to make sure,” or questioning everything from the propriety of my bedtime to whether the TV shows I watched were “too much.”

The problem was that while I didn’t want my mother hovering and taking out her fear of the Condition on me, living alone was actually . . . really darn lonely. I’d started going to the gym on my days off, and the bar in the evening, and anywhere else people congregated, just for the noise.

Linden plopped into one of the nice waiting-area chairs, sliding back till he was practically laying down, his eyes closed. For the first time, I noticed the bags under his eyes. “I thought Colt was back from Washington?”

He gave a tiny affirmative nod. “He is. But he’s still FaceTiming his family constantly, at all hours.” The sigh that he let out at that was long and pained, almost an actual whine. “I shouldn’t complain—they’re being really supportive on this Sterling mess.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that they’re kind of jerks,” I offered. I hadn’t actually met Linden’s in-laws—the senator and company—but I’d heard all kinds of commentary on what an ass the senator had been to Linden himself. It was hard to imagine, and frankly, left no room for anyone to think well of the guy. Linden was the softest, fuzziest of alphas, constantly trying to help people, to make them happy and comfortable and well.

It was like hating a golden retriever. Anyone who did it was suspect, in my opinion.

And he was stuck, I realized with sudden clarity. Colt was the one who wrote the article connecting Sterling to the Condition, so that responsibility was on him, and maybe a little on his father because he was a politician. Linden’s brother had come home and mated Brook, finally, so his family was whole and happy. Dante might be helping Ridge figure out the Condition, and there wasn’t much Linden could do to help them while his attention was already on being pack alpha and running the clinic full time.

The whole pack, and everyone Linden loved most, were doing amazing and difficult things . . . and sort of not needing him.

He was that golden retriever, going from one person to the next, offering them a stick, and none of them had the time to throw it for him. Okay, maybe that was an oversimplification, and it was probably a little insulting, but Linden was a man who thrived on being needed.

“Any chance you could drive me to the pack meeting?” I asked.

I had not planned to go to the meeting. At best, they were going to talk about Sterling, and the Condition, and everyone in the place would turn and give me their best pitying looks.

But, well, Linden had come home from school when I was a kid, shaken everything up, and probably saved my life. Then, as I’d gotten older, he’d given me a job, and a purpose, and saved my sanity as much as my life. Maybe there was a little hero worship in how much I liked to take care of people—just like my hero, my alpha—or maybe I was just returning the favor.

He lifted his head and looked over at me. “You want to go? I half expected you to avoid it.”

I shrugged, casually, because any answer I could give would be an obvious lie. Or wait, maybe not. “Dante is going, right?” He quirked a brow at that—maybe a touch disapprovingly, but it was hard to tell. Still, he nodded, so I went on. “I thought he could use a little backup, since he’s a Reid, and the pack is going to . . . you know. Be the pack.”

He gave a tiny snort but nodded. “Fair. They are, and he is. I figured Brook would protect him, but there’s no harm having both of you there to take care of him. Poor kid’s been through enough.”

“It’s settled, then. And since I don’t feel like walking, you can drive me.” He ignored the fact that it was a short walk, and I’d have had to make it to get home anyway, and smiled at me.

Then he literally fell asleep for half an hour.

THE CIDER HOUSE, as always, was busy on the night of the meeting. Most of the pack didn’t show up for meetings, but it was always enough that the bar was packed to capacity, all their employees running to keep up with the demands of those who came.

Having stopped eating French fries and burgers and stuff like that years before, I didn’t usually want it. It was heavy and greasy, and generally too much for me. The onion rings still smelled amazing, though, and I was constantly tempted to try them. Just two or three.

Except that even now, suspecting the problem was mostly Sterling food, I couldn’t just assume that food the pack was serving wouldn’t be from them. As it turned out, there were only about ten companies producing almost all the food we ate.

Your favorite breakfast cereal? Sterling probably makes it.

If it turned out to be true, no doubt I was going to be subjected to sobbing midnight telephone calls from my mother, apologizing for her love of their gross cream-filled cupcakes, claiming all responsibility for my illness. It was ridiculous, because she couldn’t have known. Not to mention the fact that she struggled with the aftereffects of coming down with the Condition while pregnant with me, if not nearly as strongly as I did. She got to develop properly before the poison, after all. I was built with the very poison that was trying to kill us. Built wrong.

Linden walked me into The Cider House, and immediately got dragged away to hear out the various pack issues that needed his attention.

Feeling unusually sorry for myself, I wandered over to the bar, leaning against the shiny wood and sighing, staring at the knots and whorls, polished to perfection by years of use.

“Hey kiddo,” Talin said in her throaty voice. I didn’t even have to look up to know she was talking to me. That was me. Kiddo forever, because I’d never even reach five and a half feet tall. My usual bottle of water materialized in front of me, and I scowled at it.

Sure, I was nineteen, and not allowed to drink because of some draconian law that let me—or healthier people than me—join the army, but not drink. But I wanted something other than water and carrot sticks in my life.

Maybe I was being a big baby and feeling sorry for myself, but sometimes it was just . . . too much. Everyone was eating fries and drinking cider from the grove, and I could never be that person. Be one of them.

“Could, um, could I get some water too, ma’am?” a soft voice asked, and it turned everything around, my pissy mood evaporating in an instant.

Dante.

I spun to face him, beaming, my hands tingling with the need to reach out to him, touch him, reassure myself he was there. His scent was even stronger standing there in the bar, all warm and cozy.

He ducked his head and smiled at me. “Skye.”

“Hi,” I answered, and for the life of me, couldn’t figure out what the heck else to say. Nice weather? How are you?

Why did everything sound inane?

“Sure,” Talin agreed. “Want a menu?”

He put a hand to his stomach and shook his head emphatically. “No thank you, ma’am. The Hills made sure I ate . . . a lot.”

She laughed at that, passing him a bottle of water. “You look like you could use a little feeding up, and they’re good at that.”

He flushed, but smiled at her, that sweet, nervous smile he was always giving Linden when offered the mildest kindness. I was probably imagining it, but I thought the smile he gave me was different. It was just mine.

That was when Matt Drury pushed past us, knocking his shoulder into Dante so hard that he smacked into me, knocking both of us into the counter. I tried my best to hide a wince as the bar dug into my ribs. Probably poorly, but heck, I’m not an actor or anything.

I glanced up to see if Dante had noticed, waiting for the outpouring of concern for my frail self, but instead, his eyes were screwed shut, shoulders hunched, like he was trying to make his big alpha frame smaller.

“Look where you’re going,” Matt said, loud and obnoxious. “S’pose I shouldn’t be surprised a Reid is pushing our omegas around though.”

The room went quiet. Not like, a lull in the conversation, but that kind of “you could hear a pin drop” silence people usually only talk about.

Dante didn’t move. Didn’t open his eyes, didn’t . . . was he holding his breath? Panic. He was panicking. Of course he was. He was in a strange pack’s territory, being called out for doing something wrong when he hadn’t.

I slid down off my stool and rounded the bar, glaring at Matt. “He’s not the one who pushed anyone,” I said, jamming the bottom of my water bottle into his chest. “You pushed him into me. And I’m gonna have a bruise, so thanks, jerk.”

I didn’t often use my perceived weaknesses, but damn it all, he was bullying Dante like we were in a high school movie. And Dante was . . . special. And maybe a little fragile.

Behind Matt, Linden cleared his throat. Matt spun to look at the alpha, eyes round. “Apologize like an adult or sit down, your choice. And either way, leave Skye and Dante alone.”

Matt scowled and flounced off to the corner table where his buddies were sitting. Jerk. I glared at him. Then the rest of them, for good measure. Then I turned back to Dante. “Come on, let’s go sit down.”

He was staring at me like I was the elephant in the room, then he glanced at the door, maybe planning a quick escape. Hard to blame him.

In a case of the best timing ever, Brook and Aspen walked in right then. Brook’s eyes darted around, taking in the mood, then Dante, arms still wrapped around himself, and I could see him piecing it together. He gave a bright smile and headed over to the bar, dragging Aspen along. When he got to us, he wrapped an arm around my shoulders, letting go of Aspen. “Why don’t you and Dante get us a table, sweetheart? We’ll grab drinks.”

Aspen nodded, putting a firm hand on Dante’s shoulder. For a fraction of a second, Dante jerked, as though afraid Aspen were going to kill him. Then he looked up at the alpha who freaking towered over everyone, into those kind, honest eyes, and somehow, his shoulders relaxed just a little. Aspen pulled him in, an arm wrapped around his shoulders, squeezing lightly, and headed for the only remaining empty table.

I took a real breath for the first time since Matt had pulled his asshole routine, and turned back to the bar, looking at Talin. “We want onion rings,” I informed her. “All of us.” Then I glanced around and leaned in, already rethinking the whole taking-what-I-wanted thing. “What brand are they?”

“We make them in house,” she answered immediately. “Hill farm ingredients.”

Did that mean . . . could I have this? Maybe just once, I could try it and see. I glanced over at Linden, and he smiled at me, giving an encouraging nod.

“I’m having new menus printed,” she continued after a moment. “We’re changing some things up, after Linden came to talk to me. Give me a week for the rest of the menu. But the onion rings? You’ve got those now. And on the house. Did you want some of Linden’s cider too?”

“Sure,” I agreed. Or I thought I did. Mostly, I stared off into space, daydreaming of being able to order anything off the menu, as Brook finished ordering for himself, Aspen, and Dante, and then led me over to where the others sat.

I didn’t know why being able to order the food made me feel like more of an adult, a proper member of the pack, but when Linden called the meeting to the-next-best-thing-to-order a few minutes later, something was different. This wasn’t just a meeting about my future that I’d been allowed into. It wasn’t a tiny scrap of freedom I’d hoarded away for myself, hoping no one would notice and rip it out of my grasp. This was a meeting about my future that I had a say in.

13

DANTE

That night was the pack meeting, and to say I didn’t want to be there was a huge understatement. Somehow, I didn’t think it’d be quite the same as the pack meetings I was used to, where Alpha Reid spoke down to the pack from on high, doling out instructions and warnings that we were all expected to follow without question. Still, I was sure there’d be no place for me.

As soon as we got to the bar downtown, Alexis bounced up on the balls of his feet, grinning, and headed over to his cousin’s table. Claudia Wilson sat there, smiling and kicking her heel on the back of the booth under the table, a hand on her round belly. Beside her, his arm around the back of the bench even though he was tucked into the corner so she could come and go as she liked, was an enormous, dark-haired alpha who looked at her like all the stars lived in her eyes.

“Do you want to come sit with us?” Ridge asked, hanging back after his mate.

It was a four-person booth, but I didn’t doubt the couples would budge in close together to make room for me. They’d be polite, or warmly open, but it’d still be awkward because I’d know that they were forcing conversations that’d be more enjoyable if I weren’t there.

That’d tie me to a table full of happy wolves, to a family I didn’t belong to and people I barely knew, and the person I most wanted to find wouldn’t be there.

I glanced around and caught sight of Skye at the bar, standing almost a whole head shorter than the betas and alphas around him.

“Um . . .” Licking my lips, I looked up at Ridge and smiled nervously. “I think I’ll swing by to catch up later. But thanks for the ride.”

He nodded, set his hand on my shoulder, then left me in the middle of the dining room staring over at Skye like a real creeper.

When I worked up the courage and went over to him, though, it turned out I couldn’t even get a bottle of water without something going wrong. And there, spectacularly, was Skye to back me up, brandishing his own water bottle like some kind of weapon as he jammed it into another alpha’s chest.

Soon Brook and Aspen arrived to shepherd us around and take charge of the situation before any more trouble could start.

Aspen was the kind of alpha I should’ve been terrified of. Not only did he look like he could kill me, not only did he have the kind of body that had been trained for that very purpose, but he had justification on top of all that. I’d been there when my father had killed his, and with Maxim Reid dead, he had every reason to take his losses out on me.

But he didn’t. Instead, he looked down at me with something akin to pity, and guided me to the last empty table, letting me slide in against the wall before he took a seat on the other side.

“You okay?” he asked once we were sitting, his hands folded on the table where I could see them.

“I’m fine.” There was a napkin on the table with utensils on top—not a cloth one, but a thick sort of paper napkin. I twisted up the corner while Aspen held my gaze.

“It’s okay if you’re not. The Groves are an accepting pack, but after everything that happened with Brook and my dad—”

I shrank down in my seat. “I know.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t realize I deserved to be shut out. There was no place for me in this pack. I’d pay my debt to them, then be gone. That was the best thing for everyone.

Maybe if I’d stepped in and stopped my father, or done more or acted faster. Or hell, maybe just if I’d more effectively gotten away.

I ripped the napkin and jerked my hand back, smoothing the soft paper back into place at once.

Aspen frowned. “They’ll ease up once they realize Brook’s got your back. I do too. And Linden, obviously. But he’s like Captain America or some shit—always trying to do the right thing even when it hurts him. It’ll help when they see you’ve got us too. Get a couple Iron Mans on your side just to prove it’s not all about good old American concepts of justice.”

“Like . . . the comics?”

He laughed. His canines were awfully long there in the dark of his mouth. “I was thinking more like the movies, but sure. Comics work too.”

Brook and Skye came over then, Brook carrying a tray with mugs of apple cider and a couple baskets of fried onion rings. The Hills really had been over the top with lunch and dinner, but the rings smelled amazing. As soon as Brook spread them out on the table and returned the tray to the bar, I leaned in toward them.

“May I?”

Skye beamed at me, his light eyes squinting with his smile behind his glasses. “Of course. They’re for all of us.”

I snatched one up and stuffed the whole thing in my mouth. A second later, there was a low, blissed out groan right beside me.

Heat rushing into my face, I turned and saw Skye leaning back against the booth, chewing slowly.

“Good?” I asked.

“Incredible.”

Near the middle of the bar, Alpha Grove was calling the pack to order. There was a guy sitting at the table nearest to him, leaning in over his knees like he wanted to plaster himself to the alpha’s side.

That was when I recognized him, the guy from the woods who’d gotten Brook out. Colt, the alpha’s mate.

Alpha Grove started talking pack business, keeping it mundane at first—the holiday gift exchange was coming up for the pack, and they’d have a party here at The Cider House for anyone who wanted to come. He said the Hagen sisters were setting up the candlelight tour downtown that year, and anyone who was interested in caroling should talk to Rowan or Becca Tartt.

Then, he started talking about Sterling. I felt Skye tense beside me and budged over to press against his side.

He kept things pretty mild, saying only that it’d been brought to his attention that there might be an ingredient or chemical in Sterling products that exacerbated the Condition, advising that Ambrosia Grocery, Chadwick’s Grille, and The Cider House were already in the process of removing Sterling food products from their lineup. He asked his pack to be on the lookout, and assured them that he and others were taking steps to reveal and remove the problem.

That, of course, was followed by dozens of questions from startled wolves. Alpha Grove walked a fine line between being firm and assuring them that he was working on solutions, but he didn’t answer much directly. I got the impression, after the whole day spent listening to Ridge, that there weren’t many solid answers yet, just an inkling. But if we could work together with each other and Doctor Grove, we could find not only what was causing the reaction, but why.

Still, Skye kept his head down, and I got the feeling he wouldn’t mind shrinking back from all the soft frowns sent his way, but I was there against the wall, blocking him from hiding. All I could do was bump his knee with mine and meet his nervous smile with one of my own.

“Finally,” Alpha Grove said, “I’d like to introduce you to a guest of the pack. Dante Reid was wounded by the Reid pack in the skirmish a couple weeks ago. He’ll be staying here a while, assisting Ridge with a few matters at the farm.”

There were some dissatisfied murmurs, and across the room, Ridge Paterson lifted his hand and waved.

I froze in my seat, hanging my head. Suddenly, there was a warm weight on top of my hand in my lap. It was Skye, working his fingers into my tightly clenched fist to open it up and lend his support.

Time stopped. I stared at him, and though he swallowed anxiously, he offered me another smile.

I turned my hand over, opening it up so I could thread my fingers through his. His cheeks went pink, and—

“Dante helped me escape the Reids back in August,” Brook announced to the whole room. “I’m glad he’s here now.”

I stared at him, and he looked a little pale, a little worried, but he nodded at me. “I am,” he said softer.

Aspen’s arm snaked around his waist.

Across the room, Colt nodded and caught my eye. “He made sure Brook and I found each other out in the woods. Made sure we got him back without anyone getting hurt.”

I wanted to shrink and disappear, but Skye’s hand flexed on mine, and that was reason enough to stay where I was.

Alpha Grove voiced his support again, but my ears were ringing as he invited the whole pack out for a run through the woods at the edge of town.

“Do you want to go?” Aspen asked Brook.

Brook shook his head. “I think I’d rather just run with you tonight, away from the pack.”

He was probably feeling raw and vulnerable, and I understood why he’d want to be away from everybody just then.

“We could give you a ride home,” Brook suggested, looking my way. Aspen’s face lost its sweet concern and he nodded.

But there I was, sitting on a bench in The Cider House, my hand wrapped gently around Skye’s. I didn’t want to move. I definitely didn’t want to get up and leave him right then, when the warmth of his palm radiated against mine and he squeezed like he didn’t want to let me go either.

“I appreciate it,” I said, “but I think I’ll find my own way home tonight.”

With a furrow to his brow, Brook hung back, but all too soon, they were sliding out of the booth and bidding us goodbye. All the while, I held onto Skye’s hand, just because it felt nice.

When we were alone, I angled toward him. “So, did you want to run tonight? You and I—we could run. Together. If you wanted.”

14

SKYE

Dante wanted me to run with him. And not only that, but he wasn’t looking at me like he was afraid I’d break. And Brook and Aspen hadn’t even hesitated in leaving us alone together, so that was the next best thing to giving their blessing.

The wolf inside me pressed. It wanted to run. It always wanted to run, but it especially wanted to run tonight, with Dante. Probably recognized the difference between him and everyone else, and the way they always treated me like I was made of cotton candy or spun glass. The nervous way he bit his lip, how he slid our hands together, and the way he couldn’t quite meet my eye, well . . . Dante might know I had the Condition, but if he thought I was special, maybe it wasn’t because of my illness.

“I’d like that,” I agreed. I stood, squeezing his hand even tighter as I did.

He bit his lip hard, stepping up next to me and not trying to shake my hand loose. “You’ll have to show me where to go,” he prompted, looking around at the thinning crowd, a few of whom always dumped their clothes right there in the bar before heading out in their fur.

I headed for the door, dragging him along. “It’s not too far. Just out back.” There was a little area in the woods with what amounted to lockers, though there had never been a need for actual locks on them, where people stuffed their clothes and wallets and such, if they were so inclined.

“I don’t run with the pack very often, so I might be a little out of shape on four legs,” I warned as I reached for my shirt. I didn’t want him to expect anything other than my scrawny, pasty self, and seeing the disappointment on his face at the sight of it was an overwhelming idea, so I turned my back as I disrobed as quickly as possible.

Yeah, it was rare for a wolf to be body shy. It was also rare for a wolf to be as skinny as me, so I thought it was an understandable hesitation. I stuffed my clothes in a cubby as quick as possible, letting my wolf ripple over my skin. The tickle of wind running through my fur made me full body shiver as I turned back to see Dante . . . And it was both good and bad that I was a wolf.

Good because I couldn’t gasp and stare quite as pitifully at Dante’s unexpected snow-white coat, so bright and perfect that it almost glowed under the waxing moon.

Bad because in this form, my consciousness and the wolf’s were switched.

Okay, fine, it’s not like there are actually two of us. There’s just one Skye. But on two legs, I could sigh and tamp it down when the wolf demanded that I rub myself all over Dante because he was supposed to be ours.

And on four legs, the wolf could do the same to me when I insisted that we did not do precisely that.

So instead, I practically wrapped myself around him, winding my small body around next to him, rubbing our necks together and mouthing playfully at his jaw.

The Skye in my head was covering his eyes, peeking through gaps in his fingers and praying that Dante’s wolf liked me as much as he seemed to on two legs. Apparently my wolf definitely liked his as much as I liked him.

After a moment, I pulled back and gave a tiny yip. Questioning.

Dante turned and . . . licked my face. And that was it. I threw myself at him, my body barely budging his with all my weight, and he huffed amusedly, reaching out to nip at my ear and deliberately missing it.

I spun and danced back a few steps, tail waving playfully, and he stepped forward. He was hesitant at first, but when no one took any notice of us, he was emboldened, and leapt after me.

And the chase was on. I turned and ran, around trees and through piles of leaves, skidding around and over and under, and keeping just a pace ahead of him. He was probably letting me get away—his stride was so much longer than mine, it wouldn’t be that much work to catch me. But he let me run, and he gave chase. Like he wanted to catch me. Like he wouldn’t mind catching me.

I sped as much as I could, my black coat offering me the one thing Dante’s majestic white didn’t give him—camouflage. He actually lost me for a second in the shadow of one of the giant oaks, and I darted in another direction. It took a moment before I heard him stop behind me, and another before the chase continued.

When he finally caught up a few minutes later, I slowed. Mostly because I wanted to. Maybe a little because I was out of breath.

And he bowled me over, if such a term could ever be construed as gentle. He rolled against me, knocking me onto my back and licking my muzzle, just as careful and sweet in his wolf skin as he was every other moment.

Even Dante’s wild instincts were tempered by caution and kindness. I wanted to roll around in it forever. We lay there in a pile of leaves, tussling, then cleaning the bits of dirt and leaf off each other.

When the pack’s howls went up all around us, I joined in without stopping to consider. Dante froze, looking around, then at me, with worry written in every line of his body. That wasn’t the pack howl he knew, after all. He was surrounded by foreign wolves.

So I pressed my body into his and howled again, as though claiming him in the name of the pack. He pressed back, content to sit and listen to me howl with the Groves. Maybe someday he’d be comfortable enough to howl with us. As one of us.

Not, however, if the Groves acted like complete assholes.

As we discovered when we went back to reclaim our clothes, that was, unfortunately, an option.

The clothes Dante had worn to the pack meeting had been taken out of his cubby and chewed into pieces.

“What the hell?” I demanded, shifting into my two-legged form, ignoring my nakedness in favor of raw anger. “Who would do such a childish thing?” Matt came immediately to mind. Or Skip Chadwick. But half the pack had been through the clearing over the course of the night, and it was impossible to pick out one scent from another, or who was responsible for this.

My instinct said to howl for Linden, that he’d come and help and make everything right.

But when I looked over at Dante’s hunched form, so resigned, almost like . . . like he thought it was to be expected that people bully him . . . I couldn’t do it. I turned and snatched my clothes out of my cubby, shoving my legs into my pants without even bothering to put my underwear on.

“I’ll walk you home,” I told him. I wanted to rail and rage and that—was not what Dante needed. He had been treated badly by my pack, and he didn’t need to hear that I was going to tell Daddy about the bad wolves. He needed me to be me, and be with him. So I plastered on my manic-scarecrow smile and looked around when I got my shirt on. “I guess I don’t actually know where you live, so I’ll follow you.”

Even as I said it, I buried my hand in the ruff of fur around his neck, scratching and holding on for dear life. He didn’t make any effort to pull ahead, just walked beside me, nudging me one way, then another, until we were standing in front of one of Isaac’s rental units. I’d looked at it before I’d talked to Cliff, but it had been a little more than I’d wanted to pay.

I had to bite back a smile at Linden’s super lack of subtlety. Because no one who was owed money turned around and paid that kind of rent for someone in their debt. I hoped Dante had no idea how much rent could be, and followed along.

But we were there. Darn it.

“Do you, um, want to watch some TV or something? Just for a while?” I asked, hopefully. “I’m a little wound up, and I could use a chance to relax.” It was diplomatic of me, I thought, to refrain from saying that I was wound up from what had happened to Dante’s clothes and not the run, but I managed.

He gave a little wolfy nod and led me to the front door, nudging the mat aside with his nose to reveal a key. He took me inside, to the living area. Then he slunk behind the couch and shifted, hiding the lower half of his body behind it. “There’s some food in the fridge if you want. I’m, uh, gonna go put some clothes on. Be right back.”

I poured us both glasses of water from the tap, pulled the carrot sticks out of the fridge, and got back in time to find him coming out of the bedroom in sweats and a shirt.

He gave that adorable shy smile and motioned to the television. “I don’t really know anything about it. I mean, what’s good or anything.”

I grinned. “Well then, you’re in luck, because I am an expert on useless late-night television.”

15

DANTE

The late-night talk show hosts were pretty funny, the laughing audience making it seem like Skye and I weren’t alone in my apartment. But we were, and I couldn’t help feeling like I was taking advantage of his kindness, stepping out of line with what his pack would allow.

Skye wouldn’t be there if my clothes hadn’t been ruined. It wasn’t the end of days or anything, but those were new clothes I’d bought over the weekend, and I hadn’t bought many. I’d worn them to try and make a good impression with Ridge. Now, Skye felt like he needed to keep an eye on me or, what? Some hopped-up Grove alpha would come looking for trouble?

I wanted to tell him I could handle it, that it was just those alphas’ illogical impulses pushing them to protect their pack, and I couldn’t even blame them for it.

Truth was, I didn’t know if I could handle it if the Grove pack decided to turn on me. I didn’t think Alpha Grove would run me out himself, but if every other alpha in the pack wanted me gone, I didn’t think he had any reason to advocate for me to stay.

I wasn’t even sure why I’d want to, except that I had nowhere else to go, and when Skye and I sat on the couch, he pressed against my arm, all warm and firm.

I’d seen swathes of his pale skin that night, even though he’d seemed shy about it. It looked delicate, like he might bruise easy, but it was creamy white and glowed in the moonlight. His eyes as a wolf were every bit as bright as they were when gleaming behind his glasses.

When I thought about leaving him, my wolf whined, scratching at the walls I’d built around it to try and keep the beast under control while the rest of my pack spiraled. But in this one thing, the wolf wasn’t wrong. I didn’t want to leave Skye Johnson behind.

Didn’t want to take him from his pack either.

For a while, we munched on carrot sticks. The water was cool and refreshing, easing the heat of shame that’d built in my chest at having my things ruined—then at not standing up for myself after it happened. It’d always been dangerous to stand against my father, against any alpha, but that didn’t stop the swell of disappointment that I hadn’t done more.

After a while of sitting in silence, pressed against each other, I lifted my arm and draped it across the back of the couch. That was all it took for Skye to breathe in deep. He leaned over, burrowing into the warm spot under my arm, toeing his shoes off and curling his legs up on the couch.

He fell asleep with his head on my chest, the corner of his glasses pressing into me. There was even a little wet spot on my shirt. The run must’ve really taken it out of him.

For a long time, I sat there quietly, watching television with the volume down low, afraid to move and wake him up, considering my options.

Waking him up and taking him home would mean making him walk on his own two feet. It wasn’t too far to the center of town—a walkable distance—but I wasn’t sure exactly where he lived. While I’d been at the clinic, he’d said something about an apartment above a hardware store, but I wasn’t familiar.

Or I could carry him, but clearly, there were wolves in the Grove pack who didn’t want me around. Walking around late at night, especially when everyone was keyed up from the run, was asking for trouble. I didn’t want him nearby if I had to defend myself. Hell, with the Reid pack decimated, there was a chance Skye’d be safer walking on his own through Grovetown than with me.

There was no way I was sending him out there on his own, and if I didn’t decide what to do soon, we were both going to end up sleeping all night on the couch and regretting it.

But I’d only slept in the bed in the apartment for a couple nights. I wasn’t paying rent, so it stood to reason that the bed—the whole damn place—was as much the pack’s as it was my own. There was no reason Skye couldn’t make use of it in a pinch.

Gently, I eased out from under Skye, ignoring his soft protest. Normally, it would have been easy to do, because when I slipped my arm under his knees, the other curved around his back to support him, his head rolled against my chest and his nose tickled my neck, but my stitches had pulled in the shift. The muscles in my shoulder were still knitting back together.

But Skye was light and I managed.

The light in the bedroom was off, but with wolf eyes, I didn’t bother turning it on. There wasn’t much in the room to trip over—my clothes all in the drawers of a dresser, the little nightstand, and the bed itself. I pulled back the bedding and set him down carefully.

“Whaddaya doing?” Skye asked, turning his cheek into the pillow even as I pulled the blankets up over him. I slipped his glasses off and put them on the table beside the bed.

I smiled at his fuzzy dark hair spread across my white pillowcase, his sly pink tongue darting out to lick the corner of his mouth.

“Getting you ready for bed.”

“Don’t need to go to bed,” he protested, but his eyelids barely fluttered before they shut again.

“I know,” I said, carding a hand through his hair just to see how soft it was. I felt guilty for the indulgence, but he sighed happily.

“Dante, stay,” he grumbled when I pulled away.

No way I could do that—not with him half asleep, not knowing what he was saying. I’d spent my whole life watching alphas demand and press advantages, and I wanted Skye to feel safe with me. Heck, I wanted his pack to feel like he was safe with me.

“I’m not going far,” I promised. “I’ll just be in the living room if you need anything, okay? And in the morning, I’ll walk you to work.” I had to go get my stitches out anyway, before heading back to the Hills’ to see Ridge. “We can get breakfast on the way.”

Skye just made a sleepy little sound, something like a huff, and even if he was discontented, he’d soon be back asleep and plenty happy.

I found an extra blanket in the bedroom closet and went back out to the living room. The couch was a little old. I could feel the wooden frame through the cushions under me, but it wasn’t so bad. I tucked one of the throw pillows under my head, turned the television off, and fell asleep to the slow sound of Skye breathing in the next room over.

16

SKYE

Waking up in a bed that smelled like Dante Reid was like a wet dream in progress. I half expected him to show up, say a couple of lines I’d heard in a porno, and . . . well, that was silly. It wasn’t an actual dream, it was reality.

So instead, a few minutes after I drifted to consciousness, there was a soft knock at the door. “Hey, you awake?”

Even then, with me asleep in his bed, Dante was sweet and gentle, barely knocking on the door and keeping his voice low. Gah. Could he be more perfect? He couldn’t be real. This was one of those TV shows where everything feels weird and wrong and the main character gets suspicious, only to find out that they’re actually in a coma and none of it ever happened.

Because no alpha had ever been as attentive to me as Dante Reid, much less a gorgeous, tall, kind one. Heck, maybe Dante didn’t exist at all, and he was the dream. I’d imagined up an alpha as perfect and sweet as Linden, only not twice my age.

“I don’t mean to bother you, but it’s getting on to when you’d be out for breakfast, and I don’t want to make you late to work,” Dante whispered.

Finally, I blinked my eyes open, looking up at where he lurked in the doorway, expression and body language withdrawn, like he half expected me to kick him.

No, Dante wasn’t imaginary. I mean, sure, almost everything about him was perfect, but I liked to think that even at its worst, my imagination wouldn’t invent someone who had so obviously been hurt by people. Someone who hunched in on themselves when faced with anger from strangers, as though used to that treatment.

I wasn’t that kind of caretaker, was I? Like those scary people who hurt their kids so they could be seen as heroic? Not that Dante was my kid, obviously.

Pushing myself up, I reached automatically for my nightstand. My brain pointed out that I wasn’t at home, so there was no reason for my glasses to be where I usually put them, but there they were, right under my hand. Folded up instead of just laid out upside-down, but right where I always kept them in my own room.

“Morning,” I croaked out. “You didn’t have to give me your bed.”

He gave a little shrug. “No big deal. The couch is pretty comfy.”

I’d spent a portion of the evening sitting on that couch, and while it was nice enough, I knew darn well if I’d slept on it, I’d be in pain. “How about I buy breakfast this morning to pay you back?”

I pushed up out of bed, still wearing yesterday’s clothes. I’d have to stop into my apartment to change before heading to the clinic.

He bit his lip, watching me. “You don’t need to do that. I already owe everyone so much.”

Walking over in front of him, I took his hands in mine and smiled up into his gorgeous gold-speckled brown eyes. “You don’t owe me a single thing, Dante. We’re friends, aren’t we? There are no debts between friends.”

That probably wasn’t true. I was sure some friends borrowed money from each other, but I couldn’t imagine either Dante or I in a position to loan anyone anything. My job didn’t pay badly, but I was never going to get rich on it. And Dante was still trying to find his way after his pack had left him floundering with literally nothing. A healthy relationship between us couldn’t include debts.

A relationship.

Was that actually what Dante wanted? It was what I wanted, duh, but that didn’t mean anything.

Still, he took a deep breath and nodded. The smile he gave me was a tiny bit strained, but given what he’d been through in the last month, that was hard to hold against him.

“Let’s go eat, then. And after that, I’m supposed to have the last of my stitches taken out.”

Case in point, those stitches. Not too long ago, he’d almost died of having his insides on the outside, and Linden had had to stitch them back in.

So we went.

The Grille was perfect, as always. Dante even pulled out my chair for me, and I did not almost die of the blood rushing to my cheeks when people turned and looked at us.

Conversation was surprisingly easy between us, given how hesitant he was, and how terrified of rejection I always was. We talked about the run, and how beautiful the Grove valley was, and avoided discussing the incident with his clothes.

I kinda felt like a jerk about it, since someone had wronged him, and I wasn’t urging him to do something about it. Maybe I should buy him some new clothes . . . but no, then he’d just start back into the notion that he owed me something.

When we finished, he even walked me over to the hardware store and waited downstairs with Cliff while I went up and changed.

Given how quiet the two of them were, I was astounded when I returned to find them chatting amiably.

“I’m sure I could order it in,” Cliff was saying. “Might take a few days, but I know just the place that’d have ’em.”

“That would be amazing,” Dante said, a smile on his lips that lit up his whole face. “Let me talk to Alpha Grove about it, and I’ll come back.”

“Of course. Or you can call if you’re busy.” Cliff plucked a card out of the holder on the counter, but instead of just handing it to Dante, he grabbed a pen and wrote something on it. “That’s my cell, in case I’m not in the shop. Call whenever. And if there’s anything else, let me know. We can find just about anything.”

“Thank you so much,” Dante answered, clutching the card to his chest, looking like someone had handed him the key to the city. “I’ll call, for sure.”

They waved to each other as we left, and I felt a little like a pleased mama bear whose baby had just had a successful playdate.

“What was that about?” I asked Dante.

He flushed. “Oh, just, um, the lab work Alpha Grove wants me to do. I’m not sure anyone in town really has a setup for it, so I was asking him about where in town someone might find a few things, and he offered to hunt them down for me.”

What I knew about lab work fit into the tiny, very specifically purposed machines we had in the clinic, and I couldn’t imagine X-rays were going to do Dante much good in looking for chemicals.

Were X-rays even really lab work? Yeah, that was the extent of my knowledge: zero.

So I smiled and bumped our shoulders lightly together. “That’s awesome. Cliff’s a pretty great guy. He’s dating the alpha’s brother.”

I glanced up then to see Linden himself unlocking the door to the clinic. Darn. We’d taken long enough that he’d arrived first. That almost never happened anymore.

When we came in after him, he didn’t frown, though. There was none of the hesitation there had been at first, no looking Dante over like he might be a threat, or worrying over me because I was useless and helpless. He simply smiled at us and said, “Good morning!”

“Hey, boss.”

“Alpha,” Dante answered with a deferential nod.

That, Linden liked less than he’d liked our showing up together. He didn’t frown, exactly, but his eyebrows drew down and together, forming a little line between them, flinching a little. He was still getting used to being called “Alpha,” but I didn’t think that was the problem.

There were very few people in Grovetown who had gotten to know Dante well enough to recognize the way he closed into himself. Fewer still who had done any kind of studying to know what it might mean. Mostly just Linden and me. Well, and maybe Brook, who could have seen in person how Dante was treated by the Reid pack.

Linden wasn’t worried about Dante hurting me anymore. I was as sure of it as I could be. Finally, he’d gotten on board my train. Next stop: dote on this sweet boy until he knows what he’s worth.

He smiled at Dante, waving him over to one of the beds and patting it. “Hop up, and we’ll get those stitches out once and for all.”

Dante went and sat, pulling his shirt off and laying back when Linden told him to.

I wanted to jump in, to bring up the conversation with Cliff, just to make sure Dante advocated for himself, but the door swung open with more force than usual, and I turned to find . . . oh jeez.

“Hi, Mom.”

Her jaw clenched and she pointed back outside. “I need to speak to you. Alone.”

17

DANTE

The door swung open with a bang, and I jumped, Alpha Grove freezing over me with a pair of tiny, sharp scissors. I looked over, and there was a slight woman with dark hair and narrowed eyes, asking to speak with Skye alone.

I wanted to hop up, ask what her business was, but she smelled like a member of the Grove pack, and then Skye said it—“Mom.” I had absolutely no business blundering into that, even if I could’ve gotten off the bed right then.

Skye was quick to usher her outside, and Alpha Grove didn’t comment, simply clicked his tongue against his palate and frowned.

“I should’ve taken these out before the run yesterday,” he muttered.

A shift wasn’t the worst for stitches, but I’d noticed when I’d gotten dressed that morning that they were a little messier than they had been, my skin and muscles moving with the shift the night before.

“You couldn’t have known I’d join,” I said. Anyway, I was a werewolf, and any uncomfortable tugging had been short-lived before it healed.

Alpha Grove gave me a look that said he should have known precisely what everyone was going to do at any given time, but he returned to his work, and I decided to change the subject as I laid back and tried not to squirm under the strange feeling.

“What’s it like, having a mate?”

The question came out of a morning spent with Skye’s scent in my bed, his warm, twinkling gaze first thing in the morning. It was domestic and lovely, tempting me to consider things I’d never thought were for me.

Alpha Grove tilted his head to the side, frowning. “Well, for a long time, I thought I didn’t need one. Wouldn’t find one, either. It was just—I didn’t really let myself think about it.” That was something I could relate to, after all the Reid omegas died and I saw what vile impulses really made alphas tick. “Every once in a while, I’d feel out of control or like I couldn’t protect the people I loved, but it was never bad for me. Then I met Colt, and it was like, hm . . . it was like everything in me needed everything in him.”

I swallowed hard. That sounded like a lot—the all-encompassing sort of feeling that alphas used to justify all kinds of assholery.

“How do you keep from hurting him?” I asked.

The alpha looked at me then, gray eyes swimming with sadness. The corners of his lips turned down. “Well, I don’t want to hurt him, first of all. But even when I slip up, Colt lets me know it. He’s sensitive, when he feels like alphas are trying to use him for something—the family he comes from is full of alphas who use people as leverage. Politicians, mostly.”

With a flinch, I hunched down on the bed. That was exactly what I was worried about—that all alphas everywhere were natural users.

“But as we’ve gotten to know each other better, started building a life together, we’ve gotten better at communicating—me at asking for what I need or want outright, and him at letting me know when he’s feeling insecure about where his place and value in the pack comes from.”

Hell, looking at Colt Doherty at the center of the pack meeting the night before, I never would’ve imagined him being insecure about anything. But that was what it meant to be with someone, right? You were supposed to be able to share your insecurities with your partner, even if you hid them from everyone else.

Alpha Grove’s lips twitched, and he got a wistful, far off look in his eyes. “I don’t suspect Colt would let me get away with it for long, if I were doing something that genuinely upset him.”

“Would Skye?”

He came back to himself, frowning at me. “Would Skye what, let you get away with upsetting him?”

“Or hurting him.”

Alpha Grove took a long, slow breath. I realized, then, what it sounded like, and rushed to add, “Not that I want to. I don’t want to hurt him. Never.”

“But you’re worried you will?”

I couldn’t answer that. Of course I was! That was what alphas did when we took what we wanted—hurt people.

It wasn’t until I’d come to Grovetown that I’d even considered there could be a healthy alpha-omega relationship. Growing up, I’d watched the Condition take over my pack, omegas disappearing one by one as they fell ill and never recovered. I remembered my father locking my mother up, her wasting away in our shabby little house.

Then he’d taken Brook, and that’d been so much worse.

Finally, Alpha Grove stopped waiting for me to respond. He sighed, lowering himself onto a stool between the beds—one of those low, round kinds on wheels. I sat up so I could see him.

“No, I don’t think Skye would let someone get away with hurting him. He’s a patient guy, has had to learn to tolerate a lot, but he knows he deserves to be treated well by people, and has never had to deal with much of the opposite. One thing you need to understand about him is he’s always lived with the Condition, and that’s how the pack has always known him. When his mother was pregnant and she fell ill, my father called the whole pack together to look after her. Nobody thought Skye’d even make it. But he did, and the whole pack felt a swell of pride over having a hand in it. Everybody’s protective of him.”

What he was telling me, between his words, was that if I wanted to get closer to Skye, that could cause me some trouble with the Grove pack. I was a Reid, a foreign alpha, and untrusted.

But Skye was the closest thing I had in this territory to a friend, and there was something else there too—something in the way he let his head rest on my chest the night before, the frustrated look on his face after we’d found my ruined clothes, how he didn’t want to leave me alone.

And dammit, I didn’t want him to either.

“Why are you curious about mating?” Alpha Grove looked up at me.

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I sat there, staring at my hands, chewing on my tongue.

“Do you want to mate Skye?” Alpha Grove asked after a moment.

My breath caught. I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

The man was damnably patient, sitting there and waiting for me to get my racing thoughts together.

“When I was in college, I dreamed about falling for a human. I’d never go back to my pack, and everything would be normal.”

Linden frowned. “But you’re a werewolf.”

I laughed. “Sure. But you must’ve heard about the cases where a wolf bit a human, and the human turned? I know it’s crazy, but I hoped it’d be like that. I’d find someone and they’d change me. I’d never have to hurt anyone. Then I came back to the pack, and it was awful.”

The alpha nodded, his fair brow furrowed with concern, but he just kept letting me lay it all out there.

“The things my father did to Brook—I don’t know how he could stand to do any of it. Brook was so miserable, the whole territory smelled like suffering and sadness, and Dad called him his mate. How could he call someone his mate and then hurt him like that? I know Skye’s not mine, not like that, but just the idea of him feeling a fraction of that pain makes me sick.” It made me want to tear and claw at anyone who’d dare hurt him, but I knew that was an impulse I should tamp down, and fast. The only way I’d find a place here was if I convinced everyone I was utterly harmless.

“That all makes sense, but Brook wasn’t your father’s mate.”

“I know,” I rushed to say. Brook hadn’t chosen to be there, and I knew with complete certainty it’d never been a mating bond at all, no matter what my father’d done to him. “I just don’t know that alphas deserve mates at all, when we’re capable of causing so much suffering.”

For a long time, Alpha Grove sat there and considered me. I could barely hear the sound of frustrated voices out in the parking lot from Skye and his mother, but I tried to tune them out, even though I was sure part of her upset had to do with me.

“Okay,” Alpha Grove said, shifting forward on his stool. “So I’m an alpha, and I have an omega mate, Colt. You know him?”

I nodded. “He was out in the woods the night Brook escaped.”

“The night you helped Brook escape,” Linden corrected. “I love Colt, and he loves me. Should either of us have to sacrifice our relationship because alphas can, potentially, be dangerous?”

“Of course not! But . . . you’re not like my father.”

Lightly, Alpha Grove put his hand on my knee. “Neither are you.”

I froze, staring at him hard. For so long, I’d been desperate for someone to say that, to say that what I was, was fine. Perhaps I wasn’t a violent alpha, capable of fighting for my pack—what my father’d always wanted. But I also wasn’t a selfish, destructive monster either. There was another way to be an alpha, embodied right there in the clinic by Doctor Grove in his hand-knit sweater.

“But I’m his son.” I pushed to see if he would break.

He nodded. “And even if half of his DNA is yours, you get to make your own choices. You wouldn’t make the ones he did.”

He said it so plainly, like he actually believed there wasn’t something vicious and evil and doomed there inside my head, clawing to get out.

“How can you be sure?”

“Because you saw how he hurt people, and you agonized over it, even when he didn’t.”

Okay, so even when I was a kid, I’d looked up at my father and known he was fucked up. Sure, I didn’t have that exact phrase for it at five years old, but I’d known what he did was wrong and bad, and in time, accepted that was who he was.

“In his life, Skye has had a lot of people try to make decisions about what’s best for him without considering what he wants. I’d suggest, if you want to remain friends, that you don’t make that mistake.”

I fiddled with the seam of my jeans, right at the knee. “And do you think, if I asked Skye out, he’d want to go?”

Alpha Grove outright laughed at that, slapping his knee and pushing to stand up. “I think Skye has a lot of regard for you, and you’ll have to talk to him about the rest of that.”

I huffed, throwing my hands up. “Okay. If you want to be all adult about it. I was thinking I could just pass him one of those notes: Do you like me? Circle yes or no.”

Alpha Grove laughed so hard his cheeks turned pink. His hand settled heavily on my shoulder, and his eyes were shining as he looked my way. “You know what, kiddo? I think you’re gonna be all right. Trust your good instincts.”

Somehow, if I could figure out how to make a life here in Grovetown, he just might be right.

18

SKYE

Ah, the clinic parking lot, just where I wanted to have an argument with my mother.

I supposed I should be grateful that it wasn’t the middle of The Cider House, or the Grille that morning during breakfast, but I wasn’t actually in the mood to be grateful. Was I also supposed to be grateful that some bully had only destroyed Dante’s clothes the night before, and not physically attacked him?

“I’m at work, Mom,” I said, turning and leaning against Linden’s SUV. “So I don’t have a lot of time.”

“I am your mother. You’ll make time.” Her eyes were flashing with irritation, and that, I had to admit, was unusual. She didn’t get angry at me much.

Sad? Regularly. So helpful I wanted to scream? All the freaking time. And too darn often, there was the guilt thing. Most days I wasn’t sure if she felt guilty because I’d been born with the Condition, or whether she wanted me to feel guilty about it.

I held up my hands to either side. “This is me, making time. I’m here. But I do need to get back to work. Like right now, Doctor Grove is seeing a patient without me.”

“That Reid creature is not a patient in our clinic,” she spat.

Oh, and that was a problem.

“Dante. And yes, Dante is a patient in the clinic. We’ve been treating him for a while now.” I crossed my arms over my chest, turning back toward the clinic door as though I could just walk away.

It was actually a little tempting.

I loved my mother. There was no doubt of that in my mind. But sometimes I thought we had a really unhealthy relationship. Sometimes, I thought maybe she enjoyed . . . well, it didn’t matter. I was living on my own, making my own money, and my mother wasn’t in control of my life anymore.

“That Reid is invading our territory,” she said, her voice a cold hiss. She pointed at the clinic, and her hand was trembling, she was so angry. “And they tell me you’re helping him. Showing him around, giving away important Grove secrets.”

What the actual fuck?

I stared at her for a moment, but she was serious. Completely serious. “Someone told you I’m telling him . . . Grove pack secrets? Does the pack have secrets? What am I supposed to be telling him, mother? Where the keys to the clinic are? The combination of the lock on my personal safe?”

Her lip curled disdainfully. “Hazel said you ran with him last night. Like some kind of shameless—”

“Please stop right there,” I interrupted, throwing my hands up between us. “There’s literally no way you can end that sentence that won’t be ignorant or offensive. Who I run with is my choice, Mom. My business. I’m an adult, and I get to decide who I spend time with.”

“And you decide to spend time with a kidnapping rapist,” she sneered. “I thought I raised you better than that.”

It was like she didn’t know me at all. Did she truly think that calling my friend names was going to convince me to abandon him? What the heck kind of person did my own mother think I was?

I stepped up right in front of her, glaring into her eyes. She didn’t back down, but I wasn’t going to, either. “I thought you raised me better too. I thought you raised me to not judge people I didn’t know. To give them a chance instead of jumping to conclusions without knowing anything.” I leaned an inch closer, where I could almost feel her breath. “Dante didn’t have anything to do with Brook’s kidnapping. Do you know what he did have something to do with? Getting Brook free. He had something to do with that. Is that a trait you don’t want me to pick up from my friends? Selflessness?”

She snorted and turned away. “He told you that, I suppose? And you believed him. This is why I didn’t want you to leave home, Skye. You obviously weren’t ready. You’re still a child, believing the first man who comes along and takes the time to lie to you.”

“No, Mom. He didn’t tell me he saved Brook. Brook did. You gonna tell me Brook is lying too?”

Finally, she hesitated. “Brook said the Reid didn’t hurt him?”

“No, Brook said Dante didn’t hurt him. Dante isn’t Maxim any more than I’m you, or you’re Barbara Hill.” Okay, yeah, I threw that in there because Barbara and Mother had always been embroiled in a not-so-friendly competition at the county fair for their handmade quilts. But really, just because almost everyone in the Grove pack was good and decent didn’t mean that every single member of the Reid pack had been a monster.

We had our bad apples, and the Reids had had Dante, their single ray of sunshine. Yes, they’d tried to extinguish him, but they had failed. I sure wasn’t going to let my mother try to finish the job.

She continued to look irritated, eyes narrowed and lips pursed in a pout, like she was disappointed the nastiest bits of her gossip had been proven wrong. Finally, she huffed. “He let them hold Brook prisoner for a week.”

“Us too,” I agreed. “We let Brook be held prisoner for a week too, because we didn’t have a way to get him out either.”

Whipping her head around to glare at me, she threw up her hands. “Fine, your new friend is a veritable saint straight from a family of monsters. Is he entitled to our omegas now because he returned the person his father stole?”

I reared back in shock. “Wh-what? What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact that you weren’t at home last night when I went to see you,” she answered acidly, glaring at me. “Talking about the fact that he took you home with him last night.”

And oh boy, did I not want to discuss that with my mother, but I wasn’t going to have her badmouthing him based on a few hours of television. “Someone stole his clothes and destroyed them during the run, so I walked him home. We talked and watched TV. He’s a good guy and I like him and I hate that a Grove bullied him. Nothing happened, Mom.”

Her shoulders uncoiled a tiny bit, but she didn’t immediately throw a counterargument back at me, so I figured that was as close as I would get to winning.

I closed my eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath, trying to let the tension go out of my body, and when I opened them again, I met her gaze steadily. “Is there anything else, or can I get back to work?”

She turned half away, arms crossed and lips pursed. “You’re right, I suppose.” Whoa, what? My mother, admitting she was wrong? There had to be a trick. Some awful proof that Dante was actually a super-villain and kitten-kicker in his spare time. But no, she replaced her pout with one of those falsely pleasant faces and turned back to me. “I’ll leave you be, then. I have to get to knitting circle anyway. I don’t know why I was worried. There are a dozen healthy omegas around. What would he want with you, even if he was trying to infiltrate the pack?”

And with that gut shot, leaving me gasping for air, my mother turned and left me standing there, alone.

What would Dante want with me, when there were so many healthy omegas around?

Nothing.

19

DANTE

When Skye came back into the clinic, he was strangely subdued. His chin was tucked down, his teeth were pressing into his deceptively plump bottom lip. He gave us one bewildered stare, then retreated to Linden’s desk.

The alpha got off his stool. “Everything all right with your mom, Skye?” he asked gently.

But it wasn’t. Nothing was right. That was clear in every rigid line of Skye’s body.

And still, he gave a quick nod. “Absolutely. Everything’s fine.”

Skye opened a laptop on the desk, avoiding looking at either of us. After a moment, Alpha Grove’s scowl disappeared. “You headed back to the farm today, Dante? I can give you a ride.”

I went for my shirt, tugging it back over my head. “I’d appreciate it, Alpha. Thank you.”

When I got off the bed, I drifted toward the desk Skye was hunched over. He looked even smaller than normal, and he wasn’t a big guy to start with. Something had hurt him, and I wanted nothing so much as to curl around him like he’d done to me on the run, make sure things started to look better.

But he didn’t even glance up at me when I came over.

“See you soon?” I asked.

“Yup.” I saw the tendons in his neck when he swallowed. When I took another breath, I smelled his distress. My wolf said we shouldn’t leave, whined in my head, but our alpha was there at the door, waiting.

“Okay, good.” That sounded pathetic to my own ears.

The rest of the day, I talked to Alexis. He didn’t let long silences lapse like his mate did, but he didn’t seem to mind doing most of the talking either.

He told me about how he and Ridge had come to Grovetown and why, about Claudia’s pregnancy and the conditions under which she’d started showing symptoms.

The next day, Skye wasn’t at the Grille in the morning, and after I ate breakfast alone, I headed over to Claudia Wilson’s house for the first time.

She was Alpha Grove’s second, and an omega. I could just imagine my father’s scoff at hearing that, but I thought that sort of balance was probably good for a pack.

And maybe I was being a little starry eyed about the Grove pack, but it seemed to me that Linden Grove was the perfect pack alpha, so if this was a choice he’d made, it was the right one.

We’d made arrangements the day before. Alexis and Ridge were living with the Wilsons while they got their new house fixed up at the edge of the Hill farmland, but Ridge would be at the farm that morning. I expected Alexis would’ve followed him out, or he’d be taking advantage of some of the last milder days to work on his podcast.

But when I rang the bell and the door opened, Alexis was right there, grinning at me. “I’m crashing this party. Claudia got pie for breakfast.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Pie?”

Alexis grinned. “Don’t worry. Rowan’s pies are fine. No creepy chemicals in there.”

He led me in to sit in the chair across from their couch, then disappeared. He and Claudia came in with little plates of warm pie in their hands. He handed me one.

Claudia was a short omega, but round as I’d ever seen, working toward her third trimester if she wasn’t already in it. She wore flannel pajama pants and a sweatshirt, her hair pulled back and a broad smile on her face when she considered her plate. She sent that smile at me, for a second, but it was clear I came second to pie.

“Thank you for having me,” I said before I took a bite.

She waved her fork in the air. “It’s nothing. Should’ve had you over sooner. Introduced myself. I’m Claudia. You’re Dante.”

“That’s a normal introduction,” Alexis muttered to his plate.

She stuck her tongue out at him. “That’s Alexis,” she announced. “Now that introductions are out of the way, he and Linden tell me you’re working on figuring out what Sterling’s doing to cause the Condition.”

Even Ridge didn’t say it that bluntly, but I had a feeling that if you were an affected omega, that earned you the right to be pretty pissed at the big-ass corporation poisoning you.

“Yes. He said Alexis’s parents are bringing samples from a Sterling farm nearby.”

Claudia wrinkled her nose, making a face like she could still remember how just being near the farm had taken her down.

“Good. It’s time we got things moving. I know the pack’s been through a lot lately, and Linden has too much on his plate to do this on his own. It works out you showed up when you did, Dante. So, how can I help?”

I had her take me through her pregnancy—when she’d started showing symptoms, what cravings she’d had early on.

She reached over and squeezed Alexis’s hand. “I hate to think what might’ve happened if Alexis hadn’t offered to come out here and help me, or if Ridge hadn’t followed right after.”

Alexis’s face colored and he shrugged. “You’d have been okay.”

She gave me a skeptical look. “Sure. Except loads of omegas aren’t. I want to think Sterling doesn’t realize, but it’s just . . . so little actually affects werewolves. None of us were ready for this. The Groves are lucky to have a doctor, but werewolves have never had much need of professionally trained doctors, you know? Just somebody to pop a bone back into place so it doesn’t heal wrong.”

I nodded. Claudia and Alexis had come from another pack, not quite like my own, but rural and rustic and not at all prepared to deal with the Condition either.

“And you haven’t had any other symptoms since you cut out all Sterling products?” I asked.

Claudia and Alexis shared a look. “No. None. It’s damn hard to do, but my mate got in a tear right after we found out. But Sterling stuff is in everything. Processed sugar and flour. Pasta. Half the juices in a chain grocery store are from Sterling or one of their subsidiaries. As much as I want to say the solution is all werewolves cutting out Sterling products, it’s not that easy. Our pack is pretty self-sufficient. We have a local grocery store, restaurants run by werewolves who are sensitive to the things that affect us and willing to change for the good of the pack. And it’s hard to keep track of it here. Somewhere, like a city or a less organized pack, it’d be a full-time job for every omega, just keeping an eye out. It’d mean less omega independence, fewer job opportunities with the flexibility and resources we’d need to stay healthy. That’s better than, you know, fucking dying, but it’s not great.”

It wasn’t. We couldn’t put the burden of all that on omegas alone, but I couldn’t imagine alphas like my father and Cain offering the kind of support they’d need—and definitely not without turning into domineering assholes about it.

“So what I need to do is isolate the compounds affecting omegas, and we have to get Sterling to remove them. That’s not going to be easy.”

I remembered the interview I’d watched in the clinic with the Sterling CEO. He’d been so defensive, I’d have to have hard proof, obtained legally. Thankfully, it sounded like it wasn’t going to be hard to drive out of town and purchase Sterling products, even if I started my work straight from Ridge’s old family farm.

“No,” Claudia agreed, “it’s not, but whether or not they mean to do this, it’s wrong. They need to fix it.”

I nodded. “I’ll do my best to help.”

Her grin returned. “I knew Linden picked the right guy for this. He’s got a good eye for that.”

I looked down at my pie, took a few more bites to finish it off. Meanwhile, she shifted around on the couch and pulled out a backpack.

“I was glad to hear you were coming by this morning too, you know.” She nudged the bag across the floor toward my chair with her foot. “Got some stuff for you. I heard you had some problems with the pack on the run.”

Oh. Linden hadn’t mentioned that.

I opened the bag, and there were folded up clothes inside, the tags still on. “You really didn’t have to—”

She cut me off with a huff through her nose. “In this pack, we take care of our own.”

All I could do was stare. “I’m . . . not.”

Claudia blinked at me, her brow cocked like she didn’t believe me. “Okay.” She held out the bag anyway and shook it in the air between us, until I had no choice but to take it. “But right now, you’re here, so you are. Linden gave me your sizes, and I had to go to the store anyway. We’re nesting.”

“Nesting,” Alexis echoed, wiggling his fingers in the air. “Want to see the nursery? It’s, like, almost done.”

So, I didn’t have a lot of interest in babies or nurseries, but it wasn’t lost on me that these two were inviting me deeper into their home, trusting me in a space meant for the most vulnerable member of their family.

I had to remind myself that the baby wasn’t there yet, but it still seemed to me like a degree of trust I hadn’t earned, and acceptance I longed for.

“I’d love that, yeah.”

I LEFT Claudia Wilson’s in a wonderful mood. I’d spent the day with two Grove omegas, no alphas standing there glaring down at me like it was only a matter of time before I bared my fangs and attacked them.

That left me with a light of hope. Even if half the pack hated me, even if it would be almost impossible to convince them I didn’t pose any kind of threat, I could navigate this. A few pranks and some growling from Grove alphas were nothing to the real threat of violence I’d faced in my own pack.

There was a chance I could wiggle my way into a space here in Grovetown, and that brought back my conversation with Linden from the day before.

He’d said to trust my good intentions, that Skye had regard for me, whatever that meant. I’d never find out if I didn’t try.

I went by Ambrosia Grocery on the way to the clinic. The grocer there, Isaac, was a middle-aged omega with brown hair, barely long enough to start to curl. He helped me pick flowers from his small display, and there were plain vases there too.

Sure, I’d never been any good at this kind of thing, but I had seen movies. In them, guys brought flowers when they wanted to ask someone out.

I got to the clinic, and it was like no time at all had passed. I was surprised to find Skye there alone, hunched over his laptop, just like he’d been when I’d left the day before.

When I came in, he glanced up for a second. His cheeks went pink, and he looked back down at his computer. “Oh. Hey.”

“Hey.” I let the door swing closed behind me. So far, I’d spent as much time in this clinic as I had in my apartment. It wasn’t weird to let myself in and wander over to the desk, except for the way Skye’s gaze flicked up to me and back down again a few times.

Maybe he was just nervous. I was carrying flowers, basically giving myself away before I said a word.

“So, um . . .” I looked down at his computer. “Am I interrupting?”

Skye swallowed and shook his head. “Nothing important.”

He snapped his laptop shut, but even when he looked up, he didn’t meet my eyes. Instead, he stared at the flowers, those flushed spots high in his cheeks, sweeping down his long, thin neck. His skin would be warm there, a place where I could nuzzle and kiss and—

One thing at a time.

“I wanted to ask if you might want to go out sometime? Like, to dinner. It seems like we’ve got breakfast on lock, but we could, you know, check out one of the other mealtimes. See what’s up with that.”

“Oh.” Skye swallowed again. His dark lashes fluttered against his cheeks as he blinked too fast.

My heart beat hard. Weird, how I felt like I could hear it all the sudden.

Finally, he said, “I’m not sure we should . . .”

Skye looked up for just a second, but I don’t know what showed on my face. Shock? It wasn’t like I thought I was such a catch, but he’d . . . I’d never gotten the impression that he didn’t want to be around me.

It took a few seconds for his words to sink in.

He didn’t think we should go on a date. He didn’t want to go on a date with me.

Of course he didn’t. I was a Reid, and I had absolutely no business sniffing any further into the Grove pack than I already had. I owed them—didn’t mean I belonged. Skye had been kind, but he’d finally come to his senses. He needed to focus on his own pack.

“Right. Of course. I completely understand.”

I stood there with the vase in my hands, not sure what to do with it. I wanted to apologize, but I wasn’t sure what to apologize for. Maybe I’d gotten the wrong idea, but even now, I didn’t think so. Something had changed.

Truth was, I didn’t understand a thing. So when Skye finally looked up at me, blinking his wide, blue eyes behind his glasses, and asked, “You do?” nerves soured my stomach.

In the end, what mattered more than understanding the particulars was that Skye wasn’t interested. Even if he had been interested once, he was allowed to change his mind. At the very least, I understood that.

“I do.” My knee bumped the far side of the desk when I stepped closer. Skye was still staring at me, but I shifted a pile of magazines out of the way and put the vase down there. “But I still want to thank you for . . . everything.”

“Oh, yeah. Thanks. Those are really pretty.” He pushed his glasses up by the bridge of them and leaned in to smell them.

“You’re welcome. I guess I’ll see you around then?”

“Yeah. Probably.”

“Okay. Bye.” Everything was stilted and awkward, including my hasty retreat to the door of the clinic, swinging open as Linden returned from afternoon rounds.

He nodded to me. “Dante.”

“Alpha.”

I skirted past him—couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Knew if I lingered, they’d see something I didn’t want them to see, some emotion I wasn’t ready to name, maybe ever.

20

SKYE

Flowers.

He bought me flowers.

They were perfect and gold and pink and I wanted them like I’d wanted nothing else in my life, ever.

But why had he gotten them for me? Why not Harmony Morgan or, or . . . I don’t know. Just someone else. Someone not useless and sick and pitiable.

No one wanted a sick omega. No one wanted a partner who might waste away and leave them with lifelong control issues. No one wanted a drain on their resources that couldn’t give back.

No one wanted an omega for whom every heat was more danger than fun. On the single occasion I’d had a heat in the previous year, my temperature had spiked dangerously high. I’d ended up in the clinic, which was oh-so-sexy.

Every alpha wanted to have heat sex with their omega partner under constant medical supervision, I was sure.

Linden: You two doing okay? Need any more lube because your defective omega doesn’t produce enough slick?

Dante: Sure thing, doc. Everything under control.

Me: (incomprehensible mumbling because of the thermometer in my mouth.)

Yup. Super sexy. Not at all a nightmare.

Linden hovered in the doorway for a long time after Dante left, watching him walk away—probably from the last time he’d ever talk to me—before turning and looking at me. And at the flowers. And then at me again.

It was subtle, the way he sniffed the air, subtler than Dante had been, but I knew Linden. I wondered what pitiful smelled like. To me, it always just smelled like Skye, and I was too used to it to even notice anymore.

I figured that in his usual Linden style, he’d let it go, let me figure out my own issues. Linden was good at only sticking his nose into people’s private lives when it was obvious they couldn’t handle it themselves. Like when Mom and I had gotten into a shouting match in the clinic about her “right” to be present for my checkups because I was “living under her roof.”

He’d taken me aside that very afternoon and offered me the job.

I might have been a little in love with him at the time.

Mom had freaked out and gone over his head to his father, who had been the pack alpha at the time. She’d insisted I was incapable of holding a job, and demanded that the alpha rescind the offer, or order Linden to rescind it.

Now that he was dead, a lot of people in the pack complained about how old-fashioned and terrible Aspen Senior had been, but never in my life would I forget that day. The way he looked at her, then looked me over, head to toe, like he was assessing my value. I had the desperate fear that he would see what she did, a weakling and invalid who needed to go home and stop playing at being an adult. Finally, he’d asked me, “Think you can do the job he wants you to?” All I’d been able to muster was a nod, frantic and breathless and hopeful.

He’d looked at my mother, shrugged, and said, “You’ve got to let them go sometime, Marian.” Then he’d nodded to me. “I’m sure you’ll do fine, young man. Don’t let Linden overwork you. He’s distractible, that boy.”

And Linden was, sometimes. Not in a bad way, but in the way where he’d get to working and forget about lunch. I’d set up a new schedule for him within a week of starting, poking and prodding whenever he got engrossed in something instead of continuing with his other duties, and for almost a year, everything had run smoothly.

Because I was good for something, no matter what my mother thought. I was good at my job.

One of the waiting-room chairs fell into place next to the desk chair I sat in with a squeak, and Linden dropped into it.

“Did you need me to move?” I asked, bracing myself to stand.

He reached out and wrapped a hand around my wrist, holding it gently in place. “Skye.”

“What?” That came out a little sharper than I’d intended, maybe. A little more defensive.

I was good at my job.

“Those flowers are lovely,” he said, out of nowhere.

I nodded, but I didn’t look at them again. They were beautiful. The most beautiful. They were going to sit on the counter of my kitchenette until they dried completely out, withered and browned, looking like just the kind of mementos old maids in the eighteenth century had kept, to remember when they’d had half a chance at a future with another person.

I was worth something.

Suddenly, Linden’s hand was on my cheek, wiping at tears with his handkerchief. When had I started crying? Ugh, just like the weakling everyone thought I was.

“Dante gave you flowers?” was all he asked.

I nodded, but what could I say? How could I explain? Hell, how had I gotten from a beautiful boy giving me flowers to crying like a little kid with a skinned knee?

“What did he say?”

I let myself fall forward onto my alpha’s shoulder. “He asked me to have dinner with him.”

“And you said . . . ?”

“I said we shouldn’t,” I mumbled into his chest, but it came out sounding more like gibberish.

Knowing me as he did, Linden didn’t even have to ask for clarification. “And why did you say that, when you obviously wanted to go?”

Ugh. All I could tell him was the truth, and he’d go all Linden, and tell me I was as good as anybody, and other beautiful, sweet, kind words, but that was because Linden loved me. He didn’t want to see that I was sickly and weak, and what alpha really wanted an omega like that?

When I didn’t answer, he didn’t immediately prod, just held me against his chest, petting me like I was a cat. When I couldn’t take the aimless kindness anymore, I turned so my mouth wasn’t muffled by his sweater and sighed. “Mom’s right. No one wants an omega like me.”

There was a tiny hitch in his motions, just a slight increase in the tension in his arm, before he went back to the smooth, rhythmic motion. “Skye, you know I have the utmost respect for your mother and her struggles, right?”

“Of course,” I agreed. He’d been taking care of her occasional Condition episodes for as long as I’d been alive. He was always perfect and professional and respectful to her. I didn’t think he liked her too much, but he was very good at his job, both as doctor and as alpha.

“Then I’d like you to remember that, when I say that sometimes, your mother is an incredibly selfish person, and frankly, not a very nice one.” I tried to pull back, but he kept right on petting me. “I know, I know. I’m supposed to be nice. But Skye, if she told you no one wants an omega like you, she was either completely wrong, or intentionally lying.”

“She worries about me,” I answered, and it came out tiny. Like I actually was a small child again.

“Maybe,” he said, halfheartedly. “Or maybe she wants you to need her. And every step you’ve made in the last year has taken you farther and farther away from her.”

I was probably pouting, but I couldn’t help it when I immediately shot back with, “I can see her house from my living-room window.”

His chest shook under my head. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

“Everyone else leaves home. I mean, almost everyone. It’s normal. Their parents don’t . . .” And how could I explain it? The all-encompassing, absolutely smothering love of my mother?

“I know. And I can’t explain why your mother is how she is, but she’s struggling with the fact that you are an independent adult, Skye. And dating a boy? Well, that’s a huge step, isn’t it? If you go falling in love, moving in with someone”—I scoffed and opened my mouth, and Linden held a finger up to stop me—“If that happens, Skye, then she’ll have to really accept that you’re never going home. She doesn’t want that, and she’s willing to hurt you to stop it from happening.”

“Dante doesn’t want—”

“You like Dante, right?” His tone was light, like it was a real question. I just glared up at him, because it wasn’t a question worth answering. He nodded after a moment. “You respect Dante?”

“Of course.” How could he even think that I didn’t?

He smiled down at me, running a hand through my hair, and all my righteous indignation faded away at the expression. “Then I think that maybe, you should let Dante decide what he wants in an omega. Because offhand, I’d say he likes kindness. And intelligence. And ruthless efficiency while running an office. And you know, I just might know an omega who fits that description.”

“You think I should have said yes?”

“I think you should have said what was right for you. Not for your mother.” He leaned forward and kissed my forehead, unusually paternal for Linden. It was nice. Safe.

Unlike real life.

I sighed, letting my head fall back against his soft sweater. “He won’t ask again. He was nervous, and I said no.”

“There’s a pretty easy way around that, you know.” I glanced up and met his eye, and he waggled his eyebrows. “I’ll bet you wouldn’t even have to buy him flowers.”

21

DANTE

Alexis’s parents were due to arrive in Grovetown on Friday afternoon with a bag full of Sterling cabbages.

Without a car of my own, going out to the Hill farm in the morning usually meant I spent the whole day there, until Ridge could get away and drive back into town, so I’d had to commandeer some space in the farmhouse to try and figure out the Condition.

“Do you think there might actually be something to the whole apple theory?” I asked, chewing the inside of my cheek as I looked over the produce spread on the card table Mr. Hill had set up in the kitchen corner. It was hardly lab space, and when he’d pulled it out of the cellar, I’d expected it would bother me more to be shoved to the edge of an active kitchen.

Instead, Barbara Hill was there to bounce ideas off of, and she proved to be good company for it.

At the stove, she laughed, hands on her round hips as she turned toward me. “Where’d you get the idea apples have anything to do with it?”

I shrugged, glancing past the fruits and vegetables I’d collected. The day before, I’d gone by Ambrosia Grocery and asked Isaac to help me pick out his most popular local produce.

I still couldn’t verify with complete certainty that diet was the critical factor in whether or not an omega developed the Condition. It came on during periods of high stress or physical change, when hormones or endorphins were working in overdrive—basically any time omegas’ brains squeezed out all those chemicals en masse that kept them alive and functioning properly.

“Just something Colt Doherty mentioned . . .” I scowled down at the apple at the center of the table. It was true that the Groves had enormous success controlling the Condition, and they ate more than the average number of apples, per capita, but correlation was not causation.

I’d run into Alpha Grove and his mate the night before, after picking up take-out from the Grille. Colt had been nice, quick to squeeze my arm and say it was good to see me again. His smile was perfectly manicured, like he’d practiced it in the mirror. It set me on edge, but his words and behavior were all genuine. That was something I was still getting used to, the wolves in the Grove pack meaning what they said and giving without thought of what they’d receive in turn.

Colt had jokingly asked me if I thought apples were the cure for the Condition. But if they were, it was hard to imagine Skye ever suffering symptoms.

Barbara picked up her wooden spoon and went back to stirring her plum jam. “Okay, so tell me—what qualities do apples have that might affect something like the Condition?”

For the past couple days, while I’d been waiting on fresh samples from the Menas, I’d been trying to figure out what made the Groves, particularly, so resilient. They weren’t the only pack that’d had better luck than most, but no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find anyone who’d done better.

That didn’t mean they weren’t out there. When werewolf packs had a resource they wanted to protect—healthy omegas—or a weakness they didn’t want exploited, they shut down. Didn’t talk about it. Kept to themselves and closed the world out until they’d recovered or were too desperate to stay silent.

But I had to work with the information that was available to me then, and it was that Sterling Corporation seemed to be using some product that affected omegas, and since the Grove wolves had only recently started purposefully cutting out their products, they had some other advantage.

It’d be a hell of a lot easier if that were diet than some special quality of evolution in this pack we’d have to try and replicate and share.

I sighed, stepping back from the table and pacing toward the counter where she worked. “Well, apples are high in fiber. If the Condition is gastrointestinal, that could make any solution in Sterling products easier to digest. Werewolves naturally tend to prefer foods high in protein and crude fats. Compared to humans, most packs tend to eat fewer fruits and vegetables. Obviously, modern diets have changed a lot, but the Grove pack does seem to have a more balanced diet, on average, than other wolves.”

“Okay, so, fiber?”

I huffed, spinning around and pacing back toward the table. “But the symptoms don’t fit. I’ve never heard of a case of the Condition that works that way. I mean, Skye can eat a greasy pizza and it wouldn’t necessarily make him puke. It’s just . . . eating well seems to keep him from having as many episodes.” Thinking about Skye was hard, but no matter how I looked at this, it came back to him.

Even if he didn’t want to be more than friends, or even be friends, if I could help solve this, my effect on his life would be generally positive.

Sort of.

Hopefully.

“So, you’re saying it’s not dietary?” Barbara asked.

I groaned again. “No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Apples have any other qualities you want to consider?” I had no idea how she sounded so calm when I wanted to tear my hair out, but she’d been a mother. She’d lost her daughter to the Condition, and seemed interested in helping me put it all together.

At least, she tolerated it. Ford had stopped coming into the kitchen while I was working.

“Well, the gastrointestinal system is complex. Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions.”

“Or?”

“Well, polyphenols. And apples are high in antioxidants. Both can help with heart health. I guess the Condition affects blood pressure, leads to fainting sometimes. And, uh, acetylcholine is typically higher in people who consume apples regularly. That promotes brain health and memory retention, lowers the risk of Alzheimer’s.”

I was going around in circles, but that was better than staying still. Throwing myself into my work was easier—way more comfortable—than thinking about my place in the Grove pack and how I didn’t really have one. Or worse, how Skye had avoided looking at me the last time I’d seen him.

I’d started eating breakfast at home, not wanting to scare him out of his usual activities or make him think I was stalking him or something. Wide berth, that was the way to go here.

I’d been pacing a few minutes when I realized Barbara was staring at me. “Hon, you’re talking way over my head. But come here, taste this, and tell me if it’s sweet enough.”

Another sigh, and I wandered over to her side, where she held a wooden spoon up to my lips. The jam was bursting with sweetness. I moaned, leaning my hip against the counter.

“That’s incredible.”

Barbara grinned. “I’ll send you home with a jar.” She was always handing me stuff, jars of food or tins of cookies for me to take home. It was sweet, and the farm was becoming the place in Grovetown where I was most comfortable now that I didn’t have the clinic.

At the very least, I didn’t think anyone there hated me.

Outside, gravel crunched under tires, and I heard Alexis bounce off the porch, calling out to his parents.

I raised a brow at Barbara. The Menas were going to stay in the guest room at the farmhouse until they got settled in Grovetown. They used to live beside Ridge’s old family farm, the one Sterling had bought from his parents. It wasn’t safe out there anymore, so they were coming here, and I’d gotten the sense Ridge was kind of nervous about it.

Barbara and Henrik, weirdly, seemed delighted to share their home, and that wasn’t something I was ever going to get used to with this pack. They were just so . . . generous.

It was weird. Hard to entirely trust.

And damn if I didn’t feel like an asshole for not trusting it.

But Ridge and Ford were out in the barn that afternoon, so Ridge didn’t have to show his face right away. Alexis brought them in, and Mr. Mena held out a grocery bag that was tied up tight.

Still, not tight enough when I considered the toxic chemicals that might be in there, ruining kale or lettuce or whatever leafy green thing he’d plucked out of the farm for me.

“Take it you’re Dante?” he said to me, nodding at the table full of samples. He held the bag away from himself and angled even farther from his wife and son.

I stepped up and took it from him. “Yes, sir. Dante Reid. Pleasure to meet you. Thanks for this.” I lifted the bag a little, then looked to Barbara. “Could I borrow a freezer bag or something?”

A thin plastic grocery bag wasn’t going to do anything to make me feel safe wielding this thing, and even when I’d put it in the freezer bag, I felt tainted holding onto it.

That was all base, unreasonable emotion. Even omegas weren’t affected so quickly, and this idea that I was holding an evil vegetable was, probably, over the top.

Still, I grimaced at Barbara. “I should probably find somewhere safer to work . . .”

With a wave of her hand, she dismissed me. “Sure. We’ll move you into the barn tomorrow.” She smiled at Alexis and his parents. “I hope you came hungry. Dinner’ll be ready soon. Dante, you put that bag on the porch and help set the table.”

Thank god someone was there to tell me what to do, because right then, I wasn’t sure. But with an order from her, well, I might not know where the forks went, but Alexis and I figured it out, pushed the card table out of the way, and there I was, eating dinner with what felt like a whole damn pack gathered closely around one big, full table, once Ridge, Ford, and Henrik came in.

22

SKYE

Dante wasn’t at the Grille the next morning, which wasn’t too shocking. He’d come to eat with me, and then I’d rebuffed his attentions when he asked me out. There was no reason for him to keep showing up at the Grille at the same time every morning.

Ugh.

What had I been thinking?

Oh yeah, that no one would want me. I sat there, glaring at my boring, dry breakfast sandwich. The same one I ate every day. Even if Dante did like me, even if he did want to have dinner with me, how long would it be until he got tired of me eating the same ten boring healthy things?

I dropped the sandwich on my plate.

This was ridiculous. Dante didn’t care what I ate. My diet wouldn’t make him unhappy. My health issues were mine, and yes, if we got serious, then he’d have to deal with them in a way, but they were still mine.

If I believed he was the kind of person who would like me less because I was living with the Condition, then why did I like him at all?

Because he wasn’t.

Just like my issues weren’t Dante’s, my mother’s issues weren’t his either. Dante was the only person I knew who didn’t have any baggage related to my health. Oh, he had his own, that was obvious enough. But I didn’t like him less because of it, did I?

I grabbed my sandwich and took another vicious bite. Nope. This wasn’t on Dante at all. He’d never been anything but sweet and kind, and he’d brought me flowers.

“Gonna kick your breakfast’s ass, Johnson? I dunno, I think it might be able to take you down.” Skip Chadwick joked as he sauntered past me. His mother stopped at the counter and frowned at him, hands on her hips, but she didn’t say anything.

And for some reason, that was just too much.

“I wasn’t thinking about the healthy breakfast your mother’s establishment made me, Skip. I was thinking about jerks who stick their noses in other people’s lives like they get a say in them.”

He spun to stare at me as though I’d just grown horns, mouth dropping open.

And sure, maybe I was overreacting, but damn it all, a breakfast sandwich was exactly the kind of thing that might be able to take me out, if our growing suspicions were right. It was just the kind of thing that might have killed thousands—hundreds of thousands—of people just like me in the last twenty years.

It wasn’t fucking funny.

“How about it, Skip? Think someone like that could take me down in a fight? Want to give it a shot?”

He took a step back, away, almost stumbled into the counter. He actually looked nervous. Of course, that was because no matter what I did, no one would give him the benefit of the doubt. I was sickly little Skye, so he couldn’t win a fight with me. Even if I broke my finger by punching him too hard, he’d end up the bad guy when people retold the story.

That returned a small measure of my usual calm, but heck, I’d already picked the fight. I might as well use Skip’s terror for something. So I continued to glare at him. “Someone thought it’d be funny to pick on Dante after the run by ruining his new clothes. Whoever it was should apologize and replace them, but if he’s not wolf enough to do that, at the very least, he’d better keep his distance from now on.”

“Whoa, whoa, dude, that was not me.” He frowned, eyes darting around to take stock of who all was watching him get humiliated, and straightened. “But come on. Guy’s a Reid. After what they did to us, you really gonna defend him?”

“Dante hasn’t done anything to this pack. He wasn’t part of the attack against us, and the only connection he had with us before that was when he helped Colt save Brook.” I slowed down at the last, enunciating each word. I hated to use Brook’s pain, but it was the best way to get people to acknowledge that Dante was everything good in the world.

“If he didn’t attack us, then why was he at the attack?” Lane Daniels asked, sitting halfway across the restaurant and not even pretending he wasn’t listening.

I turned my back on Skip. “He challenged their alpha, to try to stop the attack from happening.”

And suddenly, I wasn’t anyone’s focus. They were all looking at each other, in varying degrees of surprise and disbelief.

“That what he says?” Skip asked, suddenly beside me. And he looked pouty, petulant, but strangely enough, he looked like he already knew what my answer would be. Like he was saying it just to give me the opportunity to answer.

Huh. Maybe there was hope for Skip yet.

“No. He’s mostly tried not to talk about it. Even if they’re awful, they were his family, and most of us don’t like to speak ill of ours, no matter what they do. But Aspen says the only scent on him when they found him was Reid. That a Reid attacked him. Not a Grove.” I gave a good glare around at everyone, just for good measure, and barely refrained from stamping my foot like a kid. “So you should all be nicer to him. He’s done nothing but good for this pack, and some of us might owe him a lot, since he’s why we didn’t have to fight to get Brook home. I love you all, but . . . but do better.”

I pulled a ten out of my wallet, dropped it on the table next to my half-eaten breakfast, and left.

Linden didn’t say a word about my clear distraction when I got to the clinic, or how I had to smell like anger and who knew what else, just smiled at me and got to work for the day.

When Skip showed up at noon and wordlessly handed me a bag with my usual salad in it before slipping out as quietly as he’d come, the alpha raised a brow, but kept his thoughts to himself.

Finally, I broke. “So where’s Dante?”

One corner of his mouth turned up. “Not Skip?”

“Gross, no.”

“He’s still at the farm. They’re trying to set him up with some lab space, but we don’t really have anything like that lying around, so we’re making do.” He pulled up the extra chair and dropped his own lunch on the desk across from me, sitting down and leaning back. “Three people asked me this morning, between Grove House and here, if it’s true that ‘that Reid boy’ was trying to stop the pack war, and not fighting us.”

That was impressive, since the clinic and Grove House were literally right next to each other. Still, I shrugged. “He was.”

“He was,” Linden agreed as he pulled a sandwich out of his reusable silicone container, setting both halves on top of it. “So I told them as much. At least one of them seemed a little put out about it, but they didn’t question whether it was true or not.”

“Good. Maybe they’ll stop harassing him.” I continued to glare at my food. It really was a good salad, though, so I couldn’t be too mad at it.

“Maybe so.” We ate in silence for a few minutes until Linden added, “I suspect he’ll be more excited about the other thing you’re planning, though. He’ll probably be over at the farm until after dinner, if you want me to drive you over.”

And darn him, I did. I sighed and nodded. “If you don’t need me this afternoon.”

“I think I can manage one afternoon on my own.”

And that was how, half an hour later, salad rolling around in my stomach, I found myself getting out of Linden’s SUV just outside the Hill farm. I took a deep breath, and behind me, Linden said, “It’ll be fine, Skye. It’s a formality. You already know the answer.”

Well, I hoped I did. What if he’d changed his mind? What if the dramatic omega was just too much work?

Nope. Not focusing on that.

Instead, I nodded, and marched up the porch stairs to knock on the door. Barbara Hill answered with a great big smile, never quite as serious about her competition with my mother as Mom was. “Hello, Skye. How are you this afternoon?”

“Fine, ma’am. I um. I was wondering if Dante is here?”

“He sure is. He’s set up out in the barn.” She started to point, then paused, frowning. “Let me bring him to you.”

“Oh I don’t want to interrupt him—”

“Don’t be silly, sweetheart,” she chided, opening the door wide. “I’ll get you some tea, and then he can come in and talk to you. It’s high time he took a break anyway, and I’m sure he doesn’t want you out there with”—a dozen horrific images went through my head about what he might be doing. Kissing someone else? Going feral? Fighting with someone? Dismembering bodies?—“the Sterling cabbages.”

Cabbages. Naturally.

Still, I didn’t want to be anywhere near possibly poisoned vegetables, so I let her lead me to the kitchen, pour me a glass of tea, and go out to get Dante. It was sweet tea, which my own mother had raised me to despise, so I cringed a little at the taste, but I sure wasn’t going to tell her that. It wasn’t that bad. It was just . . . a lot.

She wouldn’t be using Sterling food, would she? Not knowing what everybody thought was going on.

I didn’t have much time to think about it, because it only took her a few minutes to come back, leading a confused Dante. He saw me sitting in the kitchen and froze. He didn’t curl into himself like he did sometimes, so I decided that was a good sign. Even nervous, even after I’d been kind of a jerk, he wasn’t scared of me.

My courage wasn’t going to hold out, though, so I hopped up as they approached, wiping my palms on the sides of my jeans and taking a deep breath. “Hey, Dante.”

“Hey, Skye. How are you?”

“Terrible,” I admitted.

Barbara Hill’s concerned eyes flicked over me, likely searching for symptoms of the Condition, but Dante’s gaze didn’t stray from mine for a second. “I’m sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do?”

I almost grinned in triumph. It was perfect. “Yes. There definitely is. You can pretend that the other day never happened. I mean, except for the flowers. Those were pretty great.”

He chewed on his lip and started to look away, but no, that wasn’t what I wanted either.

“No, no, not like you didn’t do it. Like, um, more like I wasn’t being weird. Like, maybe, if I said yes instead.”

His eyes shot back up to meet mine, full of surprise. “Like if you said yes?”

“Yes. Yes, like . . . would you have dinner with me sometime? Tonight? Tomorrow? Anytime, really. I don’t have any plans. Not, like, ever.” Yeah, okay that was probably over the top and more than a little sad, but he knew me. He’d seen how full my social schedule wasn’t. He just didn’t know how willing I was to fill it completely with him.

The sweet smile that bloomed on his face was even better than the flowers. “I’d like that. I’d like it a lot.” Then he paused, biting his lip. “You’re sure? You don’t have to. I know I’m . . . a Reid.”

“That’s not a choice you made, Dante.” I stepped forward, almost into his space, and was only reminded of Mrs. Hill’s existence when she took a step back, bowing out of the room with a huge smile on her face. I ignored it. She wasn’t that gossipy, and even if she was, I didn’t care who knew. “You’re a good person, and that’s a choice you make every day. That’s what defines us. Not the things we’re stuck with.”

Hmmm, my brain said in Linden’s voice, popping into my head at the most inopportune time ever. Is that anything like you having the Condition?

And darn it, he was right too.

23

DANTE

Like it cost him nothing, Skye let me off the hook for being a Reid. Weird, how I’d thought that was why he hadn’t wanted to date in the first place.

But I had my own preconceptions about my worthiness, and I was beginning to realize that Skye might have some of his own. Maybe it didn’t matter who I was when I’d asked him out, he’d have hedged and said no anyway.

It was hard to believe that with those big blue eyes, he might not have dated much. But he’d said that he didn’t get out a lot, and Alpha Grove said everyone was protective of Skye. That could be sexy, maybe, but it didn’t sound to me like the sexy kind of protective. More like the mollycoddling kind that built up boundaries instead of tearing them down.

In any case, there Skye was, standing in Barbara Hill’s kitchen, asking me out, and I was grinning like a kid on Christmas.

“So, tonight then?” I asked. “I’m free tonight.”

I was free always. Nobody in Grovetown much wanted to have me around. Well, outside of the Hills’ farm. They didn’t seem to mind me much. Barbara and Ridge were always there to talk, and they never let me leave without a full stomach and a pat on the back.

Even Alexis’s family was plenty pleasant—so pleasant I didn’t get why Ridge was a little extra quiet around them, but what did I know about in-laws?

All of a sudden, I was thinking of Skye’s mom and the sharp glare she’d thrown around the clinic the other day. Okay, so maybe I got why Ridge was nervy.

Already, Skye was nodding. “Tonight’s great.”

“Or you could go now,” Barbara said in a sing-song voice from the living room. I frowned, but she kept right on going. “Not like you’re going to solve all the world’s problems in one afternoon in a barn, and you don’t want to make Henrik give Skye a ride back to town, then have to turn right back around and take you in a couple hours, do you?”

I met Skye’s eye, raising a brow at him. She had a point. I didn’t want to inconvenience Henrik, and, well—

“I’m off the rest of the day,” Skye confirmed with the quick flash of a smile.

“Okay, yeah. That’d be great. I mean, I need to swing by my place first. Maybe shower. Do you mind waiting for me?”

Skye shook his head. “Not at all.”

In the other room, we heard the huff of Henrik pushing out of his seat, so that settled it. I was leaving work early to spend the rest of the day with Skye.

He rode with Henrik in the cab of the truck, but I insisted on riding in the back. In the barn, I had hand sanitizer, and there was a spigot in the yard outside, but if I’d gotten anything from the Sterling produce on me, I didn’t want to risk getting too close to Skye.

Henrik dropped us off at my place, and once I told Skye to make himself at home, I went straight back to the bathroom to shower.

Knowing Skye was sitting out there waiting for me, I stripped quickly and took a perfunctory, thorough shower. When I got out, I wrapped a towel around my waist and picked up my bundle of clothes to put in the hamper.

But my apartment was small—the front living space and kitchen, a short hallway with a bathroom, and the bedroom across from that. The bathroom shared a wall with the other side of the duplex.

I walked out into the hallway and heard the soft sound of a caught breath.

There, on the edge of the couch, Skye sat, pink in the face, pushing the glasses up the bridge of his nose.

And I was standing in the hallway, the next best thing to naked, while he stared at me.

With a smile, a tiny nod, I went into the bedroom. But that felt . . . wrong somehow. I wasn’t ashamed for Skye to see me. Wasn’t ashamed to be around him.

I dropped my dirty clothes in the hamper and stepped back into the hallway. When I walked into the living room in only my towel, Skye sat up straight, his eyes enormous behind his glasses. He was chewing on his lip, staring not at my eyes, but at my chest.

“Sorry I took so long,” I muttered, and the words felt fuller in my mouth, like I was talking different, deeper, pushed by feeling instead of logic. “Thanks for waiting.”

“Oh, yeah.” Skye got up, but that only brought him closer to me. He tipped his head to the side, a frown on his face that was anything but dissatisfied. “But don’t you still need to—” He waved at my chest, but his throat worked as he swallowed. After a second passed, his fingertips traced across my skin.

“Get dressed?” I leaned into his hand, and his palm flattened, his fingers flexing on my pec. His tongue darted across his lips. His gaze was still down, on where his pale hand connected with my shower-warm skin, so I had ample opportunity to search his face. His eyebrows were thick and as dark as the mess of hair on his head. It was soft, but a little chaotic, like he combed his hand through it often.

His lips were pink and full, like his warm flesh strained below the skin, not dry and cracked despite how cold it was getting outside.

“I’m going to,” I muttered, leaning down. His breath tickled my lips, and finally, his eyes met mine. They were so fucking blue, like . . . like sky. Shit. I was supposed to be cleverer than that, right?

“Yeah?”

“Uh huh.” He wasn’t pulling away, just staring up at me. Slowly, his fingers began to move over my skin again, and I never wanted him to stop. His touch was light but tickled. I wanted to growl and push into him, but—

Date. We were going on a date.

I wasn’t just any alpha, beholden only to their instincts and desires. I wanted Skye to trust me. And his pack—I needed their tolerance, at the very least. Because I didn’t intend to play fast and loose with Skye’s heart.

“Yup. I’m going to get dressed,” I confirmed. “But first—”

I leaned in, angling my head down to catch Skye’s soft lips. He made a muffled sound against my lips, but let my movements lead his. I kissed him slow, just teasing while I touched his pale cheek, his hair that was so much softer than I’d imagined.

When I broke away, his chest was rising and falling with quick breaths. His eyelids were shut, his lashes fluttering against his cheeks, but he was wearing a beautiful smile.

“I wanted to do that at the farmhouse,” I said. But the truth was, I’d wanted to do that for days. Maybe longer. Maybe the first time I opened my eyes and saw him sitting there in the clinic.

“Right. And now? You want to do it again?”

I laughed, pulling him in for one more quick kiss. “Again. And probably some more later. But I do want to take you on that date. Wherever you want to go. And it’s so early, we have time for a movie too. You up for that?”

He opened his eyes and gazed up at me, the look in his eyes making my heart clench. “Sounds perfect.” With a heavy sigh, he stared back down at his hand on my chest. “So I guess you should get dressed. Maybe.”

24

SKYE

The theater was ancient and small, and never played movies until they had been out for months, but it was still a treat. Not that it was expensive, I simply didn’t go on my own. Mostly because it felt a little . . . sad. Who goes to the movies alone?

Well, people who really liked movies and didn’t have anyone they wanted to go with, I supposed. I liked TV better, most of the time. People on TV usually had smaller problems, closer to my scope of interest. More “what am I going to do with my life?” and less “how can I save the whole universe from destruction?”

A year before, I never thought I’d be embroiled in a fight bigger than the one with my mother over my own independence.

Funny, how things changed, first with an out-and-out pack war with the Reids, and then . . . well heck, we kind of were in a movie, weren’t we? It was us against a giant corporation, with the fate of every omega in the world hanging in the balance.

Hopefully no one would expect me to do much more than cheer from the sidelines. I could be an excellent cheerleader, as long as there were no complicated moves involved.

Although actually, with the yoga Linden had put me onto for strength training, I could do the splits. Maybe I’d be a great cheerleader!

Dante slid his hand into mine as we walked into the theater, twining our fingers together and watching me from beneath lowered lashes, probably half expecting me to jerk my hand away and wipe it off, horrified to be touching a Reid in public. Well, he was in for a surprise. I squeezed his hand and leaned against his shoulder.

He turned to look at me, biting his lip, and nodded in the direction of the snack counter. “They have anything on your diet here?”

I gave the counter a dubious look. I’d never gotten anything, even on the unusual occasion I went to the theater. As a kid, because my mother was a penny pincher, and then, well, there had been my diet. All that sugar and grease and . . . I shook my head. “Maybe just water. Oh, but you can get something if you want. I’d never stop you—”

He was already shaking his head. “I know you wouldn’t. But I don’t really need it. Mrs. Hill stuffs us all full of food every chance she gets.”

So we got bottles of water—ooh, fancy—and headed into the darkened theater.

I hadn’t watched a lot of the superhero movies from the last ten years, so I suspected I was missing a lot of important things, but the movie was nice enough. The heroine was beautiful, and despite her diminutive size and the rampant sexism of the villains, she kicked everyone’s asses with ease.

More importantly, Dante kept my hand clasped in his the whole time, rubbing his thumb softly over the sensitive skin of my wrist, his knee pressed lightly against mine, so I could feel the warmth of him through the fabric. It was all I could do to bother paying attention to the movie at all. Just those points of warm pressure were my whole focus, body and mind.

I was only half paying attention, so when a villain jumped out at the heroine, I startled, my heart hammering in my chest. Dante bumped his shoulder against mine, and gave my hand a little squeeze, and I breathed out a laugh.

But my heart didn’t stop hammering, and after a moment, I started to feel disconnected, like my head was floating away in the dark, and my fingers started to tingle.

Oh no.

No.

Not now.

I leaned over to whisper to him, “Be right back,” before stumbling up the aisle out of the theater, into the bathroom across the hall. The whole time, my heart kept pounding, worse and worse, until I could feel it everywhere, and the blood rushing in my ears was all I could hear.

I almost fell into the toilet, bracing my hands on the cubicle walls at the last moment, but that was as lucky as I got. My whole body spasmed, and everything I’d eaten since breakfast made a sudden reappearance. It wasn’t much, but that didn’t stop my stomach.

It went on for long minutes, my body getting rid of everything it could, and then just heaving painfully when it was all gone, as though trying to find any last traces.

When that ended, I pressed my sweat-sticky face against the cool metal of the cubicle wall and sat there on the floor, panting and trying not to cry. I was still dizzy every time I tried to move, my heart beating too fast and extremities tingling.

Blood pressure too high, my time with Linden told me. Stress or symptom?

I hadn’t had an episode this bad since the state fair, and if my experience was right, it wasn’t going to get better soon.

Call Linden, my common sense ordered.

But . . . I was on a date.

I’d never in my life been on a date. Or asked on a date. Or anything more than seen everyone around me date. If I called Linden, then it was over. And would Dante ever ask me out again, when we managed half a movie and that was it?

Why would anyone ask me out again after this?

My shoulders shook, and it made my head pound, too hot and too heavy. That made my stomach cramp up again, not finished with its torture, but when I leaned forward, my sweaty hand slipped against the wall, once again almost sending me for a header into the toilet.

Then, again, there was nothing but my stomach heaving, and trying not to fall down. Damn my stubbornness, why hadn’t I called Linden when I’d had a moment’s respite?

Too late now.

25

DANTE

I was having a normal date—an entirely normal date—with a werewolf. That wasn’t something I’d ever thought was even possible, given werewolf dynamics and interests. Okay, so my pack hadn’t had a lot of options for dating—no restaurants or cozy pack taverns or movie theaters. It’d been all about growling and claiming and, well, I’d figured that was just what werewolves did.

But there Skye was, holding my hand in a dark movie theater, a secret smile on his face. So, the pack I’d grown up in was toxic, but maybe I could still be what I was without being as crappy as they were.

There was an edge of tension in Skye’s voice when he excused himself, but I wondered if I was imagining it—expecting things to go wrong simply because that was what I was used to.

I stayed in the theater, mostly empty on a weeknight, and tried to watch the movie. It was impossible. Minutes ticked by, counted on the dimly illuminated screen of my prepaid flip phone.

Skye never came back, and my immediate thought was that I’d done something wrong and he’d run off.

But that was silly. If I’d made him uncomfortable, he’d have told me. Nothing he’d done had given me any reason to worry.

So I shoved that down and went out into the lobby. The carpets there were worn navy, and had big, bright shapes with what looked like confetti sprayed across the pattern of them. Now, though, the carpet was faded and threadbare, and there was no sign of anyone in the lobby but a teenager behind the snack counter.

I followed Skye’s scent around to the theater’s bathroom, and the second I walked into the short, tiled hallway to the men’s bathroom, I smelled the acrid stench of vomit and sweat.

The door to the stall where Skye had collapsed was flung wide, his shoes visible against the floor. He was kneeling over the toilet, his hands braced on the seat, his knuckles stark white ridges where he gripped it.

“Skye?” My voice shot up in alarm. I raised my hands, unsure what to do. When I touched his back, his whole body convulsed, gagging over nothing.

He looked back over his shoulder at me, sweat on his brow, his lips trembling and slick. All he did was groan and drop his head against his arm.

My whole life, I wouldn’t forget the haziness in his eyes, the absolute dread and misery when he looked back at me.

I had to do something, but my fingers had gone numb and cold. I’d been there when Mom had started to have her fits, collapsing on the floor and seizing. She’d died.

And an icy spear went through my chest at the thought of Skye suffering and knowing there wasn’t a single thing I could do to help.

Only, it wasn’t down to me alone. Skye had a pack. The Groves.

“It’s okay,” I assured him, rubbing a firm hand against his back, touching his heated neck with my cold fingers. “It’s going to be fine. I’m calling Linden.”

IT WAS ONLY ten miserable minutes before the alpha marched into the shabby bathroom, but they were the worst ten minutes of my life. Skye’s eyes filled with tears, and I couldn’t tell if he was sad or embarrassed or in pain.

All three, likely.

Between heaving, he gasped out, “I’m sorry,” over and over. Didn’t matter how many times I told him it was fine and he had nothing to be sorry for and all I wanted was for him to focus on breathing and being okay, he was still miserable and shaking.

It was a relief to step out of the stall and have Alpha Grove there with his firm, steady hands to take control of things.

He passed me an empty popcorn bucket and helped Skye to his feet. There, he checked his pulse and tested his temperature with the back of his hand while I held my breath.

“I brought my car. Can you walk?” Alpha Grove asked gently.

With a hard swallow, Skye nodded. When they walked past me, Linden kept his arm around Skye’s waist, and Skye grabbed the empty bucket from my arms, holding it in front of himself as he trudged through the lobby to where Linden’s silvery SUV was parked out front.

I’d like to say I’d never felt more useless than I did following them to the car, but truth was, it was pretty on brand for me. Still, I slid into the back seat and nobody said a bad word about it.

Back in the clinic, I tried to give them their space. It was incredible, how much of this was by rote for them. Skye knew just where to go, where to put himself and what Linden was going to do. And, despite the terseness in his expression, Linden went through taking care of him with quick efficiency. He was worried about dehydration and Skye’s blood pressure.

Soon, Skye was lying in a bed, propped up by pillows and the bend of the thing itself. He had an IV in his arm, a sensor on one of his left fingers to monitor his pulse, and a cup of cold water on a table stretching across the bed.

“Did you eat anything weird at the theater?” Linden was asking. “Even a piece of candy.”

Skye scowled his way. “Nothing off my diet. I had breakfast at Chadwick’s, like normal. Then you saw lunch when Skip brought it. We were going to eat after the movie.”

Okay, so I needed to get over myself and ignore the prickle of jealousy at the idea of someone else bringing Skye food.

Probably.

Maybe.

Or I could let my wolf have its way and growl Skip into submission.

“I had a couple sips of tea at the Hills’,” Skye continued with a grimace at me, like he was worried about getting Barbara in trouble.

At that, I had to shake my head. “Not possible. Barbara and Henrik have been really careful about Sterling products. And Ridge—he’s there so much. No way he’s letting it sneak in.”

“Even just a little,” Alpha Grove said, frowning.

“What about the water bottles?” I offered instead. “We got water at the movies.”

Alpha Grove’s scowl deepened. “Just water?”

I nodded. “But—honestly, it makes more sense than Barbara using Sterling sugar to sweeten her tea.”

Skye sighed. “He’s right. After losing her daughter . . . Linden, there’s just no way.”

Linden pinched the bridge of his nose, no doubt overwhelmed by the prospect of having to worry about the water we drank. “Okay,” he said after a second, dropping his hand. “I’ll look into it. You all right for a few minutes?”

Sucking in his cheeks, Skye gave him a nod. He didn’t look a whole lot better, but he’d stopped throwing up. He was pale and tired now, his hands a little shaky when he lifted them to make putting on monitors easier for Alpha Grove.

Linden left us to make some phone calls outside. I probably could’ve eavesdropped, but there Skye was, staring up at me with a pitiful, chagrinned look on his face. I had plenty to worry about right here in front of me.

I pulled one of the chairs off the wall and went right to the side of his bed, then sat down and slipped my hand, palm up, under his.

“So, this is a complete disaster.” Skye laughed, ducking his head. For once, no color rushed into his cheeks.

I shook my head while I rubbed my thumb across the edge of his palm. “Nope. Not even a little bit.”

He scowled, disbelief in every line of his pale face. But his blue eyes were shining and, sure, a little bloodshot. Didn’t matter. Still gorgeous.

“I’m being serious,” I insisted. “This was one of the best days I’ve ever had. A guy I have a crush on asked me out. I got to hold his hand. I mean, okay—maybe you have a point. Not everything went perfect. In my perfect world, you’d feel amazing all the time. But tonight didn’t have to be perfect for me to enjoy being with you.”

“Seriously?” Skye’s hand flexed. He slipped his fingers between mine, and I squeezed back softly.

“Seriously. Ten out of ten, would date again.”

“And if I get sick?”

“Then we handle it. I want to be there for you. I’ll get better at not just standing there like a jerk. Maybe Alpha Grove can give me some pointers.”

He chuckled. “You should really call him Linden. He’s still pretty squirmy about the whole pack-alpha thing.”

I blinked. Hard to imagine an alpha being uncomfortable with any degree of power.

“Okay. Maybe Linden’s got some tips.”

Skye’s smile was blinding in the stark-white circle of his face. “Then we’ll have a redo.”

“Absolutely. But I’m pretty sure a date doesn’t end until one of us goes home, and there’s a TV right over there . . .” I tipped my head toward the corner of the room, then looked slyly back at him. “Want to watch something?”

26

SKYE

Linden was gone for way more than a few minutes, but given how crappy things had been looking there for a while, I didn’t mind too much.

Dante had found reruns of an old TV show that was a mystery and a comedy, and we were both utterly engrossed within a few minutes. Just like in the theater, he held onto my hand, his own warm and dry compared to my clammy palms. Our shoulders were pressed together instead of our knees, but it was almost as nice, when my heart slowed a bit and my stomach stopped cramping.

In some ways, it was nicer.

It wasn’t just Dante on a date with me, it was Dante completely accepting me, as I was. Sad, broken little Skye, and he wasn’t annoyed and pacing and complaining that I’d ruined our date. He wasn’t just plain old gone. He was grinning at a joke one of the main characters had made, shaking his head. “Imagine being that cocky,” he said with wonder, and I had to stifle laughter, because it was true.

Maybe Dante and I were a lot of things, some good and some bad, but cocky was none of them. He was constantly afraid of doing and saying the wrong thing, walking a line, scared of straying because he was convinced he was surrounded by people waiting for him to screw up and prove he was just like his father. It made for a careful, nervous alpha.

Me, I was all over the place. Maybe cocky would have been my natural state, if not for being sick. I was smart, and I knew it. And people confided in me sometimes, so I had more information than the average nineteen-year-old did. But the constant reminders of my illness had always kept any ego in check.

It was hard to think that much of yourself when a strong wind could knock you over. Yeah, it was ridiculous. Having the Condition wasn’t a moral failing. I hadn’t done anything to deserve it. Linden reminded me of that regularly.

But there was just something about the way people talked about the Condition. The way they treated sick people. Like they thought I must have done something to make myself sick, that they themselves hadn’t done. That way I deserved it, and they deserved to be well.

I had a feeling I could write a book about the psychological phenomenon, if I ever got to go to college.

But unfortunately, as Linden and I had determined, every distance-learning program we’d found at universities of repute required minimum terms of residence on campus every year. Time I could never manage, if I couldn’t even go on a date in my hometown, the safest place in the world for a werewolf with the Condition.

Just as the main character shouted the big reveal, who the villain of the episode was, Linden marched back into the clinic, a bottle held high.

He didn’t come closer to the bed, just stood there in the doorway, bottle of water held aloft. “Water,” he spat. “Sterling-brand water.”

Dante’s eyes narrowed, and for the first time since I’d known him, I caught the bitter-astringent scent of his anger. “You talked to everyone in town about not carrying their products anymore. I know you did.”

Linden clenched his jaw and nodded. “I did. And Jerry and I are going to have a nice long talk about this, but apparently he got rid of forty pounds of Sterling-brand popcorn, but didn’t think to even look at the bottled water.”

“It’s just water,” I pointed out. “They don’t even put ingredient lists on it, do they?”

“They do, actually,” Linden corrected. “But it’s not like this stuff says, ‘Ingredients: water and werewolf poison.’ ”

“But it should,” Dante said. It was a silly thought, but he didn’t sound belligerent or angry anymore. He sounded . . . thoughtful. “And that’s all it should say,” he added, when Linden looked over at him, head cocked and one eyebrow raised.

I tried to clear my still-aching throat, and both of them spun to face me when I coughed. I held up a hand to stop them from running in—especially Linden with his bottle of werewolf poison. I managed to choke down a drink from the water Linden had given me—the clinic’s water came right from the bore behind Grove House, so there was no worry about it being tainted.

Linden set the bottle of water down on a table in the waiting room, washed his hands, and came over to help me lay back down after taking my drink. Then he looked at Dante. “Why is that important?”

Dante’s eyes had never left the bottle, like it was a snake sitting in the waiting room. Or a revelation.

Finally, he turned to look at us. “They put it in the water.”

“So they’re not just trying to kill us, they’re arrogant about it?” I wasn’t sure why that was a good thing, but Dante seemed downright pleased.

“But don’t you see?” he asked, turning back to both of us, excited. “That’s exactly what this means. It says what’s in it, right? It says water.”

“Yes,” Linden agreed, then his mouth fell open. “That’s a lie. And they have to know it.”

“So it’s not some preservative or pesticide they’ve thrown in for a valid reason that’s having an unexplained side effect.” Dante kept glancing between us and the water, like he was afraid it was going to disappear. “There’s no way it ends up in water by accident.”

“That does seem kind of unlikely.” I squinted over at the bottle myself, like suddenly I’d be able to see the poison in it, like it would be green and bubbling or have a skull and crossbones on it. But that was just it, wasn’t it? It seemed completely innocuous, something as simple and pure as water. No one would ever look at a bottle of water and think, “That’s probably not okay on my specialized diet.”

“Even better,” Dante said, turning to us with a grin. “They put it in water.” When I turned to him, clearly confused, he grabbed my hand and gave it another squeeze. “It’s going to be so much easier to find now. There are two ingredients in the bottle, like Linden said. I don’t have to wade through all the chemicals that make up snack cakes or vegetables. The arrogant assholes put it in water.”

He looked like he was having a genuine moment of joy, and even in my misery, it took my breath away. His eyes, always so nervous and cautious, were lit up like a kid on Christmas, or like I’d just offered him the world on a platter.

“Well, all of them are in the back of my car,” Linden told him, turning the stink-eye on the bottle. “There are a few hundred of them, and Jerry handed them over the moment he realized what had happened. So you’re going to have plenty of test material now.”

Dante bit his lip, trying to suppress his smile, and turned his worried gaze back to me. “If we could take them up to my lab, that would be great, but, um—”

“You can go do your science,” I said, waving my hand at the door. “I mean, I get it. It’s a breakthrough. It’s important.”

He shook his head and sat down next to me, just as the theme song for the TV show started playing again—apparently it was a marathon. “It is. But you’re more important. And it’ll still be there tomorrow, when you feel better.”

Linden gave a little sigh at that and stepped back from the side of the bed. “I’m gonna go ahead and drive all this up to the farm and leave it with the rest of your equipment,” he told Dante. He looked like he, too, was suppressing a smile, but it was aimed at Dante, like he was a puppy who’d learned how to do a trick. “I’d rather not have it here in town. And I’ll stop in and warn the Hills about it.”

He went over and grabbed the bottle as Dante took my hand once again, leaning his head on my shoulder and turning to watch the television.

Linden looked back, met my eye, glanced at Dante, and then . . . he winked at me. Huh.

Well, whatever anyone else in Grovetown thought, at least I knew for sure that one person was on Dante’s side. And mine.

27

DANTE

When I went to the farm the next day, I felt better that Skye was in the clinic. If anything happened to him, if he had another relapse, there was someone around who knew what they were doing. My growling wolf said I ought to be there, looking after Skye, seeing him safe. But if my panic at the movie theater had proven anything, it was that in a real-life crisis, I wasn’t much good.

Even if I didn’t ruin everything I touched, the best thing I’d done in that theater had been to call in Alpha Grove. I hoped, over time, I could get better, figure some of it out on my own, but . . . but maybe it was okay for me to lean into my strengths and let Linden and Skye see to theirs.

There was plenty of work at the farm for me to throw myself into to avoid worrying too much about the things I’d done wrong, particularly when there wasn’t anyone there trying to make me feel like I had screwed up.

Strangely enough, that wasn’t because I was alone. Ridge had taken the day off farm work to join in in the makeshift barn laboratory. He said it was no problem, since there wasn’t as much to do with the changing season. Ford could look after the animals and show Mr. Mena the ropes.

Really, I thought it was more likely that Ridge wanted to see this through as much as anyone. It was his theory we were testing, and he wanted to make sure he wasn’t wrong, hadn’t dragged the pack toward a conflict with a major corporation for nothing.

When it came down to it, Ridge had more laboratory experience than I did. We worked easily together, both quiet, both focused on our own tasks.

We isolated the chemical solution present on both Sterling produce and in the water bottles. It meant hours spent titrating, boiling flasks on hot plates, testing properties. When Ridge left for lunch, he came back with snack cakes and boxes of granola and dry breakfast cereal. Even baby formula.

It was in all of it. Everything we tested, and by the following afternoon, Ridge’s shoulders were beginning to sag.

I stared blankly at all the food laid out on the worktable between us. “How—why? Why would anyone bother to do this?”

Ridge was only a couple years older than me, but when I looked into his face, he seemed aged from just that morning. “I don’t know. I can’t—When we first saw them spraying it on the fields, I thought it was a pesticide. It’s almost like chlorpyrifos, but it’s not. That’d affect humans. It’s so . . . specific.”

He dug out his phone, and I peered over his shoulder to see him looking up the CEO of the Sterling Corporation, Jedediah Sterling. Like most multimillionaires, he had his own Wikipedia page, complete with his birthdate, approximate net worth, and familial connections that were a matter of public record. He had a wife, a son and a daughter, a handful of grandchildren. But there was nothing there to signify some latent hatred of werewolves.

I wanted to think this was all a huge mistake, but there wasn’t a good excuse for this kind of prolonged illness, caused by a particular agent, that only affected werewolves. If it were an accident, it wouldn’t be in the bottled water. It had to be purposeful.

Ridge shook his head, slipped his phone into his pocket, and set his shoulders back. “Well, we need to know how it affects werewolves, why it’s just us, and just omegas at that. You’re into biology, right? Do you know what’s different about werewolf and human physiology—what’s different about omegas?”

“I can . . . try and figure it out.” I knew a little—as much as any werewolf with a year of a biology degree and a higher-than-average curiosity about what made alphas tick might know, anyway. But the pack needed this, and it was time for me to prove my worth. There was nothing to do but bridge any gap between my knowledge and real understanding. Maybe with what we’d learned, Linden would know where to go from here.

He gave a short nod. “Good. That’s . . . It’s plants, for me. Some husbandry, but when it comes to people, werewolves, that’s beyond what I know.”

“Yeah, well, they need you here. And the alpha brought me in for this. I can talk to him in the morning. He’ll . . . know more than I do.”

Ridge’s lips twitched. “For sure. Seems to know a lot, our Alpha Grove.” His hands settled on his hips. “You want a ride back to town?”

I sucked in my cheeks, thinking about Skye still stuck in his bed, how easily he’d been sent there by an innocuous bottle of water.

With a sigh, I shook my head. “I think I’ll stay here. Do some more research. Double check there’s nothing we’re missing.”

Ridge nodded. “I’ll leave my laptop with you then. You have my number if you find anything.”

“I do.”

I knew I should’ve gone home with him, needed rest, but with my brain whirling so fast, there was no way I could just let this go. There was something in our physiology that made us susceptible, that made sure Sterling was pretty damn comfortable exposing human consumers to this poison that’d decimated omegas.

If only it’d come for alphas, it wouldn’t have seemed so damn insidious. It wasn’t that all omegas were perfect angels, but I was sure werewolf packs would be better off with fewer alphas. We weren’t all good. Hell, I was still struggling to accept the handful of decent alphas in the Grove pack, and they seemed like aliens come to make me question my assumptions, rather than the norm for alpha wolves across the country.

It would’ve been better for this shit to take out alphas. What would packs be missing out on then? A bit of leadership, sure, but also a lot of violence. I couldn’t believe a knot was worth all that much, even if some people liked the feel of one.

But that was it—if I could’ve taken Skye’s illness from him and felt it myself, I would’ve. He didn’t deserve all that, to struggle and be in pain and—

And I knew he’d give me the world’s biggest frown if I’d said a foolish thing like that to him, but I couldn’t help feeling that he deserved better and . . . and I deserved whatever I got. Not a damn thing about this was fair.

That really hit home when I walked out of the old barn as the sun was sinking below the tree line to see Ford there, elbows on the fence of the goat yard, glaring off at the sky.

He’d barely spoken to me around the farm, but Ridge said not to worry about it—Ford just didn’t like talking.

Now, that twitching muscle in his jaw made me think he might have something to say. I wandered over to his side and leaned against the fence too. “You okay?”

From the corner of my eye, I saw his jaw flex again. He sighed through his nose, looking down at the hoof prints below the fence. The goats were already in for the night, so they couldn’t stand there bleating for attention. Slowly, he shook his head.

“I want to hunt down whoever’s responsible for this, tear them to pieces,” he admitted in a low, soft voice that sent a shiver right down my spine.

Barbara had told me she’d lost her daughter, Ford’s mate, seven years before, to the Condition. Now, all this work we were doing, however good it was and whatever hopes it had kindled for the future, it was also dragging up a whole lot of trauma for people who’d lived and lost.

For once, Ford’s violent alpha impulse wasn’t entirely misplaced. I thought about Skye, how I’d feel if he were gone and the people responsible for it got away with continuing to hurt people. It’d have driven me over the edge, made me into the beast I’d always feared becoming.

That Ford spent his days looking after goats and chickens and plants? Well, that was an incredible amount of restraint, in my book.

“I’m sorry you can’t,” I said quietly, “but we can still make them face justice.”

Ford’s throat worked. He didn’t say anything for a long while, so long I worried I’d said the wrong thing. Finally, all those words he kept inside escaped in a long sigh, and he turned to me.

“Let me give you a ride back to town.”

And that was it. He was holding it together, like an alpha should.

28

SKYE

Four days, I was stuck in bed before being able to keep down solid food again. For the first twenty-four hours, even the IV had made me feel queasy, as psychosomatic as that probably was.

By the time we got to four days, I was about ready to go stir-crazy. My mother had spent long enough hanging around, smothering me, that Linden had instituted visiting hours, so she couldn’t be there literally all the time. It had been too long since I’d had a major relapse, and lying helpless in a clinic bed was a lot worse than sitting at the desk, working.

I gave a put-upon sigh when Linden came in smelling of lunch on the last day. He said I could go home the next morning if I was still feeling okay, and even worse than lying in the clinic bed, then I’d be expected to take days off work, lie around, and not even come into the building.

Lying in the bed at the clinic at least had me in the right place.

And . . . not alone all the time.

“You smell like the Grille’s barbecue chicken,” I said with a sigh.

He lifted a brow at me. “You don’t like barbecue chicken.”

“I’d eat it right now,” I insisted. He lifted a brow and looked at me for a long moment, letting me consider the words. Barbecue chicken. My stomach turned. “Okay, maybe not. It’s got chicken skin on it. It’s gross.”

His lips turned up at the corners, but he didn’t laugh at me. “Yes. It’s disgusting that chicken has chicken skin on it.”

I scrunched up my nose at him. He could mock all he wanted; it was gross.

He didn’t press the point as he came over and checked my vitals, nodding and frowning and doing his usual Doctor Grove faces as he checked me over.

“Well, Doc? You can give it to me straight. Am I dying?”

It was his turn to give me the stink-eye. “What you are,” he corrected, setting his clipboard on the hook. “Is getting better much faster than ever before.”

He went quiet, and I didn’t answer immediately, letting it sink in. I’d had minor relapses over the years, each resulting in a day or two in the clinic, and then weeks of feeling sluggish and unfocused. But even my most restrictive dietary changes had never done what we were doing now—eliminating every single food made by Sterling.

And now, four days after the worst relapse since I almost died at thirteen, I was sharp as ever, and mostly annoyed at still being stuck in bed.

It was really them.

Ridge and Alexis had found the culprit—the monster that had been hiding under my bed since birth. It wasn’t over. The monster was still a monster, and being pulled, kicking and screaming, into the cold light of day hadn’t killed it or turned it into something harmless.

But everyone could see it now. We had the choice, albeit a difficult one, not always possible, to step carefully around it, and avoid the worst of its teeth.

Well, except when they poisoned water, or other things no one was expecting. Maybe when another company decided to go in on their plan to murder an entire species.

I sighed and tried to shake off my lingering sense of nihilism. “Any lasting damage this time?”

He sat down in the chair he’d left next to mine, sighing. “That’s something I’ve been thinking about. Dante called yesterday to ask about physiological differences with omegas, especially ones susceptible to the Condition. There has to be something, doesn’t there?”

It only made sense, what with the fact that other omegas ate whatever they wanted and didn’t get sick like me. Me, I drank half a bottle of water, spent four days in bed, and still didn’t want to look at food half the time.

“So I’ve been talking to a friend I went to medical school with, and he invited me to bring a few omegas down and use the imaging equipment at the hospital where he works.” His lips twisted in wry apology. “As much as I hate to say it, I could take almost any omega in town as a baseline, but—”

“But I’m the only one you know who’s chronically ill.” I flopped back against the bed, staring at the ceiling. “It’s weird, you know. Most people are in the opposite situation. Omegas everywhere are sick. I talk to them online all the time. It’s only around here that I’m Skye the freak.”

“You’re not that here either, Skye.” He reached out and took my hand. “If anything, you’re Skye, the omega we’ve failed.”

Of course Linden would see it like that. He thought that as a doctor, he should be able to heal anyone, fix any ailment. That was his job, so he should be impossibly perfect at it.

I turned on my side and met his eye steadily. “If you’d failed me, I’d be dead now. If you want to take me and Colt in as before and after tests for how omegas should and shouldn’t be, that’s fine. I know you don’t blame me for being sick.”

“No one should blame you for being sick,” he corrected. “You would never have chosen this, and anyone who makes it worse by blaming you for it is an asshole.”

I could have told him that there were plenty of people who did just that. People who equated being healthy with being good, and thought that a sickly werewolf was seen as a failure, but that wasn’t his problem. And ultimately, it wasn’t mine, either.

My problem was taking care of myself, and helping Linden make it better.

“So you talked to Dante?” I bit my lip. “He hasn’t come in today. Or yesterday.”

“Dante does not think you being sick makes you bad,” he shot back, almost as defensive as if I’d been talking about him. I couldn’t lie, seeing someone so defensive of Dante warmed my heart a little. Then he leaned in and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “I think he’s been working twelve-hour days since you got sick. He wants to figure this out, and it sounds like he and Ridge are making headway.”

“They . . . are?”

He smiled at me, squeezing my hand. “They are. And maybe it’s not a cure, but once we know more, we’ll know better how to deal with it.”

And that? Well, I couldn’t say for sure how Dante felt about me, or whether he’d ever want to go on another date after how the last one had ended, but it was undoubtedly the most romantic thing I’d ever heard of in my life. Dante wanted to stop the whole freaking Condition for me.

When I rubbed my suspiciously wet eyes, Linden didn’t say a single word.

29

DANTE

I’d hit a roadblock. The information available on the internet about werewolves was suspect at best. Loads of it was written by wishful humans who longed for the idea of a pack because they were missing that sense of connection in their own lives.

And hell, when I turned off the safety filters on Ridge’s laptop, thinking I might find something fringe but useful, all I’d found was that there was plenty of werewolf porn out there. More than plenty.

There just wasn’t much concrete information. Werewolves weren’t known for having open social-media presences. There were obvious exceptions—Ridge’s mate and his podcast, a couple Instagram influencers, the entire Doherty family. Honestly, Alexis’s podcast was about as close as anyone came to telling the world what it was like to be an omega werewolf living in the age of the Condition.

Well, that, and Skye’s blog.

But what I needed was firm, specific information about werewolf anatomy, and the closest I’d gotten was an article that speculated that the reason werewolves had evolved in the first place was some latent, misunderstood part of the brain, present and dormant in some humans. There was lots of speculation about the ways we were alike, how some humans had been bitten and could shift afterward.

But hell, average humans didn’t know much about neuroscience, so I was pretty screwed on that front.

I needed a break—maybe an academic medical library—and a chance to clear my head, so that morning, instead of going straight to the farm, I went to Chadwick’s Grille to grab a couple breakfast sandwiches to bring over to the clinic.

If Skye still wasn’t up to eating, that was no big deal. But it seemed better to offer something he didn’t want than to come empty handed, and the wolf inside me was thrilled to be able to offer Skye anything at all.

It was early enough that Wanda and I were almost the only people in the Grille, and I had the chance to sit there quietly at the counter, nobody around to bother me.

When I got to the clinic, Skye looked better than the last time I’d seen him. He was sitting up in the third bed, his legs crossed comfortably under a blanket and a laptop balanced in his lap.

My gaze was immediately drawn to him the second I entered, but sitting at the desk between the waiting room and the rest of the clinic, Alpha Grove cleared his throat. I looked his way, and he lifted a mug of tea to hide his smile.

“Good morning, Dante,” he said, sparking a rush of activity on the far side of the room.

Skye jerked upright in bed and snapped his laptop closed. His wide blue eyes turned toward me. His cheeks flushed, but a tentative smile played at the very corners of his lips.

“Good morning, Alpha.” I nodded to Linden. “I brought Skye breakfast. I hope that’s all right.”

“Of course. As long as Skye feels up to giving it a try?” Linden looked his way across the clinic’s main room.

Skye nodded, so I stepped past Linden’s desk, to the far side of the room, and pulled a chair to his bedside.

He grinned at me as I sat. “Finally taking a break?”

I shrugged, pulling the wrapped sandwich out of the paper bag and folding the wax paper down carefully. “Mostly wanted to see you,” I admitted, avoiding looking Alpha Grove’s way. “But yeah, I hit something of a roadblock.”

I passed him the sandwich, but he didn’t take a bite right away. Instead, he put his wrists on the edge of his closed laptop and frowned. “That must be frustrating. Linden said you and Ridge were making good progress.”

My shoulders sank a few inches. “Yeah, but we’ll get it . . . once I learn everything there is to know about werewolf anatomy.”

“That sounds . . . yikes.” Skye cringed.

Before I knew it, I was laughing. Damn, it felt good to let that out after days of being on edge, bent over a rough-hewn wooden table, hoping I was smart enough to figure all this out and sure I wasn’t.

“Yeah, I know. But what were you up to just now?” I nodded to the computer in his lap and pulled out my sandwich, shoving the wrapping out of the way.

Skye’s nerves came back then. He wiggled on the bed and shrugged. “A post about how I relapsed after drinking Sterling bottled water.”

For one grating heartbeat, I only felt fear—fear at Skye being exposed to Sterling, becoming a target of people I was sure wanted to harm werewolves.

It must have shown on my face, because Skye shrank back against his pillows.

“I talked it over with Linden. As long as I don’t make any unfounded accusations and only talk about the correlation, and since you actually did find something in the water—”

He cut off short when I took a deep breath, but it was just to unclench my gut and shake off that rigid fear.

As much as I wanted to know Skye was safe and healthy, it wasn’t my place to tell him what he could and couldn’t do with the information he had. I didn’t want him to think I was that kind of alpha, either.

“No, that’s great. It’s absolutely what you should do. Our people are in danger—that has to be our priority, not keeping a multi-billion-dollar corporation happy. And if there’s trouble, your pack has your back. What you’re doing, it’s great.”

I forced a smile, and it must have done the trick. He smiled back.

Truth was, I thought it was brave of him to take a stand. I just didn’t want him to ever get hurt.

Protect him, my wolf supplied, alert and ready to pace the perimeter of town with Aspen Grove to make sure there were no approaching threats.

I’d do my best, but given my track record in keeping people safe, I was glad I wasn’t alone in caring for Skye.

“It’ll be fine,” Linden said assuredly, standing up from his desk and coming over to lean his hip on the frame of bed number two. “At some point, we have to stop shrinking back from this, and the Dohertys are already out there doing what they do best.”

Skye’s smile tightened uncomfortably. “Talking?”

Linden’s breath escaped in a laugh. He shrugged. “Making trouble.”

“Drawing attention,” I mumbled, staring down into my sandwich. I took a bite and sighed. “It’d help if I knew what, exactly, made werewolves different, and omegas so susceptible.”

“About that—” Linden had a thoughtful look on his face, and my breath caught. There he was, like the savior pack alpha he was, ready to give me a key to open the next lock on this whole mess.

But right then, there was a sharp knock on the door, and Colt Doherty himself stuck his head in, his perfect smile lighting up the whole clinic.

“Lin,” he called, his voice so honeyed and sweet it couldn’t be anything but false. “There are some men here to see you. From the Sterling Corporation. They want to talk to the man in charge.”

Linden’s breath escaped in a gust. “You told them that was you?”

Colt’s laugh was entirely manufactured. “Sure did. They want to talk to the alpha.”

It was something of a miracle that whoever Sterling had sent, they’d made it the short distance from Grove House to Linden’s clinic in one piece without Colt shredding them. Linden’s mouth spread and flattened into a thin line. With a heavy sigh, he pushed off the bed, sparing one last glance for Skye and me.

“Wish me luck,” he said with a grimace.

Then he left us behind, shutting the clinic door to try and mitigate the disturbance.

Skye and I sat silently, staring at each other with the precise discomfort of children whose parents were having words with the principal.

“This is bad, right?” Skye whispered. “Why are they here?”

“I don’t know . . . It’s not a stretch to jump from Colt to Linden, and he’s talked a lot about the farm on TV.” Colt hadn’t named names in his interviews, but everybody left a trail. No way, after hours of TV interviews and articles in the Washington Post, Colt’s trail was all that hard to follow.

“You’re dragging our company’s name through the mud,” someone hissed beyond the door, plenty loud enough for werewolf ears to pick up.

“We’ve done our due diligence, and it is my professional opinion that—” Linden was speaking in a calm, measured voice that wasn’t as easy to hear.

Every muscle in Skye’s body was rigid. His hand was firm under mine when I reached out and touched it.

He seemed miserable, with the monsters who’d given him the Condition right there outside the door, being . . . being spoken to, like they deserved some consideration.

It was the right way to behave, probably, but I couldn’t stand looking at him there, fury seething under the surface that he wasn’t allowed to express yet, having to bite it back.

“I’m going to go see if I can help,” I said, squeezing his hand and setting the rest of my sandwich aside.

He gave me a terse nod, and when I got to the clinic door, I only opened it wide enough to slip out. I didn’t want these men getting any closer to Skye than they were already.

“Who’s this, then?” a young man snapped when I came out into the small space between Colt and his mate and the clinic.

“Archer Sterling, Dante Reid. Dante, this is Archer Sterling, and his grandfather, Jedidiah.”

The young man stood, a scowl on his face, between us and an older man—a man I recognized from television interviews I’d been watching. Jedidiah Sterling, the CEO of the Sterling Corporation for the past two and a half decades.

“Reid, as in that pack that attacked yours?” Archer demanded of Linden. “The one you want to blame us for putting over the edge?” Behind Jedidiah, there were men in dark suits who looked an awful lot like lawyers. One of them took a note on a notepad.

Calmly, Linden smiled. “I’m quite sure that Dante would say the Reids made their own choices. Though I continue to suspect Sterling is not entirely blameless in the recent chaos, intentional or no.”

Archer scoffed. Behind him, Jedidiah looked toward the roof of the clinic like he was praying. Or just ignoring us.

“Can I help you, Dante?” Linden asked gently.

“Actually, I was thinking they might be able to help me,” I said stiffly, taking my cues from him and doing my best to master the shaper edges of my anger.

Archer Sterling’s copper brows shot high on his pale forehead. He held out his hands by his sides, wide and open but with the sharp edge of his anger. “Okay?”

“I was just thinking, since your company has developed and disseminated such efficient poison, you might be able to shed some light on what, precisely, it’s meant to do. Assuming it has some use other than killing our packmates.”

Archer made a sharp, aghast sound, but his grandfather began to smirk. “I’d be happy to look at whatever it is you think you’ve found, young man. But I can assure you, all our products are perfectly healthy.”

30

SKYE

All of our products are perfectly healthy, the man said.

Perfectly healthy.

And there was me, the result of his so-healthy products, lying in bed because I’d had half a bottle of his poison water on an empty stomach. The irony didn’t escape me, that I’d have gone out there and given him hell, if, you know, I hadn’t been lying there in a clinic bed.

“No reason you should have to bother with this baseless slander, Grandfather,” the sharpest of the voices spat, and if words were weapons, people would have been pouring into the clinic a moment later. “I can go see this ‘proof’ of theirs. Do you even have a proper laboratory in this town?”

And that, well . . .

I slid one leg out from under the blanket, turning as I did, to face the side, and—I didn’t even try. When you’ve spent as many years as I have sick, fighting your body’s reactions every single day, sometimes you just know that today, your legs aren’t going to be willing to hold you up.

So instead, I sat there in my bed, as my alpha and Dante fought my battles for me. As small-minded bureaucrats and businessmen suggested that my life wasn’t as important as their company’s income.

I balled up a fist and hit my useless leg with it, like the violence would make me heal, or make me feel better. Really, it just turned into a reminder that I was a weakling. I couldn’t even hurt myself when I was trying to.

Dante was hesitant about the lab, and he didn’t want to say it outright, but I could hear it in his voice. Tiny drops of his concern falling into the air, like blood into water, and I could imagine the Sterling monsters salivating at the thought of the sweet, fresh kill. My sweet Dante, so vulnerable, trying so hard, dealing with people who wanted him to fail.

Why did everyone want to hurt him so much?

My attention came back to the conversation—all too easy to hear with my better-than-average omega hearing, which was one of the few things not affected by the Condition—and the first thing I picked back up on was a gravelly voice saying, “Well, I can certainly stay here, and—”

There were a few quick footsteps that had the cadence of Dante’s boots on pavement, when everyone else in the parking lot had sounded as though they were wearing loafers. He was coming closer to the clinic door.

Dante wouldn’t bring them in, would he?

What would I even do, faced with the bogeymen who’d spent my entire life tormenting me? The people who might be responsible for me being short and scrawny and sickly, and freaking . . . a werewolf who needed to wear glasses.

“Oh, I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Linden’s smooth voice interrupted. “You’re welcome to stay in your car, but since I’ll be going with you and Dante to look at his results, I’m going to have to lock the clinic up.”

“You would drag an old man—”

“An old man who was healthy enough to invade my pack territory in order to issue threats is healthy enough to come to the lab and see why his threats are in error.” Linden’s voice had gone hard, as it so rarely did. I could picture it, the way his gray eyes went cold and steely, and his whole body tensed, as though ready for violence. Unlike so recently, with Dante’s pack, I suspected that violence was going to be silly and unnecessary. The Sterling people were monsters, sure, but they were monsters who poisoned pregnant women and babies, not monsters who came with tooth and fang bared, ready to have their own blood drawn in return.

No, they only struck people who couldn’t defend themselves.

A moment later, there was a snatch of murmured conversation even I struggled to pick up on, though it sounded closer than the rest.

“—sure about that? I know the story is important, but the lab is crawling with Sterling products.” That had been Linden, his voice low and filled with that quiet tension that said he was fighting his alpha instincts.

The response wasn’t so hard to hear. Colt, strident and fiery, as though his voice could barely contain the anger in his words. “Yes. I’m not missing a minute of this, and it’s all going straight to the public. This is harassment and intimidation, and you know as well as I do that they wouldn’t be doing it if they weren’t as guilty as we know they are.”

He was right. There was no real doubt of that. If they had good intentions, they’d have come with scientists and questions, not shouting in the clinic parking lot about how we were trying to take money from them.

It was hard to imagine what I would do if someone told me I was endangering millions of lives, but that was mostly because I didn’t do anything that affected millions of lives. If someone told me I was hurting the pack, well, I’d be defensive and bothered, but I wanted to think I’d take a moment and consider it. Find out if it was true before making threats and screaming about the people who dared accuse me.

On the other hand, if that happened, the person accusing me would be someone I knew: a friend, a neighbor. There was no situation wherein a complete stranger would ever intimate that I was responsible for the Condition. Well, except those sort of people who always blamed people who were ill for their own situations. Like if only I ran a few more miles a day, I wouldn’t have the Condition at all.

On the table next to me, my phone buzzed. It was a text from Linden.

“Not going to let them know you’re in the clinic. I’ll send someone to sit with you.”

It was both vindication, because it meant that Linden thought these people were as dangerous and underhanded as I did . . . and really annoying. Yeah, I knew, I’d blow away in a strong wind. It was the so-hilarious joke my mother used to tell her friends whenever they said anything about my weight.

I knew I was short and scrawny and couldn’t even fight off some corporate monsters and their villainous lawyers or whatever, but it still hurt to be reminded.

Once again, reminded by the Sterling Corporation that I was a ninety-eight-pound weakling, who couldn’t possibly defend myself. Who needed someone else to come sit with me, to protect me from the bad guys.

Ten minutes later, Aspen and Brook showed up at the clinic, Aspen looking pissed and ready for a fight, and Brook holding onto his arm.

The way Brook glanced up at his mate wasn’t frightened and looking for reassurance, though. Not like some stereotypical werewolf fiction. No, that look said it all: Brook was worried about Aspen. But why?

Without another word, he dragged Aspen over to sit next to my bed, and sat on his lap. Was he worried Aspen was going to run off and pick a fight with the Sterling people?

But no, Aspen didn’t look like he was going to do that. He was tense, sure. His jaw clenched. He didn’t say a word to me, just inclined his head in my direction and pressed his forehead against Brook’s hair.

I drew my brows together and shot Brook a questioning glance, and he sighed. “We’re all kind of useless right now, huh? The whole pack, except for Dante, Ridge, and maybe Linden, a little.”

It was fair. It reminded me of the ridiculous omegas-as-soft stereotypes—something the Grove pack didn’t really go in for ever. I frowned. “Because we can’t be involved. I mean, we shouldn’t even be in that room. Colt’s only going because he’s, you know, Colt.”

Brook gave a laugh at that and nodded. “He sure is.” He glanced back at the clinic door, shaking his head, before turning back to me. “I’ve never had anything like the Condition, not a single time in my life. But you couldn’t pay me to go in that place, where they’re testing for whatever it is making us sick. It’s like walking into a poison factory. Colt has nerves of steel.”

Of that, I had no doubt.

Still, I was more worried about Dante. Sweet, kind Dante, who had brought me breakfast, who had been attacked and beaten down by every villain I could think of, and who was at that very moment, trying to convince a multinational corporation to stop trying to murder me.

Beautiful Dante, with the permanently ruffled hair and stubbled jaw and . . . I sighed and stared at the remains of my breakfast sandwich. He’d come to see me, even sick and pitiful in the clinic. He’d provided for me, been providing for me, and as ridiculous as it was, something about it made me feel more secure, even with monsters roaming the valley.

Dante with his enormous white wolf, so strong and—

“Skye?” Brook asked, pulling himself off Aspen’s lap and reaching over to cup my cheek. “This might be a silly question, but um . . . How long since you’ve had a heat?”

The flush that rushed to my cheeks, I realized, wasn’t just because of the fact that we were discussing heats in front of an alpha. Damn it all. It was because I was on the cusp of one.

31

DANTE

Perfectly healthy, Mr. Sterling said, as if we could just ignore decades of suffering, disease, and death for the people we cared about most—our children and parents and mates.

I was angry, that alpha buzz sparking in my head, making it hard to think. My wolf said it was time to defend the pack.

But I hadn’t spent every year since puberty shoving down my worst instincts for nothing. I had seen firsthand how little alpha instincts could serve a modern pack, and if I wanted to make my case, I needed to keep my head on straight.

“This is it?” Archer Sterling asked as he got out of the imposing black SUV at the Hills’ farm. He slammed the door behind him, and incredibly, he found the vitriol to drag his glare across the beautiful landscape and find it wanting.

Colt Doherty beamed straight at him, completely unbothered. “Sure is. Our state-of-the-art barn, full of wolves smarter, faster, and stronger than the best scientists you could provide.”

The alpha’s mate turned his grin on me then, and it struck me that he and Linden might have talked about me. Together. When I wasn’t around.

I was important enough to slip into Linden Grove’s thoughts, even when I wasn’t there.

My heart convulsed in my chest, squeezing all the air out of my lungs at once. Colt gave me a brief nod, so subtle I doubted anyone else had caught it, and he swept his arm toward the barn.

“If you’ll follow me, gentleman,” he said.

Sterling and his cohorts fell in behind Colt. Linden Grove took up the rear, with me. For a pack alpha, he was all too willing to let his omega mate step forward and take charge of this situation.

“If you don’t want to talk to them, you don’t have to,” Linden offered, his hand settling heavily on my shoulder.

But my thoughts strayed to Skye, trapped back in the clinic because he’d had the audacity to drink from a water bottle at a movie theater.

I couldn’t let him down.

“No, Alpha. I’ve got this.”

Linden’s lips barely twitched. “Okay, but you look like you want to tear their throats out. Try and take a deep breath.”

A shiver worked down my spine. The last thing I wanted was to lose my head and let him down. “I’m fine. Swear.”

We followed the Sterlings and their lawyers into the barn, and my stomach clenched around my breakfast.

Grovetown, the makeshift lab in the Hills’ barn, the pack alpha’s faith in me—all of it was so much more than I’d ever had in my father’s pack. But now, I was seeing it through the eyes of Jedidiah Sterling and his legal team.

I was untried and uncertified. I was doing the best work I could in a barn, with sketchily obtained Sterling produce, but then I saw the water bottles stacked in flats at the end of the rough wooden table I’d been working on. There was an open bottle on the end. I grabbed it and lifted it in the air toward the Sterlings in their silk suits.

“There’s a solution in this—even in the water.”

Archer Sterling scoffed. “In the water? What the hell would we put in water?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, “but it’s present in the water, in lettuce we picked from one of your farms, in the dry products you can find in any grocery store. It’s some kind of chemical that affects omegas.”

“Why omegas?” Archer asked. His grandfather seemed all too happy to lean back and let others argue it out rather than raise his own voice.

“We’re not sure yet,” Linden offered, “but we know it does. Twice now, omegas have had episodes of weakness, nausea, loss of consciousness, and lethargy in the wake of being exposed to your products.”

“At best, that’s anecdotal,” Archer said.

The second I felt doubt, my pack had my back. I had to have theirs.

“Sure,” I agreed. “For now. Today, it’s anecdotal, but what happens when packs start talking to each other? We compare notes, we work together. We’ll find the truth. You’re certain we won’t find you’re responsible for two decades of the Condition?”

“Well, I’m quite certain that stolen produce is not admissible evidence in a court of law,” Archer drawled. He had the cold, practiced look of a man used to getting his way, like he didn’t have to consider for even one moment that he might have to bend or compromise.

He had less on the line than we did, though. The Grove pack was protecting their lives.

“Perhaps not,” Linden said. I kept my mouth shut, all too aware of the sharp press of fangs sharpening behind the soft flesh of my inner cheeks. “But you have an opportunity here to work with us, to right wrongs and cooperate. Or we can continue our work, and when this all comes to a head, we’ll control the narrative. We’ll solve this, with or without your help.”

Mr. Sterling spared a fleeting glance for his lawyers, and a moment later, he scoffed. “I’ve heard enough. This is all children playing at rebellion when there’s nothing to rebel against. Run your tests in a barn practically open to the elements. You have nothing against us. It was foolish for us to come here, to waste our time on this hearsay. Archer, enough.”

His grandson rocked back on his heels, frowning, and one by one, the Sterling group filtered out of the barn and left us in my pathetic set up.

My breath came hard and fast, anger flooding my veins, searing through my limbs like acid until Linden touched my shoulder.

“It’s times like this I would encourage any alpha who can, to seek the company of an omega who soothes them,” Linden muttered quietly. “Should I take you back to the clinic?”

The clinic, and Skye.

That was as good as the alpha’s endorsement. There were plenty in the Grove pack who may not like me yet, but at the very least, I had Linden’s support.

“Yes, Alpha. Thank you.”

I must have sounded as desperate and grateful as I felt, because his smile softened. His thumb brushed my neck. “Of course, Dante.”

32

SKYE

“Six or seven months,” I said, shrugging, trying to play it off. Yeah, so I was probably about to have a heat. It didn’t mean I wanted to talk about it.

I knew Brook and his family were open and chatted about things like that, but it wasn’t how things had worked in the Johnson household. Maybe my mother had always been old-fashioned and stodgy. Or maybe my father had influenced it—I’d never know, since he’d left so long ago I barely remembered him.

The truth was probably a little closer to my current issues.

The Condition.

Heats were the main thing shared by all omegas, hand in hand with the soothing pheromones that helped struggling alphas. Heck, the heats were probably caused by the pheromones, not that I was an anatomy expert, to be sure of that. I wasn’t sure there were many werewolf anatomy experts, since apparently there were humans who believed that male omegas could have babies, as though alpha-soothing pheromones made us all anatomically female.

My mother had always connected heats to the Condition, because both only happened to omegas. And frankly, my mother was ashamed of being an omega. Or maybe . . . maybe angry about it? That made as much sense. Being an omega had caused me more stress than any other accident of my birth, and it was almost certainly the same for my mother. My mother’s reaction to that stress was to hate everything about being an omega, and treat it like it was something bad and shameful.

All that to say that my family did not have chats about upcoming heats, and I wasn’t comfortable talking about it, much less in front of my pack alpha’s brother. Brook alone would have been bad enough, but Aspen was . . . well, he was an alpha.

And he wasn’t my alpha.

I swallowed hard, trying not to think of Dante, but it was nearly impossible.

Particularly when the man himself slipped into the clinic right then, looking positively hunted. Brook’s hand fell away from my cheek as we all turned toward him, searching for some indication of what had happened.

He didn’t meet anyone’s eye, but slunk over to my bedside, leaning in farther than he usually did, taking a subtle, but deep, breath. There was tension in every line of his body, his muscles practically thrumming with the need to move, but instead, he held unnaturally still.

The whole room fell silent, everyone staring at poor Dante, me biting my lip so hard I was surprised it didn’t draw blood. Because biting holes in my lip when I was sick, and heading into heat, was a fabulous plan. It wasn’t like my body had enough to deal with already.

Dante, like he could read my mind, lifted his hand toward my face. He paused halfway there, hand hovering in midair, before inching it forward, till he could just reach my lip with his fingertips, and softly pulled my lip from between them. His smile was hesitant, nervous, and absolutely beautiful.

I leaned into him, like iron filings drawn to a magnet, taking a deep breath of his air. He smelled like anxiety, like frustration and anger, and it made my skin prickle, made me feel like I was a prey animal who should be hiding from the predator. But beneath that irritation, the woody scent of the man himself had the opposite effect. His warm, steady presence, and the scent of pine and alpha, well . . . I didn’t think the warmth in my chest was only a result of an upcoming heat. It was all Dante.

A lot of humans think that heat makes omegas act drunk, makes us incapable of making decisions, but the truth—at least for me—is something a little less drastic. When I had the urge to lean forward into Dante’s space, to wrap myself around him and not let go, the surging hormones just made me more likely to give in to those instincts instead of checking myself and pulling away.

So I leaned in and lay my head on his shoulder, letting my eyes drift closed and breathing in his calming scent.

Without a second’s hesitation, he wrapped his arm around my waist and stepped even closer, resting his head atop mine. He breathed deep again, like he needed the scent of me as much as I needed him.

“It didn’t go great, I take it?” Aspen asked, breaking the silence.

Dante let out a tiny growl, cut off, then rolled his shoulders back and took another deep breath. “About as well as you’d expect from a company who’s doing what they’re doing. Assuming they’re doing it on purpose.”

It was what we’d all been thinking. What I’d said outright. Somehow, having Dante back up my opinion didn’t make me feel better. Yes, fine, what I really wanted was for someone to tell me that no, there was no monster under the bed.

Unfortunately, that simply wasn’t the truth, and asking Dante to lie to me would just make me more of a child than my mother kept telling me I was.

A throat cleared, soft and prodding, and when I opened my eyes, it was to Brook’s clear blue ones. He looked at me for a long time, then glanced up at Dante, and back. Then, deliberately, he ran his knuckles over my cheek again.

Was he suggesting that I . . . my cheeks flamed at the notion that I should—but I could, couldn’t I?

I was an adult, with a job and a life and . . . I could actually ask an alpha to spend my upcoming heat with me. Most omegas I knew, when they mentioned it, said that it was easier to go through with an alpha. And there I was, with an alpha I’d been spending all my time thinking about.

Why shouldn’t I ask him, then?

I bit my lip, and when Brook raised an eyebrow at me, gave a tiny little nod. He smiled and turned to Aspen, making little shooing motions with his hands. “We should leave them be. They’ve got a lot to talk about.”

A moment later they were gone, the clinic door closing with a snick behind them, and I was alone with Dante. Perfect. Now all I had to do was muster the courage to ask him.

I waited a while, but every moment I put it off, I ran the risk of someone popping in, for the doctor, or a visit, or any reason. People did it all the time, and I did not want an audience. Especially if Dante turned me down, the last thing I wanted was someone hearing it.

I took a deep breath, swallowed hard, and without moving my head from under his—all the better to avoid meeting his eyes while I asked—spoke. “So it looks like—that is, I’m—I guess I’m about to have a heat.” The last word came out as a squeak, which sounded super sexy in a cartoon-character kind of way, and I had to work not to cringe away from him. He’d gone still, so still he wasn’t even breathing. Too late to back down now, though. If I didn’t finish it, I was just going to be the creepy over-sharer. I could only force out a whisper, but in the silence of the clinic, I didn’t doubt he’d hear me. “I was hoping maybe you’d help me with it.”

And then, well, I held my breath.

33

DANTE

Linden was right, the only thing that gave me any relief after fighting back the urge to break an old man’s nose was seeing Skye. I hated that he was stuck in the clinic, but the whole place smelled like him, not because of his recent relapse, but because he spent his days working there.

I hadn’t been to his home, but I’d seen him fill this place with his sweet smiles and quiet footsteps and the click of his fingers flying over his keyboard while he wrote for his blog.

More than any other place in Grovetown, this place was home.

Strange though, how potent his scent was, all warm and full. Maybe he was finally feeling better. I’d gotten used to how he smelled when he was sick, his heartbeat thready and fast, his blood pressure too high.

Now, I hoped he was starting to feel better, his warm-sugar scent stronger with a steadier heartbeat.

I tried not to take it personally when Aspen and Brook couldn’t get out of the clinic fast enough. I’d hardly given them any details. Of course, Aspen would most likely prefer to learn what’d happened from his brother. It wasn’t that he mistrusted me, but brothers were brothers, and I was the last person to claim to understand the bonds between family—at least family that didn’t hate each other.

And really, I didn’t mind being left alone with Skye. First thing when I’d gotten back to the clinic, I’d wanted to crawl in bed with him, wrap myself around him until my wolf was satisfied that he, at least, was safe from those Sterling dicks.

I’d held myself back, but Skye had leaned into me like he was happy to see me, and the press of his arm against my stomach, his head a warm spot on my chest, was so wonderful that, even after they left, I saw no reason to move. I could stand there forever, my nose buried in his soft, dark hair while he let me stew over my frustrations and hold him close.

Until he spoke, and my heart froze in my chest, and my lungs stopped working, and my arms turned to stone around the warm, trembling omega on the bed.

I could barely hear his whisper—“I was hoping maybe you’d help me with it”—under the sound of the growl ringing in my ears.

My wolf, telling me not to be a complete jackass when he sensed my hesitation. Because all I wanted to do right then was ask him if he was sure, how he could possibly trust me, a Reid, the idiot who’d taken him on a date only for him to relapse because I wasn’t paying attention, during his heat.

I.

Was.

Terrified.

But I heard the sound of Skye’s nervous swallow, and I realized my heart hadn’t actually stopped. Blood was still rushing through my veins, thrumming under the skin so every spot where our bodies touched, where he trusted me with the weight of his body, was vibrating pleasantly.

I could still breathe, and Skye hadn’t jerked away from me, so I still had a few seconds to figure out how to speak again.

I leaned back, just far enough to tilt his head up. My thumb brushed over his bottom lip, still swollen and dark pink from the hard press of his teeth. His breath caught. His eyes widened. He stared up at me, waiting, and I realized then that there was nothing I wouldn’t give Skye if it was mine to give. No one in the world was so important to me.

“My pack—I mean, the one I—the Reids—” I staggered through it, but Skye nodded, like even if my words were a mess I could hardly get out, he still understood me. “We never had many omegas. Not—not after the Condition. And I—” I pressed my lips together, sighed through my nose. “I have never shared a heat with an omega. If there is some way—any way—that I can support you, I want to, but I’m not an expert. I would understand if—”

Skye cut me off with two fingertips pressed lightly over my lips. He was smiling up at me, his other hand snaking around the back of my leg as he leaned in, pulling me so close that my knees bumped against the bed frame.

“I’m not looking for an expert,” he said simply. “I just need you.”

Damn. “Oh.”

As lackluster as my response was, Skye’s smile was full. He turned his head, his nose pushing into my stomach, under my jacket so he could take another deep breath.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

And it was another few minutes before I thought to move again, content as I was to comb my fingers through his hair.

In the end, logic won out. We couldn’t spend his heat in the pack’s clinic. It’d be his place—where he hadn’t been for days—or mine, and I was in no way prepared to take care of Skye the way he deserved.

I pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “Would you mind if I ran a quick errand?”

Skye’s frown was faint when he looked up at me, but the pout was clear in his voice. “You’ll come right back?”

Holy hell, my wolf was practically dancing circles, tail wagging, just knowing that Skye wanted me with him. “Absolutely. Yes. I—I want to be with you. Now. For your heat. And—” And for as long as he wanted me. “Yes. I won’t be long.”

His smile returned like a beacon. “Then sure. You can go, for a little bit. I should, you know, touch base with Linden about—well . . .” He waved at the clinic bed.

Right. Because he was sick, and he might not be up for whatever exactly my wolf had in mind for him. But there was no way Linden Grove would let me hurt him. If he let Skye leave the clinic with me, he’d give me a warning if I needed one.

And Linden was his pack alpha. And his boss. And his doctor. And mated.

And there was no reason for my wolf to be snarling at the very idea of him getting close to Skye while his heat was on the way. If there were anything between them, it—it would have happened. And, well, Skye deserved an alpha like that, who could provide.

And, dammit, my wolf needed to check himself.

“Yes. Great. You talk to the alpha, and I’ll be back. Half an hour. Maybe less. I’ll be fast.”

Skye laughed. “You don’t have to rush. I’ll seriously be fine.”

I squeezed his hand. “I know. But I’m riding a little close to the edge, and maybe I need to be around you.” I bit my tongue, even while I grinned, and shrugged. “Who knows. Half an hour.”

I saw Linden outside the clinic, gave him a nod, and double-timed my way to Ambrosia Grocery. No one on the sidewalks registered. What I needed was to provide for Skye; nothing else mattered.

Only, when I got there, I realized that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Provide? What the fuck was I supposed to provide?

I stood there like a statue in front of the sliding glass doors until someone needed to get out, and Mr. Tartt came up to me. “Everything all right, Dante?”

It was like I’d never had a conversation with sentient bipeds before.

“Mr. Tartt, sir, I—” Fuck, I didn’t know how to say what needed saying. I didn’t have any right to lay claim to Skye. He was a real Grove wolf. My father had attacked his pack, tried to take an omega—the comfort and support Skye offered me so freely now—and I was terrified that someone would realize I was there and make sure to smack me back to my place the very second I began to trust that I was safe. Strangely enough, it wasn’t the Sterlings that scared me—it was the Groves, because they had something I wanted, something—someone—that they could take away from me if I stepped out of line.

The grocer was frowning, his cheeks a little soft, lines carved on either side of his mouth from smiling, but now his lips turned down. “You can wipe that scowl off your face and tell me what you need, Dante.”

His voice was soft, easy. And still, my shoulders snuck up toward my ears.

“You’re an omega,” I announced.

Mr. Tartt’s lips twitched like he was holding back a smile. “Indeed I am.”

“Skye’s heat is coming,” I blurted out, immediately feeling like a dick for sharing something private. That wasn’t my business to tell people, even if it was the only thought left in my head. “I don’t know what he needs.”

His expression softened, and though I felt like a complete fool, he nodded sympathetically. “I can help you with that.”

He took me through the store, pointing out food that would be sustaining with so much physical activity. Shockingly, that included a dozen apples, but when in Grovetown . . .

My cart stuffed full, I wandered the back aisles. I had ideas about what heat might be like, had heard things, but, well, you could never be too prepared.

Isaac’s chocolate-brown brows shot up when he saw the huge bottle of lube I picked up, but all I could do was shrug. I wasn’t entirely untested, and with humans, you could never really have enough lube. Even if Skye got slick on his own, well, he’d been sick. I just didn’t want to count on it. If we had sex, it—it had to be good. I wouldn’t be a regrettable alpha.

Thankfully, Isaac didn’t comment, and he checked me out himself.

When I got back to the clinic, my arms were laden with four huge canvas grocery bags, stuffed full of everything Isaac Tartt had even glanced consideringly at.

Linden and Skye both turned to stare at me when I shuffled awkwardly through the door, kicking it open on the way.

“Half an hour and you got all that?” Skye asked. “That’s impressive.”

34

SKYE

Linden came into the clinic a few seconds after Dante left, and I wouldn’t lie, I felt better having someone there with me. Even with the assumption that the Sterling people had left town, I didn’t really want to be alone.

Despite my mother’s voice in my head, pointing out how weak I was, how unable to protect myself, I was determined not to see it as a failing. So I relied on my pack. Wasn’t that what it meant, to be a wolf?

The pack was there to protect.

“Everything okay?” Linden asked, watching Dante rush off. “I figured he’d be here a while. He was a little on edge.”

I frowned, pulling my lip back between my teeth. Should I not have asked him? “Too on edge to help me with . . . something?”

Linden scoffed at that, finally letting the door fall closed and turning to look at me, expression disbelieving. “He could be working sixteen hours a day and still not too busy for you, Skye. The boy’s smitten.”

My mouth fell open, and all I could do was gape.

Smitten?

With me?

But I was just trouble. Hardly even worth the effort, barely a proper omega, not even . . .

I stopped and took a deep breath. That wasn’t me, not any of it. It was my mother telling me what she thought I was. But there was no such thing as an improper omega. Linden’s mate was an improper omega, and he was amazing, strong and terrifying. Brook was an improper omega, all solid and muscular, and was awesome and blissfully happy.

Was there really such a thing as a proper omega?

And who cared anyway? Who wanted to be proper, when the improper omegas I knew were also the best, happiest people?

I took a deep breath, closing my eyes and trying to gather my thoughts. Okay. I could do this. I didn’t chat with people about heats, but this was Linden. He knew more about my body than I did.

“I’m going into heat,” I informed him, as clinically as possible, trying to emulate my own voice, when giving him less salacious information. Because just the fact that I was going to have a heat wasn’t salacious. It was a fact of nature, of life, and there was nothing to be ashamed of.

I diligently ignored the fact that my cheeks felt like they were on fire, and met Linden’s eye steadily.

Linden? He was the best. He nodded, the only indication of his surprise a slight widening of his eyes that he quickly covered, turning to pull out the blood pressure cuff. “Makes sense to me. You’re running a little earlier than I’d have expected, given your irregular schedule and recent relapse, but”—he looked over at the clinic door, then back toward me, one eyebrow lifted—“maybe there are external factors contributing to your body deciding now is a good time.”

Was he saying I was going into heat because Dante . . . what, existed in proximity to me?

At the mere thought of Dante, the flush in my cheeks spread down my neck, and that was sort of telling, wasn’t it?

“Is that—” I looked at the door as well, biting my lip once again. “Is that a real thing? Is it okay? Should I be worried, or—”

Linden took one of my hands in his, but instead of holding it, he turned it, pressing fingers to my wrist to gauge my pulse. “It is a real thing, and it’s fine. It might just be when you’d have had it regardless, but even if being around Dante did trigger it, that’s fine. It just means that you feel safe enough for that to happen, and your body is prepared to handle it.”

“Is it?” My body didn’t feel any different than usual. Well, a little more tired, but that was the relapse, not some new and magical ability to get through my heat without being exhausted and pitiful.

Linden didn’t bother re-answering that, just wrapped the blood pressure cuff around my arm, not even bothering to wipe the smile off his face. It wasn’t smugness or anything obnoxious, though. He just smelled . . . happy. Pure and simple, Linden was happy. I didn’t think it was because of the Sterling people, particularly given how Dante had reacted to them, so it could only be me. Me and Dante.

After a moment, Linden nodded. “Okay, it’s still a little high, but you’re used to that. Since you’re going into heat, though, I need you to watch it closely. Check it every few hours, and if it gets too high, you call me, okay?”

I nodded, unable to form words around that vision of embarrassment.

Sorry Dante, I know we’re knotted together, but I need to call my boss to tell him about my blood pressure.

Not that there was any certainty Dante would want to knot me. Or heck, even have sex. There hadn’t been a lot of time spent on heat education in school, but they’d been very clear that some couples didn’t have sex—the proximity alone helped the hormone surges, if not in the same way as a good knotting.

Would Dante even be willing? Would he do it even if he didn’t want to? The thought made me a little ill. I didn’t want to take advantage of him. Too many people had done that; I wasn’t going to become the next one.

Linden, meanwhile, was gathering tools on the little table by my bed. A thermometer, a blood pressure cuff, his extra stethoscope, a handful of latex gloves. “I want you to set a timer on your phone,” he told me without looking up from the drawer of his desk he was looking through. “Every three hours, you’re going to write down your vitals, for as long as your heat goes on. Along with any other symptoms. You know how this works better than anyone, and you know your body.”

It sounded like a nightmare, if I was being honest, trying to keep track of my vitals so closely while . . . well. Yeah. I’d spent heats in the clinic before, during rough times, and Linden had done precisely that—collected my vitals every few hours the whole time. And now, he was trusting me to do it. Because I was an adult, responsible for my own health. Because Linden trusted me with my own health.

I swallowed hard and nodded.

With a smile of triumph, he came up from his desk with a little notebook. “There we go. You write everything down, every time. I’m trusting you to know if it’s too much. The second you’re worried, you call me. Got it?”

“I will,” I promised. “I can—I can check in sometimes if you want.”

“Only if you want to, Skye. You’re an adult. You don’t have to check in with me. But if it makes you feel better? Yeah, do it. It’s not going to bother me to hear that you’re all right.” He came back to the side of my bed, a leather bag in hand, and proceeded to stuff the notebook, a pen, and all the tools into it. “You can share your numbers with me or not, obviously, but it’ll be good for you to keep close track and note how you feel at every step. Knowing more about how your own body reacts is always a good thing. You’re already an expert at this.”

Me, an expert. I had to blink the stinging out of my eyes at the idea. At Linden, telling me that I was good, that my skills had value. So instead of answering aloud with my no-doubt wavering voice, I just ducked my head in a silent nod, accepting the case he handed me and clutching it against my chest.

That was when Dante came rushing back in, carrying more grocery bags than I went through in an average week, looking flushed and beautiful. I glanced at the clock, and sure enough, he’d taken just under thirty minutes, including the walk both ways, a walk that would have taken me most of the allotted time all by itself. “Half an hour and you got all that? That’s impressive.”

His response was a tiny, breathless smile.

Linden chuckled. “Why don’t I lock up the clinic and drive you over to . . . to Dante’s place? Seems like that would be more convenient than climbing all those stairs to yours, Skye.”

I couldn’t even bring myself to look at him again. I couldn’t tear my eyes from Dante. Beautiful, flushed, panting Dante, who had agreed on a moment’s notice to drop everything and spend a week with me.

It was all I could do to cover a gasp when everything came together in my head. Linden was right. Dante was . . . Dante was smitten. With me.

I grinned at him. “That sounds perfect, Linden, if you could.”

Dante didn’t even look away from me, just nodded and ducked his head a little at Linden’s voice.

And that, right there, was the moment I decided. If he let me, I was going to marry that wolf. Make him a full Grove. Johnson. Whatever.

35

DANTE

It took everything in me not to growl at Linden the whole way over to my place. He was doing us a favor, making sure Skye didn’t have to walk to my apartment, or his, or anywhere. Wasn’t like I had a car. And Linden would’ve been well justified in making me race down the street behind them, sprinting and snarling at the very idea of another alpha providing for Skye.

That was the influence of his heat. I wanted to be the wolf who gave him everything he needed, who made him feel happy and safe. All the fucked-up experiences I had with alpha-omega relations said there could only be one alpha who provided, and as often as not, they’d do more damage than good.

And if I stepped back and looked at things clearly, I wanted Skye to be surrounded by people who made him feel safe, who supported him and protected him, even from me if it came down to it. That was pack, and my own screwed up idea of what that looked like wasn’t a justification for my wolf to want to drag him away and keep him sequestered with me. That’d never be good for anybody.

Fuck, I hated alpha instinct, feeling beholden to thoughts that weren’t logical and didn’t match up with values I’d had to fight to cultivate after being raised by monsters.

I’d slipped into the back seat with Skye, sat pressed against his side, our legs pressed against each other as he leaned against my arm. That soothed my wolf. Some.

When I took a deep, shaky breath, he turned his wide blue eyes up at me and frowned, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his pale nose. “You okay?”

“Absolutely. Yes. Great. I’m great.” I must’ve sounded as harried as I felt, but Skye only slid his hand down my arm and threaded his fingers with mine.

“Good.”

The alpha’s SUV was quiet, the sound of music playing in the background low on the radio. He didn’t seem to want to draw attention to himself, though that was impossible, considering he was, you know, the alpha.

Thank god the drive to my place wasn’t long. I hopped out and went around to the trunk while Skye got out the other side. Linden came around to open the trunk hatch.

“I’d help you bring all that in, but I get the sense I should just get out of the way,” he said. I pulled my four enormous grocery bags out of the back, hanging them off my arms, and when I straightened, I saw the good humor in his slate-gray eyes.

“That might be for the best, yes,” I hedged, but his smile only grew.

He clapped his hand on my shoulder and gave me a serious alpha nod. “Trust your wolf. And trust him. Skye knows what he needs.”

I swallowed hard, feeling like nothing so much as a child getting advice from his father before he went out and tried to be an adult on his own—only, my father never would have been so nice. And you know what? Absolutely no part of me wanted to think about what my father would’ve done if he’d gotten within sniffing distance of Skye.

I shook the thought off and nodded. “Thanks, Linden.”

Something in his smile eased then, and he let me go. “Call if you need anything.”

He got back in his car, leaving me to shuffle past Skye to the duplex and unlock the front door with no small amount of shifting around awkwardly to get out of his way.

“I just need a second to put these away—” I lifted my arms and went past the open counter through to the fridge. Not everything needed to go straight away, but I didn’t want the cold stuff to go bad.

For a couple minutes, I focused on putting groceries away. That wasn’t something I could fuck up too miserably.

But when I looked up, Skye was standing there just inside the closed door, chewing his lip again. He had his phone in his hand. Was he calling a cab because I was being too weird? Calling Linden back to save him because I actually had fucked up miserably?

“Everything okay?” I asked.

He nodded. “Just setting an alarm.”

“Something I need to know?”

Quickly, he shook his head. “Not really. I just need to check my blood pressure every few hours. No big deal.”

Right. That was the leather bag he had in his hand. He set it by the couch and straightened again, and—I was supposed to be smooth, supposed to take charge and provide. Where the hell did my wolf get off, getting all defensive around Linden but struggling to figure out what to do now?

“Want something to drink?”

“I’m good for now, thanks.” His tongue pressed into his cheek, rounding it out. When he sighed, his shoulders slumped low. “I should probably tell you I haven’t done this either, right? Shared a heat with anybody. Because, you know, I’m Skye and I’m—”

I scowled when he cut off so abruptly, but it didn’t take a supergenius to figure out what he was going to say. He had the Condition, and the people he’d grown up with treated him with kid gloves.

I nodded, stepping around the kitchen counter and onto the carpet, but I hung back on the other side of the room. “It’s okay, Skye. I don’t care about that. I just—”

He stared at me, spots of pink high on his cheeks, his eyes wide and pupils huge and dark in the low living-room light. His warm, clean scent drew me another step toward him.

“I just don’t want to hurt you.” Without thinking, even noticing, I’d closed the distance between us. My palm cupped his cheek, and his flushed lips fell open on a breathy laugh.

“You won’t.”

He made it sound so simple, but when I frowned, he shook his head. “You overthink everything, Dante. It’s sweet. And I guess I don’t mean you’ll never hurt me, but I do know that you wouldn’t do it on purpose. Little hurts—the kind I’ll always be able to forgive.”

My breath caught. Forgivable? That wasn’t a word I’d ever thought applied to me, applied to alphas. But there Skye was, offering me blanket forgiveness for every time I made a misstep but didn’t mean harm.

Frozen, I stared as he held my hand steadily against his face, cupping the back of it, even as he turned his head. He kissed the skin inside my wrist where my pulse jumped, then his lips pulled back over his sharp teeth. He bit me, a scrape of teeth that sent a shiver down my spine. When he caught my eye, his flush had swept down his svelte neck, disappearing below the collar of his shirt.

“Little hurts,” he repeated, while I watched the blossom of the red line against my skin, marking where his teeth had dragged across my skin, not hard enough to break it but enough to make the blood rush to the surface. “Forgive me?”

All I could do was groan, grabbing him by the back of his neck and pulling him into me. He pushed up on his toes, his body tight against mine while I swallowed his moan and plundered his generous mouth with my tongue.

“Always,” I rasped against his lips. “Anything, Skye. Whatever you want.”

His hands settled on my shoulders and he pushed me back, only to nod down the short hallway toward my bedroom. His brows rose in silent question, and though my mouth went dry and my tongue was thick and useless, I nodded.

I snatched the grocery bag with the bottle of lube off the counter, took his hand, and pulled him away from the locked front door and the rest of the world while my wolf preened. This once, I supposed, it was fine for me to keep Skye to myself.

When we got to my bedroom, Skye stopped in the doorway. I almost ran into him, but when I caught myself, I saw no good reason not to pull him back against my chest. He took a deep breath, and his whole body trembled against my front.

“This okay?” I dipped my head to brush my lips across his ear, and felt the tickle of his black silk hair against my cheek when he nodded.

“Smells like you,” he said hazily, turning to kiss the edge of my jaw, making little nips across my skin with the edge of his teeth that sent all my blood rushing straight down to my cock. It pushed into the small of his back, and he wiggled up on his toes, straining to get closer.

He twisted at the waist, and I took his arm, dragging it around my neck to steady him as I bent to scoop my arm under his knees. “Well, let’s make it smell like you.”

I carried him to the bed, unceremoniously dropping the bag of lube on the mattress before I gently set him down. He stared up at me, the muscles of his throat working with a nervous swallow. “You’d like that?”

“If my sheets and blankets and pillows smelled like the sweetest omega I’ve ever met?” I dragged my shirt over my head by grabbing it between my shoulder blades and tugging it off. I threw it across the room and grinned at Skye as he gaped up at me. “I’d love it. Settle in. Nest in here and never come out, so long as you stay with me.”

There he was, chewing on his lip again. He sat up, fiddling with the hem of his shirt in a way that seemed a little too nervous for my liking. Rather than keep his hungry gaze on me, he stared at the bag.

“What’s in there, condoms?”

I blinked. I hadn’t even thought about condoms. Werewolves didn’t get sick—except the Condition—and, well, nobody had come up with a knot-friendly solution.

While I had a flash of horror that I’d done the completely wrong thing, he grabbed the bag, the crinkle of treated canvas loud in the room as he pulled out the bottle of lube.

“Did you . . . want condoms?”

He kept staring down at the bottle, chewing on his swollen lip. “No. Rather have your knot.”

His voice was short and strained, and I wanted to get him out of that shirt and see the way his blood blossomed under his skin, heating it up. I just didn’t want to push him.

“Do you think we’ll need this?” He held the bottle up, finally lifting his eyes to mine.

I shrugged. “Dunno. I don’t think omegas have to have it, but—but like I said, I don’t want to risk hurting you, and well, more slick can’t make things worse.”

Skye grinned, and I saw the flash of white behind his lips. “Just messier.”

“Yeah, but it’ll be our mess.”

The blue around his irises was a tiny circle when I said that, his skin pink, every pulse of his heartbeat sending his scent out in waves across the room.

“Take off your pants,” he demanded, scooting higher on the bed.

Damn if I weren’t ready to give him everything he asked for. I shucked the rest of my clothes and crawled up on the bed on my knees. Skye flipped over so he could sit on his own, right in front of me.

Light as feathers, his fingertips skimmed across my chest, tickling over smooth skin, gliding over my scars. I expected him to say something, nerves keep him talking while he traced the shape of my body. But it seemed like words failed him. He went for the bottle, squeezed a generous amount of lube into his palm, warming it between his hands before he dragged them lower, down my belly.

With loose fingers, he gripped my dick. I swallowed a moan, my whole body taut as I fought the urge to throw myself on him and push him back into the mattress.

First time. His first time, in a heat cycle that would last for days. There was no reason to rush.

I shoved my wolf down and let Skye take his time, his touch as curious as it was heated. He took time to learn the shape of my cock, to weigh my balls and tease them with his fingers while I sat on my knees, my legs spread for him while my fists dug into the tops of my thighs.

Finally, he met my eyes again, his mouth softly open. His breath came harder, matching my own soft panting.

“Can I take your clothes off?” I asked.

All he did was nod eagerly, squirming to help me get him naked. I folded his glasses and set them out of the way on the table beside the bed.

His body was made of lean, graceful lines, pale skin that was soft and peppered with dark hair. His nipples were dark and pebbled, his stomach flexing with every breath. And between his legs, his cock was flushed, the tip slick.

I wanted every bit of him.

With a grunt, I pulled him into my lap, squeezing his ass to jerk him closer. The second his cock pressed against the flat of my stomach, Skye bucked against me, smearing precome over my skin.

I reached behind him, dragging my fingers down his crack. He was slick, wet for me already. I shouldn’t have worried, but I was glad anyway that my dick was lubed up for him.

When I sank a finger into him, he threw his head back, his mouth hanging open on a moan like music. “Yeah. Oh—oh that’s good.”

His body moved against mine in a languorous wave while I worked my fingers into his heat, spreading him open until he was whining for my dick.

“Inside,” he rasped, lips shining where his tongue had circled them, where mine had tasted him. “Need you. Now, Dante.”

I pulled my fingers out to a whimper, and already, he was holding me steady, working himself down on my dick while he gasped.

“So tight.” I gritted my teeth, holding still while he rocked onto me, each movement of his hips shoving me deeper. “Skye, it’s too much.”

My vision narrowed. All I could see was the pale circle of his face, his frantic headshake.

“No. No. It’s perfect. Need it. Oh!”

“Fuck,” I hissed when he slid down, his ass flush against my thighs, his body convulsing around me while he adjusted to the intrusion.

His trembling arms were looped around my neck. His chest shook with each breath. “A-Alpha,” he whined, his eyes full and dark.

I held his ass, sure I had the whole world in my arms. I lifted him, and he made a high sound in his throat. When I pulled him in again, my cock spearing deep, he gave a punched-out moan.

And there, with him clinging to my shoulders, mindless and needy, I set a rhythm that I could fall into, a pace and pleasure that I’d drown in happily, so long as I had Skye.

36

SKYE

“What’s wrong?” Dante asked, watching me like a hawk as I leaned back against the headboard after taking my vitals for the millionth time in two days.

I shook my head, breathing deep, eyes closed. “Not wrong, just . . . Could you grab me some water? I’m probably getting dehydrated. Heats are like that, and my blood pressure is up, so—”

But I was already talking to his back. Or better put, he was already all the way in the kitchen, glasses clinking together and the sink running. He came back a few minutes later with two tall glasses of water, a few cubes of ice in each. I figured one of them was for him, but he didn’t so much as take a sip as I drained mine. Then he traded me for the full glass, clutching the empty one against his chest.

“Is that enough? Should I get more?”

I held up a hand to stop him as I sipped from the second. “It’s plenty. Even if I needed more, I can’t just down a gallon of water at once.” I took another sip, then set the second glass down on the nightstand. “I can drink some more when we’re done.”

“Done with what?” He flushed, shaking his head. “I mean, I know—but you’re not waiting days to finish more water.”

I grinned at him, throwing out my hands and tapping the fingers together demandingly. Biting my bottom lip in a way that I desperately hoped was sexy, I looked up at him through my eyelashes. “I mean, technically, I don’t think I’ll ever be done. I just meant done for this round.” Pushing away from the headboard, I pulled myself up onto my hands and knees, and crawled over to bury my face in his chest. “ ’Cause I need you.”

He almost dropped the empty glass, barely catching it before it slipped through his fingers and crashed to the floor. Instead, he leaned over and set it on the nightstand, without breaking contact with me.

Then, he took my face in his hands, and placed the gentlest kiss on my lips. “If you’re sure you’re up for it. I don’t . . . I know you know what you need, but I don’t want to hurt you.”

The haze in my brain cleared enough, at least for a moment, to realize that the worry in his beautiful brown eyes wasn’t just for me. Well, it was, but it wasn’t. He was terrified of hurting me, and if he did, that would hurt him. So if I blithely ignored my own body’s signals and let this hurt me, he would take that on himself. Use it to hate himself.

And that, above all things, made me take a mental step back and think about it.

Truth was, I wasn’t up for anything really athletic, after two straight days of sex. My pressure was too high, and even if it was just the dehydration at fault, there was no reason to push it.

So instead of trying to act enticing or sexy anymore, I let myself fall back onto the bed. “How about I let you do all the work?”

That, oddly enough, made him smile. “I can do that. ’M happy to.” He set a knee onto the bed next to me, eyes scanning my body with the strange combination of interest and concern that I was starting to get used to. When he looked back up and met my eye again, there was a twinkle in his.

Instead of explaining his intentions, he just manhandled me over onto my side, facing away from him, then spooned up behind me.

It didn’t do a lot for the itch under my skin, though just the skin-on-skin contact helped a little. Now that I’d had him, though, my body wasn’t willing to go back a step and just snuggle. It wanted—

I gasped in understanding as his fully hard cock brushed against my ass. He propped himself up on an elbow behind me, leaning forward to give my earlobe a little nip, then kissed my cheek. “You just stay there, sweetheart. I’ll take care of everything.”

Before I knew what was happening, he was slicking me up again with his handy little bottle—okay, maybe not so little, and we were going through it fast—of lube. I both did and didn’t want to ask how he’d known I might need it. It wasn’t something I’d ever discussed with anyone, not even Linden. Not being able to get properly wet wasn’t something a person wanted to discuss, ever. It was on one of the lists of symptoms of the Condition, so I’d just accepted it as a fact of life, and pretended it wasn’t a thing. Wasn’t important. Wasn’t just another way I was a defective omega.

But there, in Dante’s bed, him producing lube like it was the most natural thing in the world, slicking himself up as he lay at my back, then sliding into me, achingly slow and perfect. There, I didn’t feel defective at all.

He leaned in, running his lips along the curve of my shoulder, peppering kisses along my neck, as he started to rock into me, slow and gentle. As sore as I was from two days of regular sex, this didn’t bring out any of my aches and pains. Instead, it felt like a slow, steady build of pressure as he slid inside me, wrapping one arm around my middle and pulling me in tight against him.

“How are you so perfect for me?” he asked, working his way down my jaw with his sweet little kisses. “Didn’t think there’d be anyone in the whole world so perfect.”

I turned to look up into his eyes, and didn’t see the slightest bit of hesitation. Of dishonesty. He was really there, really what he seemed, and—“I’m falling in love with you, Dante.” His eyes went wide, and he slowed, staring at me. “So if you don’t mean it. If you don’t want—-if you don’t want me like that. For keeps. Then I need you to tell me that.”

Instead of stopping altogether, or pulling away, he squeezed me even tighter against him. “I do mean it. I want”—he swallowed hard, but didn’t look away from me, not even for a second—“that. I want exactly that. I’m . . . I think I am too.”

His hand crept up from my waist, till he was cupping my cheek, lifting it so he could kiss me, briefly, on the lips. When we broke apart, he took a deep breath, and buried his head in my shoulder. The smell of salt came sharp and stringent to my nose, and I pretended to ignore it, as he went back to laying tiny kisses all along my back.

Slowly, so slowly, he rocked into my body over and over, hitting just the right spots, but softly, so softly that the buildup took me by surprise. It might have been moments or hours, but suddenly, I was gasping with each motion.

He twined our right hands together and brought the fingers up to his lips, kissing each of my fingertips as I gasped for breath, tightening around him. The pressure of his knot seemed like more in this position, or this time, somehow. I groaned as it breached me, pushing all the way in, filling me up so completely that all I could do was breathe and whimper.

A single touch of his hand was all it took to undo me. Those strong fingers wrapped around my cock, and he hadn’t even stroked when my orgasm hit me, all red and warm and perfect. It was almost as slow and languorous as his thrusts had been, like that long stretch when you wake up on a lazy Sunday morning, without the usual sharp rush that came and went all too fast. It continued for a long, slow moment, the warmth spreading from my core all the way to my toes and fingertips as he stroked me, slowly, milking my orgasm out of me.

I fell asleep there, just like that, in Dante’s bed. Curled up with him all around me. Just where I wanted to be, forever.

37

DANTE

Disentangling myself from Skye was the hardest thing I’d ever done, particularly when my wolf had decided the only path to happiness was spent curled around him, nuzzling his neck, licking the spot it so desperately wanted to bite.

Even when it meant helping him into a warm bath, bringing him a fresh glass of water and a plate of apple slices and peanut butter, I still wanted to hide away with him. But there was a new buzz in my head—not all fear and shame over being an alpha. The thought that there was a pack out there, relying on me, on us, to come out, had begun to matter. I didn’t want to let them down either.

So maybe I didn’t have to shut myself away with Skye to protect us both from the monsters of my past. But for a little while longer, I could keep him in my bed. Or my bathtub.

Or just, you know, with me, okay? I wanted to stay close.

He looked happy, smiling and self-satisfied, sinking down in the steaming water up to his collarbones. I’d never seen anyone more beautiful, and I couldn’t imagine wanting anything more than I wanted to see that smile.

“What?” I asked, dangling my hand in the water, slipping the loofah up his chest and across his neck. He arched back, leaning into me, his lithe shoulders lifting.

“Nothing particular. I told Linden I was coming out of it. He said when we’re ready, we should come by the clinic. I think he’s . . . done an Alpha Grove thing.”

The way he bit his lip then made me want to lean in and kiss him, and—well, why not?

He sighed, opening to the sweep of my tongue, and when I sat back on my heels on the tile floor, the loveliest pink color rushed into his cheeks. “I guess that means something good?”

Skye’s lips twitched. “With Linden? Usually.”

ONLY, I couldn’t have guessed that Linden had gone above and beyond for me. Okay, for his pack. Still, when we met him in the clinic the next morning, it was me he led with a hand between my shoulder blades toward what must’ve been a storage room of some sort before.

Now, it was clean, everything white and shining. Glass doors made up refrigerators and sample boxes filled with what I’d been testing out at the Hills’ barn. Every piece of equipment was new, every surface clean and shining. He’d had everything I needed brought over, replaced every piece of equipment—even bottles of chemicals and solvents that had been opened were now full and hermetically sealed.

I spun in the broad, open space, and stared up at the pack alpha, grinning in his white coat.

“I thought you could use a more appropriate space to work, and you wouldn’t mind that being here, in the clinic.”

With Skye.

He didn’t have to say it, but my eyes met Skye’s past the doctor’s arm. He was sitting on the edge of the nearby clinic bed, still worn out from his heat, but he was beaming.

“Is this safe?” I stared at Linden. “I mean, keeping all this here, where any omega could come in and—”

Linden held up a hand. “Perfectly safe. Pressurized entrances. The room is climate-controlled. I had them install a separate HVAC just for this space. Even if you sprayed the whole room down with that Sterling crap, so long as the door’s closed, the rest of the clinic will be safe.”

Okay, so no dragging Skye in there with me to do research, but I could still work near him. When I stepped away for lunch, he’d be in the next room over.

It felt like us against the world, and with the Grove alpha’s blessing.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more in the barn,” I blurted out. This—it was so nice, and it was too much.

Linden’s smile softened. He shook his head. “No, Sterling was right. If we want to accomplish anything, we have to take this seriously. And to protect our pack, a small renovation? No big deal.”

Our pack.

I swallowed hard. Nodded. “Of course.”

Maybe I wasn’t used to receiving gifts, but this wasn’t that. This meant he believed in my ability to figure this out, and that we had work to do.

Linden stepped back in the doorway, angled so he could look at both Skye and me. “When you said you could come over this morning, I called my colleague at the hospital. If you have time today, Skye, we could go, get some scans done. Nothing major. An MRI. Some bloodwork. A CT scan. Nothing you haven’t done before.”

Skye nodded, completely unbothered by the whole thing. No Reid wolf I’d ever known would’ve been so nonchalant about medical treatment, especially in a human hospital, but this was Skye’s life, and he was a lot braver than any Reid. “Sounds good.”

“I asked Colt to come too—and, hell, I haven’t seen my brain since med school. So we’ll all do it. Dante?”

I’d faded out, my gaze shifting back to my new laboratory. With a start, I looked back at them.

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 it did. 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 have you been?”

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. Like hates them. 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.

He stared at me when he was finished, his cheeks hollow. “I’ll show this to my grandfather. If there’s anything here, if you’re right, I’ll make him see.”

Sure, this guy was still a spoiled brat, but I couldn’t hold back a smile. “When the alpha sends me the test results from today, I’ll tie it together. Let you know what I find.”

Archer nodded stiffly. “Good.”

He turned to leave, and . . . damn. I had a science buddy.

38

SKYE

Somehow, having Colt and Linden and Linden’s doctor friend, Lawrence, there for the MRI made it less awful than it had been the last time I’d been to a human hospital for testing. I wasn’t alone—the single, pathetic, sickly subject of testing—with the team of them trying to fix what was wrong with me.

We were all getting tested, having the same imaging done. Yes, it was still because I had the Condition, but this time it was for comparison. And for once, when I thought about having my medical information compared to someone else’s, the most important thing that came to mind wasn’t the idea that I was going to come up the loser.

No one was going to look at the tests and think I’d failed somehow.

Because I hadn’t.

Nothing I’d done had earned me lifelong complications from illness, because that wasn’t a thing. No one deserved to be sick. Except maybe people like Mr. Sterling, since I was pretty sure he was deliberately making other people sick. He probably deserved it.

“Would you look at that?” Linden’s friend said in the middle of my scan, just loud enough for me to hear, and okay, that was scary. Except he didn’t sound bothered. He sounded excited.

“Am I dying?” I asked, trying to keep the tremors out of my voice. Nothing to be scared of. It was just a scan. Not gonna kill me.

Colt’s voice came over the speaker then, dry as dust. “I don’t know what I’m looking at, but offhand I’d say Skye’s is bigger than mine.” I could imagine him shooting a wink my way at the innuendo.

“It is,” Linden’s friend agreed, missing the joke. “Much bigger. It’s not a static thing, but omegas do tend to have considerably more mass in the remus gland than betas or alphas. But his is . . . well, it looks inflamed, but that alone probably wouldn’t account for the difference.”

“So . . . dying?” I asked again.

Finally, Linden spoke up. “Probably an indication of your recent relapse. Or your recent heat. We’d have to take more images at other times to be certain, but I’d hazard a hypothesis that the size of it might have something to do with susceptibility to the Condition.”

“It’s possible,” Lawrence agreed. “I mean, the gland is most prominent in omegas, and omegas are the ones affected by the Condition. And since it’s also the gland that produces all those lovely soothing pheromones omegas have, well . . . there’s a strong correlation.”

“And it’s not like we can test the poison Sterling is trying to feed us on actual live omegas,” Colt said, but his voice was unusually tense. Not like he was casually throwing out that it wasn’t possible, but like he was cutting off a line of thought. Like maybe they had considered it, and he was telling them not only no, but fuck no.

“No,” Linden agreed, his voice soft and thoughtful. “We’ll have to find other ways to test it, obviously.”

Not that I’d have expected my own alpha to want to experiment on me. A human who was excited by a breakthrough, well . . . I didn’t know much about medical ethics, other than that I was pretty sure experimenting on me probably didn’t go along with them.

The machine stopped whirring, and finally, a moment later, I was free and could breathe again, sitting up. I took half a dozen deep gulps of air, trying to force back my nerves, and make my hands stop trembling.

“I think we have what we need, Skye,” the doctor’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “You can go ahead and change back into your clothes. We’re going to go in there”—he pointed to a door—“and look at some comparisons. Just come on through when you’re ready.”

Thank goodness.

To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure why they’d had me change into a gown in order to scan my head. But I wasn’t a doctor, so what did I know? I wasn’t going to argue. I grabbed my stuff and went into the bathroom while Linden’s friend suggested getting some scans of humans for the cause. Some humans had a remus gland too, he pointed out. It was theoretically why some of them were able to turn when bitten.

And if I spent a few minutes sitting on the toilet, breathing out some of my stress, well, no one but me had to know.

It was just scans. I hadn’t done anything wrong, I wasn’t any sicker than usual, and everything was fine.

Finally back in my own slacks and button-down, I draped the gown over one shoulder and headed back out to rejoin the others.

Only Linden and Colt and the doctor weren’t the ones waiting for me right outside the bathroom. No, that was a silver-haired man with deep crow’s feet and no laugh lines. A man with a gun in one hand, pointed in my direction, and a finger to his lips.

“You’re going to be good and keep quiet, right?” As though to remind me why that was a good idea, he lifted the gun a few inches, till the freezing metal brushed my chin.

I swallowed hard, but nodded.

His smile was tiny and cold, and he reached up with his free hand to brush my cheek. “Good boy.”

It was all I could do not to be sick.

He waved the gun in the direction of the door, a clear order to go out, but . . . well, come on. I might be naive, but no one is that naive. If I went with him, quiet and meek like he wanted, my body would be found in a ditch three weeks later.

So instead I went limp, dropping to the floor. I tried to roll away, but his foot came down in my way. I got my hands under myself, took a deep breath to scream bloody murder, because let’s be honest, if you have to get shot, you might as well do it in a hospital—but then, there was a sharp crack, a blinding pain in my head, and everything went dark.

I WOKE IN A DARK ROOM, on a strange bed. It smelled like dust and, I dunno, death? Mothballs? It wasn’t something I’d smelled before, but it was stagnant and ugly and oppressive.

The duvet under me was rough and heavy—the fabric felt almost more like a tapestry than a blanket. When I moved my hands, the scent of dust increased, and I almost sneezed.

There was a little light, coming from a door opposite the bed, but between me and it was the old man. Pacing. Gun still in hand.

“You shouldn’t have made me do that, Emile. You always make me do these things.” He turned to me, pointing the gun in my direction. “Why won’t you be good? I don’t want to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you. Aren’t you all supposed to be docile and meek?”

Somehow, it seemed like a bad idea, pointing out to him that I had no idea who he was. What he wanted. That I didn’t know Emile, and definitely wasn’t him. And that sure, maybe I was a stereotypical omega in a lot of ways, but no one was going to make me be meek and docile, least of all by insisting I should be.

So for once, I took my mother’s advice. I had nothing nice to say, so I kept my mouth shut.

“I’m not going to let you mutts ruin me,” he told me, and I couldn’t see the expression on his face since the light was behind him, but it was easy enough to imagine the nasty sneer. People who called werewolves “mutts” were always sneering. “The whole valley is like a fortress, that’s what my men said. Discovered before they’d been there twelve hours, chased off by some dog.”

A fortress? Grovetown? I thought we were well protected, sure, but I’d hardly call the valley a fortress. We were a center for tourism, for goodness’ sake. “Look, mister—if you want to talk to the pack, you should talk to Alpha Grove, not me. I can’t ruin anyone. I don’t really have that kind of power.”

He didn’t even acknowledge that I’d spoken by looking up at me, just turned and continued to pace and mutter. “Is he the one you left me for? The big blond one? It doesn’t matter. He’ll have to find a different bitch.”

All mystery aside, that was when I saw red. Where the hell did this racist old bastard get off, calling me names?

I sat up on the bed, opening my mouth the give the asshole a piece of my mind—sure, yes, and probably get shot—when somewhere nearby, a door slammed open and then shut.

“Grandfather? I have to talk to you.” Footsteps echoed through the building, giving me the impression that it was huge. We were upstairs from where the other person had come in, I was sure, and in a small bedroom. But the sounds echoed much farther than just to a door and back.

The old man slunk over to the bedroom door, pulling it mostly shut. The crack of light from it fell on his face as he half turned to shoot me a venomous glare. I supposed he wanted me to keep quiet again.

Forget that.

Before I had a chance to screech at the top of my lungs, the door was yanked back open from the other side. “Grandfather? I went back to Grovetown and talked to the boy doing their tests. They’ve outfitted a real lab, and—What the hell? Who are you?”

The guy who stepped in was a redhead, but that was about all I could tell with him backlit.

“Skye,” I rasped, as I deliberately turned to look at where the old man stood with his gun.

The man followed my gaze, mouth falling open in shock when he found my kidnapper. Wait, was it kidnapping when I wasn’t a kid? Adultnapping? Was that a thing?

“Grandfather, what the hell is going on? Who is he? Why are you—Why do you have a gun?” He stressed the last, as though that was the most shocking part, and not, oh, the unwilling man being held prisoner.

“I don’t know who you people are, but your grandfather is crazy. He kidnapped me from the hospital.”

The nose of the gun flew up, once again pointed in my direction, albeit at the end of a trembling arm. “Quiet!” the old man snapped. “You be quiet. You had your chance to talk, and you said the wrong things.”

The redhead flipped a light switch, leaving the old man and I blinking at the brightness for a moment. “Grandfather—”

“Go home, Archer,” the old man said, casual as you please. Like his grandson finding him holding a gun on someone was nothing. “I have to handle this. The little whore is trying to ruin me. I should have known he would. Never wanted to stay, oh no, but he’d come back to ruin me, wouldn’t he?”

And that, well . . . that was it. I’d kept my mouth shut long enough, but I wasn’t going to sit there and be berated for crimes I hadn’t committed. Not that I suspected the person he was talking about—Emile, maybe?—had done anything wrong either.

“Look, I have no idea who the hell you are. Either of you. I’m not Emile, and I’m not going to sit here and let you keep insulting me for the crime of being a werewolf.” I turned to the other man, who in better lighting, was clearly a ginger guy in his twenties. Maybe thirties? He looked horrified, which I was hoping played in my favor. “I was in the hospital for tests, and your crazy gun-toting grandfather showed up and kidnapped me. Help?”

The old man snarled as effectively as any wolf, and he did that thing to the gun where it makes a clicking noise and everyone goes quiet. Sure enough, everyone went quiet. Yes, including me.

“Grandfather?” the redhead whispered. “I don’t know why you’re doing this, but shooting this boy isn’t the answer. He’s just a kid, and he’s scared. And frankly, so am I.”

“I told you to go home, Archer.”

“I can’t do that, Grandfather.”

So, I didn’t know this Archer guy. Or his murderous grandfather. But if I had to be in this situation, I was suddenly glad it was with Archer. Stand-up guy, Archer. Not gonna let his grandfather murder me. I was there for that kind of guy.

If I survived the next hour, I’d name my first kid Archer. Or, like, a cat, since I didn’t even know if I wanted kids. I had to swallow down the terrified giggle that tried to force its way up my throat at the thought. Murder grandpa didn’t seem the type to appreciate me finding levity in the situation.

“You can stay and help, then,” murder grandpa said, turning to glance at the guy. “But the mutt needs to die. Then everything can go back to normal.”

Archer’s mouth fell open, and he held up a scrunched handful of paper. His voice was soft and hurt when he spoke. “You already know. You know that there’s something in the products.”

The old man’s upper lip pulled away from his teeth in another wolfish snarl. “Of course I know,” he sneered. “I created it. It was my masterpiece. I spent years on that formula. How many drugs are there than only affect the dogs? Just one. Just mine. And it’s going to wipe them off the face of the earth, just like they deserve.”

Archer stared at him in shocked horror, and the crumpled papers dropped from his lax hands to the floor. He gave a tiny shake of his head, a ghost of a motion, like he had to deny it, couldn’t stop himself, even if it was obvious that it was true.

Every word.

Sterlings.

These people were Sterlings.

But who was Emile, and why had the old man been talking about him like the abuser in a bad relationship?

Everything clicked into place with sudden clarity.

“No way,” I whispered. “No fucking way.”

Two heads snapped toward me, and well, I’d have felt better if it had been one. Or none, since if it had been one, it probably would have been murder grandpa.

“What?” he demanded, teeth still bared in a wolfish threat. I doubted he’d take too kindly to the comparison, so I didn’t point that out.

Really, I should have just shut up again. But I had to know. “Emile. You called me Emile, but my name is Skye. Was Emile another werewolf? Another omega wolf, maybe, one you abused?”

“Abused!” he roared, taking a step toward me, free hand clenched into a fist, like shooting me wasn’t enough. Like he had to hit me with his own hands. “I would have given you”—he paused, squeezing his eyes shut for a second before continuing—“I would have given him the world. But no. He needed another dog. An alpha. You mutts don’t belong in human society. We need to be free of you. All of you.”

He lifted the barrel of his gun again, pointing it at me.

“Grandfather—”

“Leave, Archer, unless you want to help me incinerate the body.”

The body. My body. Holy hell, he was talking about me like I was already dead. I’d fought back the Condition too long to give up so easily. I glanced to both sides. Maybe if I rolled off the bed. Maybe—

The pop of the gun going off was somehow louder and quieter than I had expected, but no pain followed.

No. Archer Sterling was the one who clutched himself in shock. Who had put himself between his grandfather’s gun and me. Who fell against the bed, with red spreading beneath his fingers, where he had his hand pressed to the center of his chest.

Sterling hissed in anger, but he didn’t reach for Archer. Didn’t rush to call an ambulance. No, he stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

And then locking it.

Archer fell onto his back, struggling to breathe, gasping in irregular lungfuls of air. It might have been the shock or damage caused by the bullet, but that was when my training snapped to the forefront of my mind.

I yanked myself up to my knees, going to him, looking at the bullet placement, checking his pulse, his breathing. It hadn’t hit his heart, but from the sound, one of his lungs had collapsed.

And Archer Sterling wasn’t a werewolf.

Archer Sterling was dying, unless—and maybe even if—he got to a doctor in the next minute. Not only was I not a doctor, I didn’t have any of the tools I’d need to fix this, even if I thought I could do it.

Looking into Archer Sterling’s terrified face, my mind flashed back to earlier that day. Some humans had the remus gland, Linden’s friend had said. Some of them could be turned into wolves, if they were bitten.

I looked down at his face. “Archer? Archer, I can’t fix you. You’re going to die.” He breathed out what might have been a laugh under better circumstances, an incredulous half smile on his lips, but I shook my head. “There’s a chance. Maybe.” I grabbed his left hand, the one that wasn’t pressed to his chest, and held it up. “I can bite you. I don’t know if it’ll work, but—”

His eyes traced my face, glancing back and forth from my mouth to his wrist repeatedly, before he closed his eyes. I was terrified it was a no, or that he’d lost consciousness and couldn’t say yes, but before I had a chance to panic, he whispered, wheezing and thready, “Do it.”

I didn’t know where a wolf was supposed to bite a person. It just wasn’t a thing we did. We all knew it was possible in theory, but why do it, when most humans didn’t want it? Hell, they wrote whole horror plots based around evil werewolves taking their agency and forcing the bite on them. All I could do was pick a place, go for it, and hope for the best. So I did. I let my wolf’s teeth break free, growing long and sharp, and I sank them into the meat of his forearm.

He sucked in half a sharp breath, his whole body wincing in pain, but he didn’t scream. Instead, he murmured something else. “Phone.”

Phone?

Oh! It only took me a moment to find his cell phone in his pocket, but by the time I looked back up at him, his body was lax. Unconscious. I opened it with his face, which felt skeevy as all hell, but otherwise the only choice was to call nine-one-one. And what would I tell them? Help. The rich man whose house I’m at has kidnapped me?

Murder Sterling would just meet them at the door and say they were being pranked, that he was alone in the house.

I needed someone who wouldn’t be deterred by the asshole.

Also, I only knew one phone number by heart. So with my own heart beating double time and an unconscious Archer Sterling beneath me, I dialed my one number. The clinic.

39

DANTE

I’d never expected to get anyone from the Sterling Corporation on my side. Hell, I had thought this whole thing would be an uphill battle from the start, like every other damn attempt to make the world a little less shitty. But Archer Sterling might actually be a decent guy, and even if he was clearly a spoiled ass with screwed up ideas about werewolves, that didn’t make him evil.

People could grow. Change. Maybe.

At least, I was going to try and give him a chance, because things would be a hell of a lot easier if he had our backs.

I suspected we’d have a harder time convincing him that there was something insidious behind what we’d found. Maybe he could see the evidence of danger, but pushing him to think it was purposeful and someone at their company, maybe even his grandfather, was a mass murderer? That would be a much bigger hurdle.

I leaned back against the counter, my fingers tapping the edge. For the moment, there was nothing more I could do but wait. Maybe I should have gone to the hospital, but with all the testing done, that meant Skye and I could relax when he got back to Grovetown.

That was better, right?

While I was talking my way out of thinking everything I did was some degree of a mistake, the phone rang shrilly through the clinic. I sucked in my cheeks, wondering if I had the authority to answer. But, well, if it were an emergency, whoever it was would need to know Linden was away from the office.

I went over to Linden’s desk and picked up. “Grovetown Clinic, this is Dante.”

“Dante—” The rasp on the other end was immediately recognizable, that soft, low voice that’d gasped my name so recently was now filled with fear.

“Skye! What’s wrong? Where are you?”

My wolf’s fury bristled, even as I tried to convince myself everything was fine. He was having an episode or a panic attack, but Linden was there to help him.

Except if he were, Skye wouldn’t be calling me. There wouldn’t be fear and desperation in his voice. His voice wouldn’t break on a gasp that sounded too much like a sob.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. There’s a house. The trees outside—dark leaves still.” This late in the year, that sort of thing was worth noting. “It’s dusty. I don’t know where I am, Dante. Archer’s here. He’s—He’s bleeding. Unconscious. Sterling shot him. I—” He cut off sharply, but all he was doing now was working himself up.

“Okay. I’m coming to get you, okay? I’ll call Linden, and we’ll find you.”

“Okay,” he whispered. “I don’t know when he’ll come back, Dante . . .”

All the times my father had been drunk and out of his mind, all those times I’d hid in my bedroom closet and hoped he’d forget I existed at all, rushed back in.

“Find something heavy, something you can hit him with. If there’s a door, push something against it, okay? Stay quiet.” Maybe Sterling would forget he was there.

I had a horrible, sharp fear that this was punishment—the universe getting back at me for what’d happened to Brook. Someone had taken Skye, and if Archer was there, it—it had to be Sterling. Had to be.

I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than someone like my father, because I didn’t know what Sterling was capable of.

“I’m going to call Linden. Will you be okay for a minute?” I asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

“And this number, you can pick it up if we call you there?”

“Yeah.”

My mouth went dry. I didn’t want to hang up on him, terrified that this would be the last time I ever heard his voice. I’d only gotten a taste of him, a handful of weeks.

It wasn’t enough. I wanted forever.

“Skye?”

“Uh huh?”

“I love you.”

He scoffed. “Don’t say that now!”

“Sorry. Had to. Hold on.”

I hung up and snapped a picture of the caller ID with my phone. Before I had a plan, I was crashing out of the clinic into the parking lot. The door locked behind me, but I had my cell phone in my hand.

Shaking, I raised it to my ear and called my alpha.

He picked up on the first ring.

“Dante, hi. I don’t suppose you’ve seen Skye, have you?” There was a tightness to his voice, constrained by years of being a doctor who delivered bad news gently. But he was tense. Worried. He knew something was wrong.

“He’s been taken. Sterling. He has a house somewhere—old, Skye said. Maybe out of use, like a vacation house. It was dusty. Maybe toward the mountains? There were evergreens.”

An awful beat passed. I heard him draw in a slow breath on the other end of the line.

“Okay. You have Aspen’s phone number?”

“Yeah.”

“I need him here, and Skye needs you. So can you call my brother? He’ll bring you here. We’ll find him.”

The stubborn confidence of the pack alpha washed over me, and I trusted we would be all right. It was the only option. “Linden, Archer’s there. He’s been shot. He’s not conscious. Skye called from another number.”

“Send it to me. Call Aspen.”

With directives, my head cleared. Once I hung up on him and called Aspen, the older Grove brother was outside the clinic in minutes, Brook beside him in the front seat.

I opened the back door, and he twisted to grin up at me, gripping Brook’s hand across the center console. “Figured another set of teeth wouldn’t hurt anything.”

The ride to the hospital was too long, silent and tense. From where I sat behind Brook, I could see the muscle in Aspen’s jaw working.

That was deeply fucking relatable. Pack was in danger, and even if Skye wasn’t Aspen’s mate, there were bonds that were every bit as important. Aspen wanted to protect the Grove pack. Brook wanted to protect his friend.

And I wanted to find the omega I’d take as my mate, if he wanted me.

I’d never get the chance to ask if we didn’t hurry, and though Aspen was already speeding, I wanted him to go faster. Hell, I wanted to jump out of the car and sprint at the edge of the road on four legs until I found Skye.

At the hospital, Colt, Linden, and another man in a white coat were already outside.

I got out of the car as soon as it stopped. “Anything?”

Linden gave a tiny shake of his head. “Archer is . . . stable, but we don’t know where Skye was taken.”

My stomach gave an awful, uneasy clench. What if we could never find him? I gasped in air, desperate for the scent of him.

Suddenly, Colt was there, right in front of me, face hard and intense. He had the same stubborn, steady presence he had in the forest the night I’d helped Brook. He held the tops of my arms. He wasn’t Skye, but he was still an omega, and right then, he was way calmer than I was. The effect was grounding. I looked down into his blue eyes, so much darker than Skye’s own bright gaze, and scowled.

“You should shift,” he said.

I’d expected him to tell me to calm down, clear my head, but I didn’t know what my wolf could do on four legs that I couldn’t do on two. At least now, I could think logically. I glanced at the alpha, but he was simply watching his mate, a frown on his face.

He wasn’t interrupting, because omegas had a voice in his pack, and Colt was trying to tell me something important. Skye would’ve given me hell if I’d brushed Colt off, as he should’ve.

My attention refocused on him, and his lips twitched knowingly.

“Why?”

“You love Skye?” he asked.

My fingertips had gone icy. I nodded. There was no doubt in my mind. If I lost him, the world and all the fragile hope I’d pieced together since the Groves picked me up off the forest floor and stitched me back together would shatter.

“And you have a sense, right, that he’s your mate? In here.” He tapped his fingers against my solar plexus. “He’s yours and you’re his?”

“Yeah.” This was all some kind of magical, fated-mate fantasy that I’d never believed in. I’d wanted to boil the need alphas felt for omegas down to science—pheromones or hormones or selfish indulgence and want.

But the look in Colt’s eyes told me that there was something more. What I felt for Skye wasn’t chemical or selfish. I wanted to give him the world, build a place for the both of us. I needed him, yes, but in my soul. That wild part of me that he soothed wasn’t evil like I’d always thought, but it did need him.

“Then trust your wolf,” Colt said. “You can find him.”

“Like you found me?” Linden asked, blinking wide eyes. Doctor Grove must’ve leaned on science and logic too.

And Brook and Aspen? Well, their hands were already locked together tight. This was a bond they’d felt and acknowledged, that’d gotten Brook through trauma and brought Aspen Grove home.

And it’d bring Skye home too, because I was an alpha and a werewolf and there was more to me than base, awful instinct.

Colt turned a gorgeous smile on his mate. “Oh, no. That was because you smelled like wool in the heat of summer. Stands out anywhere,” he teased.

Already, I was shedding my clothes, kicking off my shoes. If trusting my wolf would bring me to Skye, it was time to give in.

I should have known Colt was right. The second my paws touched the ground, I felt a shiver through my bones, like frost sweeping through my marrow. It was a spear of ice that melted almost immediately, spreading warmth through my limbs. My chest was full. My nose flared. There was Skye, at the edges of my consciousness, calling me across miles.

Aspen shifted beside me. Linden and Brook grabbed our clothes off the ground and headed for Aspen’s car. But me and Aspen, we were going on foot, my wolf ready to sprint along country highways after my mate, as long as it took to find him.

40

SKYE

Block the door. Yes, that was a good idea. I scanned the now-bright room, and my eyes locked on the huge old-fashioned dresser. That might help. Maybe.

I leapt off the bed, and sure enough, the thing didn’t want to move for me when I pushed at it. I took a deep breath, braced myself, and pushed as hard as I could. It took me a few minutes to get it to the door, and sort of wedge it in front. The knob was in the way of pushing it flush against the door, but maybe it would at least slow him down for a minute if he came back.

Archer’s phone rang where I’d left it on the bed, and I almost didn’t answer it. What if it was his grandfather? What if it was someone I didn’t know, and they wanted to talk to a man who was in the middle of maybe bleeding to death?

But the number looked familiar, so I picked it up, hit the button to answer, and held it to my ear. That, naturally, was when my mind went blank. What did one say when answering a possibly murdered man’s phone?

“H-hello?”

“Skye?” came Linden’s strident voice, and I could have cried in relief. Dante must have written down the number on the caller ID from the clinic and given it to Linden.

I took a few gasping breaths, nodding, before I realized he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, yes, it’s me. I’m . . . does biting humans really work, Linden? I know it’s a ridiculous urban legend and we don’t—we don’t really do it, but—”

“Sometimes,” he said, stressing the word hard. “It can’t be counted on, Skye. If the human doesn’t have a remus gland to react to the wolf genes, then it’s just a bite. Tell me what’s happening. Did someone make you bite them?”

A sob burst out of me, and I shook my head—again, not helpful. “No. No, I just—His grandfather shot him. He’s dying and there’s no way his grandfather would let paramedics into the house if I called them, and I don’t want him to come back anyway, so I don’t want to remind him we’re here.”

I checked Archer’s pulse for the fiftieth time since I bit him, and it was the same as it had been. Slow. Too slow. But not slowing down more. And he was still breathing, if struggling. The spot where I’d bitten his arm had welled up with blood initially, but it wasn’t flowing. No, it was scabbing over instead of bleeding more. I felt like a terrible medical professional, paying more attention to his phone and the dresser than him, but if I didn’t get help and keep his grandfather from coming back, it wouldn’t matter what I did to try to save his life.

And given how much his grandfather seemed to hate werewolves, no doubt he’d see the bite as something even worse than Archer bleeding out in the middle of a dusty, abandoned room, with no company but a terrified stranger.

“I bit him,” I whispered down the line, like that would make it a secret. “It was the only thing I could think of because I can’t get him to a doctor, and he was shot in the chest, and I think—I think one of his lungs collapsed. I can’t—” I broke off and pressed an ear to Archer’s chest, first one side, then the other. There was air moving on both sides. Maybe . . . maybe it hadn’t collapsed?

“Skye?” Linden was asking on the phone. Still as calm as ever. My alpha. He was coming. He would protect me. Protect us, since—

“He’s . . . he’s breathing. I think maybe it worked? Does this make him a Grove now?”

“It makes him alive,” Linden corrected. “The rest will be up to him.”

“I asked,” I told him. “I asked before I bit him. He said to do it. I mean, it wasn’t a real choice, because who would want to die, but he said yes. I didn’t just—”

“Skye. It’s fine. You’re fine. You did the right thing. You’ve kept a cooler head than most people would have, and I’m proud of you. You probably saved his life.” Linden’s voice was as soft as ever, but there was also steel underneath it. Absolute confidence that he was right.

Because I had done it. I’d saved Archer’s life, probably. Maybe I hadn’t been calm, and I definitely wasn’t a doctor, but I’d thought of something. I’d done something. And Archer was alive.

I checked his pulse again, and it was steady. Stronger than it had been a minute ago.

Holy crap, I turned someone into a werewolf.

“Skye?” Linden was saying on the other end of the line. “Skye, Dante is here. We’re going to find you, okay? We’re—”

Whatever he was going to say was lost on me, because the doorknob rattled, and the door shook, followed by a soft curse. Then, another pop, and a crunching noise—wood splintering? And there was a small hole in the door, around head-height.

He’d shot at the door. My stomach swooped in shock and horror. He’d tried to murder me twice, and didn’t care that one of those shots would have killed his grandson.

But Linden said Dante was there. Dante would find me. He had to, right? There was no way Archer and I could die in this dusty hell. Especially not Archer.

Or maybe especially not me, since he’d actually been shot in the chest, but the man had jumped between me and a bullet, despite being a human who wouldn’t heal as fast as me.

I mean, yeah, I had a chronic illness, but he was human.

Or, um, he had been.

I bit my lip, checking his pulse again. And again. It was definitely getting stronger. He was going to live.

And be a werewolf, when his grandfather was an enormous speciesist.

He gave a little cough, and his whole body jerked. Quickly, it turned into a big cough and he sat up, covering his mouth with both hands. I thought maybe he gagged once or twice. It sounded painful and went on for long moments, but then, he pulled his hands away from his face, and there—oh jeez. He’d coughed up the bullet.

We both stared at that in horror, and the scent of frightened omega permeated the room.

But . . . okay, not that I wasn’t scared, I was terrified, but I didn’t usually smell myself. I looked up at Archer, aghast. Had I . . . ?

I leaned in, taking a long sniff of his neck. When I pulled away, his brows were drawn together in confusion, but he was leaning forward just a little—like he wanted to return the favor. It made sense, really, since he was turning into a wolf. Scent wasn’t as important to humans as it was to us.

I sat there, across from him, biting my lip, and whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

“For what?” His voice was rough, like, oh, he’d just coughed up the bullet that almost killed him. “Didn’t it work? I feel like it must have worked.”

“It did,” I agreed. “But you’re an omega.”

For a moment, he just sat there, blinking and staring at me. Then . . . he burst into laughter. Wild, loud, hysterical laughter, that left him clutching his sides and leaning against me, panting. His voice was almost a sob, when he mumbled into my shoulder, “Of course I am. How’s that for karma?”

“Open this door, Emile,” the old man’s rough voice demanded from outside the room. “Open it now.”

“Why, Grandfather, so you can shoot me again?” Archer asked, voice less raspy, and gaining in strength. In anger. “Or so you can poison more werewolves with your chemical masterpiece?”

He scanned the room for a moment, finally stopping on a huge ugly oil painting on one wall. Rushing over, he pulled it down, braced his foot against the bottom of the heavy wood frame, and jerked hard on the top piece until it broke away in a long chunk.

A piece about as big as a baseball bat.

“You don’t understand the dogs like I do, Archer. They’re not like us. This is a war, and only one species can prevail. We have to make sure the mutts don’t overtake us.”

We both looked to the door, then each other, and Archer rolled his eyes, sighing and muttering about how ignorant he’d been to not see the old man’s madness. I wanted to reassure him, because really, who jumps to the conclusion that his grandfather is a monster without hard proof? And now that he had proof, he wasn’t trying to pretend otherwise.

Turning back to me, Archer held out the piece of picture frame, a question in his eye. Did I want to be the bait, or swing the bat? Neither of us were big strong guys, but with a piece of wood and enough space to swing, I thought either of us could muster the force necessary to lay a man out. I looked between the wood and him, then shook my head and pointed at him, trying to make my decision clear in my expression, lips pursed and looking at him hard.

Your grandfather. You choose.

He turned to look at the door, and for a second, his eyes hardened, but then he shook his whole body, and held the piece of picture frame out to me. I nodded and took it, positioning myself just inside the door.

Archer went to the dresser, shoving it aside with frustrating ease—of course, even if he was an omega, he didn’t have the Condition, so he just plain old had werewolf strength, now. He opened the door and took two big steps back, hands held aloft.

“What the hell were you thinking, Grandfather?” He lowered one hand, giving a convincing wince and clutching the edge of the bloody spot on his shirt. “You shot me.”

“Where’s the mutt?” The old man demanded. He didn’t step into the room, and I couldn’t see him from my vantage, but Archer pointed to another corner of the room. One in the opposite direction from where I was.

“He’s hiding from you, of course. Where do you think he is? You kidnapped him and shot me right in front of him. He thinks you’re a monster.” And there it was. The old man stepped into the room. Eyes and gun raised in the direction where Archer had pointed. Without even a warning, he fired off two shots into the corner of the room.

I didn’t have any hesitation left after that. I lifted the splintered piece of wood over my head and brought it down on Sterling’s skull. He dropped like a rock, the gun skittering off into the far corner of the room, and Archer slumped down onto the bed.

For a moment, we both stared at the unmoving body of Archer’s grandfather, before Archer asked, dispassionately, “Is he dead?”

I shook my head. “No. Just unconscious. Strong heartbeat.”

The thunderous crash from downstairs had me turning back toward the door, my impromptu bat raised again, in case I had to defend us. Archer dove for the corner of the room, coming back up with the gun. His hands trembled, but he braced himself, ready to fight for our lives.

But what came bounding down the hallway had the tension slipping out of me. I dropped the piece of wood and fell to my knees, arms outstretched, as the big, beautiful white wolf that was my mate rushed straight into me, sniffing and licking and whining his concern over me.

A moment later, I heard Linden and Aspen and Brook’s voices, all wound together and asking questions. I didn’t listen. It didn’t matter. Archer and I beat the bad guy. My alphas were here. We were safe. Everything was going to be fine.

41

DANTE

Turned out, that thing inside me I’d been denying my whole life was right there when I needed it, a huge white wolf with legs strong enough to outrace a car, senses keen enough to find my mate even lost out in the woods, his scent masked in melting frost and the smell of diesel trucks and wet asphalt. My wolf knew what to do.

Well, plus or minus dealing with the front door, but Linden and the others piled out of the car and took care of that for me after just a few moments of whining and clawing at the thick wooden obstacle. Then, it was a mad sprint to Skye, pushing my nose into his stomach, sniffing for blood, licking his smooth skin and feeling the anxious flutter of his pulse.

He was whole and unharmed, the blood in the room concentrated around Archer Sterling, who had the curious scent of enemy and pack all mingled in at once.

I saw the bite mark on his wrist and growled. That was Skye’s mark, there on another wolf.

An omega wolf.

Not his alpha or his mate, but a scared kid who’d been shot.

Skye’s arm wrapped around the ruff of my neck, his fingers combing through my fur as he pressed his face against my shoulder. “Archer saved me,” he whispered into the curve of my neck.

With a rush of air, I plopped down on my back legs, my tail giving a thwack against the dusty floor for good measure. If Archer saved Skye, he was as good as pack, even if I hated the idea that Skye needed saving in the first place.

There was nothing for that shivering, snarling anger like my omega pressed against my side. Linden checked on Archer, his eyes full of concern, his voice soft. Aspen, bare footed and in nothing but jeans, checked Jedidiah Sterling’s pulse, but he left him facedown on the floor.

It was only that—the other alphas in the room, the knowledge that Archer and Skye had brought Sterling down already—that let me sit with my mate. Pack would handle this. The Groves would keep us safe.

And me? I would give Skye a place to lean, warm fur and good scents and tongue licks until he felt safe.

And if that man on the floor moved, if he so much as twitched, I’d tear the loose folds of his skin with tooth and claw and leave him bleeding on the floor like the monster he was. Once, the Reid pack had treated me the same, and I had done far less to deserve it than Sterling had.

I stayed like that for a long time, pressed against Skye, nudging into him with worry. Linden called the authorities. Aspen put on a shirt. And finally, when the police arrived, I stepped into another room to shift and dress, leaving Skye to answer an officer’s questions.

I rushed, still buttoning my shirt when I came back to that dusty old room. They’d taken Mr. Sterling away in an ambulance, but with Archer’s account of what’d happened and the bloody hole in his shirt, he’d be in a cell soon enough.

Skye was leaning against the wall out of the way, one of the officers talking to Colt, Linden at his side. There was a frown on Skye’s face as he listened to Colt’s account of how we’d found him, how I’d taken off running at the edge of the winding country roads, and they’d followed in Aspen’s red Mustang.

I dropped against the wall beside him, my arm against the wood paneling. Skye’s teeth pressed into his bottom lip.

“You found me,” he muttered softly. He was looking down at the worn floorboards.

“Yeah.” I swallowed hard, glancing at Colt. He met my eye past the arm of the officer. “It’s a mate thing, I guess? Colt suggested I try shifting, and—and he was right. It was like the whole world blew apart, and there was a line straight from me to you. Knowing you were in trouble, you needed me—Skye, you’re the only thing that matters to my wolf.”

Finally, he looked up at me, color flooding his cheeks. When I reached out and gripped his nearest hand in both of mine, he spread his fingers then gripped me tight. “And to you?”

I couldn’t stop the grin that tugged at my cheeks. Once upon a time, only a handful of hours ago, I’d have been all too happy to pretend my wolf and I were different things. I’d seen only the worst in alphas—how we could hurt people and how needy we were, not how we could protect them and support the ones we loved, how I could run miles on unfamiliar land directly into the open arms of the man I loved.

Now, I knew the beast and I were of the same mind. My wolf wasn’t evil, not any more than I was on two legs. And sure, sometimes I’d be selfish, but what I wanted more than anything right then was a kiss from my mate.

“Oh, we’re in agreement that you’re the most important person in the world,” I swore, leaning in to press a kiss to his temple.

“And you, uh—you know I can still take care of myself?”

I leaned back, searching his face. He was frowning, nervous.

Duh. I felt like a buffoon. Of course he was. He was Skye, a chronically ill omega who’d been coddled by his pack all his life, whose life had just been in danger. No doubt the cavalry would circle and people would fret over him, and—

And he wanted to make sure that wasn’t going to be me, as if I could ever imagine him to be anything but the most capable, competent, incredible, loving man I’d ever met.

“Well, from where I’m sitting, you just saved Archer Sterling from a fatal gunshot wound, pulled off the kind of stunt with that bite that most people think is a complete myth, and you beaned a real asshole and knocked him the fuck out. All I really managed to do today was find you. You’re the guy who saved the day, Skye. Hell, you’ve been saving me from the first minute I opened my eyes in the clinic and you were there, an angel with a distressingly nutritious breakfast sandwich.”

The longer I talked, the more Skye’s smile grew, until it was huge and luminous and genuine. Damn if that didn’t make me feel like a hero too, knowing I could make Skye Johnson so damn happy.

He rocked forward on the balls of his feet, grabbing me by the front of my shirt and pulling me in. He lifted his face, his head tilted, and the second I sighed, his tongue slipped into my mouth, laying a claiming streak between my lips to tangle with my own.

It could’ve been minutes, hours, maybe even seconds that stretched out deliciously, until time lost all meaning, but eventually, Brook’s sharp cough pulled our attentions away from each other. “So we can, like, leave now. The cops’ve got our contact information, and I’m deeply ready to evacuate this little house of horrors.”

Archer flinched, but Linden kept a hand on the young man’s shoulder.

“I can give you a ride to—”

“Back to the hospital,” Linden offered. “And we’d appreciate it, Archer, if you don’t mind.”

Between Aspen’s car and Archer’s, there were plenty of seats for all of us, but Linden stopped me before we could slip into the back seat of Aspen’s Mustang.

“We found something in the tests. The remus gland—might be something there. I know you two need some time, after today, but when you’re ready, you and I will go through it. Get to work.”

I stared up at him. Sure, I wasn’t the hero of the day—that was my incredible mate—but nonetheless, Linden had just offered me a solution, something I could research and understand, and maybe, just maybe, use to make the world better for our pack and our people.

“I can’t wait to see what you found.”

42

SKYE

Both Brook and Aspen kept shooting us glances in the rearview mirror. Brook amused and maybe charmed, and Aspen, in standard Grove style, concerned.

The funny thing was, I understood both.

Dante had found me. With no indication of where I was, no address to run to, and no rational reason to have been able to do that, Dante had shifted and run and found me. Romantic maybe wasn’t a strong enough word to cover how amazing that was.

On the other hand, I’d almost died. Archer had almost died. I’d turned someone into a werewolf to save his life, and . . . and we’d been right. Our very worst thoughts on the Sterling problem had been right. The Sterling Corporation had, in fact, been trying to kill all werewolves.

That horrible old man had been responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. He was responsible for Claudia’s near-miss with the Condition because of her pregnancy. We’d almost lost our second because of him. He was responsible for almost every single struggle I dealt with daily. For the way I was living a shadow of a life, a holding pattern, as I waited for the relapse that would kill me.

And from the way the police had looked utterly shocked the entire time they’d been taking Archer’s and my statements, he was on his way to prison. The monster was being dragged from under the bed, kicking and screaming, and he wasn’t going to be allowed to haunt my bedroom any longer.

I was already wrapped around the only man I wanted haunting my bedroom. And oh, how I wanted that.

But why not? I loved him. He loved me. He’d found me.

“You want someone to stay with you?” Aspen asked, and I realized we were all the way home, the Mustang sitting in the driveway of the duplex Aspen and Brook shared with Dante.

Brook gave a little snort, reaching out to squeeze Aspen’s arm. The way he bit his lip seemed like he was trying not to laugh. “I think maybe they could use some alone time, Asp,” he whispered to his mate, giving him a knowing look.

And Brook was right. Both that Dante and I needed to be alone, and for every reason in that amused, knowing look.

I grabbed Dante’s arm and slid over, popping the back door open and climbing out of the car. “Thanks, but we’ll be fine. We’re going to go—go. See you later.”

Dante didn’t struggle at all, just let me drag him all the way to the front door, and when we got there, searched his pockets till he found the key and opened up, holding the door for me. He followed me in, watching me with the same intense expression he’d been wearing since he’d found us with Sterling, but also . . . also a little confused. A little uncertain. Like maybe he wasn’t sure why I’d come into his place instead of just going back to my apartment.

So I turned my hips to face him, reaching up and putting my hands on his cheeks. “I love you.”

A low rumble bubbled up from his chest, like a growl, but pleased and somehow proprietary. Well, proprietary because of the intense look in his eyes. How close to the surface his wolf was. As ever, though, he had perfect control of his wolf, his teeth flat and even, as he whispered, “I love you too.”

I nodded, suddenly breathless. “You came for me. You—you make me feel safe.”

“I’ll make sure you are safe,” he assured, a little more wildness in his eyes, voice rumbling in a not-quite-human way.

“I know you will,” I agreed. “And I’ll protect you too. I’ll bash a thousand evil old men over the head if it means they won’t shoot at you when you come to rescue me.”

He leaned down, pressing his forehead against mine, and huffed out a breath that was somewhere between panting and amusement. “You did that.”

“Dante.”

He leaned back a few inches to properly meet my eyes, biting his lip.

“Mate me, Dante. Mark me. I want it to be forever. I told you I’m in it to stay. I want it for good.” His eyes softened, something vulnerable and sweet shining through, but I rushed on, not wanting to give him a chance to denigrate himself. “You found me. And . . . and we could die tomorrow, because of some awful old monster who hates all werewolves. I don’t want to waste any more time. I want this. I want it now, and I want it tomorrow, and I don’t want to have to dance around it anymore. I want you.”

He sucked in a harsh breath, his gaze darting back and forth from my eyes to my neck and back again, like he couldn’t quite believe it. Like he didn’t trust himself. So I dropped my hands to his and started walking backward, pulling him down the short hall, toward the bedroom. He didn’t hesitate to follow.

He never did, my perfect mate.

I didn’t stop moving until the backs of my knees hit the bed, and I used the momentum to pull him right into me, both of us tumbling onto the bed together, breathless. “This is what I want,” I whispered to him, rolling us over until I could straddle his hips.

I pulled him up into a sitting position so I could tug his shirt off, and he took that as his cue, tossing it across the room and then stripping off my clothes, hands moving so nimbly it looked like he was playing a musical instrument.

He rolled us back over, tossing my clothes to the floor, one piece at a time, until I was completely naked. He was still wearing his jeans, and it was . . . well, it was a lot. I shivered at being so exposed, while he was still dressed, and ducked my head a little when he stared. “Dante. You have to—”

Like the words had woken him from a trance, he went into a frenzy of motion, stripping off his own clothes and tossing one piece after another onto the floor to join mine.

“I love you,” he whispered, leaning down to lay a line of kisses along my collarbone. “I was so worried. I was afraid we wouldn’t find you, or we’d be too late, or—”

“There’s no need to worry about it anymore. You did find me, and you were right on time.” I grabbed his chin and held it in place as I leaned in for a kiss. “You were perfect. My perfect mate.”

He snatched the bottle of lube, still sitting on the nightstand, and coated his fingers in it, and went right to working me open. I had a moment to pause and worry, because lubrication was an even bigger struggle for me outside of heat, but he didn’t even notice. Just looked over every part of me like a starving man looked at a pineapple pizza. Whether it was his favorite or not, he needed it.

But then, when he looked back up into my eyes, gold flecks dancing in his deep brown gaze, I really got it. I was his favorite. He was that guy who kept trying to convince everyone that pineapple pizza was not only excellent, but maybe the very best kind of pizza.

Dante didn’t just love me, like my mother loved me and my pack loved me, because it was a requirement. Dante loved me because he wanted to. Because he enjoyed my company, and liked my body, and . . . Dante loved me.

“That’s plenty,” I whispered. “Want you right this second.”

“I don’t want to hurt you—”

“You won’t.”

And Dante trusted me, because with that promise, he reached down to spread the rest of the lube from his fingers onto his cock. As he lifted my hips from where I’d been sitting on his thighs, lining himself up, he looked back up to meet my eye again.

“You’re sure? You’ll be stuck with me forever.” He said forever like he meant heaven. Like he was looking at a work of art, and he couldn’t imagine anything better.

I grinned back. “Forever is exactly long enough.” I gasped as his cock breached me, but as soon as I could focus again, I ran a hand up to his shoulder, right where it met his neck, then met his eye again.

The brown was almost gone from his eyes, blown so wide that just a tiny ring of color showed around his pupils. He nodded, and bared his neck even more. It was almost like the way one bared their neck in submission to their alpha, and suddenly, the mate bond made a lot more sense in my mind.

That was what it was. He was submitting to me. And I would submit to him. It was an offer and a promise, and I was so ready for it. Never before in almost twenty years of life had anyone submitted to me. Bared their neck for my bite. Accepted me, so perfectly and willingly.

My wolf teeth slid out of their own accord, looking at that stretch of skin, and I leaned forward, biting down instinctively.

Dante moaned as my teeth slid into his neck, and it wasn’t pain. Or it wasn’t only in pain. He thrust hard, holding me still against him and fucking into me as I marked him. Claimed him as mine, forever.

The marks barely even bled, were already starting to heal as I pulled my teeth free. Healing into a shiny pink ring, looking perfect. Looking like it belonged there.

When I let my head fall back against the pillow, panting hard, he took my face in his hands and met my eye again. “Yours.”

“Mine,” I agreed. Then I turned my head, baring my neck just a few more inches, and he moaned again. He thrust harder, shaking the whole bed, and I wondered if I’d have bruises on my ass for a few hours from the pounding. I could barely catch my breath, the movement and sensation blending together and lifting me higher and higher until—

Sharp pinpricks of sensation lit me up from the inside. His teeth on my neck. In it. Holding me, claiming me as his own.

The first person who had learned exactly who I was, and what he was getting into by being with me—a lifetime of dealing with my Condition—and then he chose me anyway.

And that was all it took. My vision whited out, body going rigid and electricity coursing through me as I came under his body. His teeth.

My mate. My partner and savior and lover. My Dante.

43

DANTE

I was a Grove.

The second Greta Hagen from the B-and-B saw the edge of Skye’s mark beneath my collar—or rather, the second she’d run to spread the news through the town gossip mill—something had changed in the pack’s view of me. I belonged to Skye, so I belonged to them. And while I wasn’t at ease with every person in the pack yet, I trusted Skye.

That was easy. We were getting married, and I was going to take that man’s name. No more Dante Reid, no more snarling feral alpha monster stalking my nightmares, the beast of my father and the thing I feared I’d become.

Now that I had Skye, had pack, I knew better. Alphas didn’t lose control because it was inevitable, but because those bonds with each other that we all needed to feel whole went neglected.

Anyway, it wasn’t like Skye’s mother was a dream parent, and Skye was pretty much perfect, so having a nasty parent wasn’t a life sentence.

I’d have been happy with a courthouse wedding, but Skye deserved the whole damn world, and the second I’d brought it up when we were having dinner at the Hills’ farm, Alexis had given me a sly smile. “Oh, you’ve got to let us help plan it. We’ve got, like, a million wedding magazines.”

Ridge had given a grunt, nodded, hooked his hands in his jean pockets. “Sure do.”

And that settled it. Before I knew what was happening, it felt like every omega in the Grove pack had a hand in planning the party. Colt was calling event coordinators and planners in from Washington DC, Alexis was master planning what flowers to have his mate grow for our arrangements, Brook and Aspen had built us an incredible wooden canopy with their bare hands. It’d be over at the Grove, and between Rowan’s baking, Juniper’s hard cider, and Wanda Chadwick, we had catering taken care of.

All of it, the pack just . . . provided. The wedding was still a couple months away, in May, but I’d need at least that long to settle into the idea that these people, who I’d once expected to hate me, to leave me to die in the middle of the woods, could give me so much.

Skye? He gave me everything. He’d saved me and given me a place.

In the months after the terrifying day I’d almost lost him, we’d gone back to the hospital for testing together. Linden had watched the flurry of activity in his brain as he’d asked Skye to think about stressful scenarios, and Skye’s remus gland reacted right there, proof on the screen that something happened to omegas that didn’t happen to alphas or betas.

For the first time ever, I saw my own brain too. That was a trip, the sensation of seeing inside yourself to a part of you that didn’t make sense. But alphas’ remus glands were smaller, tighter, more efficient.

We speculated it was why our wolves were bigger, why the Sterling chemicals couldn’t penetrate the same way they did for omegas. Omegas’ glands were large and porous and so reactive, because when they were stressed, they produced the pheromones that pushed the pack to protect. When they sensed our need, they secreted those pheromones that calmed us down, made us see clearly again.

Basically, omegas were magic.

Colt had taken to calling Skye the uberomega, and even if it was silly, if it always made Skye blush, it was nicer than being told he was broken or sickly. Instead, the more we learned, the more we had to admit that Skye’s vulnerabilities came from being, well, the best damn omega he could be.

It all fell into place, why omegas were so prone to developing the Condition during times of high stress, like puberty or pregnancy or when everything stacked up against them exactly wrong. It was a self-sustaining cycle—fear of the Condition caused it.

And sure, there were plenty of health benefits to eating apples regularly, but I had to think that the reason the Grove pack hadn’t been decimated like other packs, like the Reids, was because every single pack member knew they had their pack’s support, even when things went bad. It didn’t make things perfect, but they were a hell of a lot better than they could’ve been.

“How are you feeling, Dante?” Linden asked. He was holding a bottle of water—a Sterling-brand bottle of water—in Skye’s general direction.

Being the badass my mate so clearly was, there wasn’t a lot that put him over the edge, but the sight of that logo, all the stress that came with it, ticked up his fear response.

We were in the clinic, doing a simple stress test. Over the last couple months, we’d established what Skye’s body went through when he was afraid, how that might make him more vulnerable to the Condition. It was slow work, but Linden had brought in other doctors, reached out to other packs, and there was a definite pattern forming.

It helped that Archer Sterling had convinced the board of his grandfather’s company of the legal danger of continuing producing, well, everything.

Lately, Skye, Linden, and I had been researching the other side of all this—what part the remus gland played in pack dynamics and mating bonds.

“Well,” I said, “I feel a little like if you keep wagging that bottle of poison in my mate’s face, I’ll have to bite your hand off.”

Linden, strangely enough, trusted me enough not to take it literally. He set the bottle aside—away from Skye—and made a note.

Skye, on the clinic bed, fiddled with his glasses and smiled at me, like he wasn’t entirely put off by my protective instincts.

“Good,” Linden said, putting his clipboard aside. “I think that’s plenty for today. If we don’t head over, we’re going to be late.”

Despite being alarmingly pregnant, Claudia Wilson, the Groves’ second, was insisting on throwing our engagement party at her house. Really, I thought Alexis had done most of the hard labor for it, but she’d insisted. Grove omegas deserved to celebrate every step, and none more than Skye.

Linden drove us over. The party was a blissful kind of haze, where people clapped me on the shoulder and congratulated me and said I’d made a wonderful choice of mate—as if it’d even been a choice, and Skye hadn’t drawn me in with every sweet smile and wide-eyed blink and fidget of his glasses.

After dinner, Claudia raised her glass of cider and pushed to stand. Birch’s hand settled on her back, even as she clinked her fork on the side of her glass.

“I am so excited to be here tonight, welcoming our young Dante into this most esteemed pack of misfits.” Chuckles sounded all around the table. “When the pack came together to try and figure out what the hell to give you boys to celebrate the, you know, entanglement of your lives in perpetuity forever and ever—” Birch gave her a little nudge. “Or happily ever after and all that jazz. Whatever.”

She smiled indulgently down at her husband, but when she looked up across the table, her gaze met and settled on Linden. Subtly, he nodded.

“We decided, together,” she continued, “that the best thing we can give you is a fond farewell.”

My breath caught.

I turned in my chair to stare at Skye, horrified. Was I—

Was I getting Skye kicked out of his own pack?

His hand closed on mine under the table. He glared at Claudia.

Alexis groaned, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Jesus, Claud.”

At the head of the table, Linden cleared his throat. “What Claudia means to say, is that we decided, Skye, that you’ve been in Grovetown your whole life. We know you love us, and we love you, but that’s also been . . . hard. We think, with Dante, you have the support you need to—to think about going to school. I know it’s something you’ve always wanted, but never thought you could take for yourself. And Dante”—he looked at me—“you never got to finish your degree. And even without it, you’ve done so much for our pack, for werewolves everywhere. You deserve to finish your education.”

Claudia sighed, dropping back into the chair with her husband’s broad hand on his back to steady her. “Lin’s right. What we’re saying is, if you want to go out into the world and try something new, you have the pack’s blessing. We’ll take care of it, support you, always.”

Linden nodded. “And you always, always, have a place here. If you decide not to go, or want to put it off a few years and decide later, that’s fine. I love having you both in the clinic. You make me sharper, have so much to give to our pack already. But I know that won’t change, no matter what.”

My pulse was racing, but Skye’s hand was there in mine, his presence beside me steadying, calming, keeping my head from flying right off my shoulders.

“That’s incredible,” Skye whispered. “Thank you.”

He turned to look up at me, and finally, I unfroze enough to meet his eyes.

“What do you think?” he asked.

I stared around the table, at the faces of friends and family. This was what pack was—not people who took from you, who you owed allegiance and violence to, but people who lifted you up and helped you reach your full potential, because that could only benefit the whole pack.

“I think—”

Brook sat right across the table, grinning at me like he was the happiest damn man on the planet. And maybe all that trauma—it was okay to let it go and feel all the good that was around you.

“I think we should get some brochures.” I looked back at Skye, meeting his shining blue gaze through the lenses of his glasses, marking the high, soft, healthy color in his cheeks. “And I think I could do anything, if you’re there with me.”

Skye surged forward, claiming my lips right there at Claudia’s table, in the middle of a pack I could’ve been at war with only months ago, and when he kissed me, the whole table cheered.

We hope you enjoyed this installment of Wolf Moon Rising! Please consider leaving a review to help other readers find it, and check the next page for a sneak peek of Captured, the first book in our new series, Star Marked Warriors, available starting July 29, 2021.

And continue to the end to find the blurb for the next Wolf Moon Rising book, Strawberry Moon, coming in late 2021.

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Burns & Fawkes’s Books & Foxes

SNEAK PEEK OF CAPTURED

STAR MARKED WARRIORS BOOK ONE

CHAPTER ONE

LUCAS

No one buys coffee at nine at night.

Okay, yeah, during college-exam season we got strung-out last-minute studiers coming in at a quarter to nine buying triple red-eyes, but on a normal day? Business died after about five.

Then I got to spend four hours scrubbing the shop to a high shine so it was ready for the lucky assholes who worked the morning shift. I’d kill to work the busy hours, serving up our fun drinks instead of scrubbing the gummy tables and doing load after load of dishes.

But a guy did the job he could get these days, and this crappy job was what a guy could get with a degree in history.

Yeah, I know, what was I thinking?

I was thinking that history was cool, and I was good at learning about it and making new connections. I sure wasn’t thinking about how I didn’t want to teach history for a living. Or just as important, that there were already a whole lot of history teachers out there, so even those jobs were pretty damn scarce.

So yeah. I spent my nights slinging coffee.

Or not slinging coffee.

And of course, getting that one last-minute customer at five till closing who paid in nickels and dimes, just so I’d have to rewash everything and recount the cash drawer. By the time I was finishing cleaning up for the second time at a quarter after, I was about ready to go home and sleep for a week.

That, naturally, was when someone started banging on the locked front door.

Seriously?

My coworker, Katie, in her hideous, grasshopper-green, ruched bridesmaid’s dress. Once, months before, I’d considered her my friend, but then Morris had moved out of our apartment, and he got all my friends, including the ones who worked with me, in the breakup.

He’d abandoned me in a lease I couldn’t really afford, moved in with and gotten engaged to a guy he’d been seeing behind my back for months, and somehow, he was the one everyone stuck by.

Oh, to be fair, Katie seemed to think we were still close. But she hadn’t hesitated to say yes when dear, sweet David asked her to be one of his bridesmaids. He’d done it right there, by the front door of the shop, while smirking at me.

I didn’t know what I’d done to make him hate me, or to make Morris leave—okay, no, I knew what had made Morris leave. I was a burnout working for minimum wage at a coffee shop. Dear, sweet David was a teacher.

Not so hard to get those teaching jobs when science is your field of expertise.

“Lucas!” Katie yelled, banging on the door. “I need coffee. You gotta open up.” Then she held up a half-full bottle of Jack, and the motion almost sent her careening into the glass door. She barely caught herself at the last second, leaning her shoulder hard against the doorframe and giggling. Already drunk, then. “I thought you’d wanna hear about the wedding.”

The wedding. Morris and David’s wedding, that very evening. Literally the last thing on the entire planet that I wanted to hear about.

I grabbed my coat, checked my pockets for my wallet and keys, and headed for the front. If I could have slipped out the back and left her there, I would have, but she would have seen me climbing into my car.

So I unlocked the door, opened it just far enough for myself to fit, and slid out, pulling it shut and turning to lock it behind me.

Katie fell into me, giggle-whining. “Noooo, Lucas, you gotta let me in. I need coffee.”

“Closed,” I told her tersely. “And I’m not cleaning the shop again just so you can sober up.”

“Aww, don’t be bitter, baby. You didn’t wanna marry Morris anyway.” She petted me like I was a sad dog, and I wanted to snap my teeth at her. And I also wanted to stay there, because no one had touched me on purpose since Morris had moved out.

He’d done it while I was at work one afternoon. Hadn’t even told me anything was wrong in our relationship. Just took his stuff and left.

And took the cat, too. The cat we’d bought together, and let me tell you, Donna Meowble was my goddamn cat. He’d wanted a cat, and picked her out, and then proceeded to completely ignore her at every turn. I’d fed her and changed her litter and petted her when she demanded attention.

I missed her.

But Morris hadn’t even talked to me since he’d left, so I’d never had a chance to demand her return. When I’d brought it up to David dearest, he’d laughed at me and told me that “Fluffy” was Morris’s cat, then he’d walked away.

Next I’d seen him, he’d been asking my two female coworkers to be his bridesmaids. He’d worked at the coffee shop during college the same as I had, you see, so they were his friends too. We’d been coworkers for three years, David and I, before he’d moved in with my boyfriend and stolen my cat.

“Is that what Morris told you, that I didn’t want to marry him?” I asked, turning away to walk toward my car. “Because that’s bullshit. I asked him to marry me a year ago. I asked.”

She stumbled a little at that, staring at me, then latched onto my arm, following me toward my car. A ride. That was why she’d showed up. She wanted a ride home because she was smashed and couldn’t drive herself. “Nuh uh. Morris said you didn’t want a serious relationship and David did.”

I stopped dead, and she almost fell forward thanks to momentum and drunkenness. “And it never occurred to you that Morris and David are cat-stealing liars?”

Catching herself, she turned to me and rolled her eyes. “Oh come on, Lucas. You never wanted a cat.”

It was true. I hadn’t wanted Donna. But we’d gotten her anyway because Morris had wanted a cat, and to prove that I was capable of “being long-term.” His words, not mine, because he’d so loved to twist the knife about how I couldn’t seem to find a job in the field of my degree. And the ginger queen and I had bonded, while she and Morris had not.

“I’d say to ask Morris who fed her and cleaned her teeth and took her to the vet, but he’s a fucking liar, so I’m sure he’d say it was him. And you’d believe him, because you want to. So what’s the point of this conversation? You came to tell me my asshole ex is now married to the asshole he cheated on me with, and they’re both very happy with their stolen cat. Congrats, job done. Now I’m going home, goodbye.”

I walked briskly past her, shoving myself into the front seat of my car and locking the doors behind me.

She came up to the driver’s side window and knocked on it, whining. “Oh come on, Lucas, don’t be pissy. Get over it, move on. Morris wasn’t right for you. We all knew it.”

Well I wished they’d told me.

I turned the key and . . . nothing. Or, okay, something—the sound of a dying moose, maybe. The engine cranking, trying to turn over, and just not managing it.

Katie started to giggle, slumped against the side of my car. “Looks like you’re walking too, sweet cheeks.”

And you know what? Fine. Fucking fine.

I pushed the car door back open and climbed out, snatching the bottle of Jack from her as I did. “You’ve had enough, I think.”

My turn.

If I was walking four miles home in the middle of October in the mountains, I deserved a little liquid company.

It was a celebration, right? My ex got married.

I took the first swig as I started walking.

Three miles later . . . okay, no, maybe it wasn’t actually three miles later. Or maybe I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere along the line. I’d been distracted, kicking a rock along in front of me. And, you know, finishing half a bottle of Jack Daniels.

I was still carrying the empty bottle along because there weren’t any convenient trash cans on the side of the road. I looked up for the first time in a while, trying to figure out where the hell I was.

On the left side of the road, trees. On the right side of the road . . . also trees. And past them, a mansion. Fuck, I’d walked all the way out of town, into the surrounding area of rich people’s ski chalets or whatever they called them.

A car drove by, its high beam headlights temporarily blinding me, and I stood there for a moment, blinking at the spots left burned into my retinas.

Then the blue spots turned red and gold and purple, and I wondered if I’d somehow managed to give myself alcohol poisoning on half a bottle. It had been a lot of booze, and on an empty stomach. I didn’t usually drink much since finishing school, so maybe I was hallucinating.

That was about when my whole body went weightless.

For a second, I thought I was falling and screamed. The empty bottle slipped from my lax fingers, and I heard the smash of it against the rocky shoulder of the road beneath me as my whole body lifted above the ground, like I was in a fucking magic stage show.

I blinked at the bright lights coalescing before my eyes, and that was when gravity reasserted itself, and I fell. I cringed, pulling my head up and shoulders in, bracing for my head to smash on the rocks just like the empty bottle of booze, but instead, I landed softly in . . . someone’s arms?

I opened my eyes, blinking again and again, trying to clear them, because that could not be right.

Standing over me, holding me in his arms, was a giant blue man.

No, not man. With dusky blue skin and deep, and black hair that was so shiny it looked somehow sharp, that was definitely not a man. Those bright blue eyes, with no whites at all and slitted pupils like a Donna Meowble’s, could only be one thing. Alien.

His arms were huge, and seemed to cradle me with ease, like I was a little kid, and my weight was nothing at all.

I opened my mouth like a fish, repeatedly, but couldn’t make words come out. Instead, my whole body went slack, my head falling back and vision going dark.

When I told everyone the story of my alien abduction and almost certain anal probing, I was definitely going to say that I passed out from the booze. Not that I saw an alien for the first time in my life, and promptly fainted.

STRAWBERRY MOON BLURB

WOLF MOON RISING BOOK FIVE

AVAILABLE LATE 2021

He lost everything, and the only person who can give him what he needs is the heir of his greatest enemy.

Ford McKesson lost his joy when his mate died of the mysterious Condition. Werewolves spent two decades watching their most vulnerable packmates wither and die, and now Ford’s own pack has unmasked the culprit. For many, it’s been a time to celebrate the end of a dark period of werewolf history, but Ford can’t let go of his grief. He watches his pack move toward a brighter future while he’s left behind.

Archer Sterling’s life was built on a rotten foundation. After his grandfather tried to destroy werewolves as a species, Archer is left scrambling to make things right. But a new beast is howling in his head, and he no longer fits into the human world of his youth.

The past year has changed Grovetown—and the world—and neither Archer nor Ford know where they fit anymore. Together, maybe they can make a new kind of home, where everyone belongs.

Strawberry Moon is an enemies-to-lovers romance with two hardheaded wolves—one a grieving widower, and the other an heir to a blighted corporation that nearly destroyed werewolf kind—in the one place with a home for them both, in a non-mpreg ABO world.

ALSO BY SAM BURNS & W.M. FAWKES

Star Marked Warriors

Captured

Declared

Submitted

Wolf Moon Rising

Black Moon

Harvest Moon

Hunter Moon

Cold Moon

Strawberry Moon (late 2021)

Fire & Valor

The King’s Dragon

The Prince’s Dragon

The Assassin’s Dragon

Poisonwood & Lyric Novellas

Poisonwood

Wyrmwood (Coming Soon)

Hardwood (Coming Soon)

Lords of the Underworld

Prince of Death

Prisoner of Shadows

Patron of Mercy

Sons of Olympus

Wildfire

Stand-alone Books

Fables Retold

A Dragon’s Fortune (Magic Emporium #3)

For Life & In Death

ALSO BY SAM BURNS

MISCELLANEOUS

THE FAIREST

THE FANTASTIC FLUKE

THE FANTASTIC FLUKE

FLUKE AND THE FAITHLESS FATHER

FLUKE AND THE FAULTLINE FIASCO (AUGUST 2021)

FLUKE AND THE FRONTIER FARCE (FEBRUARY 2022)

FLUKE AND THE FANTASTIC FINALE (AUGUST 2022)

THE WOLVES OF KISMET

WOLF LOST

WOLF FOUND

WOLF REBORN

THE ROWAN HARBOR CYCLE

BLACKBIRD IN THE REEDS

WOLF AND THE HOLLY

FOX AND BIRCH

HAWK IN THE ROWAN

STAG AND THE ASH

ADDER AND WILLOW

IN ANY LIGHT

EAGLE IN THE HAWTHORN

SALMON AND THE HAZEL

WREN AND OAK

WILDE LOVE

STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART

SINS OF THE FATHER

STRIKE UP THE BAND

SAINT AND THE SINNER

A VERY WILDE CHRISTMAS

ABOUT SAM BURNS

Sam is an author of LGBTQIA+ fiction, mostly light-hearted fantasy romances. Most of her books include a little violence, a fair amount of swearing, and maybe a sex scene or two. Oh, and let’s not forget a fox. He’d be offended at being forgotten.

She is a full-time writer who lives in the Midwest with her husband and cat. Someday, she plans to be a full-time writer who lives near the ocean with her husband and cat.

For more information:

www.burnswrites.com

Sam@burnswrites.com

ABOUT W.M. FAWKES

W.M. Fawkes is an author of LGBTQ+ urban fantasy and paranormal romance. She lives with her partner in a house owned by three halloween-hued felines that dabble regularly in shadow walking.

For more information:

www.fawkeswrites.com

waverly@fawkeswrites.com

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Contents

1. Dante

2. Skye

3. Dante

4. Skye

5. Dante

6. Skye

7. Dante

8. Skye

9. Dante

10. Skye

11. Dante

12. Skye

13. Dante

14. Skye

15. Dante

16. Skye

17. Dante

18. Skye

19. Dante

20. Skye

21. Dante

22. Skye

23. Dante

24. Skye

25. Dante

26. Skye

27. Dante

28. Skye

29. Dante

30. Skye

31. Dante

32. Skye

33. Dante

34. Skye

35. Dante

36. Skye

37. Dante

38. Skye

39. Dante

40. Skye

41. Dante

42. Skye

43. Dante

Epigraph

Sneak Peek of Captured

Strawberry Moon Blurb

Also by Sam Burns & W.M. Fawkes

Also by Sam Burns

About Sam Burns

About W.M. Fawkes