Page 10 of Black Moon

But I was barely even an alpha at all, was I? I’d never in my life considered looking for a pack leadership position.

Still, I let Zeke and Claudia drag me along. They were my family as much as my siblings were. I couldn’t let them down. “If Skip’s such a bad choice, why do you think people are going to support him at all?”

“He’s young,” Birch answered before Zeke, who had immediately scowled and scrunched up his nose in irritation, could speak up. “A lot of younger wolves feel like anyone over thirty doesn’t really understand them. It’s not without reason. They’ve been through things we haven’t. They grew up in the middle of a crisis that a lot of us still see as outside the norm. They think we’re complacent.”

It was hard to say they were wrong. After all, I was a doctor, and what had I done to stop the Condition, really? I could keep track of the pack omegas, give them information on healthy diets and smart choices. But I had no idea what caused it.

I was a teenager when it started, and I remember vividly all the things we tried when my mother was one of the first to get sick. Eating a diet low in carbohydrates was the only thing thatsometimesseemed to help people. And sometimes, it didn’t. Like with my mother.

I couldn’t blame anyone for thinking my generation had done a terrible job protecting our people and taking care of an ongoing crisis. We had. They thought we were complacent because we were. And we owed our people better than that.

Maybe I should talk to Skye about some of the treatments they had tried in other parts of the country. None had proven enormously successful so far, but maybe one would help him. Maybe this holding pattern we’d been flying for years was pointless, and we could find a way to stop the Condition in its tracks.

We’d never know if we never tried.

I’d talk to Skye in the morning. No, I’d look into the options, first. No reason to get his hopes up if I didn’t find something useful to offer him.

The Cider House was too quiet when we walked in. Not like everyone suddenly went silent because of us, but like everyone was tired and sad and scared.

Shiloh met us at the bar, arms crossed over her chest, lips pursed tight. I had no idea how she was holding it together, other than that the Morgan family was made of steel. “When are you going back for Brook? I want to go.”

It was strange, in that she didn’t ask any of the other three, all of whom had been in the first rescue party. She asked me. Clearly she was in the group that assumed I would be alpha.

I didn’t know how, when I’d done absolutely nothing to help her brother.

But I wasn’t going to tell her that. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to blow her off. I pulled myself onto a barstool, rolled my shoulders, and then met her eye. “I’m sorry to say it, but not tonight. Dad’s way didn’t work. We need to try something different.” I turned to Zeke. “You’ve got people out there scouting Reid territory, right?”

He gave me a sharp nod. “We haven’t found where they’ve got him yet, but we will. And next time, we don’t go in expecting to be able to talk, like civilized wolves.” He looked over and met Shiloh’s eye. “Next time, we go for their throats.”

While I didn’t think that was necessarily the healthiest way to march into another pack’s territory, it was the right thing to tell Shiloh, so I inclined my head in agreement. “Next time we don’t come home without Brook,” I added, and Zeke gave a decisive nod.

She took a deep breath, drew herself up, and nodded. “Okay then. Your usual, Linden?”

“If you’d be so kind, Shiloh.”

“And three adult beverages for the non-medically inclined among us,” Birch added as he leaned against the bar next to me. Shiloh went off to get the drinks, and he looked at me. “She’s going to want to go.”

“What are you looking at me for?”

The look he gave me for that could have wilted flowers. “You know why, Linden. And I love her as much as anyone, but she can’t. In that emotional state, she’d be a liability.”

I glared at him, and he gazed back, serenely, until Shiloh set down three pints on the counter with a thump. She glanced between the two of us quizzically, but didn’t ask, so I turned back to her, palms up, looking around. “I don’t get a drink?”

She snorted in return. “Gotta get yours from the back, doc. We don’t keep such dangerous stuff up front.”

“We’re gonna go sit down and try to make a decent wake of this pity party,” Zeke said, patting me on the back. “If the skinny-dipping story doesn’t get a laugh, nothing will. Join us when you’ve got your drink.”

Birch and Claudia followed him over to a table in the center of the room, where he stopped to clink his glass against the drinks of various members of the pack, saying a word or two to each as he went. His retirement was going to be a tragedy for all of us.

Sure, he’d still be there for things like this, but truth told, Zeke probably would have been a better alpha than my dad. Maybe he wasn’t the kind of guy who gave orders, but he knew everyone, and they liked him. He could have a cider with anyone in the pack, and they’d end up telling him their problems.

A little like Birch.

But no, Claudia was right. No one owed the pack their whole life, and Birch deserved to have free time. The pack didn’t have a right to take that from him, and they never would.

I was almost bowled over suddenly, by the scent of...apples? I lived among apples, for goodness’ sake, the scent shouldn’t be a surprise. But this was something special. Something different. Apples, and all the spices Mom used to use to make her special Christmas cake. Cloves and cinnamon and nutmeg, and even a hint of cardamom. I hadn’t smelled that exact mix in twenty years. Not since she’d died.

I followed the smell with my nose, my wolf thrumming in my chest with the need to find its source. I wasn’t usually an alpha led by his wilder instincts, but my wolf wanted to hunt down the scent and take a bite. Even though wolves definitely did not eat cake. Turning, I came face to face with the most beautiful man I’d ever met. He was like a Roman statue—high cheekbones, pouty, full lips, and a confident air that grabbed me like nothing else.

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