Page 60 of Black Moon

And that was my pack.

Perfect.

Colt hopped up and headed out, dragging his fingers along the inside of my wrist as he passed me. The motion didn’t go unnoticed. Brook and Skye were silent as the door closed behind Colt, and for another few moments as his car drove off, but then Skye perked up. “So you and the reporter, huh?”

He was like a high school student, and I had to remind myself that Skye had literally been a high school student just a couple years earlier. He acted like a kid because he was one, no matter how much having a chronic illness had forced him into an early adulthood.

So I turned to look at the door, taking a deep breath, and then simply...nodded. I did need to qualify it, though, or warn them—“I don’t think it’s serious for him. He just needed help, so I gave it.”

“But that’s totally not the kind of person you are,” Skye pointed out. He was right, naturally. He knew me about as well as anyone in town, and he knew damn well how much I wasn’t inclined to sleep around.

I wasn’t really in a place to process emotions about Colt Doherty. Not just because I didn’t want to face them, but because it was so early. We’d known each other a couple of weeks, and while I knew that scent and heat compatibility had seen many werewolf couples mated even faster than that, I didn’t think those couples had a Colt in them.

I was just the kind of guy who would happily fall into a mating, move in, and cling for eternity. Colt? He was areporter, for goodness sake. He had a career, and ambitions, and probably wanted to marry someone more impressive than a small-town country doctor.

Who could blame him?

I had money, and a great pack, but a beautiful, intelligent, cosmopolitan man like him could have anyone he wanted. Someone more like his father: a millionaire city sort of alpha who gave him jewels and took him to fancy parties.

I didn’t even like parties, so the best I could offer were Rowan-catered dinner parties with a few close friends. Maybe our monthly pack meeting nights, where hard cider and fried finger foods proliferated.

It wasn’t exactly a tantalizing picture.

I mean, The Cider House’s onion rings were amazing, but I didn’t think they were going to convince Colt to join the Grove pack.

“He’ll stay,” Skye decided, nodding his head sharply, as though that was the definitive final answer.

Brook gave him a tiny smile, meeting my eye with a little less childish idealism and more adult awareness. “I hope he does stay, Linden. It would be good to see you mated.”

“Right?” Skye agreed. “He’s so much a married alpha I sometimes forget he’s not actually married. He needs someone to go home to.”

“I...have no idea what that means.” Brook hid a smile behind his hand, so I suspected he didn’t have a clue either, but I wasn’t going to point that out. “How can a man seem married when he isn’t?”

Skye shrugged theatrically. “I dunno, but there you are. You’re just, like, the only no-drama alpha I know. No growling, no anger, no ‘woe is me, I’m the saddest alpha’ puppy eyes. You’re just...the alpha. Like your dad, but better.” As he said the last, his eyes went round, and he clapped both hands over his mouth. Like he could retroactively reel the words back in, or go back in time to keep them from escaping to begin with.

Oddly enough, it didn’t bother me.

It was sweet that he thought I made a better alpha than my father. I didn’t know if anyone else agreed, but it was good to have the vote of confidence. And as much as I loved my father, I’d have been the first man to admit that he’d been flawed.

No, that wasn’t fair. Dad would have been the first.

“He’s right,” Brook said when the room had been quiet too long—I’d gotten caught up in thoughts and forgotten that my poor assistant was worried about insulting my father. “Aspen Senior was a good man, and a good alpha, but you’re steadier. More level-headed. You always listen.”

And that had probably been Dad’s fatal flaw: he did not listen. He came from a time when the alpha had to be unequivocally right and could bear no questioning from subordinates. I thought it was a terrible way to run a pack, here in the twenty-first century.

“I’ll remember that,” I promised both of them. “That is, if the pack decides I’m the man to take Dad’s position.”

Brook snorted and Skye waved a dismissive airy hand in my direction, and they both turned back to their game on the television. Huh. What the heck could I say to that?

I didn’t have long to think about it, because not too long later, Colt came stomping back into the clinic, fire in his eyes. He dropped the bags of food on my desk, meeting my eye with a glare. Before I had a chance to ask what was wrong, he hissed, “You absolute, utter bastard.”

32

Colt

Yes, yes, obviously going to Chadwick’s Grille was asking for trouble. It wasn’t that Wanda Chadwick provided anything but the best grilled cheese sandwiches on the eastern seaboard, but walking into the restaurant risked seeing Skip Chadwick in the flesh.

Given that he didn’t work there, or not that I could tell, I’d have wanted to assume he had better things to do than take up a seat in his mother’s business.

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