Page 86 of Black Moon

I got patted on the shoulder a dozen times as we arrived, congratulated on my successful retrieval of Brook. It was uncomfortable, to say the least. Brook wasn’t a child who’d needed me to find him lost in the woods. He’d just needed a nonjudgmental shoulder to lean on for a minute. But I couldn’t tell them that, either. It was private. So I nodded to a lot of people, awkward and stilted, and felt like I was wading through honey as I approached the door to the bar.

Inside, Talin was standing next to a table, and behind it sat Ernest and two other elder pack members. He gave me a tiny smile. “Linden.”

“Mr. Sedgwick,” I said, inclining my head.

“This will be the last alpha choosing I take part in, fate willing, but I’m glad I get to do it. It’s time for a change.” He nudged a piece of paper across the table and motioned to the box at the end. “Won’t be too long now. More than half in already.”

At a booth in the corner, Greta and Hazel were busily sorting and counting slips of paper from an identical box. They didn’t even look up at us.

“Should I really be voting?” I asked. “It seems a little disingenuous.”

Zeke snorted as he snatched a pen off the table and wrote on his paper with a flourish. “You’d probably vote for someone else.” Then he held up his paper where I couldn’t miss it.

There it was. In Zeke’s messy handwriting, scrawled across the whole scrap of paper, it simply said “Linden.”

“My turn,” Claudia broke in, taking his pen and scratching on her own paper, speaking as she did. “Me. And Linden, I guess.”

Zeke gave another snort at that. “You’re gonna be damn good at this job, you know.” He looked down at her, then rolled his eyes. “What am I talking about? Of course you know.”

She didn’t answer, just gave him a bright smile as she shoved her paper into the box.

“You don’t technically have to vote for yourself,” Colt told me. “But after all we’ve done, and considering the other option, I’d appreciate it if you did.”

“Other option?” Ernest asked, narrowing his eyes. “What other option?”

“Skip Chadwick,” Talin told him, not moving from her place over the box. There to make sure no one interfered or voted twice or anything else unethical, no doubt.

For a moment, Ernest looked dubious, but then he rolled his eyes and turned back to me. “You going to vote for him?”

And no. I was definitely not going to vote for Skip. For Colt, I supposed, I would vote for myself. I almost closed my eyes as I scrawled my own name on the slip I’d been given, but that felt a little melodramatic. So I stuffed the slip into the box and turned back to Colt, who threw himself into my arms and kissed me soundly.

Okay, for that, I could definitely be convinced to vote for myself. Anytime he wanted, and twice on Sunday.

Talin motioned us to the bar. “Shiloh’s serving while we wait.”

So we got drinks and headed outside to join the already milling pack members. For the next hour, I introduced Colt to people.

The first time someone assumed he was my mate, the two of us looked at each other. Our eyes met, me practically vibrating with nerves, but his expression was soft and sweet, and somehow, everything just fell into place. Neither of us contradicted the assumption.

Just after dusk on Saturday night, Ernest Sedgwick and the other pack elders came out of The Cider House. He didn’t stop and make an announcement. At his age, I wasn’t sure his voice would even do that.

Instead, he ignored everyone and crossed the lot, heading straight to me. Baring his neck, he inclined his head. “By the will of the pack, Linden Grove, you are our alpha. If you’ll have us.” He looked up and gave me a wink and whispered, “By an even wider margin than your father’s election, I’ll have you know.”

My eyes stung, and I had to try twice to catch my breath. Somehow, in that moment, it was real.

My father was dead.

Aspen wasn’t coming home at the last minute to save the day.

It was just me, and the pack had decided I was enough.

I laid my palm on Ernest’s neck and bowed my head to him. “I accept the responsibility the pack has seen fit to give me. I vow from this moment to give my time, my skill, and if necessary, my lifeblood, in the name of the Grove pack.”

The howl started with Zeke, but in moments, the whole pack had taken it up, almost deafening in its intensity. The Reids would be able to hear it, no doubt.

Good, I thought.Let them know we’re healing from the blows they dealt us.

The Grove pack was strong. We would survive this, like we’d survived everything, and come out stronger on the other side.

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