Page 44 of Black Moon

I grinned, expecting the exasperated eye roll I usually got from alphas for being too forward and forceful.

Linden didn’t give me that. He only looked at me with a firm, serious line to his mouth, and nodded. “Good.”

Unfortunately, since I talked such a big game, now I had to follow through.

I shut my eyes. It wasn’t like I was embarrassed by my body’s natural processes, but it was...okay, it was kind of embarrassing to feel out of control. Humans dealt with it a little when they were going through puberty and a stray breeze could give them a stiffy.

Going into heat was like—like you could lose your mind for hours or days at a time. Everything was primal and heated and sometimessofucking excellent. Other times, I got a big old eye roll from all the big-bad alphas in my family and locked myself up alone in my room for days.

And now, it was an inconvenience I didn’t want to admit to in the middle of a crisis.

“I’m going into heat. It’s—I’ve felt it for days, and everything tonight...I honestly just want to sink my teeth into something and tear. And I want to be here for Brook—I do—but it seems like the last person he needs to be around right now is a whiny, horny omega.”

Linden was staring at me, but he hadn’t told me what a selfish dick I was being yet—maybe as a doctor, he actually understood we omegas weren’t exactly in control of this sort of thing. With an anxious smile, I dropped my hands from his arms and plugged on.

And if I crossed my own arms, it had absolutely nothing to do with any nervousness I might be experiencing standing in front of an almost-stranger and asking him to pause in the middle of a crisis and give it to me hard.

“So, it’ll pass faster with help from, you know, analpha. And since you’re, um...” Perfect?

No, he wouldn’t take anything that came out of my mouth right now seriously, and if I still felt this pull toward him after my heat passed, I’d—I’d explore that later.

“You’re someone here I feel I can trust,” I said, “and right now, that seems more important than ever. I guess I’m asking if you’d be willing to lend a man in need your hand, or, um, quite a bit more I guess?”

Total fucking ugh! I never got this antsy about taking people home, but with everything that’d happened, this felt like something other than a fun-time tumble. Under other circumstances, I’d have loved to take Linden Grove back to my motel room and luxuriate in the feel of his body against mine.

And he hadn’t responded. Fuckity fuck fuck, he thought I was an asshole.

“Not this second, obviously,” I added hastily. “I mean, stay with Brook as long as he needs. But it’s—it’ssoon, so...You can totally tell me to fuck right off. I get it. I just don’t want to disappear on Brook for days when it comes on, you know?”

23

Linden

Heat.

Colt was going intoheat.

Well fuck me.

Yes, a snarky little part of my brain answered.That’s precisely what he wants to do.

I went to college. Medical school, even. I was used to being around people who understood that bodily functions were just that—functions, not choices. I’d had the odd omega in college ask me to help them through a heat.

But I had never been asked, in such plain, casual terms, to have sex with someone I barely knew. And he trusted me? Me, the guy who had marginally been in charge of the rescue attempt he’d circumvented and completed all on his own? Me, an alpha from a pack who clearly couldn’t take proper care of their own members?

Brook was just inside, shivering in my oversized sweater, black and blue and trying not to cry, and I hadn’t saved him, but Colt trusted me.

The strangest part was that he didn’t strike me as naive, or the kind of man who trusted easily. So why on earth would he trust a completely untried alpha, in a pack who’d nearly lost an omega to kidnapping, and had lost their alpha to another pack? Hell, the Reid pack was less than half the size of ours, and they had struck us what, for some packs, might have been a mortal blow.

But there was Colt, with his huge blue eyes, gnawing on his plump, bitable lower lip, expression like I’d hesitated too long and he thought I was looking for a kind way to turn him down.

That wasn’t okay. Even if I wanted to say no—which was a ridiculous thought—I definitely didn’t want to hurt his feelings. “I’m sorry, I was just thinking the motel isn’t exactly where you’ll want to be for this. It’s fine for a short stay, but the smells alone will be too much when you hit your heat.”

His eyes widened a little, as though he hadn’t thought of that. But that was silly. He was an independent omega; he had to have thought of it. Maybe, sadly, he was just surprised I had thought of it as well.

I shook it off. I didn’t want to worry about that, and I definitely didn’t want to hesitate and make him think I was disinterested. Not when the truth was the opposite.

I’d helped friends through their heats before. I wasn’t some kind of blushing virgin who’d never seen a heat-drunk omega before. But I didn’t think I’d ever been so keen to help on any of those previous occasions.

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