Page 16 of Cold Moon

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.”

---