Page 2 of Cold Moon

But that wasn’t enough. At least I wouldn’t have to live with the guilt much longer.

With tears in his eyes, Brook was shaking his head. “It’s fine. Don’t talk. You’re going to be fine. Help! Somebody, help!”

I flinched at the sound of his shouting. He gripped my hand hard, ignoring the slick of blood across my palm from trying to hold myself together.

“They’ll come,” he promised. “Linden’s a doctor. He’ll know what to do. We’ll get you the help you need. You’re going to be fine.”

He was saying it as much for himself as for me, but I didn’t mind. Truth told, I was fine. The parts of me that hurt were fading out. Where I was cold, where sticks and small rocks were digging into the soft flesh of my human form, I could focus on the warmth of Brook’s hand and the softness of his leg under my head.

“Brook,” I rasped. It was getting harder to breathe. It wouldn’t be long now, but I’d expected to die alone with my hallucinatory caterpillar friends. Strangely enough, Brook was the closest person I had left to a packmate—someone I’d helped once, someone I understood and who understood me, who cared that I was dying.

“Yeah?” His voice was soft and shaky. He held tight to my hand like he could pin me in my body, but we both knew it was too late for that.

“Thank you.”

I squeezed his hand, and the effort shorted out my thoughts. Everything went black, except those damn caterpillars, wiggling behind my eyelids.

Those blinked out too, and the next time Brook cried for help, I could barely hear him.

2

Skye

In my life, I’ve spent a whole lot of time sitting around, waiting to find out what other people have done. It’s not that I’m incapable of doing anything. No, it’s that when you’re the sole chronically ill person in a werewolf pack, everyone treats you like you’re as sturdy as cotton candy in a rainstorm.

Mmm. Cotton candy.

Boy wasthatoutside my diet.

I had it, once, at the state fair when I was thirteen. And then spent the next week in bed, unable to keep any other food down. Heck, barely able to move. Still, looking back at that day, with the corn dogs and funnel cake and cotton candy and every other kind of state-fair-style culinary delight, it was completely worth it. It was one of the best memories of my life.

And the last time I set foot outside of Grovetown.

But it was also the last time I had a serious relapse of the Condition.

In the intervening years, I’d gotten used to being treated like a breakable thing. A glass figurine, to be set on a shelf and dusted once in a while.

Well, by everyone but Linden.

He was the first person in the pack to see me as something other than an extension of my illness. He’d gotten home from college when I was nine, and instead of just prescribing bedrest and treating me like a fragile doll, he’d worked with me. We’d found my diet together by trial and error, and he’d taught me how to take care of myself. What it meant when my blood pressure spiked, and how to help mitigate it.

Usually, being a werewolf was great. We healed fast, rarely scarred, and didn’t come down with human illnesses like “the flu.” Me, though? My great werewolf powers meant that the medications humans would use to lower blood pressure, reduce inflammation, and fight the other symptoms of the Condition did absolutely nothing for me.

The Condition couldn’t be treated because werewolves were too healthy. It was an awesome oxymoron. Or it would have been, if the result wasn’t my life.

My life, sitting in the clinic, waiting while my pack went to fight for their lives.

I had all the faith in Linden and the Grove pack enforcers, but I also wanted to be one of them. I wanted to be out there protecting my pack myself. Being useful, not just sitting around in the clinic, waiting to see if my life would continue.

Or if the Reid pack was going to kill us all. Well, all but the omegas, and probably me too. An omega who wasn’t strong enough to properly support an alpha was pretty useless. I doubted they would have a place for me, and frankly, I’d prefer they didn’t.

After what they had done to Brook, an omega older and stronger than me in every way, I didn’t think I could handle the Reids.

I couldn’t even hold my cotton candy.

When the door opened, I jerked back, my mind stuck on the repeating thought of the Reids, having slaughtered every fighter I knew and loved, coming for the rest of us. Which was silly, because even if the Reids had won the fight, it would have taken them longer than that to...

Aspen Grove pushed his way into the clinic, a destroyed mess that could barely be identified as a werewolf laid across his arms in a bloody parody of a princess carry. My mind flashed back to a night just a few months ago, when someone had carried the pack alpha in the same way, covered in his own blood with a giant gash in his midsection.

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