Page 3 of Cold Moon

Just like this wolf.

Linden rushed in right after Aspen, and when he met my eyes, there was nothing but calm determination on his face. He was Doctor Grove right now, not the sweet man who cringed when people said mean things to each other. I nodded to him and let myself fall into my own clinic persona. I wasn’t as good at it as Linden, but I was eighteen years younger than him, and had no professional training other than what he’d given me.

Instead of worrying about that, I pointed Aspen to bed number two, and set about prepping the things Linden would need to treat the broken man. The things other than a freaking miracle.

* * *

Against all odds,an hour later, I was scrubbing myself down and changing shirts, but the wolf Aspen had brought in was alive. Linden had put everything vital back together, helped along by accelerated werewolf healing. Then we’d stitched his wounds, cleaned him up, and bandaged him.

He was a swathe of bandages and not much else, but he was still alive, and the heart monitor was beeping away, slow but steady.

I could have jumped up and down and thrown a party, except that Brook had arrived, and he and Aspen Junior were having... well, I wouldn’t have called it a fight, exactly, butwords were being had.

Awkward.

“Well done,” Linden whispered to me. “He owes you his life.”

“You’re the one who did the stitching,” I pointed out. “And Aspen Junior brought him in.”

He jerked his head in Brook’s direction. “And Brook is the one who found him in the woods. But that only means that all of us kept him alive. It doesn’t mean that you didn’t.”

There was the doctor I’d grown up with.

Since he came home, Linden had been a massive source of confusion for me. Oh no, he wasn’t a confusing guy. Just, he was twice my age, and since my father split when I was a kid because he couldn’t deal with having both a mate and a child who were constantly sick, Linden had been the closest thing I’d had to a father.

But also, he was ridiculously good looking, and so kind that sometimes it hurt me to think about it. He was somehow my father figure and my first crush, which was so Oedipal that I didn’t like thinking about it. Or was it Electra? Not that it was a serious thing anyway, since Linden said Freud was sort of a weirdo whose ideas were outdated.

I wanted to find out for myself. To go away to college and study and find out more about them. Psychology in specific, because what’s more interesting than how people’s minds work? But of course, I couldn’t.

I hadn’t left pack territory in six years, and given my illness and the lack of human understanding of both werewolf physiology and the Condition itself, going away was dangerous. Here, people knew what to do if I collapsed.

I didn’t like that they were all half expecting me to collapse at any moment, but at least they knew what to do if I did.

Off at a human college, I’d probably end up at a hospital, being pumped full of drugs before they even realized I was a werewolf, and who knew how that would react with the Condition?

And if Alexis was right, and the Condition was caused by some unknown chemicals used on modern processed food, then what would I eat if I left home? Even my diet might fail me if I couldn’t identify where food came from.

Ugh.

The worst part, I’d discovered in the months that I’d been running my omega health blog, was that I wasn’t alone. Omegas around the world were trapped in their homes, unable to go to college, or visit friends or relatives in different states.

We all lived in fear, particularly those of us who were already affected by the Condition.

I shook my head, like I could shake off the irritation with my life. I had more important things to worry about right now—like a half-dead wolf in the clinic.

A wolf whose face I didn’t know.

I’d noticed it sometime while Linden was stitching his side closed, but it hadn’t seemed the right time to react. Since I was essentially trapped in Grovetown, and had only pack for company, I knew every single one of them on sight.

That could mean only one thing, they’d brought back a Reid, and for some reason, I didn’t think the flutter in my chest that realization caused was just fear. More like the fear from watching a horror movie. Like yeah, it was scary, but also, a little exciting.

No, I’m not suicidal. Just... give me a break. Every single day of my life looks like the ones before. Something new and different that wasn’t our alpha dying felt like it had the potential to be a good thing.

“So who is he?” I whispered to Linden, so I wouldn’t get Aspen Junior’s attention. He wasn’t yelling or anything, but he was clearly tense, ready to spring if the strange alpha miraculously jumped out of bed and attacked.

Linden frowned, looking at the man, then shook his head and turned to me. “I’m not completely sure, but the scent of him... I think he might be the member of the Reid pack who helped Brook escape.”

I blinked, turning back to the unconscious stranger. A Reid, but one who might be a good guy. But who had come to attack us too, I supposed, so that sort of erased the good of rescuing Brook. Maybe.

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