Page 31 of Cold Moon

Alpha Grove laughed so hard his cheeks turned pink. His hand settled heavily on my shoulder, and his eyes were shining as he looked my way. “You know what, kiddo? I think you’re gonna be all right. Trust your good instincts.”

Somehow, if I could figure out how to make a life here in Grovetown, he just might be right.

18

Skye

Ah, the clinic parking lot, just where I wanted to have an argument with my mother.

I supposed I should be grateful that it wasn’t the middle of The Cider House, or the Grille that morning during breakfast, but I wasn’t actually in the mood to be grateful. Was I also supposed to be grateful that some bully had only destroyed Dante’s clothes the night before, and not physically attacked him?

“I’m at work, Mom,” I said, turning and leaning against Linden’s SUV. “So I don’t have a lot of time.”

“I am your mother. You’ll make time.” Her eyes were flashing with irritation, and that, I had to admit, was unusual. She didn’t get angry at me much.

Sad? Regularly. So helpful I wanted to scream? All the freaking time. And too darn often, there was the guilt thing. Most days I wasn’t sure if she felt guilty because I’d been born with the Condition, or whether she wanted me to feel guilty about it.

I held up my hands to either side. “This is me, making time. I’m here. But I do need to get back to work. Like right now, Doctor Grove is seeing a patient without me.”

“That Reid creature is not a patient in our clinic,” she spat.

Oh, and that was a problem.

“Dante. And yes, Danteisa patient in the clinic. We’ve been treating him for a while now.” I crossed my arms over my chest, turning back toward the clinic door as though I could just walk away.

It was actually a little tempting.

I loved my mother. There was no doubt of that in my mind. But sometimes I thought we had a really unhealthy relationship. Sometimes, I thought maybe she enjoyed... well, it didn’t matter. I was living on my own, making my own money, and my mother wasn’t in control of my life anymore.

“That Reid is invading our territory,” she said, her voice a cold hiss. She pointed at the clinic, and her hand was trembling, she was so angry. “And they tell me you’re helping him. Showing him around, giving away important Grove secrets.”

What the actual fuck?

I stared at her for a moment, but she was serious. Completely serious. “Someone told you I’m telling him... Grove pack secrets? Does the pack have secrets? What am I supposed to be telling him, mother? Where the keys to the clinic are? The combination of the lock on my personal safe?”

Her lip curled disdainfully. “Hazel said you ran with him last night. Like some kind of shameless—”

“Please stop right there,” I interrupted, throwing my hands up between us. “There’s literally no way you can end that sentence that won’t be ignorant or offensive. Who I run with is my choice, Mom. My business. I’m an adult, and I get to decide who I spend time with.”

“And you decide to spend time with a kidnapping rapist,” she sneered. “I thought I raised you better than that.”

It was like she didn’t know me at all. Did she truly think that calling my friend names was going to convince me to abandon him? What the heck kind of person did my own mother think I was?

I stepped up right in front of her, glaring into her eyes. She didn’t back down, but I wasn’t going to, either. “I thought you raised me better too. I thought you raised me to not judge people I didn’t know. To give them a chance instead of jumping to conclusions without knowing anything.” I leaned an inch closer, where I could almost feel her breath. “Dante didn’t have anything to do with Brook’s kidnapping. Do you know what he did have something to do with? Getting Brook free. He had something to do with that. Is that a trait you don’t want me to pick up from my friends? Selflessness?”

She snorted and turned away. “He told you that, I suppose? And you believed him. This is why I didn’t want you to leave home, Skye. You obviously weren’t ready. You’re still a child, believing the first man who comes along and takes the time to lie to you.”

“No, Mom. He didn’t tell me he saved Brook. Brook did. You gonna tell me Brook is lying too?”

Finally, she hesitated. “Brook said the Reid didn’t hurt him?”

“No, Brook said Dante didn’t hurt him. Dante isn’t Maxim any more than I’m you, or you’re Barbara Hill.” Okay, yeah, I threw that in there because Barbara and Mother had always been embroiled in a not-so-friendly competition at the county fair for their handmade quilts. But really, just because almost everyone in the Grove pack was good and decent didn’t mean that every single member of the Reid pack had been a monster.

We had our bad apples, and the Reids had had Dante, their single ray of sunshine. Yes, they’d tried to extinguish him, but they had failed. I sure wasn’t going to let my mother try to finish the job.

She continued to look irritated, eyes narrowed and lips pursed in a pout, like she was disappointed the nastiest bits of her gossip had been proven wrong. Finally, she huffed. “He let them hold Brook prisoner for a week.”

“Us too,” I agreed. “We let Brook be held prisoner for a week too, because we didn’t have a way to get him out either.”

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