Page 21 of Cold Moon

So yeah. Skye Johnson, manic scarecrow. That was me.

I smiled at him. “Yup. Just weird in here with no patient now. Quiet.”

Linden looked over at the bed Dante had used for his stay, nodding. “I guess so. Things have been busy enough that I hadn’t thought much about it. Do you want something else to work on when there are no patients?”

That was actually the most spot-on question Linden had asked me in a while. While he was less likely to coddle me than everyone else, he wasn’t immune to the urge, so he wasn’t inclined to give me more work. My mother had pitched enough of a fit when he’d given me a job that she’d thought was sitting around doing nothing at all; he certainly hadn’t been willing to pile work onto it.

I still thought she’d been more offended by the fact that working gave me enough money to get my own place, and that I’d immediately done so the second I turned eighteen. It was nothing, really—one of two apartments over the hardware store, and Cliff had given it to me for a song, because having me around helped him a little. But it was mine. And I didn’t have Mom popping in to check my temperature at all hours “just to make sure,” or questioning everything from the propriety of my bedtime to whether the TV shows I watched were “too much.”

The problem was that while I didn’t want my mother hovering and taking out her fear of the Condition on me, living alone was actually... really darn lonely. I’d started going to the gym on my days off, and the bar in the evening, and anywhere else people congregated, just for the noise.

Linden plopped into one of the nice waiting-area chairs, sliding back till he was practically laying down, his eyes closed. For the first time, I noticed the bags under his eyes. “I thought Colt was back from Washington?”

He gave a tiny affirmative nod. “He is. But he’s still FaceTiming his family constantly, at all hours.” The sigh that he let out at that was long and pained, almost an actual whine. “I shouldn’t complain—they’re being really supportive on this Sterling mess.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that they’re kind of jerks,” I offered. I hadn’t actually met Linden’s in-laws—the senator and company—but I’d heard all kinds of commentary on what an ass the senator had been to Linden himself. It was hard to imagine, and frankly, left no room for anyone to think well of the guy. Linden was the softest, fuzziest of alphas, constantly trying to help people, to make them happy and comfortable and well.

It was like hating a golden retriever. Anyone who did it was suspect, in my opinion.

And he was stuck, I realized with sudden clarity. Colt was the one who wrote the article connecting Sterling to the Condition, so that responsibility was on him, and maybe a little on his father because he was a politician. Linden’s brother had come home and mated Brook, finally, so his family was whole and happy. Dante might be helping Ridge figure out the Condition, and there wasn’t much Linden could do to help them while his attention was already on being pack alphaandrunning the clinic full time.

The whole pack, and everyone Linden loved most, were doing amazing and difficult things... and sort of not needing him.

He was that golden retriever, going from one person to the next, offering them a stick, and none of them had the time to throw it for him. Okay, maybe that was an oversimplification, and it was probably a little insulting, but Linden was a man who thrived on being needed.

“Any chance you could drive me to the pack meeting?” I asked.

I had not planned to go to the meeting. At best, they were going to talk about Sterling, and the Condition, and everyone in the place would turn and give me their best pitying looks.

But, well, Linden had come home from school when I was a kid, shaken everything up, and probably saved my life. Then, as I’d gotten older, he’d given me a job, and a purpose, and saved my sanity as much as my life. Maybe there was a little hero worship in how much I liked to take care of people—just like my hero, my alpha—or maybe I was just returning the favor.

He lifted his head and looked over at me. “You want to go? I half expected you to avoid it.”

I shrugged, casually, because any answer I could give would be an obvious lie. Or wait, maybe not. “Dante is going, right?” He quirked a brow at that—maybe a touch disapprovingly, but it was hard to tell. Still, he nodded, so I went on. “I thought he could use a little backup, since he’s a Reid, and the pack is going to... you know. Be the pack.”

He gave a tiny snort but nodded. “Fair. They are, and he is. I figured Brook would protect him, but there’s no harm having both of you there to take care of him. Poor kid’s been through enough.”

“It’s settled, then. And since I don’t feel like walking, you can drive me.” He ignored the fact that it was a short walk, and I’d have had to make it to get home anyway, and smiled at me.

Then he literally fell asleep for half an hour.

* * *

The Cider House,as always, was busy on the night of the meeting. Most of the pack didn’t show up for meetings, but it was always enough that the bar was packed to capacity, all their employees running to keep up with the demands of those who came.

Having stopped eating French fries and burgers and stuff like that years before, I didn’t usually want it. It was heavy and greasy, and generally too much for me. The onion rings still smelled amazing, though, and I was constantly tempted to try them. Just two or three.

Except that even now, suspecting the problem was mostly Sterling food, I couldn’t just assume that food the pack was serving wouldn’t be from them. As it turned out, there were only about ten companies producing almost all the food we ate.

Your favorite breakfast cereal? Sterling probably makes it.

If it turned out to be true, no doubt I was going to be subjected to sobbing midnight telephone calls from my mother, apologizing for her love of their gross cream-filled cupcakes, claiming all responsibility for my illness. It was ridiculous, because she couldn’t have known. Not to mention the fact that she struggled with the aftereffects of coming down with the Condition while pregnant with me, if not nearly as strongly as I did. She got to develop properly before the poison, after all. I was built with the very poison that was trying to kill us. Built wrong.

Linden walked me into The Cider House, and immediately got dragged away to hear out the various pack issues that needed his attention.

Feeling unusually sorry for myself, I wandered over to the bar, leaning against the shiny wood and sighing, staring at the knots and whorls, polished to perfection by years of use.

“Hey kiddo,” Talin said in her throaty voice. I didn’t even have to look up to know she was talking to me. That was me. Kiddo forever, because I’d never even reach five and a half feet tall. My usual bottle of water materialized in front of me, and I scowled at it.

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