Page 39 of Cold Moon

Thank god someone was there to tell me what to do, because right then, I wasn’t sure. But with an order from her, well, I might not know where the forks went, but Alexis and I figured it out, pushed the card table out of the way, and there I was, eating dinner with what felt like a whole damn pack gathered closely around one big, full table, once Ridge, Ford, and Henrik came in.

22

Skye

Dante wasn’t at the Grille the next morning, which wasn’t too shocking. He’d come to eat with me, and then I’d rebuffed his attentions when he asked me out. There was no reason for him to keep showing up at the Grille at the same time every morning.

Ugh.

What had I been thinking?

Oh yeah, that no one would want me. I sat there, glaring at my boring, dry breakfast sandwich. The same one I ate every day. Even if Dante did like me, even if he did want to have dinner with me, how long would it be until he got tired of me eating the same ten boring healthy things?

I dropped the sandwich on my plate.

This was ridiculous. Dante didn’t care what I ate. My diet wouldn’t make him unhappy. My health issues were mine, and yes, if we got serious, then he’d have to deal with them in a way, but they were stillmine.

If I believed he was the kind of person who would like me less because I was living with the Condition, then why did I like him at all?

Because he wasn’t.

Just like my issues weren’t Dante’s, my mother’s issues weren’t his either. Dante was the only person I knew who didn’t have any baggage related to my health. Oh, he had his own, that was obvious enough. But I didn’t like him less because of it, did I?

I grabbed my sandwich and took another vicious bite. Nope. This wasn’t on Dante at all. He’d never been anything but sweet and kind, and he’dbrought me flowers.

“Gonna kick your breakfast’s ass, Johnson? I dunno, I think it might be able to take you down.” Skip Chadwick joked as he sauntered past me. His mother stopped at the counter and frowned at him, hands on her hips, but she didn’t say anything.

And for some reason, that was just too much.

“I wasn’t thinking about the healthy breakfast your mother’s establishment made me, Skip. I was thinking about jerks who stick their noses in other people’s lives like they get a say in them.”

He spun to stare at me as though I’d just grown horns, mouth dropping open.

And sure, maybe I was overreacting, but damn it all, a breakfast sandwich was exactly the kind of thing that might be able to take me out, if our growing suspicions were right. It was just the kind of thing that might have killed thousands—hundreds of thousands—of people just like me in the last twenty years.

It wasn’t fucking funny.

“How about it, Skip? Think someone like that could take me down in a fight? Want to give it a shot?”

He took a step back, away, almost stumbled into the counter. He actually looked nervous. Of course, that was because no matter what I did, no one would give him the benefit of the doubt. I was sickly little Skye, so he couldn’t win a fight with me. Even if I broke my finger by punching him too hard, he’d end up the bad guy when people retold the story.

That returned a small measure of my usual calm, but heck, I’d already picked the fight. I might as well use Skip’s terror for something. So I continued to glare at him. “Someone thought it’d be funny to pick on Dante after the run by ruining his new clothes. Whoever it was should apologize and replace them, but if he’s not wolf enough to do that, at the very least, he’d better keep his distance from now on.”

“Whoa, whoa, dude, that was not me.” He frowned, eyes darting around to take stock of who all was watching him get humiliated, and straightened. “But come on. Guy’s a Reid. After what they did to us, you really gonna defend him?”

“Dante hasn’t done anything to this pack. He wasn’t part of the attack against us, and the only connection he had with us before that was when he helped Colt save Brook.” I slowed down at the last, enunciating each word. I hated to use Brook’s pain, but it was the best way to get people to acknowledge that Dante was everything good in the world.

“If he didn’t attack us, then why was he at the attack?” Lane Daniels asked, sitting halfway across the restaurant and not even pretending he wasn’t listening.

I turned my back on Skip. “He challenged their alpha, to try to stop the attack from happening.”

And suddenly, I wasn’t anyone’s focus. They were all looking at each other, in varying degrees of surprise and disbelief.

“That what he says?” Skip asked, suddenly beside me. And he looked pouty, petulant, but strangely enough, he looked like he already knew what my answer would be. Like he was saying it just to give me the opportunity to answer.

Huh. Maybe there was hope for Skip yet.

“No. He’s mostly tried not to talk about it. Even if they’re awful, they were his family, and most of us don’t like to speak ill of ours, no matter what they do. But Aspen says the only scent on him when they found him was Reid. That a Reid attacked him. Not a Grove.” I gave a good glare around at everyone, just for good measure, and barely refrained from stamping my foot like a kid. “So you should all be nicer to him. He’s done nothing but good for this pack, and some of us might owe him a lot, since he’s why we didn’t have to fight to get Brook home. I love you all, but... but do better.”

---