Page 2 of Crave

What happened next was pretty much what you might have expected. Mass raids. Government crackdowns. The price of silver and garlic supplements skyrocketed. Debates raged on social media. What sort of stake was best to carry? Silver? Oak? Ash with a garlic-infused leather grip? You’d think werewolves having witnessed this fanged clusterfuck would have redoubled our efforts to keep things on the down low. Instead, a year after #DashCamVlad, a bunch of hipsters from the Portland pack, not to be outdone on the supernatural head-desk meter, let things get a little too recreational at a campsite out in Oregon and got caught on camera shifting into two-hundred-pound werewolves.

Kind of hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube on that one.

Most of the time things in Blood Moon stayed pretty quiet. Although the paranormal craze had turned our tourist town into a destination for everyone who thought they wanted to meet a werewolf at the full moon (seriously, they didn’t) or have a meet-cute with their very own Edward Cullen (your average vampire looked nothing like Pattinson), we were far enough removed from the political infighting and backstabbing of the urban packs not to have to worry every time we went out alone at night. Most of the vampire covens kept to the major cities. The Feds were hunting for us every day and our governing council was doing everything in their power to keep us from being turned into lab rats.

Then last year, a rival pack from Austin had started abducting runaways around Central Texas and our pack had gotten caught up in the crossfire. Long story short, after a fight out in a corn maze at the local Harvest Moon Festival the night of a massive thunderstorm, we’d uncovered their link to a vampire coven that had been trafficking humans and forcibly changing them into shifters to use as blood slaves.

Topher Greer, one of the feral wolves the North Austin pack had abducted and held captive for over a year, had been assigned by the werewolf council to our pack with West as his temporary sire until he was stable enough to live on his own. Probably as our Uncle Guillermo’s sick idea of a joke. He’d trashed the safe room we were keeping him in three times, managed to break out twice, and channeled his best #WestCaldwellMustDie resting bitch face every time Cal came by for therapy sessions. Fun gig.

“I’m not wrong,” West said, and I heard the strain of the last few weeks in his voice. “Brody checked out that stretch of the perimeter both times the alarm pinged and said there were jackrabbits popping up like crazy. But you know when you get that feeling in your gut and every instinct you’ve got is screaming something just isn’t right?”

“The North Austin pack has been trying to rattle our cage for weeks. The Council just assigned them a new Alpha and they’re pissed as hell to be under sanctions. Someone pulled the fire alarm at Hayden’s gig downtown last week. Sold out crowd. We’re pretty sure they bought off one of the bouncers. And you should see the freak deliveries that keep showing up at The Spoke. This morning it was a hundred pounds of frozen salmon.”

“The first two I get. That’s some epic level pranking even for you.”

“Touché.”

“But who drives two hours out to the middle of nowhere just to trip a sensor then doesn’t wait around to see our reaction?”

Point, West Caldwell.

“Tell you what.” I grabbed the printed pages off the counter, scanning over the inventory list I’d been neglecting all day. “I’m on pit duty tonight, but first thing tomorrow, I’ll head over to the ranch and check things out.”

There was a pause, and then—

“So look. About Ethan—”

“For the love of all that is fanged and holy, can we drop this?”

“It’s been three weeks. Even by middle school girl standards, you’re both being total drama queens.”

“Okay, first? I’ve been busy. Some of us actually have businesses to run—”

“Right. Because I didn’t just spend my Friday night up to my ass in papers to grade.”

“—and second, we both know he’s the one who made this personal.”

“He screwed up.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

West ignored that one. “I mean, I think he gets it. Now, at least.”

I scoffed. “He actually said that?”

“You know E’s not exactly a talker. It’s one reason this mating with Hayden has been so good for him. He’s even been going to a therapist, trying to work through some of the stuff that happened before he came to live with us.”

“Are you seriously going to defend him?”

“Not defend. Total Switzerland here.” There was a pause. “But everyone makes mistakes.”

And there it was.

“Because I’m one to talk, right?”

“Dally, c’mon. You know that’s not what I meant.”

Except it was. And both of us knew it.