Page 58 of Full Moon Frenzy

In the open doorway of the wine bar's patio, unaffiliated with their group, the werewolf who owned the gym near the Commerce Parkway was laughing loudly with another wolf Trapp recognized from the hardware store on Main Street, next to Muffy’s little muffin shop. Their laughter was raucous, over-loud, out of place in an establishment like this. They would’ve been better off taking their obvious inebriation to the Man-o-War, he thought.

“Well, that’s not surprising to hear. I’ve heard she’s got a stick up her ass, but you know how those pack bitches are.”

Trapp turned away from Tris Tatterswain, his head snapping up. From the corner of his eye, he could see that Grayson had done the same, just a few steps away. Maybe it was because the family was deeply involved in a halfway house charity for wolvish women escaping their packs, the same organization their father had donated the historic Hemming house to, right there in town. Perhaps they were simply oversensitive about their mother’s origins. Regardless of the reason, none of Sandi Hemming’s sons tolerated that sort of talk in their hearing.

“She’s not going to last long at that clinic, but I should shoot my shot while I have the chance. I should go ask Hemming. He’s the one that’s been with her, according to Muffy. I’m telling you, you can do anything to a pack bitch.”

Perhaps if he’d slept better, he would have kept control. Perhaps if the moon hadn’t been so soggy and miserable. Perhaps if he’d abstained that evening, already having drunk more in the past month than he normally ever did for any reason. Perhaps if Grayson had been closer, Trapp might have been persuaded to ask questions first and strike later, but if there was one thing true about him that every member of his family would verify, it was that he had a terrible temper and had never shied away from a fight a day in his life.

His fist was sinking into the jaw of the wolf who’d spoken before he even had conscious thought of moving his feet. They were talking about her. Pack bitch. If the residents of Cambric Creek were going to learn nothing else from Trapp Hemming’s fall from grace, it was going to be to keep Adriana’s name out of their fucking mouths, lest their mouths be filled with his fists.

He and the other werewolf went to ground together, his fist connecting with the other man’s face over and over, the element of surprise giving him a momentary advantage.

His advantage was, unsurprisingly, short-lived, as the hardware store wolf and the third member of their party on the other side of the table immediately jumped to action.

“Go on,” Trapp spat in the other wolf’s face. “Say her fucking name. Give me a reason.”

Bodies bumped, pushed, a harpy shrieked. He was vaguely aware that other people were involved in the fight now, the fight that he had started. A wide circle had formed around them, the way they always seemed to in bar fights like this — rubberneckers too respectable to get pulled into it, but too nosy to walk away entirely.

There was an arm around his middle, pulling him up, pulling him back, the other wolf being pulled to his feet by his own friends, instantly trying to go back in to attack.

“Enough! Trapp, you’re done!”

But he wasn’t fucking done. He wasn’t going to be done until every single busybody in town, every single business owner, every fucking wolf in this whole miserable city understood that if they so much as whispered her name, he would be there with a boot in their ass.

“Trapp!”

He was able to shrug out of the arm around him, clipping his captor in the face with his elbow, hard enough that he was able to break free, lunging back at the wolf who’d started this. His focus was too single-minded, his vision completely tunneled, and he never saw the other fist coming, never saw it connect to the side of his head until the ground was rushing up to meet him and darkness swallowed him entirely.

Adriana

Squeak squeak squeak

Her eye twitched at the sound of her rubber clog squeaking against the linoleum hallway. She was positive her shoe hadn’t squeaked before her forty-eight-hour ridealong, but its development since then was fucking typical.

Squeak squeak squeak

She paused in the doorway of the exam room, gulping from the water bottle she had in the basket of the rolling cart. Her mouth tasted of bright citrus, black pepper, and sweat, as if Trapp Hemming had lodged in her throat and refused to be evicted. She hadn’t yet decided if she wanted to order one of those fermented fish rolls to evict him forever or keep him there, a secret she tasted constantly.

Bad enough that they had done what they did. Worse still that she felt utterly crushed by all of it, as if she was that naïve med student all over again, her heart shredded anew. And then, the morning after the turn, Adriana woke in her little backyard beneath the table, stretched, feeling oddly complacent. Strange, considering the weather, but on its own, not a troubling thing. But there was an imprint around her on the ground, a crescent-shaped depression, flattening the grass into the mud, clearly something heavy and substantial. And it had been tucked around her.

The thought made her quiver. She’d spent the day after the turn alternating between crying in bed and crying in her bathtub, furious with herself for crying over him at all, and then starting all over again.

Her return to the Cambric Creek Urgent Care clinic had been less than auspicious.

It was clear that the new CNP had brought with her tales from the upstairs office, gossip her staff had been previously uninfected with, and now, like a virus ripping through all of them, they couldn’t get enough. Adriana felt eyes follow her as she crossed the reception area, walked in on Shileen and the new nurse whispering furtively, and watched the little goblin straighten up so quickly and so obviously, guilt written all over her face, that Adriana would have been foolish to assume they were talking about anything but her. Eyla’s disapproving looks had degraded to borderline hostility. Deneen was the only one who seemed to be sympathetic, and Adriana wanted her pity about as much as she wanted the rest of it.

She found herself trembling each morning as she got ready for work, the same crushing, breathless anxiety that had made her flee the emergency department, a twist in her guts and a whimper deep inside her. And it broke her heart to think that he had done this to her. Again. You’re a fool for being surprised.

She took another swallow of water before opening the door to exam room three, where the patient who had refused to be seen by either of the nurse practitioners waited, having insisted on Adriana alone.

The man inside was a mountain. Huge shoulders, long, thick legs, everything about him was big and hard and honed. His back rippled with muscle, his cheekbones were sharp and his expression was glacial. Dark eyes dragged up from her feet, taking her in slowly, not even hiding that he was doing so, his eyes narrowed slightly. The sleeves of his button-down shirt were folded back, revealing tanned skin and sinewy forearms, the knuckles on his right hand wrapped in bloody gauze, and an ugly red laceration sliced across the corner of his mouth. Adriana swallowed hard. Roid rage, maybe.

Worst of all — he looked like Trapp. Harder, bigger, much colder . . . but he was unmistakably related. Fucking typical. How many of them are there?!

Sure enough, when she tapped over the tablet, checking his chart, the confirmation she sought was right there. Not that she was going to let on that the name meant anything to her.

“Mr. Hemming? What seems to be the problem?”