Come Moonrise Read Free Page A

spurred his horse and
went after his dad. With a muttered imprecation about arrogant men
that he was sure he wasn’t supposed to hear, Frankie followed
them.
    They reached the yard a few minutes later
and Frankie let Jed take Flash into the barn.
    They walked into the house together. He
picked up the scent of his mother’s cinnamon snaps and her concern
over having a human visitor this close to the full moon at the same
time. She was smiling when she came into the living room
though.
    It was something he hadn’t managed when he’d
first seen Frankie, but then he’d been too busy trying to fight his
reaction to her scent in heat. He still was and he wasn’t
winning.
    Hell. The last thing he needed right now, or
ever, was a hard-on for his best friend.
    "Frankie, what an unexpected pleasure." His
mom’s voice held all the welcome his dad, his brother and he had
not extended.
    Frankie’s pleasure in the greeting came off
her in waves and she rushed forward, her sexy hips swinging
slightly with her graceful walk. She hugged his mom, dwarfing the
smaller woman, and kissed her cheek. "It’s been too long."
    "You didn’t come home this past summer."
    "The partners all took their vacations over
the summer."
    "And left you to work the clinic while they
were gone?" he asked, anger at her being treated like that boiling
through him.
    She turned one of her brilliant smiles on
him...finally. Apparently, she’d forgiven him his earlier coldness.
She was like that, rarely holding a grudge, especially against him.
It was one of the many things he liked about her.
    Her doe eyes filled with a
warmth he’d never been able to break his addiction to. "They didn’t
all go at once and it is my job, Ty."
    "You could have come home and worked with
me," he reminded her. "I wouldn’t have forced you to go without a
break all summer."
    It had surprised him when she’d refused the
job offer right out of college. It had hurt too. He’d thought that
after she broke up with that pathetic fiancé of hers she’d be
willing to come home, but she hadn’t.
    If he needed more proof that thinking of her
as a possible mate was beyond idiotic, there it was. He didn’t
belong in the city and she’d rejected life out here. Not to mention
the fact that she was no more stable in relationships than any
other human, as her ex-fiancé could attest.
    There was no official pack law against
taking a human mate, but it was strongly discouraged. While a
werewolf mated for life, a human could leave his or her mate behind
and seek another. It had happened often enough to make the pack
leery. Every werewolf was taught from the time they were a cub that
humans made poor choices for mates.
    That didn’t stop it from happening,
unfortunately.
    Ty’s own grandmother had been human and had
left Ty’s grandfather to marry another man when the cubs were less
than half grown. Ty’s father had been more adamant than most about
drilling into his sons the need to mate with pack. Or if not with
pack, at least with their own kind.
    His father's admonitions had not been
necessary for Ty. After he had witnessed the grisly results of a
werewolf breaking the pack law about mating for life as a cub, he'd
never considered mating human anyway.
    "Maybe I should have taken the job you
offered at that. Living in the city hasn’t accomplished what I
wanted it to." There was another layer to Frankie's words, his wolf
senses said so, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.
    "Leah moved to Billings." Ty was glad his
brother hadn’t come into the house as his mom’s words settled in
the air between them.
    Frankie reached down and squeezed his mom’s
hand. "I heard she left. I’m not carrying tales if I mention
neither Uncle Ben nor Aunt Rose know what Marigold did to send her
away."
    "But they know their daughter was involved,"
Ty said.
    "I guess it’s kind of hard to miss how Duke
cuts her now."
    "She played one of her selfish, all-about-me
games." Ty frowned. "Both Leah and