Moonrise (Wild Moon #2)

Chapter 1

EMPTY ROOMS

DANIEL

Some mornings, the silence had teeth.

It curled around my ribs like smoke, whispered through empty spaces where warmth used to live. Claire's side of the bed had gone cold thirteen years ago. I still reached for her anyway. Every damn morning, my hand sliding across sheets that held nothing but the shape of what I'd lost.

Old habits. Old wounds. Same difference, really.

The room smelled like pine and cedar and something older.

Pack house bones ran deep here, walls soaked in three generations of Callahan blood.

My grandfather took his last breath in this room.

My father, too. Claire had whispered my name in this darkness once, back when I could still pretend I was more than just Alpha.

More than the thing holding our world together through stubbornness and spit and whatever remained of my spine.

I sat up. My back cracked loud enough to echo off the walls.

Forty-nine wasn't old by wolf standards. But grief had a way of aging you faster than years ever could.

Get up, I told myself. The dead don't need you lying here feeling sorry for yourself.

The floorboards bit cold under my feet. I dressed in the dark because that's what I'd done for thirteen years and muscle memory was the only reliable thing left.

Jeans, flannel, boots that had seen better decades.

Dawn hadn't broken yet, but the forest outside my window was already stirring.

Wind moving through Douglas fir. The distant rush of Hollow Creek along the eastern boundary.

An owl calling somewhere deep in the Evernight, its cry cutting through the pre-dawn stillness like a warning no one had asked for.

I stood at the window for a long moment, watching the tree line breathe. The forest pressed close on all sides of the house. Dark and patient. Waiting, always waiting, like it knew something I didn't.

Some people found that comforting. The embrace of nature, the sanctuary of the wild.

Me? I'd learned a long time ago that the forest kept secrets. And not all of them were gentle.

My wolf stirred beneath my skin. Not restless, exactly. More like it was listening. Tracking something I couldn't hear yet.

Soon, I thought, though I didn't know what I was promising.

I made it halfway down the stairs before I smelled the coffee.

And underneath it, motor oil and pine and that particular warmth that meant only one thing.

Evan.

My son sat at the kitchen table, laptop open in front of him, two mugs already steaming on the scarred wood surface.

Twenty-five years old now, and every year he looked more like his mother.

Those pale green eyes that shifted gray in certain light.

The way his mouth curved when he was trying not to smile.

Claire's patience wrapped in my stubbornness, and somehow he'd turned out decent despite having me for a father.

He wore a faded Ward's Garage hoodie, sleeves shoved up past his elbows, motor oil still staining the cuffs from yesterday's shift.

His dark hair was getting too long. He needed a haircut.

I'd mentioned it twice already this week, and he'd ignored me twice, which meant he was doing it on purpose just to annoy me.

Smart kid. Knew exactly which buttons to push.

He looked up when I walked in. “Morning.”

The sound of his voice still caught me off guard sometimes. Even after all these years. Even knowing that Nate Harrington had given him a reason to use it again.

I'd watched my son go silent after Claire died.

Watched words get buried so deep I thought they'd never surface.

Twelve years old and suddenly mute, communicating only through nods and written notes and that devastating blankness behind his eyes.

The therapists called it selective mutism.

Trauma response. I called it watching my boy disappear piece by piece while I stood there helpless as a dead man's prayer.

Then Nate came to Hollow Pines. And something in Evan woke up.

First it was single words. Yes. No. Okay. Then sentences. Then full conversations, quiet and careful but real, and I'd had to leave the room the first time I heard him laugh because I couldn't let him see me cry.

“You're up early,” I said, keeping my voice steady.

Evan shrugged, pushed one of the mugs toward me. “Couldn't sleep. Figured I'd get a head start on the day.”

I took the coffee. Black, strong enough to strip varnish. Exactly how I liked it. The boy paid attention. Always had.

“Nightmares?” I asked, because I had to. Because that's what fathers did, even when they didn't want to hear the answer.

“No.” Evan's eyes held mine, steady and clear. “Just restless. The forest was loud last night.”

I felt my wolf perk up at that. “Loud how?”

“I don't know. Just... loud. Like it was waiting for something.” He wrapped his hands around his mug. “Probably nothing.”

But his shoulders had gone tight, and we both knew probably nothing was a lie we told ourselves to get through the day.

“What time are you due at the garage?” I asked, letting the subject shift. Some conversations needed daylight and distance.

“Seven. Gideon wants to go over the Henderson truck before Henderson himself shows up and starts yelling about how long it's taking.” Evan rolled his eyes. “The man brought us an engine held together by rust and wishful thinking, and he's surprised it's not a quick fix.”

“Henderson's been complaining about wait times since before you were born.”

“Yeah, well, Cal's about two complaints away from throwing a wrench at him, and Mason's running a betting pool on when it happens.” Evan's mouth twitched. Almost a smile. “My money's on Thursday.”

“Smart bet.” I drained half my coffee, feeling the warmth spread through my chest. “I'll ride with you.”

Evan's eyebrows rose. “To the garage?”

“Need to talk to Gideon about something.”

“Something.” The word came out flat. Knowing.

“Pack business.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” But his eyes were doing that thing where they saw too much. Claire's eyes, always seeing straight through me. “You just don't usually make house calls before sunrise.”

“I'm not making a house call. I'm catching a ride with my son.”

“To talk to Gideon.”

“Yes.”

“About pack business.”

“That's what I said.”

Evan studied me for a long moment. Then something shifted in his expression, going softer. More careful.

“Dad. Michael's at their old house today.”

My wolf went very still.

“I know,” I said, keeping my voice even.

“Nate's worried about him. I'm worried about him.” Evan set down his mug. “He's been throwing himself into that renovation like he's trying to outrun something. Barely sleeping, barely eating. There were six beer bottles on his counter when I stopped by yesterday.”

“Six.”

“Empty. All of them.”

The image settled in my chest like a stone. Michael Harrington, surrounded by sawdust and grief, drinking himself numb in a house that had tried to kill him.

“I'll check on him,” I heard myself say. “After the garage.”

Evan nodded slowly. “Good. That's... good.”

“Don't read into it.”

“I'm not reading into anything.”

“You're reading into it right now. I can see it on your face.”

“This is just my face, Dad.”

“Your face is doing the thing.”

“What thing?”

“The thing where you think you know something and you're being smug about it.”

Evan's mouth curved into something that was definitely a smile now. “I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Liar.”

“Learned from the best.”

I shoved his shoulder as I passed him, heading for the sink to rinse my mug. “Finish your coffee. We're leaving in ten.”

“Bossy.”

“I'm your Alpha.”

“You're my dad. There's a difference.”

“Is there?”

“Yeah.” Evan's voice softened. “One of them I actually listen to.”

I turned back to look at him. My son, grown now, sitting in the kitchen where his mother used to make pancakes on Sunday mornings. Where she'd taught him to read and helped him with homework and held him when the nightmares got too bad.

She would have been so proud of him. Of the man he'd become.

“Your mother,” I started, then stopped. Swallowed. “She would have liked Nate.”

Evan's eyes went bright for just a second. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. She always said you needed someone who could match your stubbornness. Someone who'd push back when you needed pushing.”

“Nate definitely pushes back.”

“Good. You need it.”

We stood there for a moment, the morning light slowly filling the kitchen, the weight of old grief and new hope tangled together in the space between us.

Then Evan cleared his throat. “Ten minutes?”

“Ten minutes.”

He nodded and headed upstairs, probably to grab his work boots and whatever else he needed for a day of wrestling with Henderson's disaster of a truck.

I stood alone in the kitchen, listening to the house settle around me. Claire's yellow curtains still hung over the sink. I'd never been able to take them down.

I'll check on Michael, I thought. Make sure he's eating. Make sure he's not drowning in that house.

It was what pack did. What family did.

Nothing more than that.

Ward's Garage sat at the edge of town where Main Street gave way to gravel and forest. An old brick building with faded red paint and a hand-lettered sign that read Ward's Auto Repair in letters that had been weathering for decades.

Three service bays, usually full. A parking lot that was more dirt than pavement.

The kind of place that looked like it hadn't changed since 1962 and probably never would.

Evan pulled his truck into the employee spot near the back, killing the engine with a practiced twist of his wrist. We'd driven in comfortable silence, the way you could only do with someone you'd known your whole life. No need to fill the quiet with noise.

“Gideon's already here,” Evan said, nodding toward the familiar truck parked by the office door. “Probably been here since five. The man doesn't sleep.”

“He sleeps.”

“When?”

“When the rest of us aren't watching.”