Free Crying for the Moon by Sarah Madison

so now, he still hesitated.
    After dithering a few days, he finally decided to call Tate. He pretended the call was about getting EPT vaccinated and neutered.
    “Already taken care of.” Tate was uncharacteristically abrupt and Alex wondered if he was interrupting something. “I vaccinated him last spring. Don’t you worry about neutering him; I’ll catch him sooner or later. In the meantime, if he bites you because you tried to trap him, the health department will have a cow.”
    “You don’t have pets of your own, do you?” Alex asked casually.
    Tate laughed. “Not at the moment. It seems suspicious, doesn’t it? The vet who doesn’t have any animals of his own. I used to have a close-knit group though. Three cats and a dog. They eventually died of old age. I lost the last cat a few months ago. They all got along so well, they were like a little pack, and I didn’t dare introduce anyone new.” The warmth in his voice was clearly audible over the phone. “Kind of like Nick and his friends.”
    For the first time since he’d met them, Alex felt resentment toward Nick’s kind. Centuries of racial hatred between their peoples suddenly flared, and Alex felt ashamed when he’d realized that he was letting old prejudices impact his current relationships. He knew what Victor would have said. In his mind, werefolk were dirty savages that could not be trusted. He’d never approved of Alex’s interactions with Nick’s pack in the first place. Now those very interactions were a threat to both Tate and the little cat.
    For that matter, Victor would have already made Tate his plaything or else drained him dry long ago. It startled Alex to realize Victor saw vampires as superior beings with every right to hold dominion over humans. He never saw them as people . He seemed to have forgotten his own human origins, and Alex knew that was exactly what frequent feedings or trips to the coffin would do. Not to mention, once you slept in your coffin, you awoke with an insatiable desire for fresh blood.
    “I’m guessing you’ll be taking the weekend off?” Alex tried not to sound as though he were holding an interrogation.
    “Is that an invitation?” Tate asked teasingly before sighing. “I’d love to take the weekend off, do a little climbing, you know? But it’s a full moon coming up and that’s when all the crazies come out. I’ll be lucky if I don’t have any emergencies. Tell you what: I’ll put out a trap up at my house and see if I can catch the cat.”
    “What if he bites you?” Alex asked.
    Tate seemed to think that was funny. “I’ve been vaccinated against rabies. It’s part of my job.”
    Alex had to leave it at that, chewing at his lower lip as he disconnected the call, wondering how he could force Tate to stay safe at home. You could invite him over , his mind had insisted. Yeah. Like that would keep him safe.
    A few days later, he was walking the gravel road in front of his house in the late afternoon when Tate came down the road in his car. The Subaru slowed, and Tate rolled down his window as the car came abreast of Alex and stopped.
    “You look like a bona fide member of the Dead Poets Society,” Tate said, as he leaned one arm against the side of the car door.
    That grin shouldn’t have seemed so engaging, nor should it have made Alex suddenly wonder what Tate would look like in bed. That had to be the reason why Alex felt so stupid when he responded. “Um, what?”
    “You. You with your hands shoved in your pockets, the windblown hair, and the setting sun behind you. You look like you’re off to a coffeehouse reading or about to give a lecture on Frost or Tennyson.” Tate ducked under the visor to look out the windshield in front of him. He indicated the forest before turning back to quote Thoreau. “ I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. To put to rout all that was not life and not, when I had come to