Burn Bright

CHAPTER 10

Leah’s truck was parked at the trailhead of the path to Jericho’s. Asil’s Mercedes was parked beside it.

“Ha,” said Charles as they got out of the car. “I talked too much. Slowed me down.”

Anna laughed, as he meant her to. Charles didn’t really care who got here first, and Anna knew it. Brother Wolf was grumpy about losing, though. He thought it would have been better to have been first.

Anna hopped out of the car and waited while he looked around the interior of Sage’s SUV until he found the key fob so he could lock it. Maybe he was taking unnecessary precautions, but he wasn’t going to leave Jericho an easy way out. He also grabbed the axe. He left the witch gun, though. Jericho was crazy—but he would listen to an axe better than a gun.

He checked the other two vehicles; they were both locked. Anna turned to start up the trail.

“Hold up,” he said. “We have a missing werewolf. He could have come this way as easily as any other.”

She stood quietly and waited while he examined their surroundings. She took in deep breaths herself but didn’t offer any opinions, so he could safely assume she didn’t detect anyone, either. If Jericho was hiding around here, he was doing a good job of it.

A better job than Charles thought the wolf was capable of.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go—but keep an eye out.”

Anna nodded. She’d been quiet the last part of the trip here, a thoughtful quiet that meant she was thinking. As they started up the trail, she linked her hand on his elbow—that was okay; he trusted her to drop her grip if they met danger. And he liked her hand on him.

“Charles,” she said, “if our traitor isn’t one of the wildlings, who do you think it is?”

“What has convinced you that it isn’t one of the wildlings?” Charles asked.

She made a hmm sound, tightening her arm. “I don’t know. Wellesley, maybe. Unless you think there are more wildlings who are capable—like Hester.”

Charles shook his head. “No. Hester—there were reasons for Hester.”

“Jonesy,” said Anna.

“Jonesy,” agreed Charles. “And Da certainly knew about her—he would. He probably knew about the flyovers, too. I just wonder . . .” He stopped talking as a few thoughts crystallized into a whole.

Anna started to say something, but Charles held up his hand, because . . . he didn’t want to be right.

“There is none so blind,” he murmured as all of the oddities of the last few days fell into place. The enormity of it all brought him to a stop as he broke out in a cold sweat.

“Charles?” Anna asked.

Brother Wolf saw it as Charles had, understanding what it meant. He went wild with denial—and for a moment, it was all Charles could do to restrain the wolf.

Not now. It’s not now, he told his brother. We will do what we have to do, but not yet.

“Charles, what’s wrong?” Anna asked, beginning to sound worried.

“I know why Da isn’t here,” he told her. Sick horror gripped him.

“Charles?” Anna asked again. She leaned against him, and Brother Wolf quit fighting and simply braced himself.

He breathed in her scent, and told her, simply, “He thinks Leah is our traitor.”

She stilled against him. “Why do you think that?”

He laid it out for her as he saw it. “If Hester was as normal as we all think, she’d have called Da as soon as she started to get flyovers. That would have alerted him of trouble. A month ago, Da asked Boyd for the files the Chicago pack has been putting together in their search for what Leo had been up to.”

“Okay,” Anna said. “We knew all of this.”

“I don’t know that he knew we had a traitor at that point, just that our enemy was active again,” he told her. “I think that Da was looking for that enemy with the threads we’ve been able to collect.”

“Thus the files from Boyd,” Anna said.

Charles nodded. “Then Mercy got into trouble—and he took those files with him. He might have other sources of information, but the files make the most sense.”

“Okay,” Anna said. “But why Leah?”

“Because he was headed home—and out of the blue he called up and told me he was taking a vacation in Africa with Samuel,” Charles said.

Anna drew in her breath, seeing what Charles had seen. “He’s afraid to come home because he thinks the traitor is his mate.”

“Africa, because he needs to be as far from here as he can get,” Charles told her.

She stiffened because she realized what it meant if Leah was the traitor.

He said the whole thing out loud anyway. Just to make sure. “If he’s right, I am going to have to execute his mate.” He drew in a breath, his chest tight. “And probably my da. Because even if Leah has betrayed us, if I execute her, he’ll come for me. His wolf spirit won’t let him do anything else.”

And he’s not in Africa, said Brother Wolf somberly. He’s somewhere a lot closer than that.

Anna nodded jerkily. She’d met his da’s wolf, the monster the Marrok held leashed with his mating bond to Leah. She knew what they’d both be facing after Charles killed Leah.

“Leah is just about the most straightforwardly honest person I know,” Anna said. “Every thought that crosses her mind comes out her mouth. How could she keep a secret like that from Bran? From her mate? I can’t even keep a surprise birthday party from you. There’s no way I could keep a bigger secret.”

Brother Wolf sent his apologies through their bond to Anna. He hadn’t known the party was supposed to be a secret.

“My da’s bond with Leah isn’t like ours,” said Charles with certainty. His da didn’t talk about his mating, but Charles knew his da well enough to know that he wouldn’t want anyone else rummaging through his mind, least of all Leah. And his da had the abilities necessary to make certain his bond functioned just as he chose. “And suspecting she is a traitor isn’t going to encourage him to open that bond any further than he can help.”

“That’s why he’s closed the bonds to the pack down so tightly,” Anna said.

Charles nodded.

“Could he be wrong?”

“I hope so,” Charles said.

“What are we going to do?” asked Anna. He didn’t think the question was directed at him.

He tried to draw serenity from the forest around them. It didn’t work, but it helped.

“We are going to find Jericho and take care of the immediate problem,” he told her. “We’re then going to finish warning the wildlings. I don’t think we need to consider them suspects anymore. But they do need to be warned nonetheless. Then I’m going to sit down with the files that Boyd sent me last night and see if I can figure out what set my da off.”

Anna nodded. “Okay. That sounds like a plan of attack.”

She was quiet all the way up to the small cabin that was Jericho’s home—thinking things through.

Charles hoped that she’d think something different than the scenario that was playing out all too clearly in his head. He did not want to face off with his da. Though he had known, from the time he understood what happened to old wolves, that eventually the duty of killing his da would probably be his—it was not something he was resigned to.

They smelled the bodies well before they reached Jericho’s cabin.

“These people died before the attack on Hester,” Anna said.

Charles nodded. “By a couple of days, I’d guess.”

She reached out and took his hand, holding it tightly in hers. He was so blessed in his mate, who understood when to talk and when not to.

Asil, Sage, Juste . . . and Leah were waiting for them next to a line of dead bodies—obviously werewolf kills—that they had laid out neatly. Sometime during the trip here, Asil and Sage must have worked something out, because Sage was standing so her shoulder brushed Asil’s.

Anna dropped Charles’s hand and went to look at the faces of the dead to see if she knew any of them without anyone’s saying anything. She was young to have such an understanding of necessity.

They weren’t pretty corpses—and so badly rotted that he didn’t think Anna had the experience to tell what they might have smelled like when they were alive.

“This one was one of . . . of the men I knew in Chicago,” she said finally, pointing at one of the dead werewolves. “And maybe this one.” Pointing at another—his face was pretty badly torn up.

“The last one is human,” said Juste. He wasn’t doubting her—just advising her.

She sighed. “He was human then, too.” She frowned unhappily at the dead man in question, then bent and quickly ripped open the dead man’s jacket and shirt, exposing the front of his chest.

The tattoo must have been a beautifully rendered dragon. Charles could see it in the delicate skill used on the parts he could distinguish. It didn’t look so good now, distorted by death and by the ragged wound that cut through it.

Anna coughed at the additional smell she’d released, putting her hand over her nose. “Yes. This one.”

When she finished coughing, she said, “He used . . .” She stopped speaking, glanced at Charles, and closed her lips.

He could take a good guess at what she would have said if she hadn’t been worried about setting him off. This was another of the men Leo had allowed to abuse her. Charles did her the courtesy of swallowing his rage as best he could.

“Too bad they are dead,” said Asil, with a growl. So Charles wasn’t the only one who had heard what she didn’t say.

Anna looked at Asil, and said firmly, “No. It’s a good thing. I don’t need more avenging, Asil. Charles did that. I am thriving. But these men are bad men, and I am glad they are dead.”

“Where is Jericho?” Charles asked. They had all been standing around the bodies instead of searching for Jericho. That could only mean they had already found him.

He assumed that Jericho was dead—since everyone had been waiting with the bodies—but Juste said, “Devon has him located in a cave about a half mile from here. Asil told us to let Devon hold the fort until the two of you could make it up here.”

“Devon told you that Jericho had had trouble?” Charles asked. Devon was a wildling—and he’d have been on Leah’s list, the group of the safest wildlings.

“Not exactly,” said Juste. “Devon didn’t change to human for us, but he scratched Jericho’s name in the dirt. Leah and I decided to check it out since Devon’s place isn’t far. We found no Jericho and these, the dead.”

Leah, looking tired and smelling of rotten corpses, said, “A few minutes after we got here, Devon showed up, too. He’s the one who ran Jericho down—probably he just knew where the likely places to look were. We left him to make sure Jericho didn’t run again, but we didn’t approach.”

She did not say that they were waiting for Charles, so that he could do his job: kill Jericho.

Asil looked at Anna, then met Charles’s eyes. “You and I should go up.”

Yes.

“No,” said Leah in a low voice. Then more clearly. “No. We have already lost Hester. We have to try to save him.”

She looked at Anna thoughtfully, and Charles had to fight back a growl as he realized that she hadn’t been waiting for him. She’d been waiting for Anna.

“She’s tired,” said Sage, before Leah could say anything.

Leah closed her mouth, but her body was tight with some strong emotion. He couldn’t tell what it was.

Grief, said Anna’s voice through their bond. She does not want to lose another wildling. Her voice was accompanied by a surge of hope.

It does not mean she is innocent, said Brother Wolf. Charles is grieved by those he sends on.

“No doubt,” said Anna aloud, answering Brother Wolf, but it sounded like a reply to Sage. Maybe it was both. “But there has been too much tragedy around here. If we don’t try, I’ll always wonder if I could have made a difference.”

“If you do try,” Asil told her, “and you succeed in giving him back a little control of his wolf, Jericho still will not last another five years.”

“Do you know him?” Anna asked.

Asil shook his head. “No. But I have talked about him with Devon in better times. Devon and he were friends, once. Closer than brothers. Now Devon is . . . Devon.” There was a wealth of sadness in Asil’s voice because Asil and Devon had once been very close as well. “And Jericho is so near to madness that he cannot even use words most of the time. The man he once was may not thank you for your help, Anna.”

Sage said, in a low voice, “I know him. The first year I was here, I got lost for three days in the middle of an ice storm. I didn’t know it was possible to be that cold and live.” She looked away. “I found out later that Bran had called all the wildlings, to send them out looking for me. Jericho found me and brought me to his cabin.” She rubbed her eyes. “Sorry. He was . . . sweet and shy. Brought me here, dried me off, and called Bran. I know his reputation—even then he was pretty bad off. But he lit a fire in the little stove—and went outside to wait for Bran to come and pick me up.”

Sage met Anna’s eyes. “I’m telling you this so you know I’m not just being expedient. He treated me well—and it surprised Bran that Jericho was able to do that. That was twenty years ago. And every day of those twenty years, Jericho has spent fighting with his wolf.” She waved her hands to indicate the dead. “This time it was the enemy. But next time it might not be. Jericho needs to die.” Truth rang in her last sentence—truth as she saw it, at any rate.

“‘Fighting’ is the right word,” said Leah in a grumpy voice. “Since when is fighting a horrible thing? We are werewolves—fighting is what we do.”

Sage gave Leah a sad smile. “Sometimes, Leah, the kindest thing is to let them go.”

A long, wailing howl echoed through the trees.

Charles raised his face to the sky and answered in a like voice so that their lone soldier understood there was help coming. Of one sort or another.

“If I take Jericho,” Charles told Asil, “it’s like as not I’ll have to do the same with Devon.”

The words were a blow—even though Charles knew Asil was well aware of that. Charles had only known the broken wolf his da had brought here sixty years ago. But he knew that Devon, in his glory days, had had a knack for making and keeping friends. Jericho, Asil, and even Bran had been friends of his.

“Devon will defend him,” said Asil, giving Charles a half smile. “Devon defends those he loves. That’s part of what made him the man he once was.”

Leah stepped closer to Anna. “You and I don’t always see things the same way,” she said.

“That is true,” his mate answered, meeting Leah’s eyes.

“I know you are tired,” Leah continued. “I know that this will only be a stopgap, but my mate gets so sad when the wildlings go on. He breaks his heart over them.”

“It would take more than those two,” said Anna, indicating Asil and Charles, “to keep me from trying to help. Bran isn’t the only one who gets sad when the old ones die.”

Leah would think that Anna was speaking only of herself, but Charles knew that Anna was talking about Leah, too.

And us, said Brother Wolf. We regret, too.

After saying her bit, Sage had moved away from the dead. She wrapped her arms around her middle and frowned off into the distance. The dead usually didn’t bother her much—a result of her early life as a werewolf, Charles had always supposed (it hadn’t bothered him at all to take care of most of that rogue pack). Maybe it was just that she was upset about Jericho, who had saved her life once upon a time.

Asil addressed Charles. “I’ve seen your mate almost die once today. That is enough times, I think.”

Charles agreed with him wholeheartedly . . . but he knew what Anna would do. He knew it was not his job to make her smaller, safer. It was his job to lift her up as high as she wanted to soar—and to kill anything that tried to interfere.

“She’ll be safe enough with all of us there,” Charles said. “And—”

There was a sharp yip of pain, and all of them ran toward the sound. Brother Wolf chose the change before Charles could decide if it was a good idea or not.

There are two werewolf wildlings nearing the end of their days, Brother Wolf told him. We are all of us wolves, but sometimes the only answer is fang and claw, and we can do this faster than the others.

More and more, Brother Wolf spoke to Charles in whole sentences, when previously he was more likely to communicate with emotions or wordless gestalt statements that conveyed an entire conversation as a whole. Charles thought that it was the need his brother had to speak to their mate that was causing the evolution.

Leah had taken the lead. Brother Wolf contented himself with running beside Anna and following those who knew where they were going.

The cave where Jericho had retreated wasn’t a real cave, but a sheltered place where two great boulders rested against each other. It smelled lightly of Devon and more heavily of Jericho. From the scent layers, this was a place where Jericho slept more often than he used the small cabin they’d just left.

“Jericho,” called Leah.

“Coming,” said a man’s voice. Jericho’s voice.

I have never heard Jericho sound like that, said Brother Wolf in surprise.

Anxiety peaked in the whole group. In Brother Wolf’s shape, Charles’s nose was sharper. What had happened to Devon? Jericho’s voice had sounded almost casual, and Jericho was never casual.

No one liked where they saw this going.

There was a shuffling noise, then a muscled man emerged. He had to crawl to get out of the sheltered space, but he stood as soon as there was room. He had a cloth wrapped around his loins in a fashion that Charles hadn’t seen in a long time. It gave Jericho the appearance of wearing baggy shorts instead of an old bedsheet.

Jericho looked much as he had the last time Charles had seen him. His beard and hair were long and scraggly, with bits of leaves and other forest detritus caught in it. His hair was tangled every which way and randomly hacked shorter here and there. His eyes were ice blue—the wolf dominant, in that moment at least. There was something odd about that cool stare, but Jericho looked away before Charles could put a finger on what bothered him.

Jericho’s body was fit and strong. Which was a good thing—hunger tended to destabilize even the most controlled werewolf, which none of the wildlings were to begin with. He hadn’t, Charles thought, eaten any of the dead men—though it was usual for an out-of-control werewolf to eat his victims.

Most of the wildlings were twitchy in human form, as if the wolf were ready to climb out at any moment. Jericho’s body was very still and balanced on the balls of his feet. He glanced around at their group with his wolf-blue eyes, then away. He shivered.

“Where is Devon?” asked Leah.

“I . . .” He stopped, swallowed, and began again. “He wanted me to run. He doesn’t want me to die. But I killed those men. The only rule is no killing. I had to tie him up in the cave.”

And that was more coherent sentences in a row than Charles had been able to get out of him in ten years. To top off the performance, Jericho walked up to Charles, dropped to his knees, and presented his throat.

“Well,” said Anna briskly after a moment of silence. “That’s all very dramatic and heartfelt, I’m sure. But we’re pretty sure those men attacked you. Self-defense is always legal.”

Jericho eyed Anna. “No killing. The Marrok was very clear.”

Behind Jericho, Asil crossed to the cave and ducked in.

“Those men belonged to our enemy,” said Leah. “A similar group killed Hester yesterday. Her mate followed by his own hand.”

Jericho swayed a bit then, and his eyes darkened to human blue. “Felt that,” he said. “Hester . . . didn’t like me at all.” For a second, he grinned widely. “Damn near killed me first time we met.” Then he blinked, and the human left his eyes again. “Not sorry I killed them. But the rule is no killing.”

“How did they find you?” asked Anna. “Do you know? Did you hear anything that can help us find them?”

Jericho growled at her.

Brother Wolf growled more savagely, and Jericho subsided.

“Don’t do this,” Sage said, apparently to herself because her voice had been very quiet. “You don’t need to do this.”

Charles gave Sage a sharp look—but her attention was on Jericho.

Jericho’s attention was on Charles.

Asil exited the cave and a very thin, patchy-coated wolf followed him, head low and tail tucked. Asil nodded at Charles—he’d found Devon just as Jericho said he would. Charles looked carefully at Devon, but the wildling seemed unharmed—if not particularly happy.

“Assume that we’ll take care of an execution if it needs to happen,” Anna told Jericho dryly. “Moving on to a different topic. Did you overhear anything they might have said? Any clues to who or what they were?”

Jericho focused his ice-blue eyes on Charles’s mate. Charles would have been happier if he hadn’t done that.

“She said not to come here. To wait. That this attack is too likely to give her away,” Jericho said, in a hard, oddly deep voice. His voice changed again, becoming both lighter and quicker. “She is not in charge; she is not the boss. And I don’t know about you, but I’m more afraid of the boss than of her.”

And Charles realized that Jericho had taken Anna’s question literally. He was repeating back exactly what they had said in his presence.

And they had been talking about a “she.”

Charles looked at Leah—he couldn’t help it. But she was watching Jericho with her brows furrowed—Charles didn’t think she’d quite figured out what Jericho was doing.

“Our job,” continued the wildling coolly, “is to get the information from this one if he has it. No one will miss him for a long time. If we can’t get it from him, then we hit the other one.” Jericho sighed loudly and dropped into the first voice. “And that will be a cluster because someone keeps taking out our surveillance equipment, I know. I don’t like going in blind, eith—” Jericho stopped speaking.

“Anna can help you,” said Sage intently. “She just broke a hundred-year-old curse on another wildling. I was there.”

The first statement was a lie. Charles turned his attention to Sage—because he’d never heard her lie before. Even more interesting than the lie was the implication that she didn’t believe Anna could help Jericho.

Even though he’d once rescued her—and Charles remembered the incident pretty much the way she’d told it—she was scared of Jericho. Charles could tell that much, though her control was very good. Probably he and Jericho were the only ones who could smell it. Charles because he had Brother Wolf, and Jericho because he was mostly wolf even when he wore human skin.

“Eith—?” asked Anna.

“I killed him before he finished the sentence,” said Jericho smugly. “He was probably going to say ‘either’ but you asked me what they said. Not what I thought they were going to say.”

Asil said, “You are feeling talkative tonight, my friend.” He sounded a little suspicious.

There is something going on, said Brother Wolf. Something is wrong with Jericho.

Well, yes.

More wrong, said Brother Wolf intently. Differently wrong.

He just killed seven people and has been waiting for two days for his death sentence, Charles reminded him. But I agree.

Satisfied, Brother Wolf fell silent.

“Did you kill them before they attacked you?” asked Leah.

“Don’t,” Sage whispered.

Jericho gave Leah his ice-blue stare. “They invaded my territory. They came with guns and sharp things. With wires and switches and buttons to make me tell them things. They wanted to take Bright. I couldn’t let them do that. They said, ‘Sage can’t figure out where Frank Bright is, and she’s had years. How hard is it to find the only black man among Bran Cornick’s misfits?’”

Charles bolted, but it had taken him an extra breath to realize what Jericho had said. That short space of time allowed Sage to get a head start.

As she ran, she grabbed her necklace. He had time to see her shift to her wolf as quickly as he could, felt the wave of witchcraft that allowed her to do so.

Then a puff of smoke billowed in the air right in front of him. The acrid, greasy cloud filled his nose and mouth and left him coughing and gagging and trying to breathe. He plowed to a stop and tried to clean his nose with his paws, wiping his face on the ground when that didn’t work.

Asil passed him without hesitation, Leah and Juste on his heels. Anna stopped and pulled off her shirt. She wiped his face and paws with it. That did the trick, and he could breathe again.

“Witchcraft,” she said. “I saw something burst right in front of you.”

Smelled stale, said Brother Wolf. The magic was trapped in an object. We would have known if she were witchborn.

“If she had that with her,” Anna said, “then she was prepared for us to find her out.”

Yes.

Sage was their traitor. He’d let himself process that, to grieve over that, later. He got to his feet and shook himself, trying to decide how to proceed.

“Heyya,” called Jericho.

The wildling had Devon beside him, and they were walking along the side of the mountain about twenty feet above where Charles and Anna were. Devon still had his tail between his legs and was watching Jericho with uncertain eyes—probably wondering why Jericho had tied him up, though it was hard to be certain with Devon.

“She’s following a trail,” Jericho said. “I know where it comes out—there’s a shortcut. If they don’t stop her before she gets that far, we can take her at the other end.”

Charles and Anna made short work of climbing the slope until they were up on the path the wildlings were on. It didn’t take them long to catch up. Jericho was not in an apparent hurry because he waited for them.

As they neared, Jericho tilted his head and frowned at Anna. “I don’t know you,” he said. “Should I know you?”

“Hello,” Anna said as they drew close. “We haven’t met. I’m Anna, Charles’s wife.”

Jericho looked at her with blue eyes that shifted from wolf to human with an unhealthy speed. “The Omega?”

She nodded.

Without tightening his muscles in warning, without a word or a sign, he jumped her.

They rolled down the steep side of the mountain so quickly that Devon and Charles didn’t catch up with them until they were nearly to the bottom. They rolled up against a tree and slammed into it, Anna letting out a grunt that had more startle than pain in it.

Charles would have snapped Jericho’s neck if Devon hadn’t knocked him sideways, then stood in front of the tangle of bodies. His head was lowered, tilted submissively, his tail was tucked, and he was shaking like a wet horse in a snowstorm, but he still stood between them.

“Second time in one day,” Anna complained with a tremor of shock in her voice. “What is it with people? Did they forget their manners? Hello, how are you? No, I get the full tackle like I was a quarterback.”

If she was complaining, she wasn’t badly hurt—though rolling down that rocky mountainside wouldn’t have done her any good.

“No manners at all,” said Jericho’s muffled voice. “Oh God. Oh God. You don’t parade surcease like this in front of wildlings, you young idiot. What were you thinking?”

It took Charles a second to realize that he was the young idiot Jericho was talking about.

Charles growled.

Jericho gave a shaky half laugh that was full of tears. “I’m sorry. So sorry. God. I can think. I can breathe.” There was a little pause, and he said, in a lost voice with a touch of panic, “What I can’t do is let go. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt.”

“Well, I hurt,” Anna said in a grumpier voice than before. “We just rolled down the side of a mountain.” This time there was a thread of panic in her voice. “Don’t get me wrong, but I would really, really be grateful if you would let me up.”

“I can’t,” Jericho said.

They were so fragile, these wildlings of his da’s. Dangerous as all get out, but they were fragile.

He is frightening our mate, growled Brother Wolf. If he doesn’t stop, it won’t matter how dangerous or fragile he is—he will be dead.

Devon whined anxiously—and Brother Wolf nosed him to reassure him that they wouldn’t kill Jericho unless they had to.

Talking seemed like a good idea if no one was to die, so Charles changed. He let his human shape come upon him more slowly than usual. That way he could do one more quick change if he needed to be wolf again without pulling on the pack.

Fully human again, though the stress of the last minute or so showed in that he was wearing buckskin and moccasins instead of jeans and boots, he stood up and shoved Devon aside.

“It’s okay,” he told Devon, “But I need to sort this out.”

Anna’s eyes were panicky, and he could see that she’d about reached her limit. Understandably, she didn’t like anyone on top of her at the best of times. Brother Wolf would have just killed Jericho and been done with it. Death was coming for that one sooner rather than later anyway.

But with his stepmother’s accurate assessment of Bran’s sorrow at losing another wildling and the understanding that probably, unless Leah beat him to it, he was going to have to kill Sage, Charles had little taste for more death. Though at least, he thought with some relief, he would not have to kill Leah nor meet his da in mortal combat.

Not yet.

Instead of killing Jericho, Charles peeled the werewolf off his mate while Anna helped by scrambling body parts out of reach as soon as he’d freed them. When Jericho’s skin lost contact with Anna’s, he screamed, his whole body locking up in agony. Charles finally took him all the way to the ground and pinned him, facedown.

Wrestling with werewolves was complicated by the fact that weight didn’t hold a werewolf unless his opponent was the size of an elephant, maybe. Joint locks still worked, though.

“Move again,” Charles snarled, letting Brother Wolf’s dominance color his voice, “and I’ll break your neck, and you won’t have to worry about touching my mate ever again.”

Devon made a soft, frightened sound.

Anna, on her feet and winded, said, “Don’t worry, Devon. He doesn’t mean it.”

But he did. Fortunately, the right person believed him, and Jericho subsided, panting and sweating. And sobbing.

Anna crouched and touched the skin on his arm with her fingers. She frowned a little, reaching with her other hand to touch Charles. Her pulse was still fast, and her grip was just a little too hard—she was using Charles to calm herself down.

Jericho was lucky Charles didn’t break his neck anyway for the way the wildling had made his Anna’s heart race with reflexive panic.

As soon as Anna touched him, Jericho’s whole body relaxed, though he still panted with stress.

“Gods,” he said, again.

Carefully, Charles let him go, keeping himself between Anna and Jericho without breaking Anna’s grip on Jericho’s arm. Which left him too close to the other wolf. He liked to give himself a little distance if he might have to kill someone. A little distance gave him more options.

He saw Jericho’s eyes do the weird blue-swirl shift to the ice of his wolf again. And for some reason, his long-dead grandfather’s voice echoed in his head.

You can always tell them by their eyes. The old medicine man’s hushed voice rang in his ears as if his mother’s father had been standing right behind Charles. He could picture where he’d been when he’d heard those words the first time—ten or eleven and huddled by the fire with a handful of other boys his age as his grandfather taught them the things they would need to know when they were men.

He had no idea why he was thinking of that tale right at this moment.

Hadn’t Sage said that werewolves were just the tip of the iceberg as far as monsters were concerned? And she had been right.

Anna said, “Some days, this Omega gig sucks worse than others. What is it with everyone’s throwing themselves on me?”

“It’s the wolf,” said Charles absently. “The wildlings, most of them, have worn out their ability to control their wolf. The wolf spirit wants to be close to you—and their human half cannot restrain it.”

“Sorry,” said Jericho, closing his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Charles could hear it in his voice, smell it in his scent. Jericho was sorry.

So why was Charles feeling like he was overlooking something important? He asked Brother Wolf, who understood what he was feeling but didn’t know what it was, either. He was no help at all.

“Sage will be long gone,” Anna said. She didn’t sound too unhappy about it.

He appreciated how she felt—a lifetime of never hearing “Hello, hello, Charlie” again. But they could not allow a traitor to live.

Devon made a noise—and then Jericho said, “No. No. We can still get there—” He started to get up, moving away from Charles to do so. He also moved away from Anna.

And Charles had to put the wildling back down on the ground to keep him from attacking Anna again.

“No,” growled Charles firmly.

“You and Devon go,” said Anna. “If Devon knows the shortcut?”

She put her hand on Jericho’s. He gripped her—and relaxed again.

Devon yipped.

Anna looked at Charles. “You and Devon can go and help them with Sage.” Tears welled up, and she wiped them off impatiently as she continued urgently, “Sage. Of all people. Damn it. I know she can’t be allowed to live. I know that. But you can make it quick. Leah won’t. You know Leah—she plays with her prey as if she were a cat rather than a werewolf.”

Jericho, released from Charles’s hold again, sat up but made no other move.

“Jericho and I will stay here,” Anna continued. “We will wait for someone to come back and tell us what happened. Then we can figure out something to do about this.” She made a waving motion to indicate their joined hands.

Rare—his grandfather’s voice—but deadly.

Charles, watching Jericho’s icy wolf eyes, abruptly remembered the story his grandfather had been telling that day when Charles had been a child.

“SHE WORE THE skins of her victims,” his grandfather told them, his voice shaky with age. “She wore the spirit and memories, too, as if they were clothing. She cried when my aunt would have cried, laughed when she would have laughed. Her own husband and their children could not tell that the monster in their home was not their beloved one. Only I saw the monster wearing my aunt’s skin—and I was only a little boy younger than any of you are now. I had no one to show what I had seen because there was no one else in the village to see her for what she was. My mother’s uncle, who was our medicine man and my first teacher, had died the year before.

“That fall, though, a trading party came to camp, and their shaman came with them. I told him about my aunt and asked for his help. He came with me to the fire where my aunt and uncle were sitting—and he told my uncle that his wife had been taken by evil. My uncle, he did not believe the strange medicine man, nor the affidavits of his power that the man’s companions were quick to give. The thing who wore my aunt’s face cried and begged my uncle not to hear the stranger’s words.

“While she was pleading, this medicine man walked up and placed his hand on my aunt’s head. She quit talking, frozen in place by the great power he held.”

Charles’s grandfather sighed. “I was there, and still, what happened is so strange that I do not know how to build the picture for you.” He’d fallen silent and watched the fire as if he had not noticed the terror he’d inspired in his audience. For weeks afterward, he would be asked to examine someone’s mother or aunt or uncle to make sure they had not been taken.

“That old man,” Charles’s grandfather said, “he sang a song to her in a language I had never heard before—and have not heard since. After a moment, he raised his other hand and put it out so.” He put one hand down as if it rested upon the head of a woman. He put the other one up. “Then he tipped his hand over slowly until it was palm down, too. And under his hand another person formed, as real as you or I, an old woman, naked, sitting in the same position as my aunt. Then my aunt fell to the side. For a moment I thought he had saved her, but she was truly dead. Her corpse rotted until it was as any body that had been dead over a year would have been. The medicine man changed his song, and he sang for a very long time. Eventually, the naked woman disappeared, and the medicine man was left with the feather of a bird in his hand.”

Charles’s grandfather looked each boy in the eye. “Afterward, that old man sat down with me and explained what the monster who took my aunt was. He said, ‘A medicine man, healer, or shaman who has given up his connection with the way of the earth is more evil than anything I have ever met—and in my youth I hunted the stick men and three separate times I brought down the Hunger that Devours. When those who are sent to do good turn from that path, when they gain power and long life by stealing life from others—there is no evil greater.’ He had, he told me, seen only one other such. The creature who took my aunt is the only one I have ever seen. They are rare and dangerous. Hard to see them—but if you look in their eyes . . . If you keep watch, it is their eyes that give them away. There is only one way to kill them, if you are not a medicine man such as he or I. That is with fire.”

“JERICHO,” SAID CHARLES softly.

A quick change, my brother, he asked the wolf. As quick as we ever have. For Anna’s sake.

Then, opening his mating bond as widely as he could, he said, Anna. I need you to do something for me.

The wildling looked at him, and so did Anna.

“Jericho,” said Charles again, heavily. This time, it wasn’t a request for the other’s attention. “Jericho’s wolf’s eyes are yellow.”

Run, he told Anna. Run and do not stop.