Burn Bright

CHAPTER 5

The flat area of the valley resembled a parking lot, but one filled with an unusually high percentage of trucks and SUVs—even for Montana. The three tractors and the backhoe completed the picture.

Maybe, Anna thought, approaching Charles’s truck (and though they’d been married for a while now, it was still Charles’s truck), a parking lot of a feed store.

Her orders were to bring the truck as close to the front door of the cabin as she could so that Asil and Charles could load it with whatever they found in the cabin. Either there was a lot of it, or it had been difficult to secure, because it had taken them a long time to finish.

The truck had been pulled close to a trail to reduce the distance the bodies had to be carried. She almost just hopped in and drove, but as she stepped into the cab, she noticed that whoever had thrown the bodies into Charles’s truck hadn’t shut the tailgate. Even though they had gone to a great deal of trouble to secure the concealing tarp down. Fat lot of good that would have done to hide the load, with a leg sticking out the back.

Anna had to partially unhook the tarp in order to get at the macabre cargo and move the bodies around until she could close the tailgate.

Dear Dad. She composed a mental letter as she unhooked bungee cords. Life in Montana is pretty interesting. Killed a man today—it was justified. Really. But just in case, you should talk to your buddies and see if there’s a good criminal attorney in Missoula or Kalispell who wouldn’t mind representing a werewolf.

She considered whether or not she should explain exactly what she was up to just now—moving dead bodies around so she could shut the tailgate—to her father, even in an imaginary letter. She decided that there were some things he did not need to know.

She pulled the tarp aside—and a horribly familiar scent caught her off guard. She stopped everything and took a deep breath, knowing she must be mistaken. And for a moment after that, she couldn’t breathe at all. Once she could breathe again, she unhooked the tarp a little more so she could get a good look at the faces of the dead.

“Hello, hello,” said Sage—and Anna jumped.

It said something about Anna’s state that she hadn’t even noticed Sage approaching.

“What did you do to your hand?” Sage asked in a much more serious voice before Anna could say anything to her greeting.

Anna looked down blankly at the bright purple vet wrap that wound around her right hand. Charles had utilized the time between when he’d used Jonesy’s phone to call for help and when help started arriving, about fifteen minutes later (some members of the pack lived almost as remotely as the wildlings), to do a little first aid.

“They shot Hester with a silver bullet,” she managed to get out reasonably smoothly. “I held on to it too long when I recovered it. It’s fine.”

“I got sent over to see what was taking you so long,” Sage said briskly, sensing, with her usual perceptiveness, Anna’s volatile emotional state and that Anna would rather not expound upon it. Sage was very good at knowing exactly what to say and when to leave things alone. “Her royal highness is getting restless.” Though Sage got along with Leah just fine, it didn’t spare Leah (or anyone else for that matter) from Sage’s pointed comments. “I think she just wants to know what Charles and Asil have found, like all the rest of us.”

Sage’s voice was beautiful. Born in the Deep South, it flowed out like honey on a sore throat, soothing and sweet. The rest of Sage was beautiful, too. She was tall, though not as tall as Leah, and slender as a runway model. Sage was funny, sharp, and warm at the same time, a combination that let her get away with saying things that a lot of people were thinking—and not getting in trouble for it.

Before Anna could decide to tell her that she knew one of the dead people, Sage rounded the end of the truck and saw Anna’s initial problem.

“Ha,” she said. “Did the idiots who loaded the bodies forget that you’d have to shut the tailgate or risk dropping dead people all the way home?” She hopped up without a fuss and started shifting the bodies around.

“Some people have no sense at all,” Sage said. “And I include Charles in that. Sending you, of all people, out to deal with all the dead bodies.”

Anna found herself at a loss for words. Still reeling from . . . PTSD, she supposed, it took her a moment to realize that Sage seemed to be ascribing any oddity in her manner to all the dead bodies in the back of the truck.

Well, she was right in that, if not for quite the reason she thought. Sage hopped out and shut the tailgate. Anna stirred herself and began reapplying bungee cords, ignoring the pain in her burnt hand.

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that, honey,” Sage said. “They’ll probably just have to undo the tarp all over again when they load whatever they found in Hester’s cabin.”

Anna let her hands drop, and Sage muttered to herself, “Leave it alone. Leave it . . .” She snorted, shook her head, and asked, “Are you all right, Anna? Is there anything I can do?”

Anna made a helpless gesture because, while Sage had been moving bodies, Anna had decided that the first person who needed to hear that she knew one of the dead men was her mate. And because she couldn’t tell Sage she was fine. Sometimes living with werewolves sucked—like when it made little social lies impossible.

When she didn’t answer, Sage gave her a sympathetic smile. “Sometimes it hits me, too.” She looked at the truck bed, at Hester’s cabin, then a sweeping glance that took in the pack altogether. Sage closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them, she said, “What I wouldn’t give to live an ordinary life, you know? No monsters. No dead bodies. The kind of life where I could get outraged that some guy is getting paid more than me for doing the same job. That a speeding ticket is enough to ruin my whole day.”

Anna started to agree but then stopped and shook her head. “No. Then I wouldn’t have Charles. He’s worth all the rest.”

“Charlie?” said Sage. She started to say something else, but she shook her head and gave Anna a rueful smile. “Charlie sure thinks the sun rises and sets on you, that’s for sure.”

Even without telling Sage everything, the other woman had helped Anna find balance. Just having someone else there helped, someone who reminded Anna by her very presence that she wasn’t in Chicago and that there were people here she could trust to have her back.

So Anna had recognized one of the dead men. That was no excuse to break into a cold sweat of memory. He was dead, after all, and memories couldn’t hurt her unless she chose to let them. And she was no one’s victim these days.

Taking emotion out of the discovery, there were some interesting implications about her knowing one of the men, weren’t there? Especially given the ammunition that had killed Hester.

“Are you okay?” Sage asked again. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Anna gave her what she hoped was a reassuring smile. She did want to talk things out but not with Sage. At least not with Sage first. “You already have, thank you. I was just having a moment—it’s been a long day. Let’s get the truck over before Leah has an aneurysm.”

“Do you think she would?” asked Sage, with interest. “That she could?” She made a happy noise. “It probably wouldn’t kill her, but it might get her to cool her jets a little. We could wait here for a while longer, don’t you think?”

“Leah’s a werewolf,” Anna said dryly. “I think she’ll survive a little frustration. Do you want to ride over with me?”

“No,” said Sage. “I’m also on my way to find Tag and ‘make sure the enfant terrible has not forgotten where he put the fuel for the fire.’” The last was said in Asil’s unmistakable accent.

“I thought Tag was up at the cabin telling stories about Hester,” Anna said.

Sage nodded. “So did Asil. But he wasn’t. So I’m to fetch him—” The sound of a great diesel engine engaging rumbled through the air.

Sage threw up her hands. “What does he think he’s doing with that backhoe?” She hopped on the edge of the truck bed and balanced on it for a moment and looked, presumably, over the cars to where the backhoe had been parked. She shook her head. “I have no idea. None. That man. But I guess I’d better find out.”

She leaped, cleared the bed of the truck, and took off running, presumably for the backhoe with Tag in it.

ANNA DROVE THE truck right up to the front door of the cabin and hopped out. By the time she had the tailgate down, Asil and Charles had come out of the cabin with their discoveries.

Between them they carried a small cedar chest, each holding on to one of the handles on either end. Impossible to see how heavy the box was—two werewolves could probably stroll around carrying a VW Bug from the bumpers and not show much strain. Balanced diagonally across the top of the chest and overhanging the sides was something—Anna was pretty sure it was the sword Jonesy had killed himself with—wrapped in a blanket.

They gently set the box down on the tailgate. Sage had rearranged the bodies so there would be some room, but neither she nor Anna had envisioned an entire cedar chest. Charles and Asil unhooked the tarp the rest of the way and rolled it back, working together as a silent team, one on either side of the truck. They were so apparently unconcerned with all the attention they were getting that Anna knew they were very conscious of the eyes on them.

They must have found the mother lode of fae magic. Anna glanced at the pack and saw that same realization on the faces around her: excitement, greed, and—on the smartest of them—worry. Only an idiot would get excited about having something the lords of Faery might want.

Charles hopped up on the truck bed and redistributed the dead men again so there was room for the cedar chest. He set the wrapped sword down on the bed and hopped back out. Anna shut the tailgate, and he and Asil rolled the tarp back and secured it.

Charles looked up. “I need not tell you how dangerous the cargo in the back of the truck is,” he said to the pack at large. “Neither Asil nor I know exactly what we found here. We’re taking it back and putting it in my da’s safe room, where it will stay until he gets back. The Marrok will dispose of it as he sees fit.”

After he spoke, he slowly panned his gaze over the gathering, meeting the eyes of each pack member until they looked away.

Silence hung powerfully in the air as the pack waited for Charles to say something else. But apparently, he’d said all he felt necessary, because he held his peace.

Asil frowned at him, cleared his throat, and said, in a clear, cold voice that was missing his usual accent, “We do not need to remind any of you what would happen if the Gray Lords discovered that we found fae artifacts in Hester’s home. We lost two of our own here, and if I read the signs aright—and I always read the signs aright—we are about to find ourselves engaged in war with an unknown enemy. We do not need to add a battle with the Gray Lords on top of it.”

From the back of the crowd, Tag growled, “What he means is, shut our mouths or someone will come pay a visit.”

He bristled—and Anna was pretty sure that it was Asil’s implied threat that Tag was bristling at. Charles, she thought, hadn’t been wrong in his assessment that he’d said enough.

This was the kind of spark that caused wolves to fight within their packs—and could leave them with more bodies. Anna’s job was to prevent fights. On the other hand, she was her father’s daughter, and any civil-rights lawyer in the country would be on Tag’s side of this.

“No,” Leah said clearly. It felt as though everyone was holding their breaths. Even Tag paused, his mouth partially open—doubtless to say something that would increase the ugly energy in the clearing.

Into the silence, Leah said, with soft promise, “Asil will not be paying anyone any visits on this matter.”

Okay, thought Anna. Give the woman points for courage—if not for brains—in directly giving Asil such a shutdown. Especially since Anna knew, the pack knew, that Leah was scared spitless of the Moor.

“I won’t allow it,” Leah continued—not looking at Asil. “It isn’t necessary. No one here will make a move that would harm our pack. We all know the dangers of letting word of what Charles found in that cabin escape before Bran chooses. There is no need for threats. In protecting the pack, protecting what is ours, we are one. Asil was merely warning us of the danger—but I am certain”—she raised an eyebrow and looked at Asil, in that moment as cool and controlled as the Moor had been—“I am certain that he would not issue a threat, especially as it is not necessary.”

There was a long, pregnant pause.

Then Asil bowed formally to her. “As you say,” he said silkily.

Leah was lucky, Anna thought, that Asil’s anger was a cold thing, so he heard Leah’s argument and agreed with it. Only a fool would think that any of Bran’s pack would betray them, and Asil was no fool. He had just been too long an Alpha before coming here, and his ruling style differed a great deal from Bran’s.

And still there was tension in the air. Leah wasn’t the only wolf afraid of Asil. Because the pack might be filled with all the crazies Bran didn’t trust with any other Alpha, but it wasn’t filled with stupid people with death wishes—those ended up with the wildlings. Even Tag was afraid of Asil—if he hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have reacted to Asil’s threat so hotly.

“Can you—” Charles murmured to Anna without taking his eyes off the dramatis personae, “pull the truck far enough from the house that it won’t burn when we light Hester’s cabin but close enough that if anyone tries to get into it, we’ll see it?”

“Sure,” she said. Later, she thought. There will be time to tell him about the identity of the dead man later, when the pack isn’t ready to ignite along with Hester’s house.

There must have been something in her voice, though, because he gave her a sharp look. She pretended she didn’t see it and headed to the front of the truck.

The pack opened a path for her as she slowly drove away in a truck full of dead bodies, fae artifacts, and that weird, witchcrafted gun, which she had pulled out of her jeans and set on the bench seat of the truck. She tried to figure out just how far was close enough to make people think they would be spotted and too far for something from a burning house to explode and crash through the windshield. It was good to have something to focus on instead of the cold fingers of her past that were trying to unravel the core of the woman she’d become since coming to Aspen Creek, to this pack, to Charles.

In the end, she decided to pull the old truck next to Asil’s very expensive, brand-new Mercedes SUV, reasoning that no one would risk the double whammy of both Charles and Asil—and that “no one” probably included the fire they were going to set.

Once she was parked, she stayed in the cab, though. She watched Charles say something to Leah, watched the pack start moving in an organized fashion. Asil and Tag working together, their former antagonism . . . not so much forgotten as pushed behind them. The wolves could do that, she’d noticed. They were so much creatures of the present that as long as their human halves stayed out of the picture, quarrels that were over and done with stayed that way.

From the driver’s seat of Charles’s truck, Anna saw Tag step into the cabin with one of the long-nosed lighters more commonly used for lighting barbecues than setting house fires (she fervently hoped). A moment later, orange light flared in the window—more brilliant because the dusk was quickly fading into darkness. Tag came out of the front door as the flames licked hungrily up the old wood of the cabin.

Anna should be out there, she knew, instead of huddled in the truck where she could draw comfort from the scent of her mate without any of the inconveniences of his actual presence. He saw too much, her Charles did.

She really didn’t want to tell him she knew one of the dead.

BEFORE ASIL GAVE in to the impulse to make Leah pay for being right, Charles said, “We should light the cabin.” He paused. “Did anyone think to call the Forest Service?”

“I made the call before we came here,” Leah said. “I told them that the Aspen Creek volunteer fire department had decided to burn an old cabin that posed a fire hazard. They weren’t happy, but it’s on private property, and there isn’t a ban on open fires”—someone said “yet,” and she nodded at the speaker to acknowledge their accuracy— “so there wasn’t much they could do.”

That had been smart, Charles thought. And not entirely a lie: if they had a fire department in Aspen Creek, it would consist of the pack. He would just have told them he was burning a cabin on purpose.

“Good,” Charles said.

Asil added, “Even if someone from the Forest Service decides to come all the way up here, they’ll be checking on a controlled burn and not bodies.” He didn’t say “good girl”; that would have been too much. He didn’t look at Leah, but he let her hear the approval in his voice. Leah’s shoulders softened—the only sign of her pleasure at the compliment paid to her by the Moor.

That, said Brother Wolf, was diplomacy.

Asil kept talking, “Tag—you’re the only one who knew Hester well, the only one here, anyway. Do you want to be the torchbearer?”

Asil’s question sparked the pack into action. Hester and her mate were not the first bodies the pack had burned, though they generally used a proper cremation process. The place of torchbearer was usually a place of honor only—a wolf who witnessed the cremation of the body.

But wolves who died as wolves couldn’t be buried where someone might dig them up believing they were going to find a human.

Fire was good at destroying evidence. Because of that, Charles had supervised the burning of a number of houses over the years but never in the Marrok’s own territory before. Never a formal funeral—though he knew the protocols.

Asil seemed to have taken it upon himself to take charge of the burning, and Charles was content to let him work off steam by taking over the organization of the fire itself.

Charles wished the fire would do as good of a job destroying the magical artifacts he and Asil hadn’t been able to find as it would turning Hester’s body to ash.

He had himself never seen so many things imbued with magic in one place before. The mishmash of magics made the hair on the back of his neck stand up worse than waiting in the middle of a busy airport did. The thought of that chest sitting in his truck left an itch he couldn’t scratch right between his shoulder blades. So did the note in his pocket.

Anna should be back by now.

He started to turn to look for his mate, but he was distracted by the flash of fire out of the corner of his eyes. He hadn’t expected, with Asil in charge, for them to light the cabin so quickly.

Tag, smelling of smoke and diesel and gasoline, took his place next to Charles, and Asil joined them.

“I liked her,” said Tag, without any of his usual drama.

Charles thought of the way Hester had chided him without a word from her cage, and said, “As did I. Though I did not know her well.”

As fires do sometimes, this one roared up in a sudden burst of light and sound. It seemed exactly right, a fitting tribute to a tough woman and her mate—hot and wild and powerful. Leah shouted, and the pack called back, answering both Leah and the roar of the fire. Charles threw his head back and howled—and the call of the pack changed as the other wolves replied in kind. Then they fell silent and stood witness.

Tag had said that her people burned their dead, and Charles wondered who her people had been. Hester was an ancient name. It might even have been her birth name, though old creatures tended to change their names now and then.

His da said that names had power. Names that had belonged to you for a long time had more power. Like many of Da’s sayings, it was true on different levels. Both witchcraft and fae magic could use a name in working evil magic upon someone. But the magic of names went further than that. Charles had found that his own name, Charles Cornick, the Marrok’s son, had often saved him trouble. The fear of his name caused people to give up the fight before it started.

Hester was a name like that—a name of power. She had been a legend among the wolves, hers a quieter legend than the Moor’s or the Marrok’s because she herself preferred it that way. But her name had served admirably to distract people from the troubled man who had been her mate.

Charles hoped that Jonesy had enjoyed the peace that she had bought him with her name.

“Godspeed, Hester,” Charles whispered. “Sweet dreams, Jonesy. Good journey.”

On the tail end of his last word, there was a cracking noise inside the cabin and the fire leaped upward, and Charles felt the increase in heat on his face and his skin roughened with the breath of . . . something.

Correlation not being causation, it hadn’t been Charles’s wish that had caused the sudden flare-up. Asil met his gaze (briefly) and shrugged. That explosion had been something they’d missed in their search. Fae magic was elemental magic, based in aspects of earth, air, fire, or water, and those same elements could have unpredictable effects on fae artifacts. He did not except the fire to destroy everything they hadn’t found. He only hoped they hadn’t missed something that was going to kill everyone in the clearing.

Charles sensed Anna approach just about the time that he was ready to go look for her. Anna set her cheek against Charles’s arm. “I think the fire was a good send-off for them both.”

Yes, agreed Brother Wolf. But Charles thought it was more a statement of support for Anna than any real opinion about what they should do with the bodies of their fallen. Once someone was dead, Brother Wolf was usually pretty unsentimental about the remains.

Anna gave him a little smile of agreement. She knew Brother Wolf, too.

Her face beneath the smile was pale, the small muscles of her jaw tense.

“What’s wrong?” Charles asked—because it was obvious to him, once he paid attention, that something was.

She tucked her arm in his and led him away from the others. Then, in a very quiet, not-to-be-overheard voice, she said, “I know one of the dead men in the back of the truck.” She let go of him and stepped back—and he didn’t think she knew she did it. Her voice shook a little, and she spoke faster. “I don’t know his name, but I saw him at Leo’s. We should get a photo of him to the Chicago Alphas as soon as we get somewhere with cell reception.”

Leo had been the Alpha who had ruled his Anna’s first pack. Charles had killed him for his crimes. Anna’s expression meant he didn’t have to ask her if the dead man had been one of those who’d abused her at Leo’s behest.

Charles didn’t reach out to touch Anna, not when she had just stepped away from him—and not when there were such ghosts in her eyes. He couldn’t say anything for fear that the thing he would say would be the wrong thing. She didn’t need his rage. He waited for her to do something that would tell him what she needed from him.

After a moment, she let out her breath and shook her head. She stepped into him and twined her right arm around his left, gripping his arm hard briefly before her whole body softened against him.

He took that moment to glance around, but no one was watching them—and if they’d overheard what Anna had said, they were being circumspect. Anna was being quiet—but they were surrounded by werewolves. It was unlikely that they had been entirely unobserved or unheard.

Anna stared at the fire, though he didn’t think she was really seeing it. But after a while, she said, “Fire is a powerful thing. It cleanses as it destroys—and it brings light to darkness.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

“I think I understand why some cultures burn their dead,” she said. “It feels like a celebration, doesn’t it? The final conflagration.” She paused. “Burn bright, Hester. Drive away the shadows, Jonesy. Sleep with the heroes and the saints.”

With the cabin and all the other things burning, the scent of burning flesh was very faint. Charles rested his chin on the top of her head and reflected that it was for the best that, as young as she was, she probably couldn’t distinguish the scent of the fire devouring Hester’s body from the scent of the rest of the burning things.

He’d have burned Anna’s past for her if he could have—but memories are not so easily set alight as a cabin.

ANNA AND CHARLES left after most of the others. There were still flames, so five of the wolves stayed—and would stay until the last ember was out.

Charles got into the passenger seat, but before Anna started the car, he put a hand on her arm.

“Wait,” he said, then pulled a folded paper out of his pocket. “Asil and I found this in the bedroom while we were looking for things that might blow up the mountain if they caught fire.”

She spread it on the seat, but it was too dark to read. Before she could turn on the cab light, Charles illuminated the page with the much dimmer light of his cell phone. Kara had brought both of their cell phones with her. Hiding Hester’s home was no longer a directive; if they couldn’t find a blazing house fire, the feds were welcome to track their phones. It would be a long time before anyone lived near this clearing again.

She read it and absorbed the implications. Hadn’t she just been thinking that there was no way any member of the pack would betray the others? It looked like maybe she’d been wrong.

“Traitor,” she said slowly. “Do you know how we have been betrayed?”

“For a start,” Charles said, “someone told our enemy where Hester lived. And probably the timing of the attack means that they knew Da was not here. I’ve been thinking about other things, too, since I found this note. Maybe Gerry Wallace didn’t go out looking for someone to finance his weirdly complex assassination plot against Da. Maybe someone recruited him. Last winter, someone fed a lot of information about Adam’s pack to the rogue Cantrip agents.”

“Right,” said Anna after a moment. “Jonesy left this for you?”

Charles nodded. “It looks like it. After Hester died.”

“She could talk to him, mind to mind, the way Brother Wolf and I do?” Anna asked.

Charles shrugged. “Yes. Though not exactly—I don’t know if Hester’s wolf could speak like Brother Wolf does.”

Anna nodded slowly. “She told him some of it before they managed to kill her. He tried to tell us what she’d want us to know.”

She started the truck up, and he turned off the light.

Still thinking about the implications, she said, “Can you keep an eye out on the phone reception? I want to send that photo of the dead man to both the Chicago Alphas. Maybe they can give us a name.”

“All right,” he agreed.

They drove awhile in silence. The track was not made better by being negotiated at night. “Hester knew,” said Anna. “She knew who it was—or they thought she knew. That’s why they killed her. So she couldn’t tell us.”

“That’s what I think,” agreed Charles.

“Is it someone in the pack?” Anna’s stomach was tight at the thought. These were her family as much as her birth family had been. Some of them might be difficult or horrifying—but they were still family. “Or is it one of the wildlings?”

“Jonesy was notably unhelpful in that,” said Charles apologetically. “I suppose that ‘us’ could mean the fae, but in this context, that is unlikely bordering on ridiculous.”

“Okay,” said Anna. “How many wildlings are there? I know three, and I’ve heard of a couple more.”

Bran kept the wildlings away from the pack. Part of it was they were dangerous and needed to be isolated—and part of it was that a lot of them were very old. Very old werewolves tended to collect enemies. As far as she knew, only Bran himself, Leah, and maybe Charles knew all of them. They weren’t kept completely isolated, and some of them sometimes joined in the hunt—but no one spoke about them when they did.

“Eighteen,” Charles said. “Now that Hester and Jonesy are dead.”

She made an involuntary noise of surprise. “That’s a lot more than I thought. But it’s still a reasonable suspect pool.” She did not want to think about it being someone she knew.

He nodded. “Asil knows—he was there when I found the note. But I don’t want to tell anyone else until we understand more. Here.”

“What?”

“There’s reception here.”

She stopped the truck and uploaded the photo and an explanatory note. Her phone had a contact list that included all of the Alphas under Bran’s rule, so she didn’t have to ask Charles for the number.

“Jonesy said that they asked her about the wildlings,” Anna said, once they were moving again. “If their agent was one of the wildlings, why would they have questions about them?”

Charles grunted. It was his “I’m puzzled, too” grunt. But then he said, “The wildlings don’t all know each other. Some of them do, but a lot of them are very isolated because they want to be. Or they need to be. Most of our wildlings change their name when they come here—Hester was an exception. Collectively, I expect that there is a lot of knowledge that our wildlings have that exists nowhere else on the planet. I can think of four things, just offhand, that would start a frenzied hunt if anyone knew about them.”

“Or maybe it’s an item—like all the things you brought out of Jonesy’s house.”

Charles nodded. “Of what we found, only the sword would really attract interest by itself.” He made an unhappy noise. “There were a couple of other things, too, I guess. But even without those, the whole collection represents a fair battery of power for someone who knows how to release or use it.”

“Maybe Hester knew who or what they were looking for,” Anna said soberly. “But she can’t tell us now.”

“Yes,” said Charles, very softly. “We know they were asking for information that was important enough to step up what has previously been a long game. We know they were asking about the wildlings, and they don’t know that. We’ll find out who their agent is, then we’ll use that person to hunt them all down.”

Anna inhaled and nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Okay. Yes.”

BOYD HAMILTON CALLED as they were pulling into Bran’s house. More specifically, he called Charles’s phone. Anna had texted him the photo from her phone.

Anna looked at Charles’s phone and gave an exasperated sigh. She turned off the truck and turned to the man who held her heart.

“I survived,” she told him firmly. “I don’t need to be coddled as though I’m some fragile doll. I can talk to Boyd—who never did me any harm anyway—and not dissolve into a spineless puddle.”

Charles gave her a look. If he were anyone else, she’d have been sure he had practiced those looks in the mirror: they were too effective to be naturally occurring. But he didn’t worry about things like that—he didn’t need to. Scary was easy—it was not-scary that was sometimes a problem for him.

She raised her eyebrow to show that she wasn’t impressed.

He almost smiled but caught it before it was more than a softening at the corner of his eyes.

“Maybe it’s not about you,” he told her. “Maybe it’s about a man who failed to protect you from Leo when he should have. If you want to punish him, you could answer my phone and make him tell you all about this dead man who he also did not protect you from.”

“He couldn’t do anything,” she said hotly, unable to let the attack on Boyd go on without defending him. Boyd had been the key to her getting out of Chicago, to her finding Charles. “Leo was his Alpha—and he kept everyone under his control. Boyd was not dominant enough to challenge him or disobey a direct order. Boyd protected people when he could. Without him, more bad things would have happened to people who couldn’t protect themselves.”

“You really believe that,” Charles said, as if he didn’t. “Good for you.” He sighed, his gaze focused somewhere in the darkness outside. Another car pulled into the Marrok’s driveway, pack members coming to gather with the others. That they were coming here instead of going home spoke to the unease that Hester’s death had caused.

The wolves who got out looked away from Charles’s truck with studious care.

Charles spoke after they were alone in the darkness again. “I sometimes think that you could be right. But mostly I believe that any dominant worth his hide protects those who cannot protect themselves. I expect that’s how Boyd looks at things, too.”

She, personally, had quit thinking about her first pack a long time ago. From the sound of it, she had been the only one. She used one of Charles’s grunts to express herself.

“A dominant wolf protects his own with his life, Anna,” Charles told her. “That means from everyone. If he felt Leo was too much for him, Boyd had Da’s number. He could have called it at any time.”

“He couldn’t disobey Leo,” she said doggedly—she’d watched him try. “Leo forbade it.”

“His wolf couldn’t disobey a direct order,” agreed Charles, so mildly that Anna flinched even though it wasn’t directed at her. She knew that mild tone.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he spoke again, the killing quiet was further away, and his eyes had returned to their usual almost-black.

“We are more than our wolves, Anna,” he said. “Boyd is also a man—and the man is in charge. He could have disobeyed by shutting down his wolf. It would have been difficult, but he is not a newly Changed wolf. He has the control to do it. He just didn’t try.”

She bit her lip. Did that change things? Knowing that Boyd could have stepped in earlier? No, she thought, with something approaching relief. There had been things that she could have done, too—if only she had known. One of the things she’d learned from being a wolf in Bran’s pack was that all the ability in the world did her no good if she didn’t know how to use it.

“He knows better now,” her mate continued in a low growl, as if he’d been following her thought path.

“Charles?” she asked, honestly unhappy. Charles wasn’t exactly tactful. Being in Leo’s pack had scarred her, no doubt, but it hadn’t been a picnic for anyone else, either. Boyd had been as close to broken as she had been, though she hadn’t seen it at the time. Boyd didn’t need her forceful mate telling him how he’d failed his pack—he already believed it.

“Not me,” Charles said. “It was Da. He educated him—then he put Boyd in charge of the pack. Boyd wasn’t strong enough to control the territory, not in his condition, especially when that pack was so broken. But Da thought that Boyd would heal better if he were put in charge for a while, so Da made it happen.” His phone had long since quit ringing. “As it turns out, Boyd rose to the occasion, and Da left him in charge.”

“That sounds . . . odd,” said Anna, feeling off balance. “Bran is all about the good of the many outweighing the good of the one.”

Charles smiled grimly. “We failed that pack, too. Failed you. Da or I should have noticed the situation sooner. In retrospect, both of us noticed oddities that we should have looked into and did not. Rather than let Boyd break under the weight of his inability to protect his subordinates from his Alpha, Da left him in a position where he could work out his guilt with action. Boyd needed to know he could take care of his pack, that what he had been and who he was now could be different, better.” He pursed his lips, and said thoughtfully, “I have no doubt at all that Boyd Hamilton will never again stand aside while someone is being hurt.”

Clearly, Anna noted, that didn’t keep Charles from being very angry with him anyway.

“So,” he asked Anna, in a suddenly brisk tone, “are you going to punish him by making him talk to you about how much he failed you? Or are you going to let him talk to me about it?”

She gave him a shrewd look. “Which one is better for him?”

“You’ll make him feel guilty. I’ll only make him mad,” Charles assured her.

She laughed—and it was only a little strained. She should insist, but she didn’t really want to have that conversation, either.

“Okay,” she said. “Go for it.”

And she left him alone in the truck to make the call where she wouldn’t overhear it.

BOYD ANSWERED AS soon as Charles called him back.

“Hamilton,” he said, his voice wary.

“You know who our dead body is?” Charles asked, watching Anna until she closed the front door behind her.

“Yes.” Boyd’s tone was brisk—and relieved. He wasn’t stupid—he’d probably been expecting Anna to call him back even though he’d used Charles’s phone. “His name was Ryan Cable. Before . . . very early on, in the dawn of Leo’s troubles, Leo brought in five military men to be Changed in secret. It was highly implied, though never spoken outright, that they were special forces. Only the old second—Harvey Adler—plus me, Jason, and a couple of others knew . . .” There was a pause. “I think out of all the pack members there that night, I’m the only one who is still alive.”

Charles thought that it might be a good time to get the conversation back on track. There was something in Boyd’s tone that indicated Boyd would have been happier to be among the dead. “Ryan Cable.”

“Sorry,” Boyd said, his voice unapologetic. “I’m trying to get the details right. It was a long time ago. I think it must have been in the early nineties. The Gulf War had just broken out, and patriotism was strong in all of us. Leo told us that there were people in the military who knew about werewolves and that one of those men had asked him for help. Leo had agreed, and his contact sent us these five men to Change. This was hush-hush stuff, both on our side and theirs.”

Brother Wolf grumbled. This was exactly the kind of thing that had driven Bran to bring the werewolves out to the public. Blackmail was less useful now—either as an incentive or as an excuse.

Boyd made a pained sound back. “Believe me, I know. But Leo had been a good Alpha up until that point. It’s only looking back that I can see that he was starting to change, and that was probably the turning point. We all have done things against the rules now and then. All of us.” Boyd included, that meant. “Leo said it was for the war effort, and we could tell he was telling the truth.”

“Not all of the five made it,” Charles said.

His father might have been able to Change five humans and make them survive, though he’d told Charles he wouldn’t ever do that. Forcing someone to Change was not ethical. Most of the time, a person who couldn’t fight hard enough to survive the Change wouldn’t survive long being a werewolf, either.

“I warned them,” Boyd said, “but Harvey took it further. He told them, in graphic detail, exactly what Changing a human to a werewolf meant. A couple of them looked pretty spooked, but they all chose to go forward.” He paused. “I wonder now what would have happened if they’d objected. If it was hush-hush, maybe they’d have been killed if they tried to get out of it. In any case, Cable was the only one who Changed. Leo and Harvey handed the dead men and Cable over to the people who came for them. Harvey didn’t like the looks of those people. I remember that. He didn’t think they were military. Leo told Harvey something that made him happier—though I couldn’t tell you what it was.”

“You think Leo took a payout for it?”

“I more than think it,” said Boyd. “We’ve spent the last few years going through the old books. Bran asked us to look for the names of people who paid Leo for things that we couldn’t verify were legitimate expenses. Leo took fifty thousand up front and another twenty after we delivered Cable. In his notes, he complained because he’d expected to get another eighty K. Thirty thousand per werewolf we successfully Changed, with one-third up front that we’d keep either way. I sent the financial files and the pack interviews—everything we’ve gathered about what Leo was doing—to Bran when he asked me for them, about a month ago.”

There was a little silence as Charles absorbed something more than just Boyd’s words. His father had asked the Chicago pack to send him their files, and that information had never made it to Charles, who handled all the pack finances and always had—except for a six-month period last year when Leah had taken over.

Leah had lost them a lot of money. Almost 20 percent of their net worth. It had taken him two weeks to replace it. Not that he was competitive or anything.

“When your father asked us to send the information to him,” Boyd said, reading Charles’s silence pretty accurately, “he said he was putting together a puzzle and would bring you in as soon as he had a target to aim you at. I gathered that he thought you were still angry about Leo and what he did to Anna. Bran didn’t want you to go on a search-and-destroy mission until he was certain he had the whole setup.”

“I see,” said Charles. If his da hadn’t given Boyd actual facts, just enough for Boyd to draw his own conclusion, Charles was pretty sure that it was the wrong conclusion. He wondered why his da hadn’t wanted to show him the books.

“I tried Bran’s phone before I called you,” Boyd said in a neutral tone. “He’ll have those files.”

“The Marrok is away,” Charles allowed. “That is need-to-know information that shouldn’t go past you.”

“Got it.” He made a thoughtful sound. “How about I e-mail you the file on this transaction and all the banking information we have on it?” There was a pause. “Then I’ll compile the whole mess that we’ve been amassing and overnight it to you on disk. If you have Cable dead in your territory, Bran has run out of time to organize everything to his pleasure.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Charles said, because Boyd was right. He’d hunt down whoever his father had given those files to anyway, because then he wouldn’t have to spend all his time redoing work someone else had already done. But that might take time and he wanted that information now.

Somewhere in those files was a trail to the man who had paid for Ryan Cable’s Change. Tough to follow a financial trail that old, but if one of the account numbers matched an account Charles had in his “to watch” files, he’d have a name. Someone had been running Cable and his dead friends, and there was a good chance that it was the same person who’d paid for his Change—or some close associate.

“After Cable was Changed,” Boyd continued, “whoever ran him used him as a messenger. He’d show up, meet with Leo, and be gone the next day. Three or four times a year. Often enough that I didn’t have to search my memory for his name but not so often that I knew him more than to nod at. If we had a real conversation, I don’t remember it. I can brainstorm with a few of the other old pack members who survived Leo and see if we can get some sort of general feel for when he came—and maybe someone will remember a bit more about him. At the end, Leo pretty well ignored the more submissive wolves. They witnessed a lot he should probably have kept hidden from them.”

“I’d be grateful for anything you can turn up,” Charles said.

“I didn’t know Hester,” Boyd said. “But I’ve heard stories of her. For her to die like this . . . I’ll do what I can.”

Charles picked up the witchcraft-laden weapon that had dropped him unconscious in the midst of his enemies.

“Did Leo ever work with a witch?”

“Not while I was in the pack,” Boyd answered without hesitation.

“Did he have weapons that were especially effective against other werewolves?”

“No,” Boyd said, though this time his response was slower, his voice raw. “Other than Justin. But I know about the drug someone developed using the wolves Leo had made and sold as guinea pigs.”

Charles took a deep breath and forced Brother Wolf to really examine the situation Boyd had found himself in—a gradual wearing away of all the rules until all anyone in that pack could do was cling to their Alpha because there was nowhere else to go. And Brother Wolf still thought that Boyd should have done more. So did Boyd, obviously.

Charles gave him what comfort he could. “You learned what not to do,” he said. “Teach the others. Move forward. Backward does no one any good.”

“How is Anna?” Boyd asked, and there was hunger in his voice. Not sexual hunger, but the need to know that he had, at the very least, helped Anna out of that mess.

“She wanted to take this call,” Charles said with amusement.

“Shit,” said Boyd. But then he laughed. “Next time maybe I’ll call her on her phone.”

“She’d be glad to hear from you,” Charles said. He looked at the witchcrafted weapon again. “I’m going to send you a photo of a witchcrafted gun that was effective enough on me.” He explained something about how he’d come to have it. “Maybe one of your submissive wolves saw something that you didn’t.” It was possible if, as Boyd said, Leo had not viewed submissive wolves as a threat and did not pay attention to what they witnessed.

“I’ll check,” said Boyd, sounding more like himself. “If they don’t know, they might have some ideas where to look.” There was a pause. “I don’t recall anything about witches in this business, though. But Harvey—he could smell a witch at a hundred yards.” Boyd paused again, then said slowly, “Harvey’s reaction that night—that might be about right if one of them was a witch.”

“Keep the weapon as pack-only information. I don’t want all the witches on the planet trying to figure out how to take out werewolves for fun and profit.”

“What about Hester’s death and the attack on the Marrok’s pack?”

Charles gave an involuntary laugh. “I’d have kept it quiet if I could have, but I suspect that people in your pack are getting calls from friends and acquaintances right now. It’s harder to keep things quiet than it was fifty years ago.”

“I hear you,” agreed Boyd with feeling. “Talk to you if I hear anything interesting.”

“Sounds good.” Charles disconnected. He started to get out of the truck, stopped, and picked up the phone.

“Da,” he said, as soon as the message program picked up. “I don’t know what your game is, but let me lay out for you what happened today with all the important pieces that I know.”