Burn Bright

CHAPTER 6

Anna let herself into Bran’s house. She felt jittery and unsettled. She’d much rather have been walking into her own house so she could deal with the stir of old memories without witnesses. Despite the lateness of the hour, the whole house was abuzz with the chatter of voices and the smell of woodsmoke. She’d known by the cars outside that everyone had apparently decided to congregate at the Marrok’s house instead of going home to sleep, like sensible people.

Even with a fair warning, she almost turned around and walked back out. Only the knowledge that Charles would think something was wrong kept her moving forward.

She wondered how often Bran wanted to turn around and walk away from it all. Wondered if that’s what he’d done.

The thought of Bran’s not coming back, of his leaving this pack and the wildlings—and, well, all the werewolves in North America—in Charles’s hands was almost enough to spark a panic attack. Of course he was coming back. He was a control freak. There was no way that he would stay away very long.

Her quiet house would await her until he returned.

Bran’s home was always teeming with people and noise; only the bedroom suites and Bran’s office were private. She knew that in most packs, the house of the Alpha’s second was nearly as busy. But most of the pack, dangerous as they were, were afraid of Charles. Having a house that was a haven rather than the pack clubhouse was a blessing she hadn’t fully appreciated until this week.

She entered the large gathering space filled with pack members—who all quit talking and looked at her as she walked in. They knew. Someone must have overheard her when she told Charles about the dead werewolf she’d once known. They had added two and two and gotten four somehow—she could see it in their faces.

There wasn’t a wolf here, not excluding Leah, who wouldn’t throw themselves between her and anyone who would harm her. Some of that was because she was Omega, but some of it was that they were her friends and family. There were compensations for living elbow to elbow with other wolves.

The problem was that she didn’t need rescuing, except maybe from them. The force of their concern, of their knowing that she had been a victim made her feel like a victim again.

“Hey, Anna,” said Kara cheerfully. Her rescuer appeared from the direction of the kitchen with a plate filled with peanut-butter cookies. “Leah and I made cookies.”

The teenager’s face was nearly expressionless except for the wry laughter in her eyes. As the youngest werewolf in the pack, Kara had dealt with her share of overprotectiveness. “There was some dough in the fridge, but Leah said she’d rather have peanut-butter cookies.”

Anna rolled her eyes. “Passive-aggressive” did not even approach describing Leah’s usual modus operandi. She regretted the gesture instantly—partially because she’d sworn to herself that she wouldn’t let Leah bring her down to her level. But mostly because, mid-eyeroll, Leah walked around the corner into the far side of the living room and caught Anna.

Leah raised a superior eyebrow.

Anna shook her head at Leah and took one of the cookies off the plate because they smelled good, she was hungry, and Kara had started to look uncertain. Kara liked Leah, but she wasn’t unaware of Leah’s games. She also knew that usually Anna was more inclined to laugh about them than be offended.

There was no chocolate in the cookie, but it was good anyway. Especially since the whole cookie thing had broken up the way every wolf in the room had been focused on Anna’s history as a victim.

“Yum. Thank you,” Anna said—and Kara gave her a relieved grin.

Tag came up and picked a cookie off Kara’s plate. “Thanks, a leanbh, I’ll take another. Your cookies are always worth a second visit.” He was, Anna thought, deliberately unclear about whether his endearment was aimed at Leah or Kara.

He took a big bite and looked down at Anna. He was taller than Charles, who was very tall, and outweighed her mate by fifty pounds of muscle—and still the most impressive thing about him was his hair. Bright orange, it covered his head and hung nearly to his waist in strands of dreadlocks. His beard was a shade darker and exploded exuberantly down his chest in a mass that the members of ZZ Top could only envy.

“For the record,” he told her gently, in the light tenor that always seemed wrong for such a beast of a man. “We’ll not stand for any to hurt you.”

And so he undid all the good distracting the peanut-butter cookies had achieved.

Tag gave a nod to the rest of the room, and there was one of those low growls that, until she’d become a werewolf, Anna associated with groups of men watching their favorite football team when the official makes a bad call. Sage, perched on the back of the couch next to the fireplace, paused in eating her cookie to give her a grimace.

Sage’s silent support allowed Anna to swallow the lump of cookie in her mouth, and say, with innocent earnestness, “For the record, Tag, I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, either.”

For a moment, the tension held. Tag’s eyes widened for an instant, lightening as his wolf considered if she’d insulted him. Then he threw his head back and laughed like a coyote.

When the room broke out in scattered snickers that had more to do with the break in tension than anything Anna had said, she considered them thoughtfully.

Hester and Jonesy were dead. All the attackers who had set foot on pack territory were dead, but those men had been backed up by real money. Someone who could acquire a helicopter.

And all that this bunch had to talk about was Anna, and what had happened to her in Leo’s hands—something that was over and done. She wasn’t sure what that said about them, but she was sure she wanted to redirect that focus.

“This is not about me,” she told them. “This is about someone’s coming into our territory and killing Hester—which directly led to the death of her mate. We may have killed those who put foot on our land, but they went to a lot of trouble to try to take Hester. We didn’t kill them all. We don’t know that they won’t be back.”

“Do we need to send a warning out?” asked Asil. “To the pack in general, but also to the wildlings—it seems like they may have targeted Hester because she was isolated.”

Asil knew about that note. He was finding a reason to go out and talk to the wildlings. He skirted the truth of what he knew with the wussy words “may” and “seems.” Anna made a note to pay attention when Asil used those kinds of words.

“I think warning the wildlings is a good idea,” Anna said before Leah could quash the idea. “If we’re being alarmist, there’s no harm done. If there is a second attack, being prepared would be useful. Leah? You know all the old wolves hunkered down in the mountains—how do you think we should do this?”

Leah glanced around the room and frowned. “You know Bran doesn’t like to broadcast where they live and who they are. Too many of them still have enemies who would love to know where to find them when they are . . . less capable.”

“Charles and I can do it,” said Anna. “He knows them.”

Leah frowned. “That will take several days. They are scattered all over our territory. I think we need to break this job down.”

“I know most of them,” Asil said. “One way or another. And none of them is likely to want to attack me. Anna and Charles can take one group, and you and I the other.”

That wasn’t going to work, thought Anna. Leah was scared of Asil. There was no way she was going to go with Asil. Or Charles.

“Three groups,” said Leah briskly. “Even if some of them answer their phones, we’ll cover them faster.” She frowned, looked at Anna and Asil, then she smiled.

Whoops, thought Anna.

“They know me, and they know Charles. If they don’t know Anna, they will understand who and what she is when they meet her. Each of us will take a group. Anna, you take Asil with you, so I don’t have to explain to Bran how I let you go off and get yourself killed.” Leah gave Anna a smile to show she knew Anna could take care of herself. And because she was pleased with herself.

That Leah would take great glee in sending Anna off with Asil, who would not stop flirting with Anna because it annoyed Charles, did not mean that her stated reason wasn’t also truthful.

“Juste?” Leah looked around until she found the quiet man sitting in a chair in the corner of the room.

Juste had been born four or five hundred years ago in France and tended to be reserved. He’d joined the pack after Anna, taking advantage of Bran’s offer to provide places for European wolves who wanted to move. Anna didn’t know much about him because he didn’t talk much—but he’d survived centuries of living in France without falling to the Beast of Gévaudan, so he must be tough.

“I can go with Charles,” Sage said—and Leah just lit right up.

Anna could see the thoughts rush through Leah as clearly as if she were speaking them aloud. Sage and Asil had something going on—something they’d been pretty private about. And if Leah could send her off with Charles while she sent Asil with Anna . . . well. If some sparks flew, it wouldn’t be her fault, now would it?

Anna opened her mouth to say something, anything—though she didn’t know whether it would have been an objection or just an agreement. But Tag spoke before she could put her foot in her mouth—because anything would have been the wrong thing.

“I’ll initiate the phone tree,” Tag said. “Because we don’t know what our enemy wants, we should make sure that all the humans in town know to be careful and to watch for strangers.”

From Leah’s nonreaction, Anna was pretty sure that Leah hadn’t been going to do that. Leah shared Bran’s indifference to humans, and she did not make the exception he did for those who lived in his town. All of Aspen Creek was precious to Bran.

“We should keep a pack member at the gas station round the clock,” suggested Asil. “If our enemies are running around the woods, they have to find fuel somewhere. I know that Troy and Eureka are both within a reasonable travel distance, but even so, it would be stupid of us not to keep watch.”

“I can do first shift,” said Peggy.

The whole pack turned to look at the dark-haired cheery little person who’d spoken. Peggy had a female human mate, the safety of whom was the reason she’d petitioned the Marrok to move to his pack. Female werewolves were relatively rare, and they were more or less (depending upon their pack) expected to find a male werewolf to mate with. Peggy’s former Alpha had begun harassing her and her mate—so she packed them both up and moved to Aspen Creek. Picking up and moving had been no big thing for them employment-wise—Peggy could carve beautifully and sold her art online, and her wife was a long-distance truck driver.

“I live across the road from the gas station,” she said. “I know all the cars that stop there—and I’m a night owl anyway. When Carrie is out, I usually sleep during the day. She won’t be back until next week. The kids who work night shift know me, so I won’t scare them the way some of you might.”

And the time for Anna to do anything about Leah’s plans passed without anyone’s noticing except her.

CHARLES STOOD BEFORE the door to his da’s house, the witch gun in one hand and the basket of fruit that had been meant as a gift for Hester in the other. He centered himself, promising Brother Wolf that they would take care of business, then retreat—

Retreat? Brother Wolf did not retreat.

There were whole weeks when Brother Wolf was just a silent presence. Hester’s death had brought him very close to the surface. Which meant that Charles needed to guard his thoughts and keep control of his temper.

Escort Anna into the peace and quiet of the guest suite, he amended.

Brother Wolf knew Charles’s initial word was the one he meant, but he allowed himself to be pacified. Probably because Charles included Anna in the second version of his intentions.

Anna was watching for him as he walked by the biggest of the three gathering places in his da’s home, now filled with restless wolves. She ducked out and followed him into the kitchen, which was unoccupied.

The whole kitchen smelled of peanut butter, and there were plates of cookies sitting on the countertop.

“We are going out tomorrow to warn all the wildlings,” Anna told him, taking the basket with a grimace. She stared at it a moment, looked around, then set it down on the nearest flat surface.

A good idea, he thought. So why was Anna acting as if there was something he wasn’t going to like about the situation?

She continued without pause, explaining plans to tighten defenses, to make sure the rest of those under their care were as safe as possible. She finished by saying, “Tag says he’ll try to contact the wildlings, but it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to get more than one or two of them to pick up their phone.”

Charles nodded at this. He sympathized with the general resistance that the older wolves had to modern technology. Da had insisted that everyone had to have phones in case of emergencies. Unless he was present, though, he could not insist that they answer their phones.

And since the point was for Anna and him to meet with them all, the fewer wildlings who answered their phones the better.

“A week is a long time to maintain high alert,” he said.

“Shutting barn doors after the cows are already out,” agreed Tag, rounding the corner. “But it would be stupider not to shut ’em if we still have a few cows inside.”

“Sometimes I’m glad I don’t know how your mind works,” Sage said, trailing behind Tag.

If he were the opposition team, Charles thought, he’d wait two weeks—two months, assuming time wasn’t a factor—before moving again. Maybe Charles would get lucky, and their enemy was impatient, or time was a factor.

Hopefully, in a week, Da would be back, and this would be his problem. The traitor would be his da’s problem. And the artifacts currently in the back of Charles’s truck would be Bran’s problem.

But the dead bodies, also in the truck, were probably still going to end up on Charles’s plate.

Figuratively speaking, he told Brother Wolf before that one could get any ideas.

“Is that the witch gun?” asked Tag.

Charles held it up—and when Tag reached for it, he handed it over.

“Is that wise?” asked Sage.

Tag aimed it at the fruit basket and pulled the trigger.

“Possibly not,” admitted Charles ruefully. Though nothing had happened to the fruit basket.

Tag pulled his hand off the grip, holding the gun by the barrel, and he shook the hand that had held the trigger. “Bites,” he said. “That’s how it’s powered? It doesn’t seem to do much.”

“Don’t you think that setting off a weapon you know nothing about in the house is a little stupid?” asked Sage.

At those words, there was a sharp exclamation, and Leah bustled into the kitchen carrying an empty plate. Tag abruptly set the weapon on the counter and tried to look as though he had nothing to do with it.

Leah snorted, but instead of berating Tag, she asked Charles, “Are you going to stay in here until the whole pack follows you?”

Without answering her, Charles picked the gun back up, frowning at it. He took the basket outside and set it on the porch, aware that Tag, Sage, Leah, and Anna trailed behind him. He aimed at the basket of fruit.

He pulled the trigger. Nausea rose in his stomach, a tingling ran through his body, and the fruit and basket dissolved into a revolting, stinking mass of grayish mud, leaving the cement it sat upon unharmed.

They all stared at the result a moment. Charles rubbed his trigger finger, paying attention to the numbness that faded slowly.

“Witch blood is apparently necessary,” said Leah coolly after a moment. “Thank you for experimenting in my kitchen with that thing, Tag. Oh, and I’m not cleaning that up. Come into the living room when you’re finished.”

She left, pausing to collect the remaining two plates full of cookies. Sage and a grinning, unrepentant Tag followed behind her.

Anna grabbed a garbage bag while Charles got a dustpan and a roll of paper towels.

“So why didn’t it do that to you?” she asked, her voice tight as she snapped the bag out and opened it.

“I’m tougher than a basket of fruit?” suggested Charles, going back outside to work on the mess.

“Very funny,” she said in a broken voice that told him humor might not have been the best idea he’d had today. She put her hand out and touched the muck that smelled of fruit, rot, and blood magic. Her hand shook.

Oh my love, he thought. Quietly, he said, “I don’t know, Anna.” He ripped off a paper towel and watched as she used it to clean her hand. “Maybe adding my mother’s magic alters the effect of the gun, my blood makes it more powerful than his did. My mother’s magic is close to witchcraft—but more attuned to the turning of the earth. Maybe her blood offered some protection. I don’t know why. But I am alive and unharmed.”

She sucked in a deep breath. Nodded. She stuffed the wadded-up paper towel in the bag, then bent and held it open next to the step, so he could just push the mess into the bag.

“What did Boyd have to say?” she asked.

“We want to know, too,” called Leah’s voice clearly. “Wait to answer that until you are in here.”

“She meant to say ‘please,’” said Sage cheerily when Brother Wolf let out a growl of annoyance.

Anna muttered something unhappily under her breath. Charles didn’t hear it all, but he knew it had to do with the lack of privacy at his da’s house.

“Exactly,” he told her.

“WHAT DID BOYD have to say?” asked Leah as soon as he and Anna came into the living room.

Charles glanced around the room and saw that a good two-thirds of the pack was here. From their attentive eyes and the hyperprotective glints of wolf eyes he caught here and there, he realized that they all knew about the dead man’s connection to Anna. He couldn’t see her telling them, so someone must have overheard them. Hard to stay quiet enough that any werewolf in sight couldn’t overhear you without trying.

So he told them what Boyd had said to him. When he finished, he looked around the room, and asked, “Do any of you know what Da did with the electronic files, financial and otherwise, that Boyd gave him?”

“Bran still has them,” said Leah. “He got them about a month back. He’s been working on them himself. He told me that you had enough on your shoulders, and he’d give them to you when the time was right.”

“Okay,” he said quietly.

Da had taken the files to work on them himself? What did that mean? “When the time was right”? His da could run a spreadsheet or conduct an Internet search, but he wasn’t in Charles’s league. Had his da just forgotten about it? That didn’t sound like the Marrok at all.

Had Da found something in the books that he didn’t want Charles to know about? Was that something the reason Bran wasn’t here?

He wasn’t in Africa. The last call Charles had made, before coming into the house, was to his brother. Samuel had not heard from their da since he’d gotten a call that all was well with Mercy. He had not heard that Da was headed to Africa—and he’d not seen him.

That meant Bran had lied. Over the phone, Charles reflected, lying would have been easy enough.

Good that Boyd was sending the files to Charles, then. He’d told his father’s message app about that, so his da would know that Charles was about to receive whatever information that data held. If he really didn’t want Charles to see something, he could come home and take care of this matter himself.

Anna brought a plate with crumbs and two peanut-butter cookies on it. “Have a peanut-butter cookie,” she told him. “They’re good.”

He looked at the cookies, still lost in trying to follow his da’s Byzantine thought process with half the information he needed to come to any kind of accurate conclusion.

“I thought you were making brownies,” he said.

“Brownies?” said Tag, distracted from his quiet conversation with a couple of other pack members. “I like brownies.”

“They have orange peel in them,” Leah told Tag, and Charles could tell that she thought that was a bad thing.

“Mercy’s recipe?” Tag said happily. “Awesome. You should get those baked before you go, Anna. One of your brownies, and those recluses will be happy to come out of their hidey-holes to have a few more.”

“The brownies can wait,” said Leah firmly. There was something in her voice that told Charles that the brownie dough would be in the garbage before it ever saw an oven.

If a dog made the sound Tag made then, Charles would have called it whining. But Tag’s eyes were shrewd and focused on Leah.

It was, Charles thought, very easy to make the mistake of buying Tag’s cheery-barbarian appearance and miss the sharp man inside who knew very well whose brownies he was praising—over the peanut-butter cookies that Leah had evidently made. And, once recognizing that sharp man, it would be easy to make the mistake of thinking that the barbarian berserker was a disguise. Tag was both—and that was before his wolf entered into consideration.

“TELL ME HOW,” Charles said, “you managed to get stuck going out to warn the wildlings with Asil?”

Anna couldn’t see his face because he was in the process of stripping out of his soot-stained shirt, and she couldn’t read his neutral tone.

“It wasn’t me,” she said. “Asil spoke up at just the wrong moment and sparked Leah’s desire to stir up trouble. It’s a talent he has. To her credit, she’s right, we need to get them all warned as soon as possible. Three teams will do that better than one.”

Charles emerged, his face as neutral as his voice had been. “All right.” Anna winced in sympathy when he jerked at the band at the end of his braid, and it snapped.

“I know,” she said with a grimace. “I know you would be happier pairing me with a different wolf. Maybe Sage should come with me and Asil go with you?”

Charles considered her suggestion that they switch partners but finally shook his head. “No. Brother Wolf doesn’t like it, but it is better this way. Some of these wolves wouldn’t listen to a messenger they see as lower-ranking.” He snorted. “Some of them won’t listen to any of us, either. But if one of them decides to cause trouble . . . Asil is a better deterrent than Sage or you. No one sane would attack the Moor.”

“Do we tell Leah about the traitor? So she can keep watch for oddities, too?” Anna asked. “Or work it so Asil is her partner, so one of us in each group knows to keep an eye out?”

He unbraided his hair, something Anna never got tired of watching. It wasn’t just that his hair was beautiful—though it was. It was the intimacy of the moment. No one else got to see what he looked like with his hair down.

“No,” he said finally. “Asil and you and I know. That is enough. I’m not convinced any of the wildlings is our traitor—you’ll see what I mean when you meet some more of them. Not only would they have trouble accumulating information—because most of them never see the main pack—but only a few of them are stable enough to hide lies this big without betraying themselves.”

“Okay,” Anna said. “Hester could have. How many Hesters are there among your father’s wildlings?”

He paused, raised an eyebrow, and nodded at her. “Score for you,” he said. “How about I warn Leah that we have reason to believe that these people were asking about the wildlings?”

“You don’t want to tell her that there is a traitor?” Anna asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t trust her to be subtle.”

Anna laughed despite herself. No, subtle was not something Leah was particularly good at.

“Who is Leah going with?” he asked.

“Juste,” Anna told him.

Charles grunted in what sounded to her like approval.

“She gave you and Sage the ones she thought would be the worst to deal with,” Anna said. “She gave Asil and me the most broken. She was careful, she told me, to make sure that ours have trouble controlling their wolves, not the other way around. That way, hopefully, Asil won’t have to kill any of them.”

“She took the easiest,” Charles said, taking off his boots.

“That’s not how she put it—but I think that’s how she sees it,” Anna agreed. “Should I have objected when she paired me with Asil?” She hadn’t planned on asking him, but the words came out anyway. “I probably could have made her send Asil with Sage if I had wanted to push it.”

Charles’s eyes brightened for an instant, and though no word came out of his mouth, she heard Brother Wolf’s Yes as clearly as if he’d spoken into her ear.

“No,” Charles said firmly. “She might enjoy stirring up trouble, but she came to the right conclusions. You’ll be safe with Asil. Sage will be safe with me. Leah will be safe because of Da—but Juste will be a good reminder.”

He pulled out clean clothes. “From the standpoint of getting a look at all the wildlings, it might have worked out better if you and Leah had been paired up. As it is, we’ll have to find a way to see all the wolves that Leah and Juste have on their list. Logistically speaking, the wildlings most likely to have betrayed the pack are in Leah’s group—because they are the most stable of the bunch.”

Anna thought about it. “I could probably get her to change it up that much.”

Charles shook his head. “I don’t think that Leah is dominant enough to get the wildlings to back down on her own, and your effect is too unpredictable.” He gave her a laughing glance over his shoulder. “And if Juste and Asil are in a car for a full day, we might be pulling out bodies. Juste has a problem with Asil.”

“Why?” Anna thought about it just a second, and said, “You mean he blames Asil for not killing the Beast of Gévaudan?” The Beast, Jean Chastel, had controlled most of Central Europe for centuries. The Moor had kept Chastel out of the Iberian Peninsula.

Charles grunted agreement. Evidently finished with the subject of tomorrow’s task, he said, “I tried calling Da before I came in. He’s still not answering his phone. I left a voice message filling him in on what’s been happening. He’d have felt Hester’s death. If he’s not getting back to me, it’s because he doesn’t want to. He’s not with Samuel, I checked. So he’s got some other game going on.”

Anna had come to the same conclusion.

“Bastard,” she said with feeling.

It made him laugh. He touched her cheek and pulled back his finger to show her the dirt on it. “Wanna shower with me?” he asked. The laughter hadn’t left his eyes, though his face was serious.

This house, she thought, was a prison in which everyone knew what everyone else was doing. Too many sharp ears and sharper noses to keep their private life private. She understood that Charles didn’t care who knew when they made love—the opposite, in fact.

But he’d taken Anna’s desires into consideration. At the Marrok’s home, they slept side by side in the guest bedroom, and all they did was sleep. Most days they stopped in to check on their own house. The horses were being fed by someone else, but they needed to be worked. Usually, they managed to sneak in an hour of privacy for lovemaking—and just being alone together.

Today hadn’t been most days.

His eyes were tired, she thought, beneath the laughter. Through their bond, she could feel his lingering sadness.

She leaned forward and took his smudged finger into her mouth, feeling his whole body jolt with surprise . . . and something else. Heat flared, brightening his eyes to gold. His breath caught, but except for that single stiffening, he didn’t move at all—a cat waiting for his prey. She let him feel her teeth while she thought about that.

No. Not prey. Playmate. Lover. But never prey.

His stillness wasn’t a predatory thing; he was waiting for a proper invitation to play. And enjoying the beginning of the game.

She sat back, satisfaction at his response sliding through her skin. She still depended upon her wolf to teach her how to play in intimate circumstances, but she no longer let that bother her—she and her wolf were one in this. She licked her lips, and said, in a voice that came out husky because a good seduction seduces both parties, “Are you, by any chance, implying I might be dirty?”

The smile that only belonged to her slid across his face and did interesting things to her insides. “Who, me?” he said in a thoughtful voice. “Maybe. But in case you thought it was a complaint . . .” He leaned forward and kissed her, touching her only with his lips because that was all he needed.

Unlike her initial move into foreplay, his kiss was as soft as a cello played pianissimo, hinting at the power of the song but lulling the unwary with its sweetness.

Her body went soft, her lips felt heavy and oversensitive as she closed her eyes to concentrate on her senses, on him. He smelled of smoke, the musk and mint that was werewolf, and the underlying scent that was his alone. Mine. All mine. All of his beauty of body and spirit was hers.

He was worth facing a little embarrassment for. Get brave, Anna, she admonished herself.

He pulled away, his lips hotter than they’d been when they first touched hers. He gave her another smile, this one full of love and kindness. People didn’t always notice how kind her mate was because he was sneaky that way.

“I need to get cleaned up,” he said. “And I need to stop this before we’re both grumpy. When we get done running around tomorrow, we should stop at home.” Where it is private, and you won’t be uncomfortable was what he didn’t say.

“Cherish” was a word often used in traditional wedding ceremonies that Anna didn’t think many people understood. They should observe Charles for a few days; they might learn something. Charles was a man who knew how to cherish the ones he loved.

Anna had always been a good student.

She said, “Are you taking back your invitation?”

He’d already turned to go into the bathroom, but her words froze him in his tracks. He looked back at her—and she could see Brother Wolf lurking in his eyes.

“No?” he said tentatively. Then he looked pointedly at the door to the suite, through which it was possible for anyone with werewolf ears to hear the chatter of a few die-hard pack members who were still up talking. “But I don’t . . .”

She pulled off her shirt. Before she’d freed her head, warm hands, his warm hands, were undoing her bra strap.

“I am,” he said, meeting her eyes as she tossed her shirt on the floor, “all out of chivalry.”

She smiled at him as he dropped her bra on top of her shirt.

“Funny,” she said. “So am—” I she would have said except that his mouth at her breast distracted her.

For a moment she let him take the lead and do as he pleased because she’d learned that pleased him, too. She gave him her stuttering breath, her hums of approval. She was very careful not to squeak because squeaking would attract the attention of the people on the other side of that door. Attract their attention sooner, anyway.

But she was simply not comfortable just taking and not giving back. Besides, his body was lovely, and she enjoyed touching him as much as she did being touched. More. So she wriggled on top of him and proceeded to give as good as she got. A small part of her was aware of when the chatter outside paused, rippled with happy laughter, then returned to chattering. That part of her writhed with embarrassment—but it was a very small part of her and easily subsumed in the emotional and physical sensations of making love with her mate.

A rather long while later, limp and breathless, Anna said, “I’m still dirty. More dirty. Because . . . sweat and stuff.”

He gave a low laugh that vibrated through her happy body. “Good to know. Me, too.” There was a short pause, and he said, “We can shower later. When I can move.”

She put her head back down on his sweaty and smoky skin, breathed him in contentedly, and said, “Okay. I can go with that.”

ASIL DROVE AS if he were a human, with human reflexes. It was nice, Anna decided, to not have to choose between driving herself or living with Charles’s sometimes-sudden decisions to drive as though a wreck could not possibly injure anyone in the car. Anna could relax while Asil navigated the almost-roads they traveled.

Since they’d taken Asil’s new Mercedes SUV instead of Charles’s truck, she could also not wince when the scrape of tree branches or rocks against the sides and undercarriage of his pristine vehicle made Asil growl. The growl was just noise, without any passion behind it. Unlike her husband, Asil didn’t love his cars. He appreciated them and took meticulous care of them, but they were just vehicles to get him from one place to the next. He enjoyed them more if they did it with style and power, but they weren’t anything he was attached to.

Not that she wouldn’t rather be driving in Hell itself if she could do it with Charles, but she’d take the good where she found it.

They were going to see Wellesley first, and Anna couldn’t help a frisson of fan-girl excitement. Wellesley was an artist, their artist.

His oil paintings held places of honor in the homes of the pack—and she’d seen them cherished by other packs when she and Charles traveled. There were two in her living room that would be less out of place hanging in the National Gallery of Art in Washington or maybe the Met than on the walls of a modest home in the wilds of Montana.

He was an artist who should have been world famous instead of werewolf famous. She considered that a moment. Maybe he was famous, but if so, it was under a different name—because she’d looked before, to see if she could find his work in the real world.

“What’s he like?” she asked Asil, because she knew that Bran used Asil to deal with Wellesley most of the time. They got on together, and she gathered that Wellesley could be difficult.

He glanced at her as if he couldn’t fathom who she was talking about.

“Wellesley,” she said impatiently.

His eyebrows shot up. “He’s one of Bran’s wildlings. That means he’s broken.”

She growled at him, and he grinned—and the expression made his normally austere face look friendly and approachable. “I am sorry, querida, but I don’t know how to answer that. He is troubled in a way that is very like schizophrenia but is more likely a damaged interaction with his wolf. He is very shy, but I think that is a product of his condition rather than a natural tendency.” He paused. “I can tell you that you aren’t his only fan. People keep trying to get me to ask him about commissioning a piece.” He laughed. “Just this morning, Sage petitioned Leah to switch with me so she could come and meet him.”

When she’d first come to the pack, she’d thought that Sage and Leah didn’t like each other. But she’d grown to understand that they were possibly as close to friends as two very dominant women (werewolves or not) could be. Leah actively liked Sage and usually behaved herself in front of her. Sage snipped and snarked at her and about her but ultimately had Leah’s back.

“So why are you and I together instead of Sage and I?” Anna asked.

“Because there is the distinct possibility that putting Charles and me in the same car together might make the universe implode,” said Asil. “I might have said that to Leah when she looked like she might make the switch.” He paused, and said slyly, “I waited until Charles could hear me, then I told her that I’d been looking forward to a whole day traveling with you.”

Anna’s first thought was surprise that Charles hadn’t put his foot down and paired Sage and Asil together instead. Her second thought was that Asil had made that suggestive comment in front of Sage, too.

“Aren’t you and Sage dating?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” Asil said. “Currently, she is playing hard to get.”

Anna took a good look at his face to see if it was okay if she asked for more details.

“She believes I am arrogant and treat her as though she cannot take care of herself,” he clarified.

“She’s right,” Anna said.

“Yes.” He gave her a graceful bow of his head. “She is.” He took a deep breath and gave Anna a humorless smile that told her he was more upset about it than he let on. “I am too old to change who I am—a man a hair less arrogant would be lost to the beast that lives inside me. You cannot look at a person, and say, ‘If I could change this or that, if I could pick what I want and discard other things, I could love this one.’ Such a love is pale and weak—and doomed to failure.”

She thought about that. “I tried to change Charles,” she said in a small voice. “I told Bran to quit sending him out on killing missions.”

Asil sighed. “You are so sensible most of the time, I forget how young you are. That was not changing Charles; that was trying to change the world so Charles could survive. That is protecting your mate from the things he cannot protect himself from.”

“Maybe Sage is trying to save you, too,” Anna said thoughtfully. “Saving you from death, really. If you keep trying to protect her when she doesn’t need it, she might have to shoot you.” Sage was a pretty good shot.

Asil fell silent; he didn’t smile at her attempt at humor. After a moment, he said, “I will consider this. It will not change how I act, but perhaps it will make her argument less aggravating.”

She couldn’t tell if he was joking. She was sort of afraid he wasn’t.

“I can tell you a few things about Wellesley,” Asil said after they’d traveled far enough to leave the subject of Sage behind them, along with several miles of twisty dirt track. “He can use magic—and not always on purpose. He isn’t a witch—his magic is closer to Charles’s magic, I think. But it makes him especially good at pack magic. He comes on pack hunts sometimes, but no one except Bran and I know it. And probably Charles. If Wellesley doesn’t want you to notice him, he is difficult to perceive, and you’ll have trouble remembering details about him, like exactly what he looks like.”

He paused. “I am old and powerful, so I have no such trouble. It is for this reason Bran started sending me to deal with him.”

“So he could come on pack hunts, or go into Aspen Springs, and no one would notice?” Anna asked. Because that was what Asil was avoiding saying. “He could gather information without anyone the wiser.”

“Yes,” Asil said. “I’ve known a few other wolves who could do this.” He paused. “I’m fairly certain that Bran can do a bit more.”

Anna nodded solemnly. She thought there was a reason that visiting wolves sometimes seemed not to notice Bran until he drew attention to himself. Part of it was his ability to hide the force of his personality, but on several occasions, she would swear that people just didn’t notice him at all.

“He likes to sing,” Asil said.

“Wellesley?” she asked. They’d just been talking about Bran, but she was fairly sure that Asil wouldn’t feel impelled to tell her something everyone knew.

Asil nodded. “He is a bass and usually slightly flat. Like Johnny Cash.”

“Johnny Cash wasn’t flat,” Anna objected, having newly become a fan, much to the amusement of certain members of the pack. “He just sang melodies in unexpected ways—choosing other notes in the chords than the note our ear thinks the melody should probably carry.”

“Or the songwriter intended,” said Asil.

“It reduced the range of the songs,” Anna continued doggedly. “But made them sound like Johnny Cash songs.”

“Yes,” agreed Asil. “But you say this as if it is a good thing.”

“Lots and lots of people agreed with me,” she said.

“Philistines,” Asil proclaimed grandly.

“Charles likes Johnny Cash,” she told him. Charles had been her gateway to a lot of music she’d once dismissed as old or hokey. Before Charles, her usual listening favorites were either truly classical—preferably with lots of cello—or whatever was current on the radio. Life with Charles had opened up her musical library considerably—and she had once thought herself thoroughly educated on the subject.

“Barbarian Philistines,” Asil corrected himself. “Johnny Cash was an uneducated, backwoods man with a deep voice. You are wasted on Charles.”

“Cash was a national treasure,” she said, starting to feel a little hot. “He took folk music, church music, and rock, and fused them into something that spoke to a lot of people. And I’m so lucky I found Charles that I must have been blessed by leprechauns in a former life.”

“You’ve never met a leprechaun, or you wouldn’t say that.” Asil gave her a superior smile before turning his attention to keeping the heavy SUV from sliding off the track when its right wheel hit a patch of soft dirt.

“I don’t want the traitor to be Wellesley,” Anna told him.

“Nor do I, chiquita.”

After a while, during which she went over their conversation in her head, Anna asked suspiciously, “Do you like to listen to Johnny Cash?”

“I enjoy Dolly Parton,” he said. “Now, there is a unique voice.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Anna said. “Do you like to listen to Johnny Cash?”

Asil sighed and gave in with such overt embarrassment that she knew it wasn’t an important issue for him—not that liking Johnny Cash was something to be embarrassed about anyway. “Only the good songs.” He glanced at her. “If you tell Charles, I’ll deny it.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Only if Charles asks me.”

Asil’s sigh, this time, was full to dripping with dramatic sorrow. “You shall be the death of me, Anna. The very death of me.”

And at that moment he made a sudden right-hand turn off the cliff. Anna grabbed the oh-hell handle, reminded herself that she was a werewolf and unlikely to die in most motor-vehicle accidents—especially since Asil’s Mercedes was less than a year old and came equipped with all sorts of airbags.

But the Mercedes didn’t fall, just continued down a very steep track for twenty yards and twisted sharply to the right.

“Looks like that erosion control Bran had put in here held for another year,” Asil said, as if he hadn’t noticed her panicked reaction. “Until five years ago, every summer Wellesley had to rebuild that road because the edge where we just turned kept rolling off down the cliff every spring.”

“You did that on purpose,” Anna accused him.

He grinned whitely. “Maybe. But it was fun, no?”

She huffed at him and wouldn’t give him a grin in return no matter how much she wanted to.

The big SUV rocked slowly down the rough track that ended . . . continued into a natural crack in the side of the mountain that was just big enough to swallow the Mercedes. Asil paused at the opening and blasted his horn twice. He paused for a count of five (because he counted out loud) and turned his lights on bright and continued down the track and into the heart of the mountain.