Soul Taken

2

George was the first to leave.

“I just got called in early tonight,” he told Adam, raising his voice to be heard over the music, as they exchanged hand grips. “Something went down at one of the grocery stores.”

Adam tensed. “Violence?”

George shrugged. “They are keeping it quiet for now—or they just don’t know yet.”

“Stay safe,” I said.

“You should talk,” George said, his eyes going to my bruised face. “I’ve taken bodies to the morgue who have been hit just there. Weak place in the skull.”

“Me, too,” said Adam, though his voice didn’t tighten. I realized that he must have been thinking that when he saw me fall at the corn maze. Sometimes knowledge only makes things worse.

“Not dead yet,” I reminded them. “I am hardheaded, I guess. When it’s my time, I’ll go, and it will probably be something stupid. But if heaven is kind, it won’t be a pumpkin that takes me out.”

“Fair enough,” acknowledged George with a faint smile. He touched his finger to his forehead in a final salute and headed for the exit.

“Let’s go talk to Zack,” Adam said.

Step one of the final planned task of the night. My stomach clenched, but at the same time, I felt an odd sort of relief. Waiting around sucked eggs.

“You don’t need me for this part,” I told him.

He gave me a half smile. “I like having you around.”

I left my fresh glass by the empty one and followed him to Zack’s table.

“I need you to stay for a bit after everyone else goes,” Adam murmured to him. “I can give you a ride home when we’re done.”

Next to Zack, Warren grunted, lifted up his hips, and pulled out a Subaru key fob that still had the dealer’s tag attached. “I’ll catch a ride home with someone. Zack, you take my car.”

“You have a new car?” I asked. Ever since I’d known him, Warren had driven a battered old epoxy-and-blue-and-rust truck.

“Present from Kyle,” Zack said, taking the fob from Warren without an argument.

I was momentarily distracted from my worry. Warren didn’t take presents that big from Kyle.

Warren and Kyle had lived for a long time in the World War II–era duplex Warren used to rent instead of Kyle’s upscale house because Warren was opposed to depending upon anyone else. Even after they had made Kyle’s house their home, Warren had clung to his apartment for a while. Accepting a gift as expensive as a new car was as big an admission of trust as anything I’d ever seen from him.

Kyle had bought a very nice wedding ring for Warren, too. I’d picked it out with him a few months ago. He’d come with me to get my lamb necklace fixed at the jewelers and seen the perfect ring.

Kyle had told me that it was too soon. Warren had been alone a very long time and he had trouble trusting anyone. Kyle was a smart man; no doubt he was right. But he’d bought the ring anyway in happy anticipation.

“That’s a new thing for you,” I said. “And I don’t mean the car.”

“My truck is too noticeable,” said Warren, his mouth tight with something that might have been embarrassment. It also might not have been.

I frowned at him.

“Kyle has me trailing people around,” Warren said too quickly. Warren was a private detective who did work for Kyle’s law firm. “He decided I needed something that blended in with all the other cars.”

It sounded like Kyle might have made that decision over Warren’s objections, though that was a little unlike him. That might explain the extra tension that Warren was wearing tonight.

“I’d have gone Honda or Toyota for blending,” I said, leaving that evidential sore spot for Kyle and Warren to work out. “But Subaru makes a good car, too.”

No one asked me about Volkswagen. I was bitter about the new Volkswagens ever since the turbo-diesel incident.

“I’d buy Mercy a new car to replace the one she used to squish her enemy against a dumpster,” Adam said, “but she’d have my hide.”

“I’m a mechanic,” I told him with mock coolness. “I have to drive an old car. It’s the rules.”

He smiled at me, and my breath caught in my chest at the warmth in his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “As long as it’s the rules.”

About twenty minutes later, the pack began drifting out singly or in small groups. Adam stood by the door, touching each one as they left. Sometimes he’d hug them, sometimes it was a brush of his fingers on their cheeks or a pat on the shoulder. A good pack leader knew what his wolves needed.

I retreated to our table, sipping my third glass of icy limeade. I should be with Adam, but I wouldn’t be able to hide my tension. It was important to let the pack be happy tonight. A few of them looked at me, and I rubbed my cheek in answer. My headache was real enough, even if it wasn’t my problem.

Adam said something to Darryl, his second-in-command, that made the big man laugh. Auriele, Darryl’s mate, reached up and smacked Darryl on the top of his head, but she was laughing, too. Darryl hadn’t competed because he and Adam had set up the stations around the maze, but Auriele had. Her team had made it out in time but hadn’t found two of the ribbons.

Sherwood got up to leave. He limped a little on his way to the exit, proving that he’d given his all to the games in the maze. Usually, he was so graceful that most people wouldn’t notice that he had a prosthetic leg.

Rather than interrupt Adam’s conversation, Sherwood started past. Adam, without taking his attention off the other two wolves, caught Sherwood’s arm, holding him where he was. Sherwood stiffened, drawing back—and Adam didn’t let him go.

Nor, despite the quick, almost worried glance Darryl gave Sherwood, did Adam allow their good-byes to be hurried. When they left, Auriele was frowning.

Adam said something to Sherwood, and Five Finger Death Punch’s “A Little Bit Off” belting through the overhead speakers made sure no one else heard what it was. The big man stared at Adam with unfriendly eyes for a moment, then took a deep breath. He made a deliberate effort to relax his posture, gave Adam a quick nod, and turned back to stride toward me.

Showtime, I thought, taking a deep breath. I needed to be calm.

Sherwood’s limp was not in evidence as he prowled toward me. I did not think that was a good sign. Wolves don’t show weakness before their enemies. Not that anyone who knew him would think that having only one leg made Sherwood vulnerable in the slightest.

I’d never heard of a werewolf missing a limb before. Werewolves either die from injuries, or they heal them. If a leg gets severed, it should regrow.

In the case of a human who was crippled or missing a limb prior to becoming a werewolf, there are ways to fix that. Those ways are horrible and involve reinjuring the damaged but healed body part. I’d heard that those methods had been tried unsuccessfully on Sherwood.

Sherwood had been found in the laboratory of a collection of black witches who had been taken down by werewolves a few years ago. No one knew how long he’d been there or what had been done to him, but I’d been confined in such a place for a bit, and I still had nightmares.

His rescuers had brought Sherwood to Bran, who had forced him to shift back to his human form. Maybe because he’d spent too long as a wolf, maybe because the witches had done something to him, Sherwood had no memory of who or what he had been.

Bran had known Sherwood’s identity, but for his own Bran-reasons hadn’t seen fit to tell Sherwood, or anyone else. Instead, Bran had thrown up his hands, given the three-legged wolf (or one-legged man) a name, and sent Sherwood Post to us.

I’d first thought the move had been for Sherwood’s sake. Bran had told me that Sherwood had complained about the horrible Montana winters and asked for assignment to a pack that lived in a warmer climate. Most places have better climates than Aspen Creek, Montana.

After the last few months, months during which Sherwood had proven to have some useful and unusual skills, I was beginning to think Bran might have had other reasons for sending Sherwood to us.

Had Bran known what was going to happen here? Had he known our pack would become the center of fae political maneuvering before we did? Because Sherwood came to us not long before I’d made our territorial claim on the national news. How had Bran known? And if so, why hadn’t he warned us that he’d be forced to leave us (leave me, some childish part of me murmured) out in the cold without the protection of the Marrok and the whole of the wolves under his aegis?

If I thought too much about Bran’s planning capacity, I usually ended up with a headache. I didn’t need more of a headache, but I couldn’t keep myself from wondering.

Had Bran, knowing that we would need every advantage we could muster, given us Sherwood Post as a secret weapon? Sherwood wasn’t just any werewolf. He was witchborn. Maybe. Or at least he could manipulate magic with skill. His power didn’t smell corrupted, nor did it smell exactly like witchcraft. And he had a lot of magic for someone who wasn’t tainted by black magic.

I didn’t know quite what he was. But I did know he was someone, a Power whose name would be known. Someone a few of the really old wolves would probably know on sight. We had only a couple of those—Honey and Zack. Age is one of those things that you just don’t ask, but you get a feel for it after a while. I knew that Honey didn’t know who Sherwood was, but I was not so sure about Zack. Zack could keep secrets.

Bran might have given us Sherwood as a weapon, but Adam thought it was about to explode in our faces.

Sherwood slid out the chair Adam had been using and sat in it. There was a significance to that, just as Ben’s not sitting in it earlier had been significant. This left Sherwood facing me, his expression as grim as I felt.

Now is the winter of our discontent, I thought. I’d taken a Shakespeare course in college that had been taught by the drama department instead of the English department. Mostly that meant we’d had to memorize a lot of the famous speeches. They bubbled up now and then. I didn’t think that Sherwood would bring glorious summer, no matter how much all concerned might wish it.

I liked Sherwood and had done so ever since the day we’d talked on the top of a very tall crane and ended up fighting back-to-back. Nothing tonight was his fault, any more than it was Adam’s. Sometimes—quite a lot of the time—being a werewolf just sucked.

I decided the best way to calm down was to have a conversation, something to distract us both. Not that Sherwood was a good conversationalist at the best of times. But there was one sure way to get his attention.

I asked, “How is Pirate?”

Some of the stress left Sherwood’s posture at the mention of his cat. But not all. If Adam was right, and Adam was always right about this kind of thing, Sherwood knew that we were in trouble, too.

“Pirate extends his greetings,” Sherwood said solemnly, “and expressed his regrets that his evil roommate would not bring him tonight. He bids me tell you that he will endeavor to teach said roommate the error of his ways—probably by coughing up a hair ball on the bed.”

He caught my surprised look, and color flushed up his cheeks. He adjusted his chair, and it gave a warning creak—he was a big man.

It was true, Sherwood did usually bring Pirate anywhere he could, and cats did tend to exert their dominance over their homes. If he could speak, Pirate might very well have given the message Sherwood related.

But this was Sherwood. I had expected a simple “Fine.” Maybe, if he was feeling unusually garrulous, he might even have said something like “Angry at being excluded.” The longer and funny story was not like the Sherwood I knew.

The silence between Sherwood and me grew awkward. More awkward. I had a million questions rising to my tongue, and I couldn’t ask any of them until Adam joined us.

“Oh, look,” I said gratefully, because awkward silences tended to make me babble, “here’s one of Uncle Mike’s minions. Do you want something to drink while we wait?”

A server had come into the room via the kitchen door, glanced around to the few remaining guests, then started toward our table, now the only one still occupied.

Before Sherwood could answer me, I met the eyes of the wolf who quite possibly would kill my mate tonight, and babbled another question off the top of my head—one that I blamed on my earlier internal sound bite from Richard III.

“Are you Shakespeare?”

Sherwood went still. Almost carefully, he turned his head toward the approaching waiter. I was pretty sure that it was to hide his expression from me.

Because there was only one reason for me to ask him that.

Adam had told me, in the aftermath of our shower this evening, that the pack bonds had informed him Sherwood’s memory was back. Sherwood’s reaction told me that he was right. Adam had no idea why it had happened, but that wasn’t the important thing just now. We had in our pack a wolf who was suddenly very, very dominant.

I’d been told that Adam was the fourth most dominant wolf in the New World. It went Bran, his two sons, then Adam. But Adam thought the new, improved version of Sherwood was more dominant than Adam was. That was a problem, especially under our current circumstances.

“Four glasses and a pitcher of water,” I told the waiter before he could ask us anything. “And when there are only four of us left here, could you close the door and give us privacy until we leave?”

“Right you are,” he said, with a nod and a touch of his finger to his forehead and a bare glance at Sherwood. This waiter was a new one to me and he looked human. He didn’t smell like it, though.

“I wonder why Uncle Mike gets along with the goblins better than most of the fae do?” I mused when the waiter had gone, giving Sherwood the opportunity to ignore my last question.

I didn’t really think he had been Shakespeare. But the pack had a betting pool about who Sherwood had been. When he’d found out about it, he’d bet that he was—or rather had been—William Shakespeare. I was pretty sure that had been a joke. Iambic pentameter was not something anyone would expect from Sherwood, who seldom spoke five syllables when one syllable would do.

“Don’t know,” Sherwood told me shortly.

I took my cue from him and quit talking. He leaned back in the chair, head canted to watch Adam talk to the last few lingering pack members.

Adam looked relaxed, the smile on his face genuine. Adam had been in a lot of battles. Unlike me, he tended not to fret about them in advance, not if it was “only” his life on the line. Next to Adam, Zack leaned casually against a wall as if he had tried to find a place where he might not be noticed. But no wolf would overlook a submissive. I saw him smile and nod at something one of the exiting wolves said.

“Do you think Zack is necessary to keep my temper under control?” asked Sherwood, his voice a rumble that carried right over the music.

The last few wolves were gathered around Adam, and I watched as they all turned to look at us. I doubt they’d been able to understand what Sherwood had said, but they probably hadn’t missed the ugly tone in his voice.

I saw some alarmed faces. Zack glanced over and away. Adam didn’t react in any way I could see. Honey frowned and started toward us, but Adam said something quietly enough that I couldn’t catch it. She aimed her frown at Sherwood.

Adam raised a brow at me, then hustled Honey and the last of the now obviously worried wolves out, following them through the door. Presumably he would reassure them—or tell them the truth. He’d do what he thought best. Zack glanced at Sherwood and me, hesitated, then trailed after Adam.

“Is Adam worried I’m unstable?” Sherwood persisted.

How to redirect an angry werewolf. I was experienced at this, having grown up in the Marrok’s pack of too-unstable-to-inflict-on-anyone-else werewolves. I just had to pick my weapon. Make him madder? Or make him think? One was certainly easier than the other, but I picked option two because it was less likely to end in disaster.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I said evenly. “Why do you think I should answer yours?”

I smiled my thanks to the waiter, who’d brought a clear pitcher foggy with the condensation clinging to its cold sides and set it down in front of me. The waiter smiled back, displaying sharp yellow teeth as he cleared away my empty limeade glasses. He stayed as far away from Sherwood as he could.

“It is not like you to play games,” Sherwood said, after the waiter had left us via the door leading directly to the kitchen.

“Adam asked that I not start any serious discussion until we were alone,” I answered, pouring myself some water. And in case he didn’t know which question I was talking about, I continued, “I shouldn’t have asked about Shakespeare, but I couldn’t help myself. That betting pool has taken on a life of its own.”

He looked at me a moment. Then he heaved a sigh and said, “No, I’m not Shakespeare.”

“No,” I replied to his previous question. “We don’t think you need Zack to keep your temper under control.”

“Then why do you need him?” he asked.

“Because having a submissive wolf in the room makes conversations between two dominant wolves easier,” said my mate, striding through the doorway with Zack trailing behind him.

Adam offered the empty chair Ben had used to Zack in a way that reminded me, as Adam’s manners sometimes did, that he was a product of another time. There was something protective and gallant in the old-fashioned action. It didn’t have the air of a man pulling a chair out for a lady, but it wasn’t far off.

Once Zack was seated beside Sherwood, Adam brought another chair over to sit beside me. He was close enough that his leg pressed against mine. In no way, shape, or form did his touch make me safer, but I felt like it did.

A movement by the exit door caught my attention as Uncle Mike looked in.

Uncle Mike gave Adam a somewhat ironic salute and slanted an unreadable look at Sherwood—or maybe Zack, it was hard to tell. To me he gave his usual wide grin, his “I’m just a friendly innkeeper, darlin’ ” smile that I found significantly less reassuring than I had before I knew him well. My ongoing wariness seemed to amuse him, though, so I’d learned to not let it show.

Uncle Mike touched a controller I’d assumed were lights, but instead the music stopped. He stepped back into the corridor and made a gesture, meeting my eyes meaningfully before he moved out of sight behind the closing door. There was a funny sort of pop as the door shut, something that my ears didn’t quite hear but I knew was magic.

Sherwood’s eyebrow climbed.

“I asked Uncle Mike for a bit of privacy,” Adam said, and I realized that I hadn’t needed to say anything to our waiter. No one would disturb us—and no one would overhear us, either.

I wondered if that magically enhanced privacy was the reason for Uncle Mike’s look. Maybe. Probably.

But Uncle Mike was old. And I was pretty sure that he knew who Sherwood was—or had been. That look . . . had he glanced at Sherwood first and then me? I couldn’t remember.

“What do you want to do?” Sherwood asked bluntly, drawing my gaze back from the closed door.

He looked a little . . . more real than I was used to. I blinked and the impression faded, leaving me not quite sure what I’d seen.

Probably it was my subconscious acknowledging that he was more than he had been, I decided. Possibly the impression had been aided a little by the intensity that the two dominant werewolves at this table couldn’t help but generate. I wasn’t Adam, to read the fine points in our pack bonds, but I could feel the magic warn that trouble was imminent if something didn’t give.

I hadn’t heard the invitation, but Adam had told me he would ask Sherwood to our table, as a guest. For the majority of werewolves it wouldn’t have had any effect. They aren’t fae, who observe guesting laws by necessity. But Adam was sure that Sherwood was old, maybe old enough that guesting laws would mean something. Conditioning wasn’t magic, but it tended to linger.

The little table, designed for two, made a fragile barrier between Adam and Sherwood. I wondered if I should shove the table over a foot—Zack and I didn’t need a barrier between us.

Instead of directly answering Sherwood’s question, Adam poured himself a glass of water. He was being careful to keep his gaze away from Sherwood’s face, except for brief, sweeping glances. Sherwood, I noticed, was doing the same.

Adam took a drink and, with the formal politeness of a dowager duchess in a Jane Austen movie, said, “I don’t know what they do to this, but it might be the best water I’ve ever tasted.”

We all knew that it was an invitation to Sherwood to accept the hospitality of the table. What he did in response would set the tone of the negotiations.

Sherwood looked at Adam a moment, not quite long enough to initiate active conflict. Then he looked away, sighed audibly, and relaxed his shoulders a degree or two.

With a quirk of his lips and a touch of showmanship, he filled his own glass. As if it were fine wine in a crystal goblet instead of battered barware, he brought the drink to his nose and inhaled. He sipped it, working his mouth as if rolling it on his tongue.

The room’s dim lights caught his hazel eyes. I couldn’t recall if I had noticed what color his eyes were before. Which was a little odd, now that I thought about it.

“Nothing magical,” Sherwood said, a not-so-subtle reminder that he was adept with some sort of magic.

He took a second drink. “Not magical anymore, I should have said. They’ve purified it somehow.”

He put the glass down deliberately, as if putting an end to the theater. Adam glanced at Zack and me, then nodded his head toward the pitcher.

Zack and I each filled our glasses and drank. The water could have been out of a sewer and I wouldn’t have noticed, not just then. I swallowed quickly and set the glass down. Zack took his time. No one spoke until he put his glass down, too.

“Just about two weeks ago, something happened to you,” Adam said in the same conversational tone that he’d used to talk about the water. “I felt it in the pack bonds as you came back into your power. As if a firework sparkler turned into a fusion bomb. Quite extraordinary.”

Even now when I sought Sherwood through the pack bonds, he felt the same as he always had. Adam thought Sherwood was doing something that kept me and all the pack unaware of his true power. Either Sherwood had not bothered to hide what he’d become from Adam—or he couldn’t hide himself from the Alpha of his pack. I thought it was the latter.

“Something died,” Sherwood said. He gave a brief, unhappy smile. “You could ask Charles about that if you’d like to. I heard that he was in the right place when it died, but I haven’t talked to him about it.”

“Something?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Something. Someone. An old foe. By its death, it released me.”

It wasn’t the time for stories now. I’d call Anna and see if she knew anything.

“You remember yourself,” Adam murmured.

“Yes,” agreed Sherwood, in an equally quiet voice.

“I gave you time to come to me,” Adam said. “But you didn’t. For the sake of the pack, I could not let it lie any longer.”

Danger scented the air, a sharp, almost storm-front quality that was as much possibility as odor. I couldn’t tell if it was my nose warning me or the pack bonds.

“I understand,” Sherwood said. “My identity is a problem.”

“I don’t care who you are,” Adam said heavily, “or were.”

“He’s not Shakespeare,” I said cheerfully into the heavy threat gathering. “He told me so.”

Briefly a smile lightened my mate’s face. “There will be several of the pack disappointed.”

“Six,” I said. “Including Sherwood. They might have won two hundred and four dollars and eighty-three cents, split between them.”

“Life is about disappointment,” murmured Zack. “Who keeps putting pennies in? What do you do if they win?”

I had a plan for that, but Sherwood interrupted me before I got the first word out.

“You don’t care who I am?” asked Sherwood, sounding . . . not distrustful exactly. If Adam had lied, we’d all have heard it.

“I don’t have any money in the betting pool,” Adam said mildly. “And I’m curious. But who you were doesn’t matter for the pack’s welfare.”

“Darned curious,” I said confidentially, bumping Adam’s shoulder very lightly with mine.

I had been raised by werewolves. I knew how to manage them. The key to keeping two dominant wolves from killing each other was to keep things from getting confrontational. Zack and I were both working to lighten the atmosphere, our voices reminding Adam and Sherwood that this was not a duel and not a fight. Not yet.

To that end I continued, “Maybe even expletive-deleted curious. Starts with an ‘f’ and isn’t ‘firetruck.’ But he won’t say so in front of me.”

That Adam wouldn’t swear in front of me had become, fairly recently, a matter of some hilarity in the pack. A few of them were trying to get him to swear on purpose. That’s how I learned that Adam apparently swore a great deal—rivaling our pack execration champion, Ben—when there weren’t any females in the room. When I’d confronted him, he’d blamed his time in the military.

Adam didn’t look at me, but I caught the edge of his dimple peeking out, as if he’d thought I’d been funny. Proof that he wasn’t as annoyed with the pack antics as he pretended—and also that his nerves were titanium.

This could go so wrong, and there were very few ways it could go right. Which disaster came to pass depended on Sherwood, and I didn’t know who this Sherwood was.

He wasn’t paying attention to me, so it was safe to examine him. I stared at him as if my eyes could take his surface and read the depths. Sherwood’s eyes really were hazel—almost green. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed them before.

There was a black tattoo on the side of his neck, a tattoo that was so old it was hard to discern anything about it other than that it had probably not been done with a modern technique. That made sense because werewolves are hard to tattoo, but if they have ink work done before they are Changed, it stays with them.

I hadn’t realized he had a tattoo at all.

Sherwood had been in our pack about five months and I had never seen the tattoo on his neck that was the size of my hand? It wasn’t even something a high-necked collar could have covered completely—the edge of the tattoo touched his jaw. The button-down shirt he was wearing obviously didn’t hide anything. I tried to remember how Sherwood usually dressed—but I just didn’t pay much attention to what people whose names weren’t Adam wore.

I thought of Uncle Mike’s meaningful look. Had he done something to Sherwood? Or had he seen something about Sherwood that had changed?

I looked at Zack. Did he look real?

Yes. But it didn’t feel any different than usual. Did that mean that Sherwood usually didn’t look real?

While I puzzled over Sherwood, the conversation had lingered a bit on swearing, with Zack leading the conversation. No one laughed, but the tension had died down a bit when Adam returned to the original topic.

“Curiosity aside, I don’t care who you are or were,” he said.

Adam hadn’t been slouching—too many years in the army. But now he straightened further and leaned forward, careful not to cross the edge of the table, which was still serving as a small and only partial barrier between the two dominant wolves. “What I do need to know is what you now mean to the survival of my pack.”

“Because I am more dominant than you are,” Sherwood said, his voice a low rumble. He held up a hand, and when he spoke again, most of the aggression was out of his voice. “Sorry. That has not been established. Let us say that I am too dominant to fit in the space I have occupied in the pack.”

Zack drew in a shivery breath as he finally figured out that this meeting was about something a lot more serious than Sherwood regaining his memory.

Zack hadn’t been briefed by Adam like I had, and Sherwood only felt different in the pack bonds to the Alpha. Having a werewolf in the pack who was, even possibly, more dominant than our Alpha was both unexpected and possibly disastrous. Sherwood, without taking his attention from Adam, put a reassuring hand on Zack’s shoulder.

Adam took a moment before he spoke.

“The pack’s situation is precarious,” Adam said. He glanced at Sherwood and then away. It was a look that human males don’t do much—good werewolf manners, one Alpha to another—equal to equal.

Sherwood nodded slowly, giving Adam the same look-and-away deliberately, completing the acknowledgment of equality that Adam had begun. A step back from the assertion of superiority that both wolves could accept better than mere words. A lot of communication between werewolves was nonverbal. That was why this conversation was happening in person instead of over the phone.

“Everything hangs by a thread the fae have managed to spin here,” Adam told Sherwood. “Not just our pack’s fate or the fate of the peoples—wolves, fae, human, and other—who live here in our territory. It may be the thread that leads the entire world away from the probability of annihilation of whole categories of sentient peoples. We, all of us, stand upon a precipice. If our pack can continue the illusion that this, our home, is a safe place for all, the Gray Lords might manage to negotiate a peace that holds.”

Sherwood’s lips twisted, but it wasn’t a smile, not really. “I hadn’t thought you were that much of an optimist. How many witches have you met that you think peace is possible with them? Vampires? The fae barely look up from assassinating each other.”

He didn’t sound like Sherwood, I thought, but what he said still sounded familiar, like listening to a few lines from an old movie I couldn’t quite place.

“I know you understand what I mean,” Adam said impatiently, his voice a little hoarse with the wolf, though his eyes were still dark. “Isolated violence is different from genocide. A battle is different from a war.”

Sherwood tipped his head in admission. “Yes. But you know and I know that even if the Gray Lords manage to work out some kind of peace—it will not last. The humans are just beginning to remember what their ancestors understood. And they are afraid. In this case, knowledge will not make them less afraid.”

I’d grown up listening to variants on the theme. Sherwood sounded, I thought, like someone who had been watching world events for a very long time, like Bran.

“You think like an immortal,” Adam said, echoing my thoughts. “Of course, peace doesn’t last any more than war does. We”—he waved a hand around in a swirling gesture as if indicating every thinking being on the planet—“tire of peace, eventually. But I know war. And every day I can hold it off is valuable to me, and to its victims.”

“Fighting becomes a habit,” I offered, more to break up the intensity that had developed between Adam and Sherwood again than because I really had something to add. “But so can peace, if you give it time.”

But Adam nodded at me as if my point had been important.

“Peace kills fewer people,” he said. “And if we get a peace that lasts for a century or a decade, it is worth fighting for.”

Sherwood raised an eyebrow at Adam. I frowned at him. There was something about that expression.

Adam nodded. “Fighting for peace—I know how stupid it sounds. I fought in that war, and it didn’t seem to help anyone at all.”

He sighed, took another drink. When Adam spoke again, his words had weight, though he spoke quietly. “I am responsible for my pack. For the lives of those living in my territory. For those I love. That responsibility gives me a duty to strive for peace.”

Sherwood scowled at the corner of the room. “You didn’t bring me here to discuss the possible outcome of the Gray Lords’ politicking.”

“I think that might be the heart of the matter,” Adam said, soft-voiced. “The Gray Lords’ politicking leaves us operating on the edge of what we can do, with failure not an option if our pack is to survive.”

He allowed Sherwood to think about that for a minute. The other wolf shrugged, managing to convey sympathy rather than indifference.

“Because our pack is standing between those who live in our territory and those who would harm them, held there by honor and by a bargain with the fae, my actions are limited,” Adam said. “And I think that yours are, too.”

“I don’t want this to happen,” Sherwood said. “But avoidance has obviously gotten me nowhere.” He waved a hand to indicate the discussion we were having. “You are a good Alpha, but I am not going to die tonight.”

A pack could not have two Alpha wolves. One of them would have to submit to the other, or die.

“There are the usual choices,” said Adam.

None of them would work, I thought bleakly. Adam had already been through them with me.

When Adam didn’t continue, Sherwood turned one palm up in invitation. Despite the tension of the situation, I found my attention drawn inexplicably to him again.

Sherwood took up space, physically as well as metaphysically. The only one in our pack bigger than Sherwood was Darryl. Unlike Darryl, Sherwood wasn’t handsome, but there was something about the structure of his face that inspired trust. It was, I suddenly realized, the face of someone people would follow off a cliff, a Rasputin, maybe.

Or a Bran.

A cold chill traveled down my spine as my subconscious stirred.

“You can leave,” Adam said neutrally, and his words brought my attention back to the matter at hand with a jerk.

Here we go. I offered up a prayer, and helpless to stop myself, I put a hand on Adam’s thigh. Hopefully, he wouldn’t find it distracting, but I needed to touch him.

“Is that what you want me to do?” Sherwood asked, but not as if he were seriously considering it. There was a subtle challenge in his tone that made the room harder to breathe in.

To someone who had not understood what Adam had spent the last quarter of an hour saying, Sherwood’s leaving would be an easy solution.

Adam met his gaze and held it this time. The possibility of violence sharpened, the smell of it like ozone in the air before a lightning strike.

“No,” Adam said into that waiting maelstrom. “You were a gift from the Marrok to my pack. I don’t throw away gifts.”

Sherwood gave a sudden, fierce smile that changed the waiting violence, gave it pause, as he said, “A gift from Bran Cornick and you didn’t run? Maybe I was intended as punishment.”

I hadn’t ever seen quite that expression on Sherwood’s face, but I’d seen it somewhere.

It was gone in a moment, but his hazel eyes were still crinkled at the corners as he continued softly, “Or maybe this whole situation was intended to be punishment for me instead.”

Adam gave him a wry smile in return. “I am absolutely sure that all three could be true at once. This is Bran Cornick at work. He is good at that kind of planning.” After a second, he added, “Or taking credit for planning when the whole situation is a total accident.”

Sherwood gave a crack of laughter and quaffed the water in his glass with the flair of a pirate downing a mug of ale, complete with slamming the empty glass on the table. He did not break either glass or table, though it was a near thing.

“If Bran planned this,” I said grimly, “I’m going to make sure he regrets it.”

Sherwood gave me a sardonic look. “This is beyond raw eggs and peanut-buttered seats.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “It is.”

“You know I can’t let you leave,” Adam said. “We are just barely managing our part of the balance the fae have constructed here. If the pack fails, the whole house of cards falls down and this chance of peace will be gone. The pack cannot afford for you to leave.”

“Let.” Sherwood showed his teeth.

It was Adam’s turn to shrug. “Leaving is a choice you might have. If you wanted to leave, I would fight to keep you—for the good of our pack.” His eyes flashed yellow. “The wolf requires it of me because you might be the key to the pack’s survival. I—my wolf would fight to the death to keep you.”

The words rang in the air, and Adam let them hang for a moment. The pause wasn’t on purpose. He was fighting his wolf to form words. Adam’s control was very good, but the wolf he carried—even not considering Elizaveta’s parting gift—was uncommonly wild.

I squeezed his leg. He put his hand on mine. When I turned my palm up, he gripped my hand so tightly it verged on pain.

Sherwood spoke, soft-voiced, into the silence. “For those very same reasons, I could not leave.”

Adam nodded. I knew that he had not really expected Sherwood to be able to leave. If he had been able to leave his pack when it was in trouble, he would not be the level of dominant that could challenge Adam.

“If my wolf could be persuaded that the best thing for the pack was for me to leave . . .” Adam’s voice was deeper, even though his eyes were almost entirely human.

“I couldn’t do that,” Sherwood admitted.

Adam nodded. “We need every wolf. If you need me to stay—and you do—you will have to defeat me in combat or my wolf won’t accept you as Alpha. And because you need me to stay, your wolf won’t let me leave, either.”

“And you couldn’t go any more than I could,” Sherwood said wryly.

Maybe, Adam had said to me as we drove to Uncle Mike’s, Sherwood will see something I don’t. Maybe he’ll see a way through this. Maybe he can bring something to the table that will change the situation.

Adam had said that Sherwood felt to him as though he was a Power on par with some of the more ancient wolves in Bran’s pack. Maybe with Bran himself.

I hoped so. I hoped that Sherwood was the greatest, most powerful warrior the werewolves had ever had. Because maybe, maybe if he was better than Adam by more than a little, Sherwood could beat Adam without killing him.

Adam was a very, very good fighter, and he did not think that he could beat the Sherwood Post he now shared a pack bond with. For the first time ever, I wished that I didn’t trust his judgment.

“If you want the pack,” Adam said, “tell me. It won’t change how hard I fight . . . but it might change some of my choices when we battle.”

Zack leaned across the table to put a hand on my arm, though I was pretty sure I hadn’t made a sound.

What had happened to my tidy life where the most dangerous thing I did was tinker with old cars?

Adam’s hand, still clasped tightly with mine, reminded me that I knew exactly what had happened to my contented, safe life. I inhaled his rich scent and thought, Worth it. Worth every bruise, every moment of terror, to be Adam Hauptman’s mate. Even if it ends tonight.

Adam was worth everything.

“What if—” Zack’s voice was almost breathless. He stopped speaking as if he were trying to put something difficult into words.

When I looked at him, he didn’t appear worried or sad or anything else I would have thought appropriate. Instead, there was something approaching awe in his face. Zack’s hand was still on my arm, but the rest of his body was twisted around so he could look Sherwood in the face.

“What if?” I asked when it didn’t appear he was going to finish.

To my surprise, Zack gave me a brilliant smile. He let go of my arm and sat back in his chair. “What if everything just remained the same?”

All three of us stared at him.

Around the question of who is Alpha, there is no room for wishes or wants. Any doubt about the ability or suitability of their Alpha makes the whole pack more dangerous—not to their enemies but to themselves and to their allies.

Warren is more dominant than Darryl, my rebel self observed. And because Warren wishes it, Darryl is still our second. But I knew that the situation wasn’t remotely the same. Darryl wasn’t an Alpha, and neither was Warren.

“You know it doesn’t work that way,” said Adam. He might have been answering my thoughts, but he was talking to Zack. Because the other wolf was a submissive and as fragile as any werewolf I’d ever known, Adam’s voice was gentle.

In response, Zack turned to stare at Sherwood.

Submissive wolves don’t generally do things like that.

I looked at Sherwood to make sure he wasn’t going to take offense. And all the little niggling things my subconscious had noticed finally came together and I saw what Zack had seen.

Sherwood was giving Zack a fond-but-exasperated look. It was a look I’d seen directed at me, but not by Sherwood.

“You’re a Cornick,” I said in shock. “I’d recognize that exasperated expression anywhere. Samuel uses it when I beat him at chess.”