Mrs. Miller said, “You are a werewolf.”
“Yes,” Charles said. He hadn’t intended for her to see the wolf, too, but he wasn’t going to lie to her.
“Good,” she said. “Kill him.”
“I intend to,” he told her, ignoring Leslie’s indrawn breath. Some people needed to die.
Dr. Miller looked down at his daughter. “I thought … She’s been gone months and we didn’t know. I thought it would be months and months more and … You found her in one day.”
He’d thought they’d find her dead. He’d said as much. Charles understood; he’d mostly thought that, too. It had been Anna who had hoped for them all.
“It’s not over,” Charles told him. “It’s going to continue to be bad for a long time.”
Amethyst’s father gave Charles an expression that wasn’t really a smile; there was too much experience in it. “I’m a doctor. A pediatrician. That’s usually my line. I know someone, a really good someone, who picks up the pieces and helps people put themselves back together. Amethyst will be all right.” He looked at his daughter and when he looked up again, his eyes were wet. “It’ll take years of therapy. Probably for all of us: a long uphill battle. But we’re still on the field fighting the good fight, battered and beaten though we are, and I understand just what a great gift that is.”
By the time Leslie drove them back to their car, it was nearly dinnertime.
“We don’t get that all the time,” Leslie told Charles as she turned onto the highway. Anna grunted as she slid from one side of the car to the other. It wasn’t a pained grunt, so Charles made do with a glance over his shoulder to make sure she was all right. “It’s why I joined up, you know, saving people.”
“She isn’t saved yet,” Charles told Leslie.
“I know, years of counseling and medication even, but much better than I thought they were going to get.”
“Yes,” he said, “but she isn’t going to be safe until that fae is dead.”
Leslie sucked in a breath. “We have the man who owns that property in custody. He lawyered up immediately, but my man on the ground says he is definitely fae. He couldn’t bear the touch of metal.”
“The current justice system is not up to handling a fae of this caliber. Not if the Gray Lords have removed his restrictions. If he is not killed, that poor pile of bodies in the attic won’t be a drop in the bucket. Fae don’t die on their own; you have to help them along.”
“I think,” she said, “that we’re going to have to agree to disagree.”
“Just make sure you don’t let him slip through your fingers,” said Charles.
Anna changed in the back of the car, while Charles leaned against it and made sure no one got close enough to look in the back window. When she was human again and dressed, she got out of the car and just hugged him.
He hugged her back and let himself admit just how much he needed her touch.
“All those children,” she said. “All of those children dead. And that was just here, in this town. How long ago did he start? One a year for what? A thousand years? Two thousand years? And Amethyst? Do you think…?”
She couldn’t even make herself say the words. All he could give her was the truth.
“I don’t know. Probably.” He kissed the top of her head and found that he was comforting himself as much as he was her. “But we stopped him and she’ll grow up strong and true. Her parents will see to it. And she’s tough.”
Amethyst had grabbed on to him, he thought. Grabbed on with both hands, and held on because she had known he’d keep her safe. She wanted to be okay, and that was a good step.
“She’ll survive, Anna. He won’t win—we have him now. Let the human justice system do what it can. When he leaves it, I’ll hunt him unto the ends of the earth if I have to.” Cliché words—and they sounded hollow to him, though he absolutely meant them.
Absurdly, they seemed to be what Anna needed. She took a deep breath and said, “Yes. Yes. That. How fortunate for the world that you are in it.” She pulled back, wiped her eyes, gave him a smile.
He didn’t know what she meant. He was a killer with bloodstained hands. He was necessary, though. Maybe that was what she meant.
“Part of the solution,” she said. “My dad always told us to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. You are always part of the solution.”
“Solution to what?”
“Anything. Everything. Me.” Her smile brightened and then died. Her voice was dead serious when she spoke again. “There is evil in the world, Charles. I know I’m not telling you anything that you don’t know. But those people out there?” She swept a hand out toward the bustling rush-hour traffic on the road running past the parking lot where they stood. “Those people have no idea. And the reason they have no idea is because you are around to keep them safe. You and Bran and Leslie—and Leeds and Marsden, too. But mostly you. Where you are, there hope is also. The hope that good is strong enough to prevail.” She took a big breath and let it out. “I want your child.”
His stomach plummeted. He didn’t know that he could have that conversation right now. Not when his shirt was still damp from Amethyst’s tears and the stink of the dead was still in his nose.
Anna turned away from him, rocking up on her toes and back. He wondered if she was thinking about running away. Or wishing she could run back to the Anna she had been before she learned about the evil in the world.
“I understand now, I think,” she told him in a low voice, her back still turned. “You know what’s out here. You think that if you, if we, have a child, then they will come after him or her. Those who serve evil. You see a child as a hostage to fate. Isn’t that Shakespeare? Evil always goes after the innocents, Charles. But no innocent will be safer than one under your protection. You brought hope into my world when I had given up.”
She turned back to him, and she was wiping her cheeks again. She hesitated, her eyes widening—and then she reached up and gently wiped his, too.
“But I saw you today,” she whispered. “I do think you are wrong. I think your child would be the safest person in the universe. But I’m done hurting you. I saw your face and I know why you’re scared. That was a lot of pain you felt for her. It’s okay. I don’t like the way this discussion has come between us. When you are ready, you just let me know, okay? Don’t wait until forever.”
Children die, he thought. He was pretty sure he kept those words to himself and hadn’t given them to Anna.
She stood on tiptoe, waiting for him to duck down to her. When he did, she kissed him, first on the nose and then, hotly, on the mouth.
“Get in the car, sweetcheeks,” she said briskly, though her voice was husky. “I have horses to look at.”
“Anna,” he said as he buckled himself into the passenger seat.
“Yes?” She hit the gas and drove out of the parking lot headed north.
“Don’t ever call me sweetcheeks.”
She grinned at him, then paid strict attention to her driving. As she took them out to the Sanis’ ranch, he wondered that she could look at him, who had hands that would never, could never come clean, and she saw hope.
Hosteen was there when they got back. He frowned warily at Anna. But Anna had seen terrible things today. Having a grumpy old werewolf who freaked out because she could send his wolf to sleep was barely a blip on her radar. Not when she was worried about Charles, who hadn’t said a single word all the way to the ranch.
His hand was on the small of her back, though. So they had to be good, right?
“Wade told me that Cantrip and the FBI are letting you help go after the fae who tried to kill my great-grandchildren,” Hosteen growled.
He was talking to Charles, but it was the wrong attitude to throw at her husband just now. Anna said, “We worked with the FBI and Cantrip today. We found the girl who’d been replaced by the changeling. She’s alive, and I think she’ll be okay. Wade or Kage told you about the changeling, right? Also, the FBI
think they have the person who took her and spelled Chelsea in custody. He was the janitor at the day care.”
She waited, the tension in the air rising as her husband started to get angry. It was like the whole hallway started to smell of ozone—the smell was imaginary, but the energy crackled.
“You know what?” she said suddenly. “This is not the time for this. We just found the bodies of dozens of children stacked up like forgotten dolls. You two go ahead and have your fight. This is not my problem to fix.”
Charles’s hand curled around the nape of her neck.
Hosteen said, “Feisty, isn’t she?”
“Tired of drama today,” said Charles. “So am I.”
Something happened between them; Anna was sure of it. Something she missed because Charles was behind her, or maybe it was some guy thing. But the air cleared.
Charles said, “Are we going to have drama here?”
Hosteen rubbed his face with both hands. “Hell, Charles, there is always some sort of drama going on here. If you think wolf packs are big on drama, you should try the horse crowd for a while.” He looked at Anna. “My problem with you is just that, my problem. I’ve never met a real Omega before. I didn’t understand what that meant. I don’t like making a fool out of myself; my father was a drunkard and I swore never to be one.”
He wasn’t the first werewolf to freak out about what Omega really meant. She suspected he wouldn’t be the last. He was being gracious, so she could be gracious, too.
“Yes,” she said. “It hits the dominant wolves harder, I’m told. For what it’s worth, I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t know I could affect someone like that; if I had, I’d have warned you.” She’d have apologized earlier, but he hadn’t given her the chance.
She was hungry. Changing always left her starving, and so did drama. “I smell food. Is there any left?”
Hosteen smiled, and bowed. She saw some martial arts training in that bow. “I think they left you some,” he said, his face lit with mischief. “We could go see.”
Chelsea came out of her room to eat with them, making it a late supper for four. Kage was out working in the stables with all three kids. They had taken some horses to the show grounds that night and were planning on taking more in the morning. Maggie and Joseph had eaten in Joseph’s suite earlier in the day. Ernestine was in her room taking a break.
Chelsea had accepted the news that they’d found Amethyst and, probably, the fae responsible for all the trouble with a faint smile and a quiet “That’s good.”
Anna worried that she was being too quiet, like the calm before the storm.
Bran had developed a method designed to minimize the problems of the Change as much as they could be minimized. People who wanted to become werewolves petitioned Bran, the Marrok. They would fill out questionnaires, get testimonials from people they knew (werewolves), and write essays on why they wanted to be werewolves. Those with good enough reasons and stable personalities (although Anna had argued that anyone who wanted to be a werewolf on purpose could not be deemed “stable” on any level) were granted their petition.
The actual Change was done at the same time every year, complete with a set of ceremonies intended to weed out the bad seeds and the weak willed, the latter of whom would not survive the Change they were seeking.
Bran’s intention was to increase the survivability of werewolves. And it worked. Those who attended Bran’s version of the Change were much more likely to live, long-term, than those who were simply Changed by accident or attack.
They knew what to expect, they knew the costs, and they understood what they were getting into. The others, those like Anna and Chelsea, had to deal with the reality of being a werewolf on the fly. Chelsea looked as though she was having trouble adjusting. Maybe Anna could help with that.
She took a bite of very good lasagna and said, in as conversational a tone as she could manage, “I was trying to gently tell this guy that I had decided that we shouldn’t go on any more dates when he attacked me and turned me into a werewolf.” She looked at Hosteen. “This is very good; did Ernestine make it?”
He shook his head. “No. I did.” He smiled. “Part of my penance for riding off in the middle of things.”
“I’d love your recipe.” She took another bite.
“I’ll write it down for you before you go,” he said.
She nodded. “I’d like that.” She looked at Chelsea. “They had been looking for some time for an Omega wolf, because Omegas, among other things, can calm werewolves. The Alpha in Chicago, where I lived, was desperately in love with his mate. She was getting more and more violent; that sometimes happens to old werewolves. Anyway”—she forced herself to eat another bite and swallow it—“this was before werewolves had come out. I didn’t even know they were real when I turned into one.” The next bite stuck in her throat and she couldn’t talk.
“They kept her prisoner,” Charles said in a low voice. “Abused her because that was the only way they could control her. You know that packs are very hierarchical. An Omega is outside the pack structure like that. She—or he—doesn’t feel the same need to obey.”
Charles gave Chelsea a compassionate look, though Anna didn’t know if anyone but she could read him well enough to see the sympathy in his eyes. “Like the way that you felt you needed to come here and eat with us, only because Hosteen asked you to.”
Chelsea looked down at her plate, her jaw tight. Anna had thought she had a handle on what Chelsea was going through, but she’d missed that part of it. Maybe because, as an Omega, she’d never felt that need to obey someone more dominant. Yeah, she thought, that would rankle a woman like Chelsea.
Charles continued. “The Alpha is, or should be, the one most capable of protecting his pack. Not just the safety of the pack, but the well-being of each of its members. But Anna’s first Alpha only cared about his mate. He needed Anna to keep his mate from attracting my father’s attention. He knew that my father would have her killed because Isabelle was a danger to everyone around her, human and wolf alike. He couldn’t dominate Anna as he did all the other wolves, so he brutalized her. He taught her to fear him in an effort to keep her under his thumb.” Charles and Hosteen exchanged a look.
It was Hosteen who said, “That was a betrayal of everything an Alpha is supposed to be.”
“Yes,” said Anna. “I’m telling you this story, not as a one-upmanship kind of thing.” She dropped her voice and added a little radio announcer. “You think you have it bad, you have it easy compared to me.” And then returned to her own voice. “Because that isn’t true. You have it different. But you need to know that you aren’t alone; I do understand what you’re going through.”
She set down her fork because eating was beyond her. “Yesterday you woke up and were just grateful you were alive. That your kids were okay. Tonight you are beginning to understand the price that you are going to pay for that. You aren’t entirely sure it is worth it.”
“Dying is easy,” said Hosteen. “Living is brutal.”
“There are a lot of downsides,” Anna said. “You probably know what most of those are.” She wasn’t going to enumerate them. Nothing like taking a person who feels bad already and telling them how horrible their life might be to turn mild depression into suicidal. “The people who go to Bran to be Changed know what they’re getting into and they have time to make a choice. You and I? We didn’t get time to make a choice. But the downsides are only there because you’re alive. You have people who love you. And you have what will hopefully be a very long time to come to terms with what you are.”
Under the table, Charles put his hand on her knee. She swallowed hard. “You’re going through a period of mourning what you once were because there is no going back. Just keep in mind that there are good things, too.”
“One of the good things is that you don’t have to be afraid of the dark witches anymore,” said Hosteen casually.
Chelsea stiffened and looked up at him.
&nb
sp; “You’re not dumb. Of course you are afraid of them.” He turned his coffee cup around between his hands, watching it instead of Chelsea. “If you’re born a witch and you don’t want to kill and torture for power, then you’re ripe for being killed and tortured yourself. That’s why you worked so hard to keep what you are secret. Kage worried for you. He didn’t talk to me about it, but he told Joseph, who came to me. I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t offer my help.”
“Maybe I am a dark witch,” she said hostilely.
“No,” said Hosteen, raising his eyes. “I can smell a dark witch from a mile away. No. You were hiding. But now you belong to a pack, and our pack can and will protect you from the dark witches.”
“Why now?” she asked, her blue-gray eyes lightening to near-Arctic white, like those of Charles’s brother, Samuel. “Wasn’t I worthy of protection when I was just Kage’s wife?”
“Yes,” said Hosteen slowly. “But I was not worthy of protecting you.”
“What does that even mean?” asked Chelsea, pushing away from the table abruptly. She stood up, clenching her hands into fists.
“It means that I am a stubborn old wolf,” Hosteen said. “And maybe I am more interested in my own opinions than listening to my grandson, who is a smart man. That is my failure. Perhaps one of the things that will be a good thing about your becoming a werewolf is that it has changed me, too. And that will mean our family is more welcoming, as it should have been from the beginning.”
“I can’t think,” said Chelsea, breathing hard. “Why can’t I think?”
“Mom?”
Anna had been so distracted by Chelsea that she hadn’t heard Max until he spoke from the doorway.
Chelsea turned wild eyes to her son and fell to the ground, convulsing.
CHAPTER
12
Anna got up and put her hand on Max’s shoulder to keep him from going to Chelsea. “It will be okay,” she said. “But she wouldn’t want you to see this.”