His da, Charles believed, thought Sherwood’s amnesia was something he could have overcome if Sherwood had been willing to try to remember who and what he had been. Charles wasn’t so sure—he’d been there when they’d dragged him out of the silver cage, more skin and bones than flesh. Da had known the old wolf longer, but Charles thought that might be giving his da unrealistic expectations.
Bran had finally had it out with Sherwood one night behind the closed doors of his study. Charles didn’t know what had happened there, but magic had leaked from the room and a dark voice that did not belong to his da spoke in tones that rattled the bones of the house, though no one who heard it could understand what it said.
The next day, Da had given the old wolf a new name: Sherwood Post, a name he’d claimed to have taken at random from a pair of books he’d had on his desk. Charles thought it was more calculated than that; he hadn’t even known his da had a copy of Emily Post’s book in his library. Bran had then forbidden any of his wolves who had known Sherwood before from speaking the wolf’s old name. There hadn’t been very many of them—the old Sherwood Post hadn’t sought out werewolf company, and when he had, he’d often used names other than his own.
“I’m not sending you alone,” Bran said. “I spoke to Tag, told him the pertinent parts of this story, and he has agreed to go.”
“Tag,” Charles said warily. Taking the berserker out in public was a risk.
Bran nodded. “Sherwood Post almost died. He thought he’d defeated it—I know this because he never went back, and he would have. But if he’d been sure, he wouldn’t have worried about telling the story of what he’d faced. I need to send you with backup.”
He clenched his hands and met his son’s eyes. “I can’t come. Risking both of us is unacceptable—and I need to stay here.” He hesitated, then admitted, “With Leah. I don’t like any of this. Tag isn’t a mage—but magic slides off him in unusual ways, and he’s traveled all over. He’s had encounters with more kinds of creatures than almost anyone I know.”
Charles got up. “I’ll tell Anna what we are doing.” He paused. “I would rather leave her here. Tag and I both have some defenses against magic.”
“But you can’t,” said his da.
Charles met his eyes. “No. If you are sending Tag, bringing Anna becomes imperative. If he goes berserker, she’s the only one besides you who would have a chance of bringing him down.”
“Yes,” Bran said.
“You asked me to come here without Anna so you could tell me how Leah and this missing town might be part of the same story,” Charles said. It was a guess, but he could tell from his da’s face he hadn’t gotten it wrong. “If Anna comes with me, I need to tell her everything.”
Bran nodded. “I wouldn’t ask you to keep this from your mate.”
“So why did you make me leave her home?” Charles asked.
“Do you think,” said his da, a hint of amusement in his voice if not his face, “that your mate would have let me get through the story without demanding more information?” He lifted an eyebrow, and his eyes, wolf eyes, laughed. “Or chew me out for how I treated both you and Leah?”
Charles thought about it.
Bran’s face grew serious. “But these events have left my wolf a little unstable, and justified as Anna’s rebuke would be, I am not willing to risk hurting her feelings—” He paused and said, “—or scaring her.”
They were all—all of the pack—conscious of where Anna had been before Charles had found her. He was pretty sure she had no idea how hard they all worked to not be too scary. Some of that came from understanding what they owed her. Bran had not had to put down any of his pack for loss of control since Anna had become part of it. Charles wasn’t sure he could remember a year without either him or Bran having to end one of their own.
No sane dominant wolf wanted to distress an Omega in any way. Stable wolves, mostly, didn’t have to become one of Bran’s wolves, but they had not had so much as a serious fight break out among their own since Anna had come. Even the most broken of the wolves did not want to scare Anna, because she was an Omega.
Charles nodded. “Are we coordinating with the FBI on this?”
Bran leaned back and sighed. “I appreciate them bringing this to us. But I judge that this is our problem. If the people disappeared from private property, it is not their jurisdiction.”
“Are we interested in an alliance?” Charles said. “Not the one we were offered, with some secret-even-to-themselves collection of federal officials. But a real alliance with the mundane humans?” It seemed to him that a path could be cleared to doing so.
“What’s in it for us?” Da said. “I don’t mind this sort of … voluntary cooperation between us. But why should I enter into an agreement that would allow them to pull me into a conflict some idiot in Washington creates?”
Charles gave his da a shrewd look. He knew better than to tell his da that the strong should protect the weak. Da believed that all right; Charles had learned it from him. But even a torturer would not get the Marrok to admit he believed mundane humans should be protected.
So Charles said, “Because in the end, the human population holds all the cards. It would cost them, but they could kill us all.”
“Point,” Bran said. “But we are a long way out from having to make a decision on that.”
“I have a few questions about Leah’s story,” Charles said, fairly sure their listener had left. His da might be more willing to open up now.
LEAH LEFT THE hallway outside Bran’s study when the topic of conversation turned to theoretical politics. It wasn’t her habit to eavesdrop, but she had heard her name and paused. When it became clear what they were talking about, she found herself glued to the floor.
She didn’t know if Bran had known she was there. Or if he had intended to keep to himself the news that there was something going on in the mountains where she had been reborn, died, and been reborn again.
She’d never been back there, though she’d requested that Bran acquire the land after he had married her in the legal sense not long after he’d first brought her here. She couldn’t even remember what her reason for that had been. A lot of her memories of those early days of their marriage were foggy.
She only knew some part of her still longed to return … home—which was an odd way to think of a place she didn’t really remember and where she had lived so short a time. Another part felt it would be unwise to let that land fall to some innocent. It was sheer luck it had ended up in the middle of a wild area rather than on the edge of some settlement turned to town turned to city—luck and a rugged landscape that did not yield easily to the needs of mankind.
She wandered to her bedroom and over to the jewelry tower in the corner of the room. It was turned so she could observe herself in the full-length mirror, and she did so.
Straight dark blond hair, loose today, hung down to her shoulders in a shining wave. Large deep blue eyes surrounded by lashes she kept dyed, as she did her eyebrows, because they were several shades lighter than her hair.
She was tall and leanly muscled. She flexed her long-fingered, manicured hands. Her father had said she was built for work—it had not been a compliment. Bran said she looked like a Valkyrie. She wasn’t sure if that was a compliment, either, though she didn’t think it displeased him.