For a moment Anna thought Leah would balk, but finally she said, “My father and mother were missionaries called by God to educate the heathen savages.” She took up her unused salad fork and peered at it, as if looking at her own reflection.
A lot of the old wolves still took for granted things Anna’s generation tended to give more careful evaluation. Even so, Anna would never have thought the Leah she knew would have been able to utter such a sentiment seriously, but if there was sarcasm intended, Anna couldn’t pick it up in Leah’s voice.
“I was fifteen—the oldest of six children,” Leah continued. What Leah said certainly had the ring of truth, but her casual tone hid more mass than the visible top of an iceberg did. “And Papa packed us all up in a wagon and headed west.”
“This was when?” asked Anna. She might not know Leah’s story, but she knew her husband’s history. He’d been a child when Bran brought back Leah. “Late 1820s or early 1830s?”
History had not been her best subject, but living in a pack of wolves that encompassed individuals born before the Mayflower left port had upped her game. Leah’s father’s expedition west seemed pretty early. The Civil War and the California Gold Rush were both in the middle of the nineteenth century. The western expansion had mostly been driven by those two events.
Leah shrugged. “Maybe? I don’t remember. Our church funded us to fuel the salvation of pagan souls.” There was the thread of cynicism Anna had felt but not really heard. “Papa packed us all in a wagon—except for my littlest brother, who was only a few months old. He stayed with my aunt and her family. The idea was we would get settled and then my aunt and uncle would come join us.”
She huffed an unamused laugh, and her foot began to tap a rhythm on the tile floor. “He had no idea what he was doing, my papa. Big dreams and no common sense. We ran out of food first. Then my little brother James broke his leg and died from the infection that set in.”
She was speaking in a quick, light monotone—as if she couldn’t bear to actually think about the words she was using.
“Two days later, one of our horses went dead lame and the other couldn’t pull the wagon on his own over rough ground. For lack of any other plans, we camped next to a creek for a week or so waiting to see if the lamed horse would recover before we all died. The horses were pets, and Papa couldn’t bear to shoot one of them just to feed us. He couldn’t fish and Ma spent her time crying, but my oldest little brother, Tally, and I caught a few trout. Not enough, though. We were starving to death when he came.”
The door behind them opened and a waiter came in to bus their plates. Leah pasted a polite smile on her face and ordered another whiskey in a voice slightly too loud.
Hesitantly, Rachel ordered red wine. As Sage requested water, Leah started humming under her breath.
Anna asked for water, too, but most of her attention was on Leah’s music. Her humming was spot-on for pitch and rich enough to hint Leah might have a beautiful voice when she sang. Anna had never heard Leah sing. In the Marrok’s pack, music was everywhere. Anna had assumed Leah just didn’t have a good voice, that she couldn’t sing, not that she didn’t sing.
The door shut and they were alone again. No one said anything, unwilling for Leah to stop. The tune she hummed was compelling in the way “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Stairway to Heaven,” or “In the Hall of the Mountain King” was compelling. Anna found that she leaned forward to hear more—and tapped her own foot in time with Leah’s foot, which was giving a percussive beat that was counter to the rhythm of the song.
Sage’s eyes were wide and she was staring at Leah. Sitting beside her, Anna could scent her unease. Fear, even.
It was Rachel, not Sage, who broke the odd spell, though. “What are you singing?” Rachel whispered. “I think I’ve heard it before—but I don’t remember where.”
Leah stopped, blinking rapidly as if she’d been caught up in the music, too.
“Where is that whiskey?” she muttered. Then she shook her head and lied, “Nothing, Rachel. It’s just a song I heard once upon a time.”
She seemed to hear the lie with a little surprise as it crossed her lips. But she didn’t correct it, just shrugged and said briskly, “Anyway. Bran showed up. They saved me by Changing me into a werewolf.”
That was weird. Changing someone was not a way to save someone who was starving. And who was “they”? Charles had told her Bran had gone off alone and brought Leah back.
Anna knew better than to ask about any of that, though. Leah hated Charles and that put a few odd kinks in her relations with Anna, Omega or not. If Anna questioned Leah about a situation she clearly did not want to speak about, Leah would clam up.
“You were fifteen?” asked Sage, an edge of outrage in her voice because, like Anna, she had been born in the last hundred years. “Fifteen when he took you for his mate?”
That was a good question. But it wasn’t the first on Anna’s list, her very long list. And she was pretty sure it was wrong, too. Someone—Charles, surely—would have told Anna if Leah had been only fifteen when Bran brought her back to his home in Montana.
Leah shook her head and said briskly, “Fifteen? Goodness, no. Twenty or more, I think. You know how time blurs after a while.”
The “he” who had come upon Leah and her starving family had not been Bran, then. Five years or more between that day and when Bran had “rescued her” by transforming her into a werewolf. Leah had given them only the beginning and the end—leaving out all the interesting parts in between. Why had she started the story if she wasn’t going to finish it?
Anna waited for Sage to address some of those questions, but evidently she’d decided to leave off questioning.
There was a long, quiet pause as Rachel finished her drink, Sage fixed her makeup, and Leah stared at her empty shot glass. Anna tried not to look like she was bursting with curiosity. Five years of something so important Leah wouldn’t talk about it. Anna would bug Charles.
She took out her phone and texted him: Almost done. Do you know how and why Bran Changed Leah?
She’d been texting him on and off all day. She’d sent him a photo of Sage in the unflattering outfit—but not in the five hundred dresses/ shirts/pants/skirts that made her look stunning. Anna wasn’t an idiot. Charles hadn’t replied to any of them. He must be out doing something. Bran liked to steal him to go hunting when Anna was gone.
She got a text back this time.
No idea. Da doesn’t talk about it. But he doesn’t talk about the past in general. Sorry for not responding earlier. Went for a run with Da.
Leah was humming again. Hearing it afresh … she could imagine it played by a full orchestra with timpani drums beating the same rhythm of Leah’s toes, making Anna’s chest buzz with the power of it.
Anna looked up from her phone and frowned at Leah. Understanding what a piece would sound like with different instrumentation was part of what had made Anna the kind of musician who got scholarships to Northwestern University. But this was more visceral than what she normally experienced.
She needed to interrupt it, so she said, “What is that song, Leah? Rachel’s right. It’s familiar but I can’t place it.” It made her want to go do … something.