"So your father thinks he's faking it? How can he do that without everyone smelling a lie?"
"My da can lie so well that no one but Samuel or I can tell," said Charles. He gave her a look-the first time he'd looked her in the face since they'd left the restaurant. "Don't tell anyone-it's supposed to be a secret."
"How old is Arthur?"
Charles smiled. "You mean this time around? I think he was Changed just after the First World War. You think he's not old enough to pull the same tricks an old lobo like my father can get away with? Da says the secret is to convince yourself you aren't lying."
"So he might just be believing his own press as hard as he can?"
"He probably brought Excalibur with him," Charles said. "He usually keeps it close. He might show you if you ask."
"Really?"
"Really."
She tucked her hand in his arm. "That might be fun."
"I'll give him a call, then." They walked another half a block in companionable silence. "I scared you," he said.
"I almost got you killed," Anna returned flatly. "Thank you for stopping me before I ruined everything."
He stopped suddenly, jerking her to a halt. "You understood."
"Not then," she admitted. "I reacted first-which really sucked. Every time I think I might not be a flaming coward, I find myself running away."
He started walking again. "You aren't a coward. A coward would never have survived what you did." But he said it absently, as if he were thinking about something else. "You know I wouldn't hurt you."
He didn't say it as if he believed it. She tightened her hold on his arm. "I do. My instincts sometimes are screwy, but I know you would never hurt me."
He looked at her, a long thoughtful look.
She raised her chin. "I said I know you would never hurt me." Then she had to modify it, so he would sense the utter truth of it. "On purpose." That wasn't strong enough. "And everything you do is on purpose." That wasn't quite right. "You are always careful of what you do. Of me."
"Stop." His shoulders were shaking and his eyes dancing. "Please. I believe you. But in a minute, you're going to talk yourself around to distrusting me again."
After they'd walked a bit farther, he said, "It is beautiful tonight."
Anna glanced up at the rain and the city streets, still noisy with traffic. She liked the way the lights sparkled in the storm. The noises of the city were as familiar and welcome as her childhood home. Somehow, though, she didn't think that Charles would normally think it beautiful. She smiled at the night.
Chapter FIVE
"WE are worried about the innocents," said the Russian wolf from the podium. Ostensibly, he was speaking to the crowd, but his words were for Charles. He spoke in English, which was well because Charles's smattering of Russian wasn't trustworthy on serious subjects, and he was distracted by Anna, who sat, very still, beside him.
"We are strong," the Russian said, "and we can protect ourselves. But we have mates who are human, families who are human. They will suffer, and this cannot be tolerated."
There was something incongruous about the venue they were in: an elegant auditorium with oak accents, trimmed in fabrics of various brownish gray hues, understated and expensive. A place where Angus hunted the CEOs of large companies and captured them with images of the power his technology could give them. The men and women filling the seats this morning were a different kind of predator. Dressed in their best they might be, but the current occupants of those nice seats made the CEOs look like puppies by comparison.
"If you can't protect your own, you deserve to lose them," commented Chastel from the back quarter of the auditorium. He didn't speak loudly, but in a room designed for sound and populated by sharp-eared werewolves, he didn't have to.
Charles waited. The Russian wolf, whose turn it was to speak, looked at him to enforce discipline. But it wasn't Charles's job. Not this time. Brother Wolf was confident that it would be theirs very soon. Then they would discipline Chastel, and blood would flow. But here, in this room, it was someone else's job.
The morning of the first day of the meeting was a very good time for a demonstration.
"Jean Chastel," said Dana. "You will not speak again in this room until it is your turn to do so."
Charles was probably the only one in the auditorium who wasn't surprised that, when the French wolf sneered and opened his mouth to say something to the fae, he couldn't. In Chastel's own territory, with his pack behind him, she wouldn't have been able to bespell him so easily. But this was Dana's territory (one of the reasons the Marrok had decided to hold these talks in Seattle). Chastel had only his collection of unhappy Alphas who did not share their power with him, no matter how cowed they were, because Chastel would never have let them that close to him. Chastel was not the Marrok.
He could have been-wasn't that a frightening thought. There had been a European ruler equivalent to Charles's da at one time.
After the Black Plague... he wasn't old enough to have been there-but Da and Charles's brother had been. It had been horrible. Dehumanizing. Especially to those who weren't truly human anymore. So much death, so many lost. Someone had seen the writing on the wall, knew that humanity would recover-and had come looking for the monsters who had fed upon the dying. So the first Marrok had been created. He hadn't been called the Marrok-that was Da's decision in the New World -but that's what he'd been. Made Alpha of all Alphas and by the power of that, able to take on any other. Or he should have been.
Chastel had killed him-and anyone after him who tried to reestablish rulership. Chastel could have taken it for himself, but he didn't want it. He didn't want the responsibility. He just wanted the freedom to kill and keep killing as he pleased.
Arthur Madden, Master of the Isles, was the closest equivalent to the Marrok that Chastel had allowed in Europe-mostly because Chastel didn't consider the British Isles to be a threat to him.
Even with so much power, Chastel did his murdering more secretively these days than he had when he was first Changed. And that, Charles thought, was because there was one person on this planet the Beast feared. And his da had told Chastel that he didn't want to hear about any more ravaging monsters in France. That had been a couple of centuries ago.
Thinking about it, Charles wouldn't be surprised to find out that Chastel could care less about the Marrok bringing the werewolves out to the public. He'd as near as nev ermind done it himself centuries ago. The most probable reason Charles could think of for Chastel's presence at this summit was that he'd wanted a chance to take out the Marrok-which he didn't get.
At least he'd be quiet for now.
Charles turned his head to Dana and nodded his appreciation. She looked frumpier than usual today. She'd given herself twenty pounds more on the hips, lost six inches in height, and wore an expensive but unattractive suit and schoolteacher shoes. He wondered if she'd done it to see if she could get any of the wolves to challenge her-or if, as Anna had said, her other guise had been too distinctive, too beautiful.
"Nice shooting, Tex," murmured the Emerald City Pack's witch in a voice that would, for all its softness, carry into the crowd. She and her mate stood just behind the small table Charles and Anna sat at-honor guards.
The witch was a little thing, the mate to one of Angus's top wolves, a quiet, scar-faced man named Tom Franklin, who was nearly as unhappy about his mate's being in the room as Charles was about his, if for entirely different reasons. The witch was blind, and that meant-at least to her mate-that she was vulnerable.
Normally this wouldn't be a problem for Tom. Charles knew him as a tough son of a gun, but no second was going to be able to protect his mate in this crowd. In other circumstances, Charles would have counted on a witch's being able to protect herself pretty well-but this one smelled clean and pure. White witches weren't nearly as powerful as their black counterparts.
Charles wanted his mate out of this room, too. He tried to focus on the Russian, who'd continued speaking now that the interruption had been taken care of. But too much of him was focused on Anna.
She'd started out all right. She sat close to him and paid attention. But there were more than fifty Alphas in the little auditorium. Fifty Alphas, some of their mates, and a smattering of lesser wolves, over a hundred in all-and most of them were more interested in seeing his Omega wolf than in watching whoever was speaking. And under the weight of all of those eyes, Anna was shaking.
I will kill them all, Brother Wolf whispered, for frightening her.
Charles glanced at Anna, but she didn't hear Brother Wolf this time. Why she heard him in Dana's home but not now, Charles put to the back of his mind as a mystery that would solve itself eventually.
Brother Wolf's protective streak aside, it wasn't Anna he was worried about, not directly. She was tough, and she would bear up to a few hours of stress-and he'd make sure that's all it would be. The problem was the wolves.
The wolves nearest Anna were, almost to a man (and a couple of women as well), beginning to focus entirely on her. Her Omega qualities called out for their protection-and these were Alphas and dominants in whom the instinct to protect was paramount. A few of them knew what was happening if not why. Arthur met his eyes and grinned. Bastard. He was enjoying this.
The Russian finished his comments and moved his right foot back, turning his body toward Charles-inviting Charles to address his concerns without asking verbally.
Charles stood up. He could have taken the podium and the mike that the Russian wolf had indicated he would yield to him, but doing so would have left Anna alone (with the second of the Emerald City Pack, his witch, and Dana to guard her) and Brother Wolf was adamantly opposed to that.
It was a good thing this was a small auditorium, and werewolves, like their cousin in the fairy tale, had very big ears.