He had hot chocolate and soup ready when his father emerged, his face flushed with the effort of the change, his eyes hazel and human once more.
He and his da didn't look much alike. Charles took after his Salish mother and Bran was Welsh through and through, with sandy hair and prominent features that usually wore a deceptively earnest expression, which was currently nowhere in evidence. Despite the play, Bran didn't look particularly happy.
Charles didn't bother trying to talk. He had nothing to say anyway. His grandfather had often told him that he tried too hard to move trees when a wiser man would walk around them. His grandfather had been a medicine man and liked to speak in metaphors. He had usually been right.
He handed his da a cup of hot chocolate.
"Your wife called me last night." Bran's voice was gruff.
"Ah." He hadn't known that. Anna must have done it while he'd been out trying to outrun his frustrations.
"She told me I wasn't hearing what you were saying," his da said. "I told her that I heard you tell me quite clearly that I was an idiot for going to Seattle to meet with the European delegation-as did most of the rest of the pack."
Tactful, that's me, thought Charles, who decided sipping his cocoa was better than opening his mouth.
"And I asked him if you were in the habit of arguing with him without a good reason," said Anna breezily as she slipped by his father and brushed against Charles. She was wearing his favorite brown sweater. On her it hung halfway down her thighs and buried her shape in cocoa-colored wool. Brother Wolf liked it when she wore his clothes.
She should have looked like a refugee, but somehow she didn't. The color turned her skin to porcelain and brought out rich highlights in her light brown hair. It also emphasized her freckles-which he adored.
She hopped up on the counter and purred happily as she snagged the cocoa he'd made for her.
"And then she hung up," said his father in disgruntled tones.
"Mmm," said Anna. Charles couldn't tell if she was responding to the hot chocolate or his father.
"And she refused to pick up the phone when I called back." His father wasn't pleased.
Not so comfortable having someone around who doesn't instantly obey you, old man? Charles thought-just as his father met his eye.
Bran's sudden laugh told Charles that his da wasn't really upset.
"Frustrating," Charles ventured.
"He yelled at me," Anna said serenely, tapping her forehead. The Marrok could speak to any of his wolves mind to mind, though he couldn't read their thoughts no matter how much it felt like that was what he was doing. He was just damnably good at reading people. "I ignored him, and he went away eventually."
"No fun fighting someone who doesn't fight back," Charles said.
"Without someone to argue with, I knew he'd have to think about what I said," Anna told them smugly. "If only to come up with the right words to squelch me the next time he talked to me."
She hadn't reached even a quarter of a century yet, they hadn't been mated a full month-and she was already arranging them all to suit herself. Brother Wolf was pleased with the mate he'd found for them.
Charles set down his cup and folded his arms over his chest. He knew he looked intimidating; that was his intention. But when Anna leaned away from him, just a little, he dropped his arms and hooked his thumbs in his jeans and made his shoulders relax.
And his voice was gentler than he'd meant it to be. "Manipulating Bran has a tendency to backfire," he told her. "I'd recommend against it."
But his father rubbed his mouth and sighed loudly. "So," said his father. "Why is it that you think it would be disastrous for me to go to Seattle?"
Charles rounded on his father, his resolve to quit fighting Bran on his decision to go to Seattle all but forgotten. "The Beast is coming, and you ask me that?"
"Who?" Anna asked.
"Jean Chastel, the Beast of Gevaudan," Charles told her. "He likes to eat his prey-and his prey is mostly human."
"He stopped that," Bran said coolly.
"Please," Charles snapped, "don't mouth something you don't believe to me-it smells perilously close to a lie. The Beast was forced to stop killing openly, but a tiger doesn't change his stripes. He's still doing it. You know it as well as I do." He could have pointed out other things-Jean had a taste for human flesh, the younger the better. But Anna had already experienced what happened when a wolf turned monstrous. He didn't want to be the one to tell her that there were worse beasts out there than her former Alpha and his mate. His father knew what Jean Chastel was.
Bran conceded the point. "Yes. Almost certainly he is. But I'm not a helpless human, he won't kill me." He looked at Charles narrowly. "Which you know. So why do you think it will be dangerous?"
He was right. Take the Beast out of the picture, and it still made him ill to think of his father going. The Beast was the most obvious, provable danger.
"I just know," Charles said, finally. "But it is your decision to make." His gut clenched in anticipation of just how bad it was going to be.
"You still don't have a logical reason."
"No." Charles forced his body to accept his defeat and kept his eyes on the floor.
His da looked out the little window where the mountains lay draped in winter white. "Your mother did that," he said. "She'd make a statement without any real support at all, and I was supposed to just take her word for it."
Anna was looking at his da with bright expectancy.
Bran smiled at her, then raised his cup toward the mountains. "I learned the hard way that she was usually right. Frustrating doesn't come close to covering it."
"So," he said, turning his attention back to Charles. "They are on their way already, I can't cancel it now-and it needs to be done. Announcing to the real world that there are werewolves among them will affect the European wolves as much, if not more, than it does us. They deserve their chance to be heard and told why we are doing it. It should come from me, but you would be an acceptable substitute. It will cause some offense, though, and you will have to deal with that."
Relief flooded Charles with an abruptness that had him leaning against the countertop in sudden weakness, as the all-consuming sense of absolute and utter disaster slid away and left him whole. Charles looked at his mate.
"My grandfather would have loved to have met you," he told her huskily. "He would have called you 'She Moves Trees Out of His Path.' "
She looked lost, but his da laughed. He'd known the old man, too.
"He called me 'He Who Must Run into Trees,' " Charles explained, and in a spirit of honesty, a need for his mate to know who he was, he continued, "or sometimes 'Running Eagle.' "
" 'Running Eagle'?" Anna puzzled it over, frowning at him. "What's wrong with that?"
"Too stupid to fly," murmured his father with a little smile. "That old man had a wicked tongue-wicked and clever, so it stuck until he dinged you with your next offense." He tilted his head at Charles. "But you were a lot younger then-and I am not so solid an object as a tree. You'd feel better if you-"
Anna cleared her throat pointedly.
His da smiled at her. "If you and Anna go instead?"
"Yes." Charles paused because there was something more, but the house was too busy with modern things for the spirits to talk to him clearly. Usually that was a good thing. When they got too demanding, he sometimes retreated to his office, where the computers and electronics kept them out entirely. Still, there was something in him that breathed easier now that his father had agreed not to go. "Not safe, but better. When do you want us in Seattle?"
Chapter TWO
"I love Seattle." Krissy folded her arms around herself and spun in a circle. She looked up with a practiced little-girl grin, and her lover smiled down at her.
He reached out and tucked a gold curl behind her ear. "Shall we move here, princess? I could get you a condo that looks over the water."
She thought about it and finally shook her head. "I'd miss New York, you know I would. No place has shopping like New York."
"All right," he said, his voice an indulgent purr. "But we can come here to play now and again if you like it."
Krissy tilted her head and caught the rain in her mouth, a quick snap like a bat taking a bug out of the sky. "Can we play now?"
"Work before play," said Hannah, the spoilsport. She'd been Ivan's playmate before Krissy. Krissy had taken her place in his bed and in his heart, and it made Hannah pissy.
"Ivan," Krissy coaxed, putting a hand on either side of his shirt and tugging him down so she could lick his lips. "Can't we go play? We don't have to work tonight, do we?"
He let her take his mouth, and when he raised his head, his eyes were hot. "Hannah, take the others to our hotel and contact our employer. Krissy and I will be there in a few hours."
It was raining again, but Jody had been raised in Eugene, where it only rained once a year-from January to December. Besides, he was a Pisces; water was his element.
He raised his face and let the rain wash down it. Practice had run a little late and the sun had set before he'd gotten out. The music had been good tonight; they'd all felt it. He pulled the sticks out of his back pocket and beat the air in a rhythm only he could hear. There was something he should change in that last measure...
He took the shortcut to his apartment-a dim little street barely wide enough for a car and a half. It wasn't late, but there was no one around except for an older man and a girl who looked about sixteen. They were both drenched and hurried toward him.
"Excuse me," said the man, "We're visiting and seem to have gotten turned around. Do you know where the nearest restaurant is?" The coat he wore was expensive-wool, Jody thought-and he had a bright gold watch on his wrist that looked like it cost a bundle. The girl-as they got closer he was pretty sure that there was more than a generation between the old gent and the girl; maybe she was his granddaughter-was wearing four-inch heels that made her feet look tiny.