"Maybe that's it," said Moira thoughtfully. "Everyone in the pack has been talking about it-sorry, Anna. But most of them were more interested in you than in all the strange wolves coming in. Maybe it's someone who wants an Omega."
"I met someone like that once," said Anna coolly. "Make sure you warn the Italians."
"Yes," said Angus, with a little amused glance at Charles as Anna gave him another order.
"Don't forget you have a dinner to get ready for," said Moira.
Charles looked at the witch, and he wasn't the only one. She smiled at them all. "We don't know exactly what they were trying to do. Probably they were trying to kidnap Anna. But there is a lesser chance that they didn't want you to get better acquainted with Arthur of Great Britain."
"Besides," said Angus, "why give them the power to change your plans when no permanent harm was done?"
Yes, Charles realized. That was logic he could wrap his head around. He had no desire to go out and do the social thing at the best of times-and this attack made him want to take his mate and barricade her in where she was safe.
"I'll go get another room," he said. "Tom and Moira can stay here until he's healed-and order room service."
"I'll stay here, too," said Angus. "Until Tom's up to taking care of himself."
Charles looked at the Alpha and realized that he wasn't the only one feeling protective. "Good," he told them, and left to do as he'd said.
A collective sigh of relief went through the room when Charles left, but no one said anything until the elevator ding was heard faintly through the walls.
Anna knew Charles had that effect on people-but she hadn't seen or felt any trouble tonight. Except for the pointing-finger thing.
"Well," said Angus, and Tom whined. "There's a reason Bran uses him to scare the bejeebers out of miscreants. I think we all saw it tonight."
"Saw what?" asked Moira.
"Exactly," said Alan Choo, who was repacking the bag he'd brought with him. "Angus pointed-and I didn't even see him move. He just was. Standing between his mate and Angus." And then he lapsed into Chinese for a few sentences.
Anna found she didn't like their being afraid of Charles. It hurt him, though he accepted it from everyone. Even if it was safer for him, it wasn't good.
Angus shook his head. "Did you see the faces on some of the wolves when he talked to them today? I suspect they didn't even know he could talk-let alone make so much sense when he did. It was as if a shark started speaking the King's English."
Tom raised his head and looked at Angus, and Alan broke off his Chinese muttering to stare at his Alpha.
"Queen's English," said Anna with more sharpness than she meant to allow. "And there's nothing wrong with Charles."
"Before God there's not," agreed Angus. "I thought to myself-well look at that, he's conducting a meeting just like everyone else. Maybe the other rumors were exaggerated about him, too. And they weren't. Not a bit of it. I don't ever want to face that man fang and claw."
"If you don't shut up," Anna bit out, "you might not ever have to worry about it."
And Angus sat back in his chair and smiled at her with satisfaction. "Well, now," he said in an entirely different voice. "Maybe I won't."
She'd missed it, she realized looking at Tom and Alan Choo. She'd mistaken Tom's astonishment for agreement. Angus had been playing her.
"Why the test?" she asked.
Angus shrugged. "I've known Charles a long time. I saw him turn from a quiet boy into the weapon his father needed-that we needed. Just because I understood the need, it didn't mean I couldn't regret. I just wanted to make sure that you were able to see below the killer to the man beneath."
"So you set him off on purpose?"
Angus's smile widened into a grin. "With the pointing-finger thing? When he was already thirsting after fresh blood because you were endangered and he'd gone hunting with no results? Do I look that stupid? No, that was just an accident."
Anna looked down at the arm of the chair and rubbed a spot lightly with a fingertip. Now that she thought to test it, she could smell Angus's sincerity. He had been worried for Charles, worried she would hurt him.
"I knew people were afraid of him," she said. "You really think they believe there's something wrong with Charles?"
Angus tilted his head, but it was Alan who answered. "Something off, anyway. Not so much crazy as... different. His father's soulless killer, loyal to the Marrok and no one else. Every word that comes out of his mouth put there by the Marrok, like a ventriloquist's dummy only scarier."
Anna thought about the fight Charles and his father had waged, which ultimately Charles had won, and opened her mouth to comment. But then she shut it again. If that was what people thought, it was because Charles wanted them to.
"Charles does it deliberately," Angus told her, watching her closely. She hoped that she gave nothing away, but his words were so close to her thoughts that she must have. He tapped the arm of his chair with impatient fingers. "If the other wolves are all scared of him, they won't be stupid and make him kill them. And they're right, whether they know it or not. There is something off, haven't you noticed? His wolf is completely out of control. It should have turned him into a mindless killer-but it hasn't."
Brother Wolf, thought Anna.
"Why do you suppose that is?" asked Choo.
Angus raised an eyebrow and looked at her, as if he thought she might supply an explanation.
There was a wolf responsible for the attack on them tonight. She didn't really believe Angus was the enemy either. He might even be Charles's friend if she could believe her nose. But she wasn't going to be sharing any insights about her mate-even if she had them-with Angus of the Emerald City Pack.
She gave him a look and relaxed on her seat on the arm of Charles's chair and waited for him to return.
ANGER.
He was so angry.
Charles had been all right all the way down to the main desk. He'd focused on the task at hand, gotten a second room, and been fine until he got back into the elevator and considered the attack on Anna. He'd thought he might be able to take what he'd learned from Anna's story and find something new, some hint at why or who.
The control that had always been at his fingertips seemed to be melting away. He watched the floor numbers rise, and they seemed to proceed at a viciously fast pace when he had so much thinking to do.
Two.
Tom had nearly been killed. If Charles had sent Anna with any of Angus's other wolves-and he might have-he'd have lost her.
Three.
Six vampires.
Four.
If Tom's witch had been what she appeared, Anna would have been taken.
Five.
If he locked her to his side, he would lose her. She was not submissive, she didn't need his care. Not that way. She needed him to stand back and let her fly.
Six.
And if he was going to do that, he was going to have to get control of his temper. Of Brother Wolf's temper. Not just now, today-but forever. Leash his need to keep her safe so that he could keep her happy.
Seven.
Today, though, she wasn't leaving his sight again.
The elevator door slid open.
ARTHUR Madden fussed with this and that, moving the place settings farther from the edge of the table, then nudging them nearer.
"My dear," said his mate with amusement, "what are you doing? He may be the Marrok's son, but you rule the British Isles. You outrank him-there is no need to be nervous."
She didn't understand. But he was used to that. His wife was human, and there was a lot she didn't understand. He didn't hold it against her. He wouldn't explain that Charles was dominant, that even with the strength of all his wolves behind him, Charles still made Arthur back down with no more than a look. It meant he needed all of his defenses. It meant the dinner must be perfect.
He could trust his mate to make everything perfect.
"You are right, of course," he said. "Dashed silly of me to make such a fuss."
She slid under his arm, as slender as the girl he'd married forty years before. He loved her as much now as he had then, but her age made him sad. When they went out to dinner now, people thought them business associates-or mother and son. When she'd been young and beautiful, he'd never given a thought to her aging, and neither had she.
She smelled of roses. "It will all be fine," she said. "I'll entertain his mate, and you can tell him stories."
He kissed her Saxon-sunlit hair, kept delicately tinted with dyes to the shade it had been naturally when he met her. "And how will you do that?"
"I'll show her my needlework and talk to her about girl things."
He turned and caught a glimpse of them in the huge gilded mirror just inside the entrance of the house. He wore a gold silk shirt that turned his hair a deeper shade of red-gold; his eyes were blue, and the black slacks he wore could have been the slacks he wore to his wedding all those decades ago.
Sunny's deep blue shirt had long, flowing sleeves that showed off the strength of her arms without betraying how her skin showed her age. There was a softness under her chin and laugh lines around her eyes. His Sunny loved to laugh.
She was dying one day at a time. It would take a long while still, he thought, decades, as her skin grew less taut and her muscles stringy and slack. And he had to watch it happen.
She caught his gaze in the mirror. "You look gorgeous as always," she said, hugging the arm that crossed over her shoulders above her breasts.
"I love you," he whispered into her ear, nuzzling at the perfect hair, closing his eyes so he could smell her precious scent.
She waited until his eyes opened and she could look into the mirror and stare into them. Then she smiled the huge smile that had first made him call her Sunny. "I know you do."