"Kara's not home," Charles told him. "And hurting her would not be advisable."
Charles wondered if he should just kill him now... but he had a reputation that his father couldn't afford for him to lose. He only killed those who broke the Marrok's rules, and he only did it after their guilt was established.
Anna had told his father that Justin was the wolf who changed Alan MacKenzie Frazier against his will, but since there were so many things wrong in this pack there might have been mitigating circumstances. Anna had been a werewolf for three years and no one had told her that she could not have children. If Anna knew so little, then it was more than possible that this wolf didn't know the rules either.
Whether the wolf was ignorant of his crimes or not, Charles still wanted to kill him. When Justin turned around to face him, Charles let his beast peer out of his eyes and watched the other wolf blanch and start back down the stairs.
"You should find Leo and give him the message," Charles said. This time he let Justin know that he was following him, let him feel, a little, the way it was to be prey for a larger predator.
He was tough, this Justin. He kept turning around to confront Charles - only to meet his eyes and be forced away again. The chase aroused his wolf; and Charles, still angry at the way Justin had manhandled Anna, let the wolf out just a little more than he should have. It was a fight to stop at the outside door and let Justin go free. The wolf had been given a hunt and it was much, much too short.
Brother wolf hadn't liked seeing Anna frightened either. He'd staked his claim and it had taken all of Charles's control not to just kill Justin in Anna's apartment. Only the strong suspicion that she'd go back to being afraid of him had allowed him to stay seated until he was sure he could control himself.
Climbing four flights of stairs should have given him enough time to silence the wolf. It might have, except that Anna was waiting for him, rolling pin in hand, on the landing below her apartment.
He paused halfway up the stairs, and she turned around without a word. He stalked her back to her apartment and into the kitchen area, where she set the rolling pin on its stand - right next to a small pot that held a handful of knives.
"Why the rolling pin and not a knife?" he asked, his voice raspy with the need for action.
She looked at him for the first time since she'd seen his face oh the stairs. "A knife wouldn't even slow him down, but bones take time to heal."
He liked that. Who'd have thought he'd get turned on by a woman with a rolling pin? "All right," he said. "All right."
He turned abruptly and left her standing in front of the counter because if he'd stayed there he would have taken her, seduced her. The apartment wasn't large enough either to pace or to get much distance between them. Her scent, blended with fear and arousal, was dangerous. He needed a distraction.
He pulled one of the chairs around and sat on it, leaning back until it was propped on two legs. He folded his arms behind his head and assumed a deliberately relaxed posture, half-closed his eyes, and said, "I want you to tell me about your Change." He hadn't missed the clues, he thought, watching her flinch a little. There was something wrong with how she'd been Changed. He focused on that.
"Why?" she asked, challenging him - still caught up in the adrenaline rush of Justin's visit, he imagined. She caught herself and turned away, cringing as if she expected him to explode.
He closed his eyes entirely. Another moment and he was going to put all the gentlemanly behavior his father had taught him aside and take her, willing or not. Oh, that would teach her not to be afraid of him, he thought.
"I need to know how Leo's pack is run," he told her patiently, though at the moment he could have cared less. "I'd rather do that through your impressions first, and then I'll ask you questions. It'll give me a better insight into what he's doing and why."
Anna gave him a wary look, but he hadn't moved. She could still smell the anger in the air, but it might just have been a remnant from when Justin had been there. Charles was aroused, too - and she found herself responding to it though she knew it was a common result of victorious confrontations among males. He was ignoring it, so she could, too.
She took a deep breath, and his scent filled her lungs.
Clearing her throat, she tried to find the beginning of her story. "I was working in a music store in the Loop when I first met Justin. He told me he was a guitarist like me, and he started coming in a couple of times a week, buying strings, music... small-ticket stuff. He'd flirt and tease." She gave an exasperated huff for her foolishness. "I thought he was a nice guy. So when he asked me out for lunch, I said sure."
She looked at Charles, but he looked as though he might have fallen asleep. The muscles in his shoulders were relaxed and his breathing was slow and easy.
"We dated a couple of times. He took me to this little restaurant near, a park, one of the forest preserves. When we were finished he took me for a walk in the woods. 'To look at the moon,' he told me." Even now, with the night long over, she could hear the tension in her voice. "He asked me to wait a minute, said he'd be right back."
He'd been excited, she remembered, almost frantic with suppressed emotion. He'd patted his pockets, then said he'd left something in his car. She'd been worried that he had gone to get a wedding ring. She'd practiced gentle ways of saying no while she waited. They had very little in common and no chemistry at all. Though he seemed nice enough, she'd been getting the feeling that there was something a little off about him, too, and her instincts told her that she needed to break it off.
"It took longer than a minute, and I was just about to go back to the car myself when I heard something in the bushes." The skin on her face tingled with fear, just as it had that night.
"You didn't know he was a werewolf?" Charles's voice reminded her that she was safe in her apartment.
"No. I thought that werewolves were just stories."
"Tell me about after the attack."
She didn't need to tell him about how Justin had stalked her for an hour, herding her back from the edge of the preserve every time she came close to getting out. He only wanted to know about Leo's pack. Anna hid her sigh of relief.
"I woke up in Leo's house. He was excited at first. His pack only has one other woman. Then they discovered what I am."
"And what are you, Anna?" His voice was like smoke, she thought, soft and weightless.
"Submissive," she said. "The lowest of the low." And then because his eyes were still closed she added, "Useless."
"Is that what they told you?" he asked thoughtfully.
"It's the truth." She ought to be more upset about it - the wolves who didn't despise her treated her with pity. But she didn't want to be dominant and have to fight and hurt people.
He didn't say anything so she continued her story, trying to give him all the details she could remember. He asked some questions:
"Who helped you gain control of the wolf?" (No one, she'd done that on her own - another black mark against her that proved she wasn't dominant, they'd told her.)
"Who gave you the Marrok's phone number?" (Leo's third, Boyd Hamilton.)
"When and why?" (Just before Leo's mate stepped in and stopped him from passing Anna around to whatever male he wanted to reward. Anna tried to avoid the higher-ranking wolves - she had no idea why he'd given her that number and no desire to ask.)
"How many new members have come into the pack since you?" (Three, all male - but two of them couldn't control themselves and had had to be killed.)
"How many members of the pack?" (Twenty-six.)
When she finally wound down to a stop she was almost surprised to find herself sitting on the floor across the room from Charles with her back against the wall. Slowly Charles let his chair drop back to the floor and pinched the bridge of his nose. He sighed heavily and then looked at her directly for the first time since she'd begun speaking.
She sucked in her breath at the bright gold of his eyes. He was very near a change forced by some strong emotion - and despite seeing his eyes, she couldn't read it in his body or his scent - he'd managed to mask it from her.
"There are rules. First is that no person may be Changed against their will. Second is that no person may be Changed until they have been counseled and passed a simple test to demonstrate that they understand what that Change means."
She didn't know what to say, but she finally remembered to drop her eyes away from his intense stare.
"From what you've said, Leo is adding new wolves and missing others - he didn't report that to the Marrok. Last year he came to our annual meeting with his mate and his fourth - that Boyd Hamilton - and told us that his second and third were tied up."
Anna frowned at him. "Boyd's been his third for as long as I have been in the pack and Justin is his second."
"You said that there is only one female in the pack besides you?"
"Yes."
"There should have been four."
"No one has mentioned any others," she told him.
He looked over at the check on her fridge.
"They take your paycheck. How much do they give you back?" His voice was bass-deep with the heat of the change behind it.
"Sixty percent."
"Ah." He closed his eyes again and breathed deeply. She could smell the musk of his anger now, though his shoulders still looked relaxed.
When he didn't say anything more, she said quietly, "Is there anything I can do to help? Do you want me to leave or talk or turn on music?" She didn't have a TV, but she still had her old stereo.
His eyes stayed closed but he smiled, just a twitch of his lips. "My control is usually better than this."