She made a hmm sound, tightening her arm. “I don’t know. Wellesley, maybe. Unless you think there are more wildlings who are capable—like Hester.”
Charles shook his head. “No. Hester—there were reasons for Hester.”
“Jonesy,” said Anna.
“Jonesy,” agreed Charles. “And Da certainly knew about her—he would. He probably knew about the flyovers, too. I just wonder …” He stopped talking, as a few thoughts crystallized into a whole.
Anna started to say something, but Charles held up his hand, because … he didn’t want to be right.
“There is none so blind,” he murmured, as all of the oddities of the last few days fell into place. The enormity of it all brought him to a stop as he broke out in a cold sweat.
“Charles?” Anna asked.
Brother Wolf saw it as Charles had, understanding what it meant. He went wild with denial—and for a moment, it was all Charles could do to restrain the wolf.
Not now. It’s not now, he told his brother. We will do what we have to do, but not yet.
“Charles, what’s wrong?” Anna asked, beginning to sound worried.
“I know why Da isn’t here,” he told her. Sick horror gripped him.
“Charles?” Anna asked again. She leaned against him, and Brother Wolf quit fighting and simply braced himself.
He breathed in her scent, and told her, simply, “He thinks Leah is our traitor.”
She stilled against him. “Why do you think that?”
He laid it out for her as he saw it. “If Hester was as normal as we all think, she’d have called Da as soon as she started to get flyovers. That would have alerted him of trouble. A month ago, Da asked Boyd for the files the Chicago pack has been putting together in their search for what Leo had been up to.”
“Okay,” Anna said. “We knew all of this.”
“I don’t know that he knew we had a traitor at that point, just that our enemy was active again,” he told her. “I think that Da was looking for that enemy with the threads we’ve been able to collect.”
“Thus the files from Boyd,” Anna said.
Charles nodded. “Then Mercy got into trouble—and he took those files with him. He might have other sources of information, but the files make the most sense.”
“Okay,” Anna said. “But why Leah?”
“Because he was headed home—and out of the blue he called up and told me he was taking a vacation in Africa with Samuel,” Charles said.
Anna drew in her breath, seeing what Charles had seen. “He’s afraid to come home because he thinks the traitor is his mate.”
“Africa, because he needs to be as far from here as he can get,” Charles told her.
She stiffened because she realized what it meant if Leah was the traitor.
He said the whole thing out loud, anyway. Just to make sure. “If he’s right, I am going to have to execute his mate.” He drew in a breath, his chest tight. “And probably my da. Because even if Leah has betrayed us, if I execute her, he’ll come for me. His wolf spirit won’t let him do anything else.”
And he’s not in Africa, said Brother Wolf somberly. He’s somewhere a lot closer than that.
Anna nodded jerkily. She’d met his da’s wolf, the monster the Marrok held leashed with his mating bond to Leah. She knew what they’d both be facing after Charles killed Leah.
“Leah is just about the most straightforwardly honest person I know,” Anna said. “Every thought that crosses her mind comes out her mouth. How could she keep a secret like that from Bran? From her mate? I can’t even keep a surprise birthday party from you. There’s no way I could keep a bigger secret.”
Brother Wolf sent his apologies through their bond to Anna. He hadn’t known the party was supposed to be a secret.
“My da’s bond with Leah isn’t like ours,” said Charles with certainty. His da didn’t talk about his mating, but Charles knew his da well enough to know that he wouldn’t want anyone else rummaging through his mind, least of all Leah. And his da had the abilities necessary to make certain his bond functioned just as he chose. “And suspecting she is a traitor isn’t going to encourage him to open that bond any further than he can help.”
“That’s why he’s closed the bonds to the pack down so tightly,” Anna said.
Charles nodded.
“Could he be wrong?”
“I hope so,” Charles said.
“What are we going to do?” asked Anna. He didn’t think the question was directed at him.
He tried to draw serenity from the forest around them. It didn’t work, but it helped.
“We are going to find Jericho and take care of the immediate problem,” he told her. “We’re then going to finish warning the wildlings. I don’t think we need to consider them suspects anymore. But they do need to be warned nonetheless. Then I’m going to sit down with the files that Boyd sent me last night and see if I can figure out what set my da off.”
Anna nodded. “Okay. That sounds like a plan of attack.”
She was quiet all the way up to the small cabin that was Jericho’s home—thinking things through.
Charles hoped that she’d think something different than the scenario that was playing out all too clearly in his head. He did not want to face off with his da. Though he had known, from the time he understood what happened to old wolves, that eventually the duty of killing his da would probably be his—it was not something he was resigned to.
They smelled the bodies well before they reached Jericho’s cabin.
“These people died before the attack on Hester,” Anna said.
Charles nodded. “By a couple of days, I’d guess.”
She reached out and took his hand, holding it tightly in hers. He was so blessed in his mate, who understood when to talk and when not to.
Asil, Sage, Juste … and Leah were waiting for them next to a line of dead bodies—obviously werewolf kills—that they had laid out neatly. Sometime during the trip here, Asil and Sage must have worked something out because Sage was standing so her shoulder brushed Asil’s.
Anna dropped Charles’s hand and went to look at the faces of the dead to see if she knew any of them without anyone’s saying anything. She was young to have such an understanding of necessity.
They weren’t pretty corpses—and so badly rotted that he didn’t think Anna had the experience to tell what they might have smelled like when they were alive.
“This one was one of … of the men I knew in Chicago,” she said, finally, pointing at one of the dead werewolves. “And maybe this one.” Pointing at another—his face was pretty badly torn up.
“The last one is human,” said Juste. He wasn’t doubting her—just advising her.
She sighed. “He was human then, too.” She frowned unhappily at the dead man in question, then bent and quickly ripped open the dead man’s jacket and shirt, exposing the front of his chest.
The tattoo must have been a beautifully rendered dragon. Charles could see it in the delicate skill used on the parts he could distinguish. It didn’t look so good now, distorted by death and by the ragged wound that cut through it.
Anna coughed at the additional smell she’d released, putting her hand over her nose. “Yes. This one.”
When she finished coughing, she said, “He used …” She stopped speaking, glanced at Charles, and closed her lips.
He could take a good guess at what she would have said if she hadn’t been worried about setting him off. This was another of the men Leo had allowed to abuse her. Charles did her the courtesy of swallowing his rage as best he could.
“Too bad they are dead,” said Asil, with a growl. So Charles wasn’t the only one who had heard what she didn’t say.
Anna looked at Asil, and said firmly, “No. It’s a good thing. I don’t need more avenging, Asil. Charles did that. I am thriving. But these men are bad men, and I am glad they are dead.”
“Where is Jericho?” Charles asked. They had all been standing around the bodies instead of searching for Jericho. That could only mean they had already found him.