Hunting Ground (Alpha and Omega #2)

Hunting Ground (Alpha and Omega #2) Page 2

"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.

She caught him looking and enjoyed his admiration. He couldn't help but smile back. She put her hand on his wrist, and said, "We need to find some food." And her smile widened a little more, and he saw fangs.

Strange, he thought, she didn't look like she belonged in the groups his ex-girlfriend had hung out with, where they all wore fangs and played that stupid game... not D &D, which was cool... something with vampires.

This girl wore a ponytail and looked more like Brit ney Spears than Vampirella. Her shoes were hot pink, and there wasn't a piece of her clothing that was black.

He didn't like it that his throat tightened in fear because she was wearing acrylic fangs.

"There's a place a few blocks away," he told her, twisting his wrist gently to get her to let go. "Serves Italian food. They have a great red sauce."

She licked her lips and didn't let go of his wrist. "I love red sauce."

"Look," he said, jerking his wrist free, "cut it out. That's not funny."

"No," breathed the man, who had somehow gotten behind him while Jody had been talking to the girl. "Not funny at all." And there was a sharp pain in his neck.

"Where is someplace private?" the old man asked after a little while. "Someplace we might play together for a while without anyone seeing us?"

And Jody led his new friends a few miles away to a place on the Sound where he knew no one would come.

"Good," said the man. "Very good."

The girl closed her eyes and smiled. "The traffic will drown out the screams."

The man leaned over and put his mouth to Jody's ear. "You can be scared now."

Jody was scared for a very, very long time before they threw him into the water for the fish.

"THE rocks will keep him underwater until they won't be able to tell how he died," said Ivan.

"I still think we should have left him naked hanging from a tree like that girl in Syracuse."

Ivan rubbed the top of her head. "Dear child," he said, and sighed. "That was a special case; she was a message to her father. This one was just play, and if we let the silly humans know we killed him, it would interfere with business."

She looked at the bloody drumsticks and sighed, tossing them in after the body. "And nothing interferes with business."

"Business keeps a roof over our heads and lets us travel when we want to," Ivan told her. "You need to wash your face, princess, and put your clothes back on."

A great mountain peak broke through the white mist and ruled in awesome splendor over the soft sky and Anna held her breath. Mount Rainier, she thought, though her geography of the Cascades was shaky. There were mountains spread out below them, but this one was orders of magnitude larger than the lowly ripples in the land below it. Gradually, other great peaks revealed themselves in the distance, drowning in clouds.

"Hey, Charles?"

The mountains were on Charles's side of the plane. Anna leaned as far toward him as she could without touching him-he was flying the plane, and she didn't want to distract him.

"Yes?"

They were wearing headsets that protected their sensitive ears from the noise of the engine and miked their voices to each other. In her headphone, his voice was low enough to make the speaker in her ear buzz even though it was turned to the lowest setting.

"Just how many planes does the pack have?"

This was the second she'd been in.

"Just the Learjet," he told her. "If you lean any farther, you're going to strangle yourself. This Cessna is mine."

He owned a plane? Just when she was starting to think she knew him, something else would come up. She knew that he handled the pack finances-and that their pack was not in any danger of being penniless anytime soon. She knew that he himself was financially stable, though they hadn't really talked about it much. Owning a plane was a whole different category of financially stable, like Mount Rainier was a whole different category of mountain from the hills she'd known in Illinois.

"Aren't we on pack business?" she asked. "Why did we take this one?"

"The jet needs five thousand feet to land," he said. "That means Boeing Field or Sea-Tac, and I don't want the government to be following us around all week."

"The government follows you?" She had a sudden picture of Charles strolling along with dark-suited men creeping behind him, trying to stay out of sight and failing, with cartoonish exaggeration.

He nodded. "We may be a secret from the rest of the world-but the wrong people know who we are."

And that was why the Marrok had decided it was time to bring the werewolves out to the public. "So the wrong people are following you?"

He smiled wolfishly. "Only when I want them to."

She considered that smile and decided she liked it on him. "So where are we landing?"

"At an airstrip maintained by the Emerald City Pack. It's about thirty miles from Seattle."

The plane bounced, dropping fast and tickling her stomach. She gripped her armrests and laughed as Charles brought the plane back to level. "I really like flying."

He dipped his head and looked at her over the top of his dark lenses for a moment. Then his mouth quirked up, and he turned his attention back to his instrument panel. The plane tilted to the left.

Anna waited for him to right it, but they just kept tilting all the way upside down and continued smoothly over until they were back upright again.

Over her laughter, he said, "This plane isn't rated for aerobatics, but a roll is only a one-gee maneuver." He tilted the plane over the other way, and said, "Properly done." And then he danced the plane through the sky.

She was breathless, and her diaphragm ached from laughing by the time the plane settled back on level flight. She glanced at Charles, who wasn't even smiling. He might have just as well been flying patterns over a grain field.

He hated planes just as he hated most modern technology. He'd told her so. But he owned one-and by golly he knew how to fly it. When he drove his truck, he was cautious and controlled. So why had he decided to play barnstormer in the Cessna? Was he just entertaining her, or was he enjoying himself?

A woman should know more about her mate. When the mate bond had first settled in, she'd believed she would. But her initial ability to feel him had faded, buried under his self-control and her defenses. She could feel the bond between them, strong and shining and impenetrable. She wondered if it felt the same to him, or if he could read her through it whenever he chose.

"This is Station Air November one eight eight three Victor requesting permission to land," he said, and it took her a moment to realize he was talking to someone other than her.

"Go ahead, sir. I mean, go ahead, eight three Victor," said a stranger's voice. "Welcome to Emerald City Pack territory, sir."

Charles dropped them abruptly through the scattered clouds, past white-coated mountains, to the soft green valley below. Before she realized there was a landing strip, the wheels touched down with a gentle bump.

The place where they landed looked nearly as remote as Aspen Creek. Though there was snow a hundred feet or so up the foothills, down where they had landed it was as green as if it were summer. Greener. Except for the landing field and a hangar, the land was awash in trees and bushes.

People jogged up to the plane from the hangar as Charles pulled his headset off and unbuckled.

He withdrew from her, thinning the bond between them painfully. If he'd warned her beforehand, she would have kept quiet: three years in her first pack had given her power over her pain. It was surprise that forced the whine out of her throat.

Charles pulled his sunglasses off his face and looked at her with a frown. Sudden comprehension widened his eyes-"I never thought..." He turned his head and said, not to her, "All right. All right." And the painful collapse of their bond ceased.

Wolf-eyed, he leaned toward her and touched her face.

"I'm sorry," he told her. "I didn't mean to shut you out. I just..."

He stopped, apparently at a loss for words.

"Donning your armor?" she suggested. "It's okay, I just wasn't expecting it. Do what you have to."

But he didn't. Instead, he said, looking out at the approaching men, "These are not the enemy. Not this time, anyway."

He was out of his seat before she could say anything. And what would I have said? He closed himself up so that he could kill if he had to, so that he wouldn't like any of them too much. So he wouldn't hesitate in carrying out whatever had to be done.

She did know something about her mate after all. She climbed out behind him, following him out of the plane and into the presence of strange wolves, still trying to decide if it should reassure her or worry her.

"Glad you made it in, sir," said the one who was in charge. It still freaked her out sometimes how she could tell who was in charge by the subtle cues of body motion and position. Real people-normal humans-didn't need to know who was first and who was last.

"We were following you on our radar, and Jim here was worried you might have had some trouble because your speed seemed a little erratic."

Charles gave them a neutral face, and Anna wondered what his aerobatics had looked like on radar.

"No trouble," he said.

The other wolf cleared his throat and dropped his gaze. "Good. I'm Ian Garner of the Emerald City Pack, and I'm to help you in any way that I can."

As Charles and the other wolves unloaded the luggage and discussed how the plane was to be cared for and stored, Anna stood a little apart. She wasn't as nervous with the strangers as she expected to be-and it took her a minute to pinpoint why.

Ian was middle of the pack and leader here. So this group was not the Alpha's top tier of wolves, nowhere near the most dominant; they were wolves who wouldn't spark a dominant male's instinct to put them in their places. Angus Hopper, the Emerald City Pack Alpha, was a smart man. Not that he had to worry about Charles's control, but playing it safe was always a smart move.

Angus wouldn't have done it because strange dominant males still scared Anna, but a part of her was grateful nonetheless.

There would be enough dominant males to drown in later, when the meetings took place. The wolves coming from Europe each ruled their own territories; some of them had been in power for centuries. No one would hurt her, not while she was with Charles. She knew it, but her fear of male wolves had taken a few years to beat into her and would take more than a month or two to free herself from.

"They'll take care of the airplane," said Ian. He picked up the nearest piece of luggage and, with a dropped shoulder and a deferential swing of his head instead of words, invited them to follow him up a stone pathway through the trees. Charles took his own suitcase and waited for Anna to precede him.

Once he had them moving, the Emerald City wolf started talking in a rapid all-business voice that might have masked his anxiety from someone who was purely human. Charles did that to people, even in his own pack, and she didn't think even his father knew how much it bothered him.

"Angus is at work," the wolf said. "He says you're to have free access to the house." Anna remembered getting a glimpse of a house as they landed, but from the ground, it was well hidden by the trees. That must be where they were headed toward. "You're welcome to anything any of us have, but the pack itself has a newish Land Cruiser and a Corolla that has seen better days. Angus says you can use his BMW if you'd rather."

"We'll take the Corolla," Charles told him. "And we're staying in a hotel downtown. This is too far for an easy commute to the meeting place."

"He thought you would feel that way. Angus invites you to stay with him at his condo in the city."

"Not necessary," said Charles. Anna wasn't sure he noticed the other man's mouth flatten. More probably he just didn't care.

The Emerald City Pack was hosting the meeting, and for Charles to refuse housing might look like he was not acknowledging them as allies. Charles preferred to be independent-separate from the people he might be called upon to kill. Charles was his father's assassin and justice dealer, and that grim responsibility affected everything he did. He didn't go out of his way to make friends among the werewolves, not even in his own pack. He would feel more comfortable on his own.

That didn't mean that Anna couldn't smooth things over.

"We appreciate the offer," Anna told Ian. "But we're newly mated and..." It didn't require any effort on her part to blush as her voice trailed off. And whatever offense he'd felt was overshadowed by interest.

"So it's true?" Ian glanced at Charles, then quickly away. "I had heard that."

"Shocking, I know," murmured Charles.

The other wolf stiffened and gave Charles a worried look, too wary of Charles to hear the humor.

"He's a terrible tease," she told Ian, trying to help.

The Emerald City wolf's face loosened in utter disbelief.

Charles saw it and grinned at her. It was too bad Ian didn't see her mate's expression, but Charles's usual-in-public granite facade was back before the other wolf glanced his way.

"Right," Ian said. He cleared his throat and changed the subject. "Well... Angus asked me to tell you that the only people we're waiting for are the Russians and the French. He thought you might also be interested to know that the British Alpha came alone with his mate. We'll know when the Russians get here-they're staying in the apartment Angus's company owns."

"Angus's company?" asked Anna-they'd packed in a hurry, and she hadn't asked him much about what they'd actually be doing here.

"Angus runs a high-tech company," Charles explained. "They put together programs to keep other companies running. We'll be using his facilities this week-he's given his staff an early vacation for Christmas." He looked at Ian. "I'd wager the French wolves have arrived already. Chastel will want to check out his hunting grounds before the prey arrives."

"They haven't checked into the hotel they booked."

Charles shook his head. "Tell Angus that Chastel would never stay in a hotel. Too public. He'll have rented a house, something nice. He's here, probably has been here for a week or two."

Charles claimed not to be good with people, not to understand them... and maybe that was true. But he understood predators just fine.

The trees thinned, and a house emerged from the forest. Like Bran's house, it had been built to take advantage of the natural topography, and the surrounding trees effectively hid a good deal of its bulk. Angus's company must be pretty lucrative.

"Angus says it is the Frenchman who will cause the most trouble," said Ian.

"Don't underestimate the Russians," Charles said. "But Angus is probably right. Jean is powerful, scary, and mad as a hatter. He likes killing, especially if his prey is weak and frightened-his life wouldn't hold up to the kind of scrutiny we're inviting by introducing ourselves to the world."

"Angus says that Jean Chastel will carry the vote because everyone else is scared of him."

Charles smiled wolfishly, his eyes cold and clear. "This is not a democracy: there is no vote. Not on this. The Europeans have no say in whether or not we tell the world about ourselves. I'm here to listen to their concerns and decide what we can do to help them mitigate the impact of becoming public."

"That doesn't sound like what I've picked up from the European delegations who've arrived." Ian was careful not to sound as if he were disagreeing with Charles.

"What about the Asian werewolves?" Anna asked. "Or African and Australian? And South American?"

"They don't matter." Ian dismissed her question.

"They matter," said Charles softly. "They have been dealt with differently."

The sharp scent of fear coiled around Anna's nose; there had been a threat in Charles's voice when he thought the other wolf had overstepped himself-and Ian had clearly caught it. She gave Charles a frown. "Stop terrorizing him. These are things I ought to have known. Tell me about the non-European werewolves."

Charles raised an eyebrow at her but answered her readily enough. "Werewolves are a European monster, and we've done pretty well here in this part of the New World, too. There are a few of us in Africa and even fewer in Asia, where there are other monsters who don't like us very well. There are two packs in Australia, about forty wolves. Both of their Alphas have been informed of our plans, and neither voiced objections. Bran has also discussed his intentions with the South American wolves. They were less happy-but, like the Europeans, they have no say in what my father does or does not do. Unlike the Europeans, they know it. We've offered them the same sorts of aid we're offering the Europeans, and they are happy with that. They were invited but chose not to come."

THE battered and abused Corolla was a four-speed stick shift with a touchy clutch, and it kept Anna's attention firmly on driving until they were on the interstate headed for the city.

"Okay," she said. "I need to understand more. I should have asked more questions, but this came up awfully fast. The British Alpha, by not bringing more wolves, is telling everyone he can handle anything anyone can send after him?"

Charles nodded. "There's some bad blood between Arthur Madden, the British Alpha, and Angus." He paused. "Actually, I think there's some bad blood between Arthur and my father, too. If it looks like an issue, I'll call Da and see what it was about. Da says that Arthur's the only Alpha who will stand up to Chastel-and that's a good thing to have. We'll need every advantage we can get."

He sounded... not worried. Intrigued. It was, Anna thought, going to be a different manner of fighting this week; not fangs and blood but a battle of wits. All those dominant wolves... most of the Alphas in the same room. Arguing. Maybe it wasn't going to be a different way of fighting. But for now, she was driving and had absolutely no idea where they were headed.

"Are we going to the hotel?"

"Yes." And he gave her directions. But as they turned off the highway and onto the streets of downtown Seattle, he said, "Let's do something first. Why don't we go see Dana, the fae who's agreed to moderate this mess." And maybe, like his father, he'd been doing some mind reading. "She's not just... a stand-in for a UN ambassador, a graceful host to help Angus. She's the one who's going to keep this civilized and keep us from paying to have Angus's carpets cleaned of bloodstains. I have a gift to give her from my father, to thank her for the help we are paying her a small fortune for."

"I didn't hear about the fae." Anna had never seen a fae before, not one she knew was a fae anyway. She felt a frisson of excitement and tightened her hands on the steering wheel. "Bran brought a fae into werewolf business?"

"It's necessary to have a neutral party to make sure the violence doesn't get out of hand."

Anna thought about the wolves she had known: the violence that had always gotten out of hand. She tried to imagine someone who could put a stop to it. Bran, Charles-but they would have to do it with more violence. "She can do that?"

"Yes. And more importantly, everyone knows it."

"What kind of fae is she? Isn't Dana a German name? I thought most of the fae were British-you know, Welsh, Irish, and Scots."

"Most of the fae we see in the US are Northern European: Celtic, German, French, Cornish, English. Dana isn't her real name. This decade or so she's been using the name 'Dana Shea,' a variant of daoine sidhe. A lot of the older fae and some of the witches won't use their own names-anything that belongs to them for such a long time develops power over them and can be used against them, the same way scraps of hair or fingernails can."

"Do you know what her real name is? Or what kind of fae she is?"

"I don't know it-I don't think even Da knows it. Though she is a Gray Lord, one of the most powerful fae. They rule the fae sort of like Da does the wolves." He glanced at her. "If Da was a psychotic serial killer, maybe. I do know what kind of fae she is, though. You meet her and talk to her a bit. Then tell me what you think."

Anna gave a half-amused huff. "What do I get if I'm right?"

His eyes lightened with the wolf who lurked inside him, and the hunger in his gaze told her exactly what he meant when he said, "The same thing you get if you're wrong."

She waited for the fear or even trepidation that thoughts of sex had usually brought to her-but it never came. Just a welcome tickly feeling in her stomach. In less than a month's time, he'd made serious inroads on her problems in that area. "Good," she told him.

He smiled at her and relaxed against his seat.

SEATTLE highways had a lot more vertical variation than those in Chicago. The roads rose above water, tangled and burrowed under hills where houses sat unmoved by the thousands of cars that traveled beneath them. Over the smell of the cars was the scent of water and salt from the Puget Sound and various other saltwater lakes and ponds. The gray skies leaked here and there, not enough to turn the wipers on full but too much to let the rain accumulate long.

Following Charles's directions, she exited the highway and found herself tootling along a slower road in what could just as well have been a small town in Britain as a part of Seattle. It looked old, quaint, and beautiful, if a little self-conscious. On the water to her right was a series of docks with boats and houseboats, while on her left, narrow buildings covered the side of a hill that got progressively steeper as she drove.

A huge silver bridge arched over the water and the road she was driving, soaring up to land on the top of a steep hill above. The name of the cross street that ran directly under the bridge had Anna pulling her foot off the gas so she could be sure that she was reading the street sign correctly.

"Troll?"

"What?" Charles had been looking toward the water, but he turned back to look at her.

"There's a street here called Troll?"

He smiled suddenly. "I'd forgotten about that. Why don't you follow it up the hill?"

She turned the car up the road and thought for a moment the decision was a mistake because the little blue car strained to crawl up the hill, which was even steeper than it had looked from the bottom. The road was narrow and claustrophobic, with the bridge for roofing, its steel feet closing in from left and right.

She was so busy worrying about driving that she didn't see it until they were quite close. The road they were on ended and teed into another road. The bridge overhead plowed into the top of the hill. And in the space between the road and the end of the bridge crouched a giant something.

Without consulting Charles, she parked.

Someone had sculpted a huge humanoid monster out of cement, rising from the sand: a troll for the bridge. Cement hair hung limply over one eye while the other stared over Anna's head at the waterway at the bottom of the hill they'd just driven up. One of its hands, which rested on a real VW Bug, was big enough to engulf the car. The Bug's nose burrowed beneath the troll's beard as if it sought refuge there.

Anna got out of the car slowly and strolled across the road, Charles at her side. The statue had been attacked with chalk recently, and the bright pink and green colors only enhanced the oddity of the creature. Fingernails and the lines of knuckles had been drawn on the creature's hands. Pink and green chalk flowers followed the contours of the Bug's fender, and on the back window-cement-covered glass-someone had written "Just Married."

Peripherally, Anna sensed they were being watched. Above the troll, in the notch where the bridge met the top of the hill, three or four street people observed them warily. One man set aside a newspaper he'd been reading and started down toward them.

He was a little above average height, though he slumped until he appeared shorter. He wore a battered canvas duster that was liberally splattered with muck. Mismatched Nikes adorned his feet. The right shoe had a hole in the toe and the left another along the edge of his heel, exposing the dirty, sockless foot inside. The jeans he wore were new and stiff, though as mucky as his duster. She caught glimpses of layers of shirts-a red flannel shirt over a yellow plaid button-up that almost obscured a graying white tee.

Anna took note of the man, but with Charles at her side the stranger wasn't a threat-and Anna was more interested in the troll. So she let Charles deal with him as she climbed up the back of the Bug and onto the creature's arm, then higher still until she could rest her hand on his overlarge nose.

"Like my little troll, eh?" the stranger said to Charles, his voice rough like that of a man who'd smoked a pack a day for years. He didn't smell like cigarettes, though. His scent, rising through the air to Anna's nose, was earthy and magical, sharp with a predator's musk.

"Was it a real one?" Anna asked him, safe upon her perch, safe with Charles.

The stranger looked up at her and laughed, exposing ragged, blackened teeth as sharp as he smelled. "Well, now. It might be that the artist saw somp'n. Somp'n he out ter not have seen, wolf-kin." He patted the cement arm she stood on, and she took a wary step back. "Happen though, he built me a friend, so we're all happy. Even the Gray Lord, there, she thought it were funny. Didn't hardly hurt me at all for gettin' seen and not tellin' her."

The fae could hide what they were. Could look just like anyone else. But the hunger that shone in his eyes when he looked at her was as immortal as she was and a lot older.

Her wolf didn't like him, and Anna narrowed her eyes at him and let him hear her growl. He should know that she was not prey.

He laughed again and slapped one thigh with a hand covered in a worn fingerless glove. "If'n I forgot meself so bad as to take a bite"-he snapped his teeth together and in the darkness under the bridge she saw the spark when they struck-"she'd chew me up and feed me to them great octopuses that live 'round here, she would." The thought seemed to amuse him. "Though a good meaty bit of wolf-flesh might be worth it."

"Troll," said Charles.

He had been having so much fun with Anna, he'd forgotten about the real threat. Reminded, he jerked around, crouched, and hissed.

Charles took out one of the plain gold studs he wore in his ears and tossed it at the fae, who caught it with inhu manly quick hands.

"Take your toll and go, Old One," Charles said.

"Hey, Jer," came a worried and thin voice from above them. "You don't go bothering them, or the police'll have us outta here. You know they will."

The troll in human guise held the bit of gold up to his nose and smelled. His face twitched, and his eyes swirled with an eerie blue light before they settled down and became just eyes again. "Toll," he said. "Toll."

"Jerry?"

"No troubles, Bill," he called up to his... what... friends? His roommates, his bridgemates, who were more human than he. "Jest saying good afternoon."

He looked at Charles, and for a moment an oddly noble expression crossed his face, his back straightened, shoulders thrown back. In a clear, accentless voice he said, "Word of advice for your payment. Don't trust the fae." He laughed again, devolving into the man who'd greeted them in the first place, and scrambled up the hill and under the bridge.

Charles didn't say anything, but Anna slid off her perch and followed him back to the car.

"Are trolls really as big as that statue?" she asked, belting herself in.

"I don't know," Charles answered. And smiled at the startled look she gave him. "I don't know everything. I've never seen a troll in its true form."

She started the car. "A toll is supposed to be for crossing his bridge. We didn't cross the bridge."

"But we were trespassing. It seemed appropriate."

"What about the advice he gave?"

He smiled again, his face lit with amusement. "You know what they say, 'Don't trust the fae.' "

"Okay." It was a common piece of advice. The first thing people said and the main point of most stories about them. "Especially when they tell us not to, I suppose. Where to now?"

"Back down the Troll road. See those docks down there? Dana lives on a houseboat at the foot of the troll."

HE'd only visited Dana at her home once before, but Charles had no trouble finding it again: it didn't exactly blend in.

There were four docks; three of them had a number of boats of various kinds secured to them. The fourth had only one. A houseboat two stories tall, it looked like a miniature Victorian mansion, complete with gingerbread trim in every color of an ocean sunset: blue and orange, yellow and red.

Dana brought hiding in plain sight to a new level. None of her neighbors, except the fae themselves, knew what she was. She was powerful enough that she had been allowed to choose to expose herself or not-and she'd chosen to continue hiding.

Charles was powerful, too. But he had no choice.

"This is it?" Anna asked, "It looks exactly like something a fairy should live in."

"Wait until you see the inside," he told her.

For nearly two centuries he had been trekking along happily... or at least contentedly, down a straight path. His life had always been about serving his Alpha, who was both his father and the Marrok, in whatever capacity he was needed.

When his father had told him what he intended, had told him he needed wolves to give a public face to the werewolf, wolves Bran could trust not to screw up in public, Charles had agreed to be one of them. Not that it would have mattered if he'd refused; in the end a wolf obeyed his Alpha or he killed him. And Charles knew with an absolute certainty that left him content that he would never be able to take on his father.

But that had been before Anna. Now his life was about her, about keeping her safe. As much as he agreed with his father about what the proper course of action to follow was, he and Brother Wolf were both concerned that keeping her safe and presenting himself to the public as a werewolf were not compatible.

This week, he couldn't let so much as a breath out that might express his true feelings on this. It was necessary for the wolves to come out. He knew that.

But now there was Anna, and she changed things.

"Should we go see if she's here?" asked Anna, still examining the houseboat from the safety of land.

Dana, no doubt, already knew that they were there-he'd felt magic brush over his skin as they walked down to her dock, but she'd wait until they approached her properly.

Dana, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, had conducted this kind of business for his father before. She was being very well paid, but with a fae it was always a good policy to bring an extra gift in lieu of a "thank-you." Saying those words could be dangerous, as some fae took them to be an admission of obligation. The Marrok wasn't the only one bringing her a gift, but his must be greater than the rest combined. Still, Charles could have presented it to her at the first meeting rather than making a special trip.

His da had suggested that Dana might appreciate a visit from him before business-and that Anna might enjoy it as well. So here they were, he with a small, wrapped painting under his arm, and Anna, who, a few steps ahead of him, had taken the first step onto the dock and discovered that a floating dock bounces.

She gave him a happy look as he followed her out on the water-soaked wooden walk. "This could be fun," she said, then turned, took a running step, and did a couple of back flips-like a middle-school kid at recess. He stopped where he was, lust and love and fear rising up in a surge of emotion he did not, for all his years, have any idea how to deal with.

"What?" she asked, a little breathless from her gymnastics. She brushed her wavy hair out of her face and gave him a serious look. "Is there something wrong?"

He could hardly tell her that he was afraid because he didn't know what he'd do if something happened to her. That his sudden, unexpected reaction had brought Brother Wolf to the fore. She threw his balance off; his control-which had become almost effortless over the years-was erratic at best. Sternly, he tried to bring his wolf brother to heel, to bring his own control back.

Anna winced and put her hands to her temples. "You know, if you don't want me to know what you're feeling, you could just distract yourself. It hurts when you block me out."

He hadn't realized he was. Didn't want to hurt her. He began opening himself up, and Brother Wolf took over and opened them both up all the way. It was very much like a man opening an umbrella that had been stored for years. Some parts creaked and groaned and shed dust-others cracked under the sudden stretching and threatened to break.

He felt naked-only more so. As if he'd shed his skin and stood with raw nerve endings waiting to be filleted by the next stray wind. All he was, all he'd been, was there in the broad daylight, where it had never been meant to be seen. Not even by him.

There was a pause, a waiting moment, and then everything hit.

There were too many memories, things he'd seen and done. Pain and pleasure and sorrow: all there as if they were happening now-too much, too much, and he couldn't breathe...

And Anna was there, holding him and releasing the spring that held him open, allowing his thoughts and feelings to settle back into private places, but not as hidden as they had been. He waited for the pain to settle, but it dissipated into the sound of Anna's song flowing through him.

His protections, the walls he kept between him and the world, were up again, but Anna was inside them. It felt odd, but not painful, more like someone had pulled the rug out from under his feet. It was intimate as all hell, scary, and miraculous. He was getting used to feeling like that a lot around her.

Anna's face was pressed against his chest, her arms around him, and she was humming Brahms in a low and sweet range.

He ran a hand down her hair and kissed the top of her head. "Sorry, and thanks. Brother Wolf tends to be a little literal, and he doesn't like you hurt." He found himself smiling, even though he was still reeling. "Brahms?"

She gave an uncertain laugh and backed up so she could look him in the eye. "Sorry, I was panicked. And music seems to help me focus... whatever it is I can do. Soothing music. And the Lullaby just seemed appropriate. Are you all right?"

"Fine-" he said, then realized that he was lying, so he amended it. "I'll be fine." Yeah, it was a sharp right his life had taken. Having a mate was throwing both him and his wolf off their game-and he wasn't inclined to complain. He smiled to himself. She even sang lullabies to him-and he liked it.

Somehow he'd managed to stay on his feet, thus avoiding a dunking in the cold water, and still had his father's present for Dana.

"Shall we go see the fae?" he asked politely, as if he hadn't just had some sort of... epiphany, metaphysical almost breakdown... he didn't have the words.

"Sure." Anna took his free hand, and the touch of her skin was better than her embrace because it was her flesh on his.

Brother Wolf gave a groan of contentment and settled down, even though he was always unhappy around the fae, any fae. They weren't pack and never could be. He himself liked her as well as he'd ever liked any fae. About Dana, he and Brother Wolf agreed to disagree.

THE boat had a door, just like a real house. Anna waited while Charles knocked. She used her eyelashes to hide how intently she watched him. His control was so good she'd had no idea there was something wrong until she'd looked up after a couple of back flips to see his eyes, gold and savage-and then she'd felt him, all of him. Too much to process, too much to see, all she'd felt was his pain. He was rebuilding the walls between them now. She didn't even know if he was doing it on purpose or not.

He seemed to have it all together now, but she kept her hand on his back, tucked up under his jacket, where she could feel the muscles, smooth and relaxed under her fingertips.

Over the smell of brine, vegetation, and city, she could smell turpentine-but no one came to greet them.

Charles opened the door and stuck his head inside. "Dana? My da sent us to bring you a present."

It felt like the whole world paused with interest, but the fae didn't say anything.

"Dana?"

Sound, when it came, emerged from over their heads. "A present?"

Anna looked up and saw that a second-story window was open.

"That's what he told me," Charles said.

Anna could tell that he liked the fae by the warmth in his voice. She wasn't prepared for him to like her; he liked so few people. The wolf inside her, brought out by whatever had happened on the docks, stirred uneasily, possessively, protectively.

"Bring it here, then, dear boy. I'm up in the studio, and I don't want to track paint all over the place."

Dear boy? Anna felt her eyes narrow. It appeared the affection was mutual.

He took her hand absently. Her wolf settled at his touch as she followed him through the door in the side of the boat. Charles seemed to know where he was going, or maybe he was just following the biting smell of turpentine.

She glanced around as she followed him deeper. There were paintings of butterflies and moths lining the hall. The rooms to either side were small and cozy, decorated in purples, pinks, and blues-as if a team of Disney animators had come in and decorated it to make the perfect fairy abode. One room held an artificial waterfall that burbled with manic cheer. A twin-sized bed took up the rest of the space. The whole place smelled of salt water and the same odd smell she'd noticed when they talked to the troll-maybe it was the smell of a fae.

The hall emptied into a cozy kitchen and a narrow stairway lit by skylights and lined with flowering plants growing in various pink, powder blue, and lavender pots. At the top was a large room, one side entirely of glass that looked out over the water. In the center of the room... greenhouse, whatever it was, stood the fae.

Her skin was pale, a stark contrast to the thick hair that flowed to her hips in mahogany curls. Her face was screwed up in concentration which made her... cute. Slender, long fingers, splattered attractively with paint, played with a small paintbrush. Her eyes were deep blue, like a lake in the high summer sun. Her mouth was dark and full. And she was tall, as tall as Charles, and he was a tall man, over six feet.

Aside from the hair, she was nothing like Anna had expected. There were wrinkles at the side of her eyes, and her face was caught between maturity and old age. She wore a gray T-shirt that had less paint on it than her hands did, and gym shorts that revealed legs that were muscled with the stringy power of age rather than taut youth.

In front of her was an easel holding a largish canvas that faced the other direction, so Anna couldn't see what was on it.

"Dana," rumbled Charles.

Anna didn't want the woman looking at her mate. Which didn't make sense. The fae was not beautiful, and she wasn't even paying attention to Charles. It must still be a leftover reaction to the odd moment on the docks.

Or maybe it was the "dear boy."

Anna's hand had found its way back under Charles's jacket, and she clenched the thick silk shirt he wore and tried not to growl-or drag him away.

Dana Shea looked away from the easel, and smiled, a radiant smile that had all the joy of a mother's first look at her infant, a boy's triumph the first time he hits a baseball with a bat. It was warm and intimate and innocent, and it was directed at Charles.

"Dana," Charles's voice was harsh. "Stop it."

A hurt look slid over her face.

"That magic doesn't work with me," he told the fae-and he was starting to sound seriously angry. "And don't think that my father's favor will allow you leeway with me."

Anna closed her eyes. It was a spell. She breathed through her nose, allowing the sharp smell of turpentine and Charles to clear her head. A spell, but she didn't think it was directed at Charles, not precisely. Dana knew Charles; she'd know he had his own defenses against magic.

Anna knew what this was-a challenge. The fae woman wasn't a werewolf, but she was a dominant in her own territory. And just maybe she considered Charles her territory. As he had certainly once been.

That was what her wolf sensed. This woman had slept with Charles. Anna supposed that in two hundred odd years he'd had sex with a lot of women. But Dana had not been Charles's mate.

Taking another deep breath, Anna leaned her forehead against Charles's arm and thought of the way his scent made her feel, of the sound of his laughter and the rumble of his voice in their bed at night. She wasn't looking for the passion, though there was plenty of that, but for the deeply centered clarity that he brought to her-and she returned to him. Something that she alone could give him: peace.

His muscles softened against her forehead, and his lips came down to brush the top of her head. She opened her eyes and met the fae's gaze.

"Mine," she said firmly.

The fae gave her a slow smile. "I see that." She looked at Charles. "You understand the impulse," the fae told him. "I couldn't resist testing her. I've heard so much about the puppy who caught the old dog in her trap."

"Careful," warned Charles. "That strays perilously close to a lie."

The fae raised an eyebrow in offense.

"You don't want me," he told her. "Don't be a dog in the manger."

She turned up her nose and started painting again, all but turning her back to them. "Aesop. I'm trying for Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, and you bring up that dry old Greek."

"I suppose if Dana is occupied, we can give her the Marrok's gift tomorrow," said Charles without making a move to leave.

The fae sighed. "You know what I like best about you-and hate the most-is that you never have known how to play properly. I am the jilted older woman whose onetime flirt has found a younger, prettier woman. You are supposed to be embarrassed that your new love knows about us." She looked at Anna. "And you. I expected better from you-you are his woman. You should at least be angry with him for not warning you we'd been lovers."

Anna gave her a cool look, remembered that they had come here to make nice with someone who would help them accomplish their task, and didn't say, "You aren't worth getting angry about." Instead, she simply told her, "He is mine, now."

Dana laughed. "You might just do, after all. I was afraid he'd found someone who would always give him his own way, and that would be dreadfully bad for him. Just look what being mated to that whiny fashion plate has done to his father." The fae started to put out a hand, but then gave it a rueful look. "I would shake your hand, but I'd get paint all over you. I am known here as Dana Shea and you must be Charles's mate, Anna Cornick, who was Anna Latham of Chicago." Anna, remembering what Charles had told her about True Names, was a little uneasy with how... precise the fae woman had been in naming her.

"I'm not the only one," Dana continued, "who has been curious about the woman who managed to tame our old wolf. So be prepared for a lot of rudeness from the women"-her voice took on a serious warning note as she looked at Charles-"and flirting from the men."

"You've heard something?" Charles asked her.

Dana shook her head. "No. But I know men, and I know wolves. None of them are dominant enough to face you directly-but they'll see her as a weakness. When your father chose to stay home, he gave them an opportunity for challenge. You are not an Alpha-and they'll resent having to listen to you." She took up a turpentine-soaked rag and cleaned her hands. "Now I'll quit lecturing you, and you can come around here and take a look at what I've done instead."