Burn Bright

Anna’s first thought was surprise that Charles hadn’t put his foot down and paired Sage and Asil together instead. Her second thought was that Asil had made that suggestive comment in front of Sage, too.

“Aren’t you and Sage dating?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” Asil said. “Currently, she is playing hard to get.”

Anna took a good look at his face to see if it was okay if she asked for more details.

“She believes I am arrogant and treat her as though she cannot take care of herself,” he clarified.

“She’s right,” Anna said.

“Yes.” He gave her a graceful bow of his head. “She is.” He took a deep breath and gave Anna a humorless smile that told her he was more upset about it than he let on. “I am too old to change who I am—a man a hair less arrogant would be lost to the beast that lives inside me. You cannot look at a person, and say, ‘If I could change this or that, if I could pick what I want and discard other things, I could love this one.’ Such a love is pale and weak—and doomed to failure.”

She thought about that. “I tried to change Charles,” she said in a small voice. “I told Bran to quit sending him out on killing missions.”

Asil sighed. “You are so sensible most of the time, I forget how young you are. That was not changing Charles, that was trying to change the world so Charles could survive. That is protecting your mate from the things he cannot protect himself from.”

“Maybe Sage is trying to save you, too,” Anna said thoughtfully. “Saving you from death, really. If you keep trying to protect her when she doesn’t need it, she might have to shoot you.” Sage was a pretty good shot.

Asil fell silent; he didn’t smile at her attempt at humor. After a moment, he said, “I will consider this. It will not change how I act, but perhaps it will make her argument less aggravating.”

She couldn’t tell if he was joking. She was sort of afraid he wasn’t.

“I can tell you a few things about Wellesley,” Asil said, after they’d traveled far enough to leave the subject of Sage behind them, along with several miles of twisty dirt track. “He can use magic—and not always on purpose. He isn’t a witch—his magic is closer to Charles’s magic, I think. But it makes him especially good at pack magic. He comes on pack hunts sometimes, but no one except Bran and I know it. And probably Charles. If Wellesley doesn’t want you to notice him, he is difficult to perceive, and you’ll have trouble remembering details about him, like exactly what he looks like.”

He paused. “I am old and powerful, so I have no such trouble. It is for this reason Bran started sending me to deal with him.”

“So he could come on pack hunts, or go into Aspen Springs, and no one would notice?” Anna asked. Because that was what Asil was avoiding saying. “He could gather information without anyone the wiser.”

“Yes,” Asil said. “I’ve known a few other wolves who could do this.” He paused. “I’m fairly certain that Bran can do a bit more.”

Anna nodded solemnly. She thought there was a reason that visiting wolves sometimes seemed not to notice Bran until he drew attention to himself. Part of it was his ability to hide the force of his personality, but on several occasions, she would swear that people just didn’t notice him at all.

“He likes to sing,” Asil said.

“Wellesley?” she asked. They’d just been talking about Bran, but she was fairly sure that Asil wouldn’t feel impelled to tell her something everyone knew.

Asil nodded. “He is a bass and usually slightly flat. Like Johnny Cash.”

“Johnny Cash wasn’t flat,” Anna objected, having newly become a fan, much to the amusement of certain members of the pack. “He just sang melodies in unexpected ways—choosing other notes in the chords than the note our ear thinks the melody should probably carry.”

“Or the songwriter intended,” said Asil.

“It reduced the range of the songs,” Anna continued doggedly. “But made them sound like Johnny Cash songs.”

“Yes,” agreed Asil. “But you say this as if it is a good thing.”

“Lots and lots of people agreed with me,” she said.

“Philistines,” Asil proclaimed grandly.

“Charles likes Johnny Cash,” she told him. Charles had been her gateway to a lot of music she’d once dismissed as old or hokey. Before Charles, her usual listening favorites were either truly classical—preferably with lots of cello—or whatever was current on the radio. Life with Charles had opened up her musical library considerably—and she had once thought herself thoroughly educated on the subject.

“Barbarian Philistines,” Asil corrected himself. “Johnny Cash was an uneducated, backwoods man with a deep voice. You are wasted on Charles.”

“Cash was a national treasure,” she said, starting to feel a little hot. “He took folk music, church music, and rock, and fused them into something that spoke to a lot of people. And I’m so lucky I found Charles that I must have been blessed by Leprechauns in a former life.”

“You’ve never met a Leprechaun, or you wouldn’t say that.” Asil gave her a superior smile before turning his attention to keeping the heavy SUV from sliding off the track when its right wheel hit a patch of soft dirt.

“I don’t want the traitor to be Wellesley,” Anna told him.

“Nor do I, chiquita.”

After a while, during which she went over their conversation in her head, Anna asked suspiciously, “Do you like to listen to Johnny Cash?”

“I enjoy Dolly Parton,” he said. “Now there is a unique voice.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Anna said. “Do you like to listen to Johnny Cash?”

Asil sighed and gave in with such overt embarrassment that she knew it wasn’t an important issue for him—not that liking Johnny Cash was something to be embarrassed about anyway. “Only the good songs.” He glanced at her. “If you tell Charles, I’ll deny it.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Only if Charles asks me.”

Asil’s sigh, this time, was full to dripping with dramatic sorrow. “You shall be the death of me, Anna. The very death of me.”

And at that moment he made a sudden right-hand turn off the cliff. Anna grabbed the oh-hell handle, reminded herself that she was a werewolf and unlikely to die in most motor-vehicle accidents—especially since Asil’s Mercedes was less than a year old and came equipped with all sorts of airbags.

But the Mercedes didn’t fall, just continued down a very steep track for twenty yards and twisted sharply to the right.

“Looks like that erosion control Bran had put in here held for another year,” Asil said, as if he hadn’t noticed her panicked reaction. “Until five years ago, every summer Wellesley had to rebuild that road because the edge where we just turned kept rolling off down the cliff every spring.”

“You did that on purpose,” Anna accused him.

He grinned whitely. “Maybe. But it was fun, no?”

She huffed at him and wouldn’t give him a grin in return no matter how much she wanted to.

The big SUV rocked slowly down the rough track that ended … continued into a natural crack in the side of the mountain that was just big enough to swallow the Mercedes. Asil paused at the opening and blasted his horn twice. He paused for a count of five (because he counted out loud) and turned his lights on bright and continued down the track and into the heart of the mountain.

CHAPTER 7

The darkness was so profound that the lights of Asil’s Mercedes barely penetrated—or else there was just nothing to see. Anna saw a flash of reflective tape, and Asil’s slow progress drew to a halt.

When Anna started to open her door, Asil shook his head as he turned the engine off. “Wait up a moment.”

They sat in silence for a while, the lights of the car fading to off. Anna had gotten used to being able to see in the dark, and the stygian lack of light started to make her feel claustrophobic. And other kinds of phobic, too.

Finally, Anna couldn’t stand the silence anymore.