Burn Bright

“Tell me?” she asked.

“As you said,” Asil told her, “it was easier to be lost and wander back in those days. Lots of men without families or pasts wandered the railroad and the highways in the Depression era. Wellesley was just another one of them until he finally lost control of the wolf in a little town with a population of about four hundred people. It’s not around anymore, that little town, or maybe more people would remember this story. Wellesley is sometimes certain that there was a black witch—or something like a black witch—involved. But in the aftermath, there was only Wellesley and some bodies: a black man in a mostly white town.”

Asil patted Wellesley again, but the other werewolf didn’t appear to notice him. After a moment, Asil started talking again.

“That’s when Bran became aware of him. He sent Charles to break Wellesley out.” There was a pause, and Asil said sourly because he didn’t want to respect Charles, “I understand he broke into that jail where Wellesley was under heavy guard and left with him. But if you can get that closemouthed wolf to tell you how he did it in plain sight of two guards, leaving an empty and locked cell behind them with no one the wiser, there would be a lot of people who’d love to hear that story.”

“Can’t you ask Wellesley?” Anna asked.

Asil shook his head. “He doesn’t remember anything except bits and pieces—mostly that’s his wolf, anyway. Wellesley doesn’t have enough memories to defend himself from anything someone wants to claim about that day if someone goes digging up old newspaper records or someone’s diary about the matter.”

“You think he is innocent?”

Asil sighed. “I think that truth is complicated—and speculating on things without adequate facts is useless. You can ask your mate if you are curious. His orders were to kill or rescue, depending upon what his judgment told him was best—and here is our Wellesley, safe if not sound.”

Wellesley’s sobs had been quieting, but Anna was deliberately focusing on Asil, so she didn’t notice the difference in him soon enough.

Asil, though, Asil was on Wellesley before his sharpening teeth could do more than scrape against her collarbone. Then they were both rolling around the room while Anna scrambled to her feet. Before she could jump in and add her weight to the game, Asil had Wellesley pinned to the floor in some complex wrestling move that didn’t allow the werewolf to use his great strength to break free.

And Wellesley—or the wolf spirit that lived in Wellesley—was trying. His eyes, those brilliant gold wolf’s eyes so startling in his dark face, saw nothing but enemies. His face, changing slowly to wolf, was wild. His jaws snapped and snapped at the air as if there were some way that he could climb out of the bones of his body to get at Asil—but would be satisfied with anyone.

Asil crooned to him in Spanish as if the mad creature were a child. There was power in his voice, the werewolf magic of a very dominant wolf trying to settle Wellesley.

She could feel the other man trying to come back, but the wolf spirit was dominant, too. Asil, she thought, could have subdued the other wolf, but he was hoping that Wellesley could control it himself. A wolf this old who couldn’t control himself better than this would need to be killed.

The impulse to soothe Wellesley, to bring him the relief that her Omega nature brought to troubled wolves, was instinctive and felt desperately necessary. But she gathered herself together and thought before she gave in to that desire.

She was in control when she reached out with her power to do what she could. She wouldn’t have tried it if it had been Charles holding Wellesley, but it was Asil, who had been mated to an Omega wolf. He’d had a long time to learn how to guard himself, to stay alert, no matter what his wolf felt from her.

She took a deep breath, centering herself, and crouched, staying on her feet in case she had to move fast. She put her hand on Wellesley’s cheek with enough pressure that he’d have trouble turning his head to bite her.

The trapped wolf shuddered at her touch.

Asil turned his croon to English, speaking to her in the same voice he was using for Wellesley. “Be careful what you do, Anna. Your abilities allow you to bring a wolf terrific relief—but it comes at a cost. When you pull away, he has to take up the burden of controlling the beast again—and that requires a lot more courage and fortitude than doing it in the first place.”

“I know,” she said simply. “I’m not likely to forget the disaster of Bran’s experiments with me. But my read on this is that we don’t have a choice.”

Asil closed his eyes, opened them again, and nodded. “If you can’t fix him, I will send him to a final rest, where this burden will no longer trouble him.”

“Will you be all right when I soothe him?” she asked, half expecting him to take offense, but she had recognized that he had been speaking of himself, too, not just Wellesley, when he warned her of the possible results of her meddling.

Asil smiled grimly. “I do not want to kill this one, who has fought so hard for such a long time. One who creates such beauty as he does is worthy of anything we can do to help him.”

It wasn’t a yes. But she thought she might have a fix for that.

She’d been practicing using what she was ever since she came to Aspen Creek. It was sometimes hard to find victims … subjects. As Asil said, most of the wolves didn’t object to the initial effect—it was afterward that made it difficult. Kara was her most consistent volunteer.

Before she learned to handle it better, what her Omega aura did was flood an area with a wave of peace that sent the beast spirit of unprepared werewolves into sleep. She and the only other Omega she knew about had consulted over the Internet (because he lived in Italy) and pulled in Asil, who knew more about Omegas than either of them did. They had been working on other ways to utilize their effect without dropping their friends in their tracks. One of the things they had come up with was something that was more … invitation than hammer.

She closed her eyes and visualized a quiet little hollow under an old tree next to a fast-running creek that was a favorite spot of hers. The sound of the creek rushing by, the smell of growing things, the peace of the place took hold of her heart.

For a long time, this method had only worked with Charles because she could use their mating bond as a conduit. She’d gotten practiced enough that she could use the pack bonds as well, and lately she’d been experimenting using only touch. Unexpectedly, that had proved more powerful—or at least differently powerful—than using the mate or pack bonds.

With skin contact, Anna gained an insight she had never received with her mating bond or the pack bonds: empathy. Or empathy of a sort, anyway. It wasn’t so much that she felt the other wolf’s emotions; what she got was a sort of pressure reading. She could gauge how much emotion they were holding. She’d learned to work with that, to soften the full force of whatever they were feeling, then back away.

It worked better with some wolves than others, of course. She couldn’t get a read, most times, on Bran or Asil, let alone affect the amount of emotion they were feeling. Kara was her best subject. Between them they had fine-tuned the effect so Anna could help Kara just take the edge off—or coax Kara’s inner wolf into a willing sound sleep without affecting any of the wolves nearby. Or at least allowing the nearby wolves to resist the rest she offered them. She planned on trying that now, so that she was less likely to affect Asil.

She didn’t know if her touch would allow her to influence Wellesley’s wolf at all. But if not, she always had her big hammer to whomp him to sleep with. The whomp would hit Asil, too, though.

“I’m going to try asking him to let his wolf sleep—like I do with Kara. I don’t know if this will affect you,” she told Asil. “I’ve never tried it when someone else was touching my experimental subject.”

He laughed, just a little, as if he were not wrestling with another werewolf. “I am prepared, mija. Do what you need to.”

She touched Wellesley’s cheek and extended her invitation of peace. He reached for it immediately—and then yanked her out of her forest glade into hell.

There was a moment when she could have broken free, then that moment was gone, and Wellesley was in charge. Sort of.