Burn Bright

Jericho’s body was fit and strong. Which was a good thing—hunger tended to destabilize even the most controlled werewolf, which none of the wildlings were to begin with. He hadn’t, Charles thought, eaten any of the dead men—though it was usual for an out-of-control werewolf to eat his victims.

Most of the wildlings were twitchy in human form, as if the wolf were ready to climb out at any moment. Jericho’s body was very still and balanced on the balls of his feet. He glanced around at their group with his wolf-blue eyes, then away. He shivered.

“Where is Devon?” asked Leah.

“I …” He stopped, swallowed, and began again. “He wanted me to run. He doesn’t want me to die. But I killed those men. The only rule is no killing. I had to tie him up in the cave.”

And that was more coherent sentences in a row than Charles had been able to get out of him in ten years. To top off the performance, Jericho walked up to Charles, dropped to his knees, and presented his throat.

“Well,” said Anna briskly after a moment of silence. “That’s all very dramatic and heartfelt, I’m sure. But we’re pretty sure those men attacked you. Self-defense is always legal.”

Jericho eyed Anna. “No killing. The Marrok was very clear.”

Behind Jericho, Asil crossed to the cave and ducked in.

“Those men belonged to our enemy,” said Leah. “A similar group killed Hester yesterday. Her mate followed by his own hand.”

Jericho swayed a bit then, and his eyes darkened to human blue. “Felt that,” he said. “Hester … didn’t like me at all.” For a second, he grinned widely. “Damn near killed me first time we met.” Then he blinked, and the human left his eyes again. “Not sorry I killed them. But the rule is no killing.”

“How did they find you?” asked Anna. “Do you know? Did you hear anything that can help us find them?”

Jericho growled at her.

Brother Wolf growled more savagely, and Jericho subsided.

“Don’t do this,” Sage said, apparently to herself because her voice had been very quiet. “You don’t need to do this.”

Charles gave Sage a sharp look—but her attention was on Jericho.

Jericho’s attention was on Charles.

Asil exited the cave and a very thin, patchy-coated wolf followed him, head low and tail tucked. Asil nodded at Charles—he’d found Devon just as Jericho said he would. Charles looked carefully at Devon, but the wildling seemed unharmed—if not particularly happy.

“Assume that we’ll take care of an execution if it needs to happen,” Anna told Jericho dryly. “Moving on to a different topic. Did you overhear anything they might have said? Any clues to who or what they were?”

Jericho focused his ice-blue eyes on Charles’s mate. Charles would have been happier if he hadn’t done that.

“She said not to come here. To wait. That this attack is too likely to give her away,” Jericho said, in a hard, oddly deep voice. His voice changed again, becoming both lighter and quicker. “She is not in charge; she is not the boss. And I don’t know about you, but I’m more afraid of the boss than of her.”

And Charles realized that Jericho had taken Anna’s question literally. He was repeating back exactly what they had said in his presence.

And they had been talking about a “she.”

Charles looked at Leah—he couldn’t help it. But she was watching Jericho with her brows furrowed—Charles didn’t think she’d quite figured out what Jericho was doing.

“Our job,” continued the wildling coolly “is to get the information from this one if he has it. No one will miss him for a long time. If we can’t get it from him, then we hit the other one.” Jericho sighed loudly and dropped into the first voice. “And that will be a cluster because someone keeps taking out our surveillance equipment, I know. I don’t like going in blind, eith—” Jericho stopped speaking.

“Anna can help you,” said Sage intently. “She just broke a hundred-year-old curse on another wildling. I was there.”

The first statement was a lie. Charles turned his attention to Sage—because he’d never heard her lie before. Even more interesting than the lie was the implication that she didn’t believe Anna could help Jericho.

Even though he’d once rescued her—and Charles remembered the incident pretty much the way she’d told it—she was scared of Jericho. Charles could tell that much, though her control was very good. Probably he and Jericho were the only ones who could smell it. Charles because he had Brother Wolf, and Jericho because he was mostly wolf even when he wore human skin.

“Eith—?” asked Anna.

“I killed him before he finished the sentence,” said Jericho smugly. “He was probably going to say ‘either’ but you asked me what they said. Not what I thought they were going to say.”

Asil said, “You are feeling talkative tonight, my friend.” He sounded a little suspicious.

There is something going on, said Brother Wolf. Something is wrong with Jericho.

Well, yes.

More wrong, said Brother Wolf intently. Differently wrong.

He just killed seven people and has been waiting for two days for his death sentence, Charles reminded him. But I agree.

Satisfied, Brother Wolf fell silent.

“Did you kill them before they attacked you?” asked Leah.

“Don’t,” Sage whispered.

Jericho gave Leah his ice-blue stare. “They invaded my territory. They came with guns and sharp things. With wires and switches and buttons to make me tell them things. They wanted to take Bright. I couldn’t let them do that. They said, ‘Sage can’t figure out where Frank Bright is, and she’s had years. How hard is it to find the only black man among Bran Cornick’s misfits?’”

Charles bolted, but it had taken him an extra breath to realize what Jericho had said. That short space of time allowed Sage to get a head start.

As she ran, she grabbed her necklace. He had time to see her shift to her wolf as quickly as he could, felt the wave of witchcraft that allowed her to do so.

Then a puff of smoke billowed in the air right in front of him. The acrid, greasy cloud filled his nose and mouth and left him coughing and gagging and trying to breathe. He plowed to a stop and tried to clean his nose with his paws, wiping his face on the ground when that didn’t work.

Asil passed him without hesitation, Leah and Juste on his heels. Anna stopped and pulled off her shirt. She wiped his face and paws with it. That did the trick, and he could breathe again.

“Witchcraft,” she said. “I saw something burst right in front of you.”

Smelled stale, said Brother Wolf. The magic was trapped in an object. We would have known if she were witchborn.

“If she had that with her,” Anna said, “then she was prepared for us to find her out.”

Yes.

Sage was their traitor. He’d let himself process that, to grieve over that, later. He got to his feet and shook himself, trying to decide how to proceed.

“Heyya,” called Jericho.

The wildling had Devon beside him, and they were walking along the side of the mountain about twenty feet above where Charles and Anna were. Devon still had his tail between his legs and was watching Jericho with uncertain eyes—probably wondering why Jericho had tied him up, though it was hard to be certain with Devon.

“She’s following a trail,” Jericho said. “I know where it comes out—there’s a shortcut. If they don’t stop her before she gets that far, we can take her at the other end.”

Charles and Anna made short work of climbing the slope until they were up on the path the wildlings were on. It didn’t take them long to catch up. Jericho was not in an apparent hurry because he waited for them.

As they neared, Jericho tilted his head and frowned at Anna. “I don’t know you,” he said. “Should I know you?”

“Hello,” Anna said as they drew close. “We haven’t met. I’m Anna, Charles’s wife.”

Jericho looked at her with blue eyes that shifted from wolf to human with an unhealthy speed. “The Omega?”