Cry Wolf (Alpha & Omega 1)

If they'd been in Chicago, attending a meeting with her old pack, she wouldn't have let him come. Too many of the wolves there would have taken advantage of his weakness. Or at least she'd have tried to stop him a lot harder than she'd tried this morning.

She had expressed her concern, eyes carefully trained on the floor. In her experience, dominant wolves didn't like their prowess questioned and sometimes reacted badly. Not that she really thought he'd hurt her.

He'd merely said, "No one would dare try me. My father would kill them if I didn't manage it first. I'm hardly helpless."

She hadn't had the courage to question his judgment again. All she could do was hope that he was right.

She had to admit he looked anything but helpless, the folds of bandages hidden by the dark suit jacket he wore. The contrast between formal suit and his waist-length beaded-and-braided hair was oddly compelling. Of course his face, beautiful and exotic, and his big, tautly muscled body meant that he would be gorgeous in whatever he wore.

He looked a lot classier than she did. She'd had to wear jeans and a yellow button-up shirt because the only other thing she had was a couple of T-shirts. She hadn't expected she'd be going to a funeral when she'd packed.

She sighed and eased her door open so she wouldn't scratch the Subaru parked next to her. Charles waited for her in front of the truck and held out his arm in what was beginning to be a familiar gesture, however old-fashioned it might be. She tucked her arm into his and let him pick his own pace into the church.

In public he didn't limp, but she knew that sharp eyes would be watching the stiffness of his gait. She glanced up at him as they started up the steps, but she couldn't read anything in his face at all: he already had his public face on, expressionless.

Inside, the church sounded like a beehive, with a hundred voices intermingling so that she got a word here or there but nothing made any sense. She could smell the wolves, but there were humans here, too. The whole congregation bore the distinctive scent of sorrow, overlaid with anger and resentment.

When they walked into the chapel itself, every pew was tightly packed, and a few people even stood around the back. They turned when she and Charles walked in, all of them staring at her-an outsider, the only person in the whole freaking church wearing jeans. Or yellow.

She tightened her grip on Charles's arm. He glanced down at her face, then just looked around. In less time than it took to walk past three pews, everyone seemed to have found something urgent that pulled their attention elsewhere.

She clutched his forearm a little harder in gratitude and looked at the church itself. It reminded her a little of the Congregational church she'd grown up in with its dark woods, high ceiling, and cross-shaped interior. The pulpit was directly in front of the aisle they walked up, raised above the main floor by about two feet. Behind it were several rows of seats facing the congregation.

As they neared the front of the church, she realized she'd been wrong about its being completely packed. The first pew on the left was entirely empty except for Bran.

He sat looking for all the world as if he was waiting for a bus rather than a funeral, despite the designer charcoal suit he wore. His arms were spread to either side of him, elbows hanging over the back of the pew; his legs were stretched out and crossed at the ankle, eyes focused either on the railing in front of him, or on infinity. His face revealed no more than Charles's usual expression, which was wrong. She hadn't known him long, but the Marrok's face was a mobile one, not designed to be so still.

He looked isolated, and Anna remembered that the man the whole town had turned out to mourn had been killed by Bran. A friend, he'd said.

Beside her, Charles let out a low growl that caught his father's attention. Bran looked over at them, and one eyebrow climbed up his face, robbing it of its blankness. He patted the bench beside him as he asked his son, "What? You expected them to be happy with me?"

Charles turned on his heel, so Anna was abruptly face to chest with him. But he wasn't looking at her, he was looking at everyone else in the sanctuary-who once again looked away. As his power swept the church in a boiling rush, silence fell abruptly.

"Fools," he said, loud enough that everyone in the church would hear him.

Bran laughed. "Come sit down before you scare them all silly. I'm not a politician to worry about what they think of me, as long as they obey."

After a moment, Charles complied, and Anna found herself sitting between them.

As soon as Charles was facing the front of the church, the whispering began, built up speed, and regained its previous level. There were undercurrents here, thick enough to choke on. Anna felt distinctly like an outsider.

"Where's Samuel?" Charles looked over her head at his father.

"He's coming in right now." Bran said it without looking behind him, but Charles turned around so Anna did, too.

The man strolling up the aisle was almost as tall as Charles, his features a rougher version of Bran's. That roughness made them not so bland or young-looking as his father. She found him oddly compelling, though not handsome like Charles.

His ditch-water brown hair was cut carelessly, but somehow he managed to look neat and well dressed anyway. He held a battered violin case in one hand and a dark blue Western-cut jacket in the other.

When he was nearly at the front, he turned around once, taking in the people in a single glance. Then he looked over at Anna, and his face broke into a singularly sweet smile-a smile she'd seen an echo of on Charles's face. With that smile she could see past the superficial differences to the underlying similarities, a matter of bone and movement rather than feature-by-feature likeness.

He sat next to Charles and brought with him the crisp scent of snow over leather. His smile widened, and he started to say something, but stopped when a wave of silence swept through the crowd from the back to the front.

The minister, bedecked in old-fashioned clerical robes, walked slowly up the central aisle, an ancient-looking Bible resting in the crook of his left arm. By the time he reached the front, the room was silent.

His obvious age told her that he wasn't a werewolf, but he had a presence that made his "Welcome and thank you for coming to pay your respects to our friend" sound ceremonial. He set the Bible on the podium with obvious care for graying leather. He gently opened the heavily embossed cover and set aside a bookmark.

He read from the fifteenth chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. And the last verse he spoke without looking down. " 'O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?' "

He paused, letting his eyes trail over the room, much as Charles had, then said simply, "Shortly after we moved back here, Carter Wallace came to my house at two in the morning to hold my wife's hand when our retriever had her first litter of puppies. He wouldn't charge me because he said if he charged for cuddling pretty women, he'd be a gigolo and not a vet."