Cry Wolf (Alpha & Omega 1)

His hands were so warm, but he'd been warm before. "I need to see your back."

He released her, stripped out of his coat, and, still kneeling, turned so she could see that the strips of shirt she'd wrapped around his torso were free of blood. She put her head against his shoulder and breathed in his scent. Underneath, she could smell old blood and the tang of a healing wound.

She grabbed his shirt in both hands and tried to collect herself.

"It was just a nightmare?" she said, afraid to believe. Afraid that had been the truth and this was the dream.

"No," he said. "It was the sum of the worst of your fears." He turned in her grip and wrapped both arms around her, surrounding her cold body with his heat. He whispered in her ear, "We've been trying to wake you up for about fifteen minutes." He paused, then said, "You weren't the only one who was frightened. Your heart stopped. For almost a minute I couldn't get you to breathe...I...I imagine you'll have bruises. CPR is one of those things I find pretty difficult; the line is so thin between forcing air out and breaking ribs."

He tightened his hold, and whispered, "One of the problems with having a brother who is a doctor is that I know how few of the people who need CPR survive."

Anna found herself patting him on the back-up on his shoulder, well away from his wound. "Yeah, well, I bet most of them aren't werewolves."

He pulled back after a moment, and said briskly, "You're cold. I think it's time for more food. We've still got a couple of hours before daylight."

"How are you?"

He smiled. "Better. A lot of food, a little rest, and I'm almost as good as new."

She watched him closely as he pulled a few packets of food out of the pack-things that didn't need hot water. More freeze-dried fruit and jerky.

She ripped a piece of jerky loose with her teeth and chewed. "You know, I used to like this stuff." Eating the bits she fed him, Walter spread himself out over her feet. Big as he was, he soon had her frozen toes toasty warm.

They lay down again, Anna sandwiched between the males, Charles at her back once more.

"I'm afraid to go back to sleep," she said. And it wasn't because he'd told her the witch could have killed her, either. She couldn't face seeing Charles's dead body again.

Charles tightened his hold on her and began singing softly. His song was Native American-she recognized the nasal tone and odd scale.

Walter sighed and moved into a more comfortable position as they all waited for morning.

Chapter TWELVE

The darkness bothered Bran not at all as he followed Tag's directions to the place he and Charles had thought would be the best starting point. He passed Asil's Subaru and hesitated-if Asil had been going after Charles, he'd have known the fastest way there.

But Charles would be headed back to his car if something had gone wrong. So Bran kept driving.

Other things he might do ran through his head. There were witches in the pay of the wolves. Not his pack-he didn't deal with black witches, and most white witches weren't powerful enough to be useful. But there were witches available to him.

If he had a two-hundred-year-old witch capable of holding and torturing a werewolf for two days-he had no intention of advertising the fact and encouraging other witches to imitate this one. Especially since she, like Bran's mother, might have gotten her ability through some kind of binding to a werewolf.

No. Best keep the witches out of it.

He could call Charles back.

That was a harder thing. Telepathy was how his mother had gotten her nasty little chains upon him in the first place. She was why he could no longer read the thoughts of others.

After he'd killed the witch who was his mother, the backlash had taken that talent from him-one of the many blessings of her death. Slowly he'd regained the ability to talk mind to mind, but never to listen in.

The only reason his mother had been able to catch him through his talent was that it was one she shared. A rare thing, even among witch born. He'd be surprised if there was another witch with that ability in North America. But he was still too cowardly to try until he knew for certain that his son was free of Asil's witch.

Of all the magic users in this old world, Bran despised and feared witches above everything. Probably because, had matters been different, he would have been one himself.

He turned off the highway and drove up Silver Butte. Tracks of a wider-than-normal vehicle preceded him. Charles had followed the plans that far, anyway.

Getting Charles's truck up the path the Vee had taken was a little tricky, driving all his other worries out of his mind. He was starting to think he should have parked beside Asil's car when he drove around a blind curve and almost hit the Vee, which was nose to bark with a tree.

He stopped with no more than six inches between Charles's truck and the Vee. He shut off the engine and parked the truck right there because the trees were too thick to go around, and he didn't trust that smooth white snow not to hide a ditch.

There had been no safe place to turn around anywhere in the last quarter of a mile; he wondered if he was going to have to drive the whole trek backward on the way out. He smiled sourly to himself; that wouldn't matter so much if they didn't make it out.

Asil had had time to meet up with Charles. Asil knew about witches. Surely his son and the Moor could handle anything they found. If Charles stuck to his route, Bran hoped to find the lot of them before nightfall and get them out of there.

He left the key in the ignition. No one was likely to come up here and steal the truck-and if anyone did...well, he could deal with Charles.

He hadn't bothered to wear a coat since he intended to go wolf anyway. He stripped in the warm cab, steeled himself, and jumped out of the truck before completing the change. Opening car doors while in wolf form was possible-but usually it left some damage behind. And despite his son's frequent mutterings about how much he hated cars, Charles was fond of his truck.

Bran settled into a steady lope, something that he could maintain all day. It had been a long time since he'd run in these mountains. They had never been a favorite hunting ground, though he couldn't put a finger on why not. Charles maintained that the Cabinets didn't welcome intruders, and he supposed that was as good an explanation as any.

Following Charles's intended route backward seemed to be the best manner to begin. Their whole loop wasn't more than thirty miles, and he could run the whole thing and be back to the cars just after nightfall.

* * * *

Except for the small porch with old green paint peeling off, the cabin hadn't changed substantially since the last time Charles had seen it, maybe fifty years earlier. It wasn't much to look at, a small log cabin like a hundred other such places in the wilds of Montana, most of them built during the Depression by CCC crews.