It didn't take Anna any time at all to discover that running in snowshoes sucked. They caught in the rocks, they caught in the brush, they brought her to her knees twice, and only Charles's hand on her elbow kept her from falling all the way down the mountainside. Jumping downed trees was...interestingly difficult. However, Charles, without snowshoes, was sinking up to his knees and deeper with each step-so she was properly grateful for hers.
That's not to say they were slow. It amazed Anna what terror could do for her speed. After the first, terrifying sprint-slide down the steep slope they'd spent hours climbing, she lost track of time and direction. She kept her eyes on Charles's red coat and stayed with him. When Charles slowed down at last, they were all alone in the forest.
Still they didn't stop. He kept her going at a fast jog for an hour or more, but he chose their path more carefully, staying up where the snow was shallower and his lack of snowshoes didn't hamper them.
He hadn't said a word after his command to run-but she thought it might be because he couldn't; and it wasn't any witch's spell.
His eyes were brilliant yellow, and his teeth were bared. He must have a good reason for staying in human form, but it was costing him. Her own wolf had slid back to sleep after the initial panic of their flight was over, but Charles's was right on the edge of taking over.
She had a whole slew of questions to ask. Some were immediate concerns like: Could the witch match their speed when a human couldn't? Could Mary use her magic to find them? Others were just matters of interest. How did you figure out she was a witch? Why could she only see the magic after her wolf was in control? Was there an easier way to break a witch's spell? Even an hour later her hands burned and ached.
"I think-" said Charles finally as his smooth rapid strides slowed to a halting limp. Her tired legs were grateful that he sounded winded, too. "-that Asil has some questions to answer."
"You think he knows her? Why is she after him?" Anna asked. She had spent a long time assuming that the werewolves (other than herself) were on the top of the food chain, but Charles's defeat at the hands of the witch shook her worldview. She was willing to believe that anyone would run from that witch.
"I don't know if Asil knows her. I haven't seen her in Aspen Creek, and she'd have been about ten when he incarcerated himself there. But if she's looking for him, he probably knows why." All of this was said in rapid three-word bursts as he struggled to slow his breathing.
She walked next to him and hoped that some of the quietness she was supposed to be able to bestow would help him. His breath slowed long before hers lost the ragged edge of their run, but she was back to normal before he said anything more.
"She shouldn't have been able to do that. She made me fawn at her feet like a puppy." His voice darkened to a growl.
"She shouldn't be able to control you with her magic?" asked Anna. "I thought that witches could do that kind of thing."
"To a human, maybe. The only person who should have that kind of control over wolves is their Alpha." He snarled, fisted his hands, then said in a rough voice unlike his own, "And even my father can't get a reaction like that from me. He can stop me in my tracks, but he can't make me do something I don't want to."
He sucked in a slow breath. "Maybe it's not her, maybe it's me. I didn't hear the first werewolf at all. I've been thinking about it, and I don't think it was downwind of us. I should have heard him, or smelled him-and he shouldn't have been able to lose me so easily."
Her first reaction was to reassure him somehow, but she bit that back. He knew more than she did about magic and about tracking. Instead, she tried to look for reasons. Tentatively, she ventured, "You were shot only a couple of days ago."
He shook his head. "That's not it. I've been wounded before. It's never stopped me from doing what I needed to do-and usually if I'm hurt it makes me more aware, not less."
"Are the werewolves we're after connected to the witch, somehow?" Anna asked. "I mean, if she controlled you, maybe she can control them, too. Maybe she did something so that you wouldn't sense them."
He shrugged, but she could tell it bothered him. And he was hurting. Watching him closely, she thought that it was more than his leg that was bothering him. All the running he'd been doing had to be hard on his chest wound, too.
"Do you need new bandages?" she asked.
"Maybe," he said. "I'd have you check, but we don't have anything to remedy the situation with us. There's a good first-aid kit back in Da's car, and that's where we're heading now."
She was about two steps behind him, so he didn't see her surprise, which was good, she thought. Dominant wolves didn't back down much. "You aren't going after her?"
"She caught me once," he said. "And I don't know how. Usually my personal magic would have allowed me to shed her imprisoning spell. That's a pretty basic one, evidently- I've had three different witches try it before this. Without knowing how she did it, it's not worth trying to fight her and risk her defeating us without warning Da. The wolves, both of them, are not as worrisome as she is. Da needs to know what's going on-and maybe Asil can shed some light on who she is and what she wants."
There was something bothering her, but it took a dozen yards of progress before she thought of what it was. "Why here? I mean, I know she was looking for Asil-and it sounds like she got some sort of information indicating he was in Aspen Creek. Did you catch her excitement when you told her he was here? She wasn't sure. So what is she doing here and not in Aspen Creek?"
"Baiting a trap," he said grimly. "My father was right about that, but not about who or why. All she had to do was kill a few people and make it look like a werewolf, and the Marrok would be sure to send someone after it. Then she could take him and question him. Much safer than driving into Aspen Creek and facing off with my father."
"Do you think both the wolves are hers?" She'd asked him that before...but it was bothering her. She'd made a connection of some kind with the first wolf, the one Charles had run after. She didn't want him to be in league with a witch.
As he had the first time she'd asked him, Charles shrugged, winced when it hurt him, then half growled, "I don't know any more than you do." He trudged on a few steps. "It seems likely. The wolf that attacked you almost certainly was. Since you are an Omega, a normal wolf would have gone after her first."
He stopped suddenly. Just stood still. "We ran out of the clearing the same way as the wolf who attacked you."
She had to think about it, but he was right. "There was a path through the brush there."
"Did you see any tracks? Any blood? You cut her shoulder open with the rifle, and she was bleeding pretty good."
"I-" Would she have noticed? She thought carefully about their escape, Charles pushing her ahead of him. "There was blood on the snow where I hit her, and it followed her path into the trees. But we were going through unmarked powder as soon as we were out of the clearing. She must have gone by a different route."
Charles turned so he faced her. The corners of his mouth were tight with pain, and from the grayish undertone of his skin, she was pretty sure he was in a lot worse shape than he wanted her to know.
"She?" he said softly.
"She. I got an up-close and personal. Trust me."
"She." He repeated. "That makes life more interesting. Her coloring was unusual."
"No." Anna frowned at him. "She looked like a German shepherd."
"It's not unusual for a German shepherd," he agreed. "But I've never seen a werewolf who looked like that. I've heard of one, though."
"Who?"
"Asil's mate."
"Asil's mate is supposed to be dead, right?" said Anna. "So you think she's really alive and working with a witch? Is that why they're looking for Asil?"
"Asil told my father she was dead, and that he burned her body and buried the ashes himself." Almost as an afterthought, he said, "No one lies to my father. Not even Asil. But that makes the absence of tracks pretty interesting. "
"What are you saying? She wasn't a ghost. The butt of the rifle hit something. If Asil's mate is dead, then her resemblance has to be coincidental."
He shook his head. "I don't know what she was. But I don't believe in coincidences." He started off again.
"I thought most witches were human," she said after mulling the whole thing over for a while.
"Yes."
"Then they aren't immortal. You told me Asil's mate died a few centuries ago. And this witch isn't much older than I am. Do you think maybe the wolf is in charge?"
"I don't know," he said, holding back a tree branch so it didn't swing back and hit her. "That's a good question."
He fell silent again as he led her up another ripple of land. Mountains looked so simple from a distance, just one long walk up and another down the other side. The reality was a series of climbs and descents that seemed to cover a lot of ground and still went nowhere.
They must have been running longer than she'd realized because it was starting to get dark. She shivered.
"Charles?"
"Mmm?"
"I think my socks must have gotten wet. I can't feel my toes." He didn't say anything, and she worried that he might think she was complaining. "It's all right. I can still go on for a while yet. How much longer until we get to the car?"
"Not tonight," he said. "Not if your toes are numb. Let me find somewhere that will give us a little shelter-there's a storm coming through tonight."
Anna shivered a little harder at the thought. At the tail end of a particularly long shiver, her teeth started chattering.
Charles put his hand under her arm. "A storm will be good. I heard bone go when you hit that wolf. If it isn't a phantasm of some sort, it'll take it a while to repair. A heavy snow and a good wind will keep it from picking up our trail."
He caught sight of something uphill, and it seemed to Anna that they climbed forever until they reached a small bench of land littered with downed trees.
"Microburst last spring, maybe," he told her. "It happens sometimes."
She was too tired to do anything but nod, while he waded through the trees until he found something he liked-a huge tree propped up by another, both of them leaning against a hump of land, creating a cave with an uninviting floor of snow.
"No food," Charles said grimly. "And you need food to combat the cold."
"I could go hunting," offered Anna. Charles couldn't. He had been limping badly for a long time. She was so tired she could have fallen asleep standing up, and she was cold. But she was still in better shape than he was.
Charles shook his head. "I'll be damned if I'll send you off on your own in this country with a storm waiting to unleash-not to mention a witch and two werewolves lurking about."
He lifted his head and sampled the air. "Speak of the devil," he said softly. Anna sniffed the air, too, but she didn't smell anything. Just trees and winter and wolf. She tried again.
"You might as well come out," Charles growled, looking out into the darkness below their bench. "I know you're there."
Anna turned around, but she didn't see anything out of place. Then she heard the sound of boots in the snow and looked again. A man stepped out of the woods about ten yards down the mountain. If he hadn't been moving, she probably wouldn't have seen him.
The first thing she noticed was hair. He didn't wear a hat, and his hair was an odd shade between red and gold; it hung in ragged, ungroomed tangles down his back and blended into a beard that would have done credit to Hill or Gibbons of ZZ Top.
He wore an odd combination of animal skins, rags, and new boots and gloves. In one hand he held the bundle she'd made of the things that had been in Charles's backpack, and her own bright pink backpack was slung over one shoulder.
He tossed them both toward Charles, and the packs landed halfway between them.
"Your stuff," he said, his voice at once hoarse and mumbly, with a healthy dose of Tennessee or Kentucky. "I saw her set the beast on you-which makes you her enemy. And along the lines of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend,' I thought I'd bring your stuff to you. Then maybe we could talk."
It hadn't been the man's scent that had clued Charles in that they were being shadowed, but a host of smaller things: a bird taking flight, the hint of a sound, and a feeling that they were being watched.
Once the stranger stepped out of the trees, Charles could smell him as he should have been able to for some time because the wind was favoring Anna and him. Werewolf.
Though he brought a peace offering and said he wanted to talk, his body language told Charles the other wolf was ready to take flight.
Careful not to look straight at him or move in any way that might spook him, Charles left Anna where she was and walked down to pick up Anna's pack and their ground tarp filled, he supposed, with everything that had been in his backpack. Without saying anything, he turned his back to the stranger and started back up the mountain.
It wasn't as foolish as all that because Charles kept his eyes on Anna and watched her face for any sign of attack. Then he deliberately cleaned the snow off the top of a log and sat on it. The man, he saw, had followed him until he stood where the packs had first landed, but he came no farther.
"I think it would be a good idea to talk," Charles said. "Would you join us for a meal?" He met the man's eyes, letting him feel the weight of the invitation that was just short of an order.
The man shifted his weight from one foot to the other, as if ready to run. "You smell like that demon wolf," he rasped. Then he shot Anna a shy glance. "That thing's been killin' and killin' up here. Deer, and elk, people, even a griz."
He sounded like it was the bear that troubled him the most.
"I know," Charles said. "I was sent here to take care of the wolf."
The man dropped his eyes as if he couldn't bear to look Charles in the eye anymore. "Thing is...thing is...it got me, too. Infected me with its evil." He took a step back, wary as an old stag.
"How long have you been a werewolf?" Anna asked. "It's been three years for me."
The man tilted his head at the sound of Anna's voice, as if he was listening to music. And for a moment his agitation slowed down.
"Two months," ventured Charles, when it became obvious that the other man was too caught up in Anna's spell to speak. He understood that feeling. The sudden peace as Brother Wolf settled down was as startling as it was addictive. If he'd never felt it before, he doubted he'd be talking, either. "You stepped between the werewolf and the grad student this fall. Just like you stepped between Anna and me when you thought I might hurt her."
It fit, Charles thought, though it added complications to just what the other werewolf was. Only another werewolf could infect a human. But he was certain that the beast's tracks stopped as soon as it would have been out of sight.
The sound of Charles's voice was enough to make the man jerk his gaze away from Anna. He knew who the dangerous one was here.
"I was going to let him die. The student, I mean," the other man said, confirming Charles's theory about who he was. "There was a storm coming, and it'd probably have killed him if he'd been in the wild when it hit. The mountains here demand respect, or they'll have you for lunch." He paused. "There's a storm coming soon."
"So why didn't you let the werewolf kill him?" Anna asked.
"Well, ma'am," said the man, staring at his feet rather than looking at Anna. "Dying by the storm, or from a bear attack, those things just happen." He stopped, evidently having trouble putting the difference into words.
"But the werewolf didn't belong here," said Charles, with a sudden inkling about why this wolf was so hard to sense and why he'd received no warning of his attack. From the clothes he wore, he looked as though he'd been living here a very long time.
"It is evil. And it turned me into a monster, too, just like it is," the man whispered.
If Charles had been a split second faster, he could have kept Anna back. But he was tired, and he'd focused on the other wolf. Before he knew it, Anna was slipping and sliding down the mountainside. She was in a hurry and about four paces from their new acquaintance her snowshoes did an excellent job of acting like skis.
Charles forced himself to stillness as the other man caught his mate by an elbow and saved her from sliding down the mountainside. He was almost certain this man was no threat to her. Charles managed to convince Brother Wolf to stand down and give Anna a chance to work her magic and tame the rogue; this was why his father had sent her, after all.
"Oh, you aren't evil," Anna said.
The man froze, one hand still on her sleeve. Then the words poured out of him as if he couldn't stop them. "I know about evil. I fought with it and against it until blood ran like the rain. I still see their faces and hear their screams as if it were happening now, and not nearly forty years ago." But the tightness in his voice lightened as he spoke.
He released his hold on Anna, and asked, "Who are you?" He fell to his knees beside her, as if his legs could no longer hold him up. "Who are you?"
He'd moved too fast, though, and Brother Wolf had had enough. As quick as thought, with complete disregard to his injuries, Charles was beside Anna, managing to keep his hands off the rogue only because as soon as he got near her, Anna's Omega effect spread over him, too.
"She is a wolf-tamer," Charles told the other man. Even Anna couldn't keep the possessive anger completely out of his voice. "Peace-bringer."
"Anna Cornick," Anna said. He liked the way it tripped off her tongue and smelled like God's own truth. She knew she was his-and as easily as that, Brother Wolf settled down contentedly. So he didn't grab her hand when she touched the stranger on the shoulder, and said, "This is my mate, Charles. Who are you?"
"Walter. Walter Rice." Ignoring Charles as if he was no threat at all, Walter closed his eyes and swayed a little on his knees in the snow. "I haven't felt like this since...since before the war, I think. I could sleep. I think I could sleep forever without dreaming."
Charles held out his hand. "Why don't you come eat with us first."
Walter hesitated and took another good long look at Anna before taking Charles's gloved hand with his own and coming to his feet.
The man who introduced himself as Walter ate as if he were half-starved-maybe he was. Every once in a while, though, he'd stop eating to look at Anna with awe.
Sitting between them, Charles repressed a smile-which was something he was doing more often than he ever remembered since he'd found his Anna. Watching her squirm under Walter's worshipping regard was pretty funny. He hoped he didn't look at her like that-at least not in public.
"It's not as if it's anything I'm doing," she muttered into her stew with carrots. "I didn't ask to be an Omega. It's like having brown hair."
She was wrong, but he thought she was embarrassed enough right now without him arguing with her over something he wasn't entirely sure he was supposed to have heard. Or at least she was mostly wrong. Like dominance, being an Omega was mostly personality. And, as his father liked to say, identity was partly heritage, partly upbringing, but mostly the choices you make in life.
Anna brought peace and serenity with her wherever she went-at least when she wasn't scared, hurt, or upset. Some of her power depended upon her being a werewolf, which magnified the effect of her magic. But a larger part of it was the steel backbone that made the best of whatever circumstances she happened to be in, the compassion she'd shown to Asil when he'd tried to scare her, and the way she hadn't been able to leave poor Walter out in the cold. Those were conscious decisions.
A man made himself Alpha, it wasn't just an accident of birth. The same was true of Omegas.
"Once," said Walter quietly, pausing in his eating, "just after a very bad week, I spent an afternoon camped up in a tree in the jungle, watching a village. I can't remember now if we were supposed to be protecting them or spying on them. This girl came out to hang her wash right under my tree. She was eighteen or nineteen, I suppose, and she was too thin." His eyes traveled from Anna to Charles and back to his food.
Yes, thought Charles, I know she's still thin, but I've had less than a week to feed her up.
"Anyway," the old vet continued, "watching her, it was like watching magic. Out of the basket the clothes would come, all in a wad, she'd snap 'em once, and, like that, they'd fall straight and hang just so. Her wrists were narrow, but so strong, and her fingers quick. Those shirts wouldn't dare disobey. When she left, I almost knocked on her door to thank her. She reminded me that there was a world of daily chores, where clothes were cleaned and everything was in order."
He glanced at Anna again. "She likely would have been terrified by a dirty American soldier showing up at her door-and like as not wouldn't have a clue what I was thanking her for, even if she understood what I was saying. She was just doing as she always did." He paused. "But I should have thanked her anyway. Got me through a bad time and several bad times since."
They were all quiet after that. Charles didn't know if Anna understood his story, but he did. Anna was like that woman. She reminded him of winters spent in front of a fire while his da played a fiddle. Times when he knew that everyone was full and happy, when the world was safe and ordered. It wasn't like that often, but it was important to remember it could be.
"So," said Charles, as Walter ate the last of his third freeze-dried dinner. "You've lived here in the mountains for a long time."
Walter's spork stilled for a moment, and he looked at Charles suspiciously. Then he snorted and shook his head. "It's not like it's important anymore, is it? Old news."
He ate another bite, swallowed, and said, "When I got back from the war, everything was okay for a while. I had a short fuse, sure, but not enough to bother about. Until it got worse." He started to say something but ate another bite instead. "That part matters even less, now, I suppose. Anyway, I started reliving the war-like it was still going on. I could hear it, taste it, smell it-but it would turn out that it was only a car backfiring-or the neighbor chopping wood. Stuff like that. I moved out before I hurt my family more than I already had. Then one day an enemy soldier came up behind me. It was the uniform, you know? I hurt him, maybe killed him..."
That last sentence the man had choked out was a lie.
Walter looked at his feet, snorted, turned his head to meet Charles's eyes. And when he spoke again, his voice was cool and controlled, the voice of a man who had done a lot of bad things-just like Charles. "I killed him. When he was dead I realized he wasn't one of the Viet Cong, he was a mailman. That's when I figured no one was safe around me. I thought I'd turn myself in, but the police station...well, policemen wear uniforms, too, don't they? The bus depot was right next to the station, and I ended up on a bus for Montana. I'd come here camping with my father a time or two, so I knew I could get away from people up here. There wasn't anyone to hurt up here."
"You stayed in the mountains for all those years?" Anna put her chin on her hand, and Charles noticed that two of her nails were broken to the quick-and looked around until he saw her gloves sitting beside her.
Walter nodded. "God knows I knew how to hunt. Didn't have a gun-but hell, half the time your gun didn't work in the jungle, either."
He pulled a knife nearly as long as his forearm out from somewhere and contemplated it. Charles tried to figure out where it had come from. There weren't actually all that many people who could move that fast, werewolf or not.
Walter looked sideways at Anna, then back to the knife, but Charles knew he'd seen the sympathy on Anna's face, because he tried to downplay his survival. "It wasn't that bad, really, ma'am. Winters can get rough, but there's an old cabin I stay in now and then if conditions get too bad."
Walter wasn't the only one who escaped to the mountains, Charles thought. There had been a few places, twenty years ago, where whole communities of broken men had holed up in the wilds. Most of the old soldiers had healed and moved on years ago-or died.
Before this trip he wouldn't have believed there was anyone here; the Cabinets had little gentleness to share with the hearts of men. Charles had never come here that he hadn't felt the old places pushing him out on his way. They weren't meant for man-even one who had a Brother Wolf. Even in the old days, the trappers and hunters had avoided this area for somewhere with a gentler nature.
A man who lived here over thirty years, though, might not be an intruder anymore. He might be accepted as part of the mountain.
Charles looked into the night-dark sky and thought that a man who stayed here that long might become beloved of those spirits. Spirits who could hide someone even from Charles's own keen senses.
Walter wiped the spork in the snow and handed it back to Charles. "Thank you. I haven't eaten like that in...a long time."
Then, as if his words had just run out, he closed his eyes and leaned against the nearest tree.
"What do you know about the werewolf that attacked you?" Charles asked.
Walter shrugged without opening his eyes. "They came in the fall on a four-wheeler and took over my cabin. After it Changed me...I did a little hunting of my own. Wish I'd seen it before it confronted that boy. If I'd been a little faster that day, I might have killed it-if I'd been a little slower, it'd have killed me. Good thing silver's bad for werewolves." Walter heaved a loud sigh, opened his eyes, and pulled the long blade out of a forearm sheath again. This time Charles saw him do it-though, come to think of it, he hadn't seen him put it away.
"This old knife of mine burns my hand now when I clean it." He looked at his hands, or maybe the knife. "I figured I was dead. I hurt that demon bad with this old blade-it's got silver etched into it, see? But the monster opened my gut before it fled."
"If a werewolf attack almost kills you, you become one," Anna said in a low voice.
Did she still regret that? Charles was overcome with the wild desire to kill them all again, Leo and his mate, the whole Chicago pack-but at the same time he was pathetically grateful that his mate was a werewolf who wouldn't fade and die the way Samuel's wives all had.
Brother Wolf stirred and settled down, just like Walter had.
"The wolf who attacked you didn't come back to you, then, after you Changed?" Charles asked.
Usually when a wolf Changed someone, it was drawn back to the new werewolf for a while. Mostly, Samuel had theorized to him once, some genetic imperative to make sure that an untaught, uncontrolled werewolf wasn't going to draw too much unwanted attention.
Walter shook his head. "Like I said, I tracked her down myself, after the first full moon-she and that woman. What is she anyway? She sure as hell ain't human-sorry, ma'am- not with the things I seen her do. She tried to call me to her the first time I Changed. I didn't know what she was, only that she smelled bad-like the beast. I thought for a while that she and the beast were the same creature, but then I saw them together."
It had begun snowing gently an hour ago, but now big, fat flakes fell with more intensity, sticking to eyelashes and hair. A little more of his tension fell away; snow would hide them.
"Have you ever seen the wolf in her human form?" Charles didn't know what Asil's mate looked like in her human form, but a description might be useful.
Walter shook his head. "Nope. Maybe she doesn't have one."
"Maybe not." Charles didn't know why he was so sure that the other werewolf wasn't what she seemed. They'd been running, it was possible he'd missed her tracks. But he tended to believe his instincts when they were whispering this strongly.
He turned his attention to Walter. Two months, and he'd had the control this afternoon to stop his attack as soon as he'd realized that Anna was a werewolf and not a victim. That was more control than most new wolves had.
"Your control is very good for someone who has only just been Changed-especially someone who didn't have help," Charles observed.
Walter gave him a grim look, then shrugged. "Been controlling a beast inside me ever since the war. Except that now I grow fangs and claws, it ain't that much different. I have to be careful-like when I went after you. When I'm the wolf, I like the taste of blood. If I'd broken skin instead of ripping up your pack...well, then my control ain't so good." He glanced at Anna again, as if worried about what that would make her think of him.
Anna gave Charles an anxious look. Was she worried about Walter?
The thought that she might try to protect another male from him brought a snarl from his chest that never made it to his face. He waited until Brother Wolf quieted, then said, "For someone who's been a wolf for only a couple of moons with no one to help him that is extraordinarily good."
He looked directly at Walter, and the other wolf dropped his eyes. He was dominant, Charles judged, but not enough to think of challenging Charles-most wolves weren't. "You thought Anna was in danger, didn't you?" he said softly.
The rawboned man shrugged, making his crudely stitched-together cape of furs rustle. "Didn't know she was a werewolf, too. Not until I was right between you."
"But you knew I was."
The man nodded his head. "Yes. It's that smell, it calls to me." He shrugged. "I've lived alone for all these years, but it's harder now."
"Wolves need packs," Charles told him. It had never bothered him to need other wolves, but there were some wolves who never adjusted to it.
"If you'd like," he told Walter, "you can come home with us."
The man stilled, his eyes still on his feet, but every other part of him focused on Charles. "I'm not good around people, around noise," he said. "I still...here it doesn't matter if sometimes I forget it's forest and not the jungle."
"Oh, you'll fit right in," said Anna dryly.
Walter jerked his gaze to her face, and she smiled warmly at him, so Charles got to watch the man's ears turn red.
"Charles's father's pack has a lot of people who don't quite fit in," she told him.
"My father's pack is safe," said Charles. "He makes it so. But Anna is right, he has more than a few wolves who would not be able to live elsewhere. If you want to move to another pack after a while, he'll find somewhere that you feel welcomed. If you can't handle it, you can come back here as a lone wolf-after we take care of the witch and her pet werewolf."
Walter glanced up and away. "Witch?"
"Welcome to our world." Anna sighed. "Witches, werewolves, and things that go bump in the night."
"So what are you going to do with her?"
"The witch told us she was looking for Asil, who is a very old wolf who belongs to my father. So we thought we'd get out of these mountains, then we'll have a long talk with Asil," Charles told him.
"And in the meantime?" Walter rubbed his fingers over his forearm, where his knife once more lay sheathed under his clothing.
"You need to come and meet with my father," Charles told him. "If you don't, he'll send me out to take you in, willingly or no."
"You think you can force me to come with you to your father's pack?" The man's voice was low and deadly.
"Oh, that was well done," Anna snapped, obviously upset with him, though Charles didn't know what he'd done wrong. His father would not tolerate a rogue so close to his pack, and he wouldn't agree to name Walter a lone wolf unless he met him for himself.
But Anna had already turned her attention to Walter. "What do you want to do? Stay up here all alone? Or come down with us when we go to get a little help-and come back here again to deal with the rogue and her witch?"
Charles raised an eyebrow at her, and she raised hers back. "That wolf harmed him. We're here on pack business-for Walter this is personal." She looked back at the other man. "Isn't it?"
"Evil must be destroyed," he said. "Or it takes over everything it touches."
She nodded, as if he made perfect sense. "Exactly."
They were going to sleep as wolves tonight, Charles declared. Anna didn't object, even though her stomach tightened at the thought.
She'd been growing used to sleeping with Charles, but another wolf made her nervous, no matter how deferentially he treated her. But as soon as the sun went down, the temperature dropped another ten degrees. With only one sleeping bag, she knew that Charles was right, and there was no choice.
She changed a hundred yards from the males, shivering barefooted in the snow-where she'd moved after first trying the bare ground under a big fir tree-whoever called them needles knew what they were talking about.
The cold made the pain of change worse and stars dance in her vision. She tried to gasp quietly, tears leaking down her cheeks as her joints and bones rearranged themselves and restretched her flesh over them, and her skin split to become fur.
It took a long, long time.
Afterward, she lay panting and miserable on the ice-crystal-covered snow, too tired to move. Even cold, she discovered, had a smell.
Gradually, as her misery faded, she realized that for the first time since last night, when Charles had curled around her and surrounded her with his warmth, she felt toasty-warm. As the initial agony faded to aches and pains, she stretched, making her claws expand and lengthen like a big cat's. Her back popped and crackled all the way down her spine.
She didn't want to go back and curl up with a strange male only feet away. The wolf wasn't afraid of the male. She knew he wasn't likely to behave like the Others. But she didn't much like the idea of touching anyone other than Charles, either.
Near but out of sight, a wolf, Charles, made a quiet sound, not quite a bark or a whine. Wobbly as a newborn foal, she staggered to her feet. She paused to shake the snow off her pelt and give herself a moment to get used to four paws before starting back, her clothes in her mouth. Charles trotted up to her, then grabbed her glove-stuffed boots and escorted her to their bed for the night.
Walter waited for them just outside their chosen shelter. As soon as she could see him, she knew that she wasn't the only one who wasn't excited about sleeping nose to tail with a stranger. Walter looked miserable, hunched over with his tail carried low.
Charles directed Walter with a flick of his ear to lie down in the shelter he'd found for them. Walter burrowed in, and it was Anna's turn. Charles pushed her after Walter, set her boots where they wouldn't fill with snow, then lay in front of them both where he could protect them. There wasn't a lot of room, even though Walter had tucked himself as close to the trees at their back as he could.
As Anna settled against him, Walter shook with stress. Poor thing, she thought. To have been alone for so long, and then be expected to adjust instantly to pack behavior. His suffering had an odd effect on her own discomfort. Concerned for him, she stretched out and buried her nose in Charles's ruff. She made herself relax, hoping that would help Walter do the same.
This was pack, she thought, as warmth rolled over her from both of the other wolves. Trusting Charles to watch for harm with his better-trained senses. Knowing that both wolves had proven themselves ready to put themselves between her and harm, and it was safe to sleep. This was better, much better than her first pack.
It was a long time before Walter quit imitating a stone statue and relaxed against her more comfortably. But not until he put his nose on her hip with a sigh did she allow herself to drift off to sleep.