Hunting Ground (Alpha & Omega 2)

She also acquired a whole slew of Christmas presents as ordered. Last year she'd been afraid (and too broke) to send presents to her father and brother. This year she... she and Charles had them and all of Charles's family and a double handful of others to buy for.

The conference would run through Christmas-she had the impression that there had been some incident that had stepped up the Marrok's timetable. Charles had been gone for a couple of days and returned even more grim than usual. He hadn't volunteered where he'd gone or what he'd done, and she'd been too intimidated by his oppressive silence to ask. It had been the next day that the Marrok began planning this summit-and he and Charles had begun to fight about it.

She'd found a pair of small gold hoop earrings with round bits of rough amber for Charles-to replace the one he'd given to the troll. And at the same shop, she broke down and bought a cheaper, more dangly pair for herself. She felt guilty about it-but maybe she could pay him back for them. They had been cheaper than they would have been in Chicago.

She came out of a little shop the proud new owner of three silk shirts-and her gaze caught on the display window of a store a few doors down.

"What?" Moira said urgently. "What is it, Tom?"

"A quilt, I think," he rumbled. "Jeez, Moira, if the two of you buy anything more, I'm going to have to help carry stuff-and that makes me a lousy guard."

The quilt was trimmed with narrow strips of red and green, the colors of the old Pendleton blankets. On the interior, there were four squares and a center section that was round. The square panels were abstract mountain scenes of the same mountain, the top two were daylight, spring and summer. The bottom were night, fall and winter. The center panel was deep mottled green with the red silhouette of a wolf howling.

"I don't think we face anything worse than a pickpocket here," Moira was saying to Tom. "I trust you to handle them with a few bags on one arm."

Moira touched Anna's shoulder. "What are you doing out here? Go in and buy it. Tom, what does it look like?"

Anna looked at the price on a discreet tag pinned to the edge of the quilt and swallowed.

They went back to the hotel after that, Anna the proud new owner of three... three... quilts. One for her dad, one for the Marrok, and one for Charles-the one she'd seen in the window.

"You can put them down on the bed," Tom said, sounding amused. "They won't break-or run away."

"I'm in shock," Anna told them. "Except for the first time I saw Charles, I don't think I've ever lusted after something so badly in my life." Then because Tom, at least, would know that she wasn't telling the whole truth, "Okay. There was that cello at the luthier's in Chicago that cost more than most cars and was worth every cent."

"And she kept finding more quilts," said Moira to the air, her amusement evident.

"I couldn't help it," Anna said. Even though she was joking, mostly, she was still shocked by the sheer possessiveness she'd felt. They were lucky she'd stopped at three. "Maybe I'll have to take up quilting."

"Do you sew?" Moira asked.

"Not yet." Anna heard the determination in her voice. "What do you think? Will I be able to find someone to show me how to do this in Aspen Creek, Montana?"

Tom laughed. "Anna, I think Charles would fly you to England twice a week if you wanted him to. You should be able to find someone to learn from closer than that."

His statement gave her an odd feeling. She touched the package she'd had wrapped for Charles, then turned with a smile when Moira told them both they needed to get moving because there were shoes to be found, and the day was wasting.

Anna pulled the hotel-room door shut behind them and tried to deal with the revelation that she was pretty sure Tom was right.

It wasn't until they were standing in front of the elevators that she found her balance. So he would fly her to England if she asked him to-she'd followed him up a frozen mountain buried in the depths of a Montana winter, hadn't she? It made them equals.

"Hey." Moira snapped her fingers in front of Anna's nose. "Shoes, remember?"

The elevator had opened.

"Sorry," she said. "Revelation, here."

"Ah." Moira appeared to consider that for a moment. "Nope. Shoes are more important. Especially if you're going to have that British snob eating at your feet."

And so Anna girded herself and set off for a second round of marathon shopping. Dark came early in the dead of winter, even if it was just raining. When Moira had done her worst, when Tom was complaining about numb feet, and Anna had shoes-and her hair trimmed and styled-Moira finally relented and told them they could head back.

To the hotel, the witch insisted firmly, not the auditorium.

Moira leaned around Tom as if she needed to see Anna's face when she made her final pronouncement. "Men don't care about dressing for dinner. Men shave and put on a tie and 'poof' that's good enough. Wom-"

They stormed out of the darkness of a basement apartment stairwell and brought a spell of silence and shadow with them. A spell that had hidden them from Tom's sharp senses as well as Anna's less-well-trained sensory abilities.

They hit Tom first, but not by much. Anna heard Tom's gasp, but before she could see what had happened to him, a delicate, strong-as-steel arm snaked around her throat.

Magic moved and settled around them all, a familiar spell, one used by packs to conceal fights or kills or anything else they didn't want the rest of the world to know about. But the attackers didn't smell like wolves.

As she fought to free her throat, she could see one of their attackers, a woman, run into the witch like a linebacker, knocking her down, off the curb and into the street.

A scream cut short, and a body hit pavement hard from Tom's direction. She couldn't see him, but it wasn't Tom who had screamed; she'd be willing to bet Tom had never made a sound that high-pitched in his life. Moira's attacker left the blind witch to help the others with Tom.

"Pretty Anna." Her attacker was a woman, and as she whispered she licked Anna's throat. She wasn't human, though. Nothing human could have immobilized Anna this easily-or taken down Tom in whatever numbers. "Come with me, little girl, and the others will survive-"

And, the immediate shock of the attack over, Anna kicked and broke the enemy's knee. She wasn't a "little girl." She was a werewolf.

The woman screamed into her ear-a sharp, high-pitched noise that deafened and hurt and drove Anna to the pavement to escape it. Hard hands dug into her shoulders in preparation to drag her somewhere. Anna twisted and writhed and hit the woman's jaw with her heel. That stopped the noise.