Hunting Ground (Alpha & Omega 2)

A woman should know more about her mate. When the mate bond had first settled in, she'd believed she would. But her initial ability to feel him had faded, buried under his self-control and her defenses. She could feel the bond between them, strong and shining and impenetrable. She wondered if it felt the same to him, or if he could read her through it whenever he chose.

"This is Station Air November one eight eight three Victor requesting permission to land," he said, and it took her a moment to realize he was talking to someone other than her.

"Go ahead, sir. I mean, go ahead, eight three Victor," said a stranger's voice. "Welcome to Emerald City Pack territory, sir."

Charles dropped them abruptly through the scattered clouds, past white-coated mountains, to the soft green valley below. Before she realized there was a landing strip, the wheels touched down with a gentle bump.

The place where they landed looked nearly as remote as Aspen Creek. Though there was snow a hundred feet or so up the foothills, down where they had landed it was as green as if it were summer. Greener. Except for the landing field and a hangar, the land was awash in trees and bushes.

People jogged up to the plane from the hangar as Charles pulled his headset off and unbuckled.

He withdrew from her, thinning the bond between them painfully. If he'd warned her beforehand, she would have kept quiet: three years in her first pack had given her power over her pain. It was surprise that forced the whine out of her throat.

Charles pulled his sunglasses off his face and looked at her with a frown. Sudden comprehension widened his eyes-"I never thought..." He turned his head and said, not to her, "All right. All right." And the painful collapse of their bond ceased.

Wolf-eyed, he leaned toward her and touched her face.

"I'm sorry," he told her. "I didn't mean to shut you out. I just..."

He stopped, apparently at a loss for words.

"Donning your armor?" she suggested. "It's okay, I just wasn't expecting it. Do what you have to."

But he didn't. Instead, he said, looking out at the approaching men, "These are not the enemy. Not this time, anyway."

He was out of his seat before she could say anything. And what would I have said? He closed himself up so that he could kill if he had to, so that he wouldn't like any of them too much. So he wouldn't hesitate in carrying out whatever had to be done.

She did know something about her mate after all. She climbed out behind him, following him out of the plane and into the presence of strange wolves, still trying to decide if it should reassure her or worry her.

"Glad you made it in, sir," said the one who was in charge. It still freaked her out sometimes how she could tell who was in charge by the subtle cues of body motion and position. Real people-normal humans-didn't need to know who was first and who was last.

"We were following you on our radar, and Jim here was worried you might have had some trouble because your speed seemed a little erratic."

Charles gave them a neutral face, and Anna wondered what his aerobatics had looked like on radar.

"No trouble," he said.

The other wolf cleared his throat and dropped his gaze. "Good. I'm Ian Garner of the Emerald City Pack, and I'm to help you in any way that I can."

As Charles and the other wolves unloaded the luggage and discussed how the plane was to be cared for and stored, Anna stood a little apart. She wasn't as nervous with the strangers as she expected to be-and it took her a minute to pinpoint why.

Ian was middle of the pack and leader here. So this group was not the Alpha's top tier of wolves, nowhere near the most dominant; they were wolves who wouldn't spark a dominant male's instinct to put them in their places. Angus Hopper, the Emerald City Pack Alpha, was a smart man. Not that he had to worry about Charles's control, but playing it safe was always a smart move.

Angus wouldn't have done it because strange dominant males still scared Anna, but a part of her was grateful nonetheless.

There would be enough dominant males to drown in later, when the meetings took place. The wolves coming from Europe each ruled their own territories; some of them had been in power for centuries. No one would hurt her, not while she was with Charles. She knew it, but her fear of male wolves had taken a few years to beat into her and would take more than a month or two to free herself from.

"They'll take care of the airplane," said Ian. He picked up the nearest piece of luggage and, with a dropped shoulder and a deferential swing of his head instead of words, invited them to follow him up a stone pathway through the trees. Charles took his own suitcase and waited for Anna to precede him.

Once he had them moving, the Emerald City wolf started talking in a rapid all-business voice that might have masked his anxiety from someone who was purely human. Charles did that to people, even in his own pack, and she didn't think even his father knew how much it bothered him.

"Angus is at work," the wolf said. "He says you're to have free access to the house." Anna remembered getting a glimpse of a house as they landed, but from the ground, it was well hidden by the trees. That must be where they were headed toward. "You're welcome to anything any of us have, but the pack itself has a newish Land Cruiser and a Corolla that has seen better days. Angus says you can use his BMW if you'd rather."

"We'll take the Corolla," Charles told him. "And we're staying in a hotel downtown. This is too far for an easy commute to the meeting place."

"He thought you would feel that way. Angus invites you to stay with him at his condo in the city."

"Not necessary," said Charles. Anna wasn't sure he noticed the other man's mouth flatten. More probably he just didn't care.

The Emerald City Pack was hosting the meeting, and for Charles to refuse housing might look like he was not acknowledging them as allies. Charles preferred to be independent-separate from the people he might be called upon to kill. Charles was his father's assassin and justice dealer, and that grim responsibility affected everything he did. He didn't go out of his way to make friends among the werewolves, not even in his own pack. He would feel more comfortable on his own.

That didn't mean that Anna couldn't smooth things over.

"We appreciate the offer," Anna told Ian. "But we're newly mated and..." It didn't require any effort on her part to blush as her voice trailed off. And whatever offense he'd felt was overshadowed by interest.

"So it's true?" Ian glanced at Charles, then quickly away. "I had heard that."

"Shocking, I know," murmured Charles.