Shifting Shadows

“Done?”

“I made them change back to human—that way none of them will be able to hurt Kara when my back is turned. It’ll take us fifteen minutes or so to get to my house and another fifteen to take them to you.”

“Don’t make it too easy on them,” Bran said.

Asil smiled at the first of Kara’s attackers who was trying to stand up. “I won’t. You have my word.”

“See you in half an hour,” Bran said, and hung up.

•   •   •

Asil made the other wolves sit in the truck bed. If they had really been human, he’d have been risking their lives by making them stay out, naked, in the cold for so long. But werewolves can’t be killed by a little cold.

“It isn’t that cold,” he told Kara when she whined in concern while her attackers climbed in. “They are tough. If they are tough enough to pick on little girls”—he looked at them, and they turned their heads away—“then they are tough enough to ride in the back.” To them he said, “You stay there until we get where we are going. If you jump, I will back up and run over you until you are too broken to heal—and leave you for someone who cares to pick you up. It might take a while.”

They heard the truth in his words, and he saw their submission. They would stay where he’d put them—which disappointed him. He could have run them over with his truck without disturbing his wolf. He would have enjoyed it.

He opened the driver’s side door and gestured to Kara. She leaped in gracefully, the only evidence left of the wound the mess the blood had made of her fur.

He drove to the Marrok’s house, following four other cars and a truck doing the same thing: the Marrok had summoned the wolves. Because he knew where the only place big enough to house everyone was, Asil drove past the house and took the back road that allowed him to drive all the way to the pole barn. The truck in front of them did the same thing, and there were more trucks and SUVs parked at the barn—pack members.

The pole barn had been built about thirty years ago because the Marrok did not like Changing people in the school auditorium. “Too much blood and misery,” he’d said. “I am old enough to believe it leaves a mark on a place.”

Asil agreed.

Bran leaned against the outside wall of the pole barn as Asil drove up. He met Asil’s eyes through the windshield and pointed to the empty space in front of him, right next to the entrance. So Asil pulled in and parked.

Bran looked considerably less dangerous than Charles—the huge, blank-faced man who stood alertly beside him. Not for the first time, Asil thought that it had served Bran well to have a son who oozed threat like a Twinkie oozed plasticky cream filling. Everyone looked at Bran’s son Charles and forgot who the most dangerous person was.

Asil got out and held open the door for Kara. She jumped down beside him and gave Charles a wary look. Bran’s son was too busy taking in the shivering and na**d men in the truck bed to notice. He threw them each a pair of sweat bottoms—which Asil hadn’t noticed him holding.

“Get dressed,” Charles rumbled at them. Once they were clothed, if only a little, Bran’s son took charge of herding them inside.

Once they were gone, Bran looked at Kara, who shrank under his gaze.

“It would have been better,” Bran said grimly, “if we hadn’t handed ammunition to our enemies. I’m afraid I’m as much at fault as you are, Asil. But it is Kara they want to pay.”

Asil frowned. Surely it should be the wolves who attacked Kara who would pay. “Explain that,” he said. Then, because he remembered that he wasn’t Alpha anymore, “Please. I don’t pay attention to politics anymore,” he told Bran, half-apologetically. “That’s your job.”

“Yeah,” Bran said. “Well, my job sucks.” He knelt and slid his hand along Kara’s jaw. Helplessly, her tail wagged her body—her wolf delighted by his attention. “You are mine, darling. I’ll keep you safe.”

Bran’s idea of safe, which paralleled Asil’s own, sometimes meant dead. Asil quit breathing for a moment.

Asil thought back over what he and Bran had done to imperil Kara. The last interaction had been in Bran’s study. He glanced at the door where the miscreant wolves had gone, preceding them into the pole barn. Eric of the “we attack children” pack had been waiting just outside that study door when Asil and Bran had spoken of how long Kara had been a wolf. She’d been a wolf for three years and had yet to be in control of her change.

That werewolves have one year to prove themselves or they have to be killed was a hard and necessary law. It required people to kill their loved ones to preserve the rest of the wolves. They were willing to do so only because that law applied to all of them. If Bran made an exception for Kara, it would spell decades of resentment and rebellion. If he did not make an exception for Kara, then Asil and Bran would have that battle that Asil came here for.

It was oddly stupid of them to hunt Kara so loudly where there were wolves to hear. It was odd that they had done so little damage to her. What if it had not been stupidity—or rather, it had been stupidity on a much grander scale? What if someone had wanted this meeting, wanted to push the issue of Kara out into the open?

Asil’s eyes met Bran’s—letting Bran know that Asil understood the issue, and that he would not allow Kara to be harmed without a protest. If Bran upheld the law, the battle that Asil had been seeking almost sixteen years ago when he’d first come here would take place.

“Whom do they belong to?” Asil asked.

“Hatchard Cole. A wolf who wants to expand his territory to include all of Alaska. He’d gladly take care of Liam Oldham and Ibrahim Ward—all he needs is my endorsement. If I don’t give it, he might just present me with a fait accompli.”

“Ah,” said Asil. “Is he here?” And is he still alive after a blackmail attempt like that?

“No,” Bran said sourly. “He gave the orders and left his wolves to spin in the wind when it didn’t work. When I called to inform him of the trespass after you called me, he commented about privileged wolves who do not follow the rules. I’m sure he’ll get some unsuspecting wolf all hot and bothered about it—someone who had to put a brother, mother, sister to rest when they couldn’t control themselves within the allotted time.”

“He wants your position,” Asil said. “Hatchard Cole.” He took a deep breath and thought about the werewolves he knew who were powerful enough to think they could take on Bran. “Was he perhaps once Conrad Hatch? I met him about three hundred years ago, give or take a few decades. Decent man, I thought then.”