He put his hand on her knee and kept eating.
He was healing as she watched him. Bruises fading, cuts mending themselves.
“It almost killed you,” she said. And she hadn’t meant to say that either. She tried to lighten the stark terror she heard in her voice with a little humor. “No more fighting bears for you.”
He set down his fork and squeezed her knee. “I killed it,” he told her. “It was dead and rotting when I turned my back. It used magic to conceal itself, or it would never have taken me by surprise.”
“No more fighting dead things,” she said, but her voice wobbled on the last word.
He reached for her—and she crawled on his lap, burrowing into his arms. He rested his chin on the top of her head.
“I will probably have gray hairs tomorrow from the moment when I saw you throwing rocks at the bear,” he told her. “No more throwing rocks at bears for you.”
Eventually, she slid back into her seat, and they both ate some more. When neither of them could eat another bite, she left the mess in the kitchen and they leaned on each other all the way to their bedroom.
In the darkness, while he slept, she cried silently on his shoulder—tears that she would never have allowed herself had he been awake. He worried too much over her tears. But in the darkness of their room, surrounded by his warmth and his scent, it seemed the proper time for tears.
They could have lost him today. She wondered if the skinwalker had taken him, would she have noticed. Would she have, like his grandfather’s uncle, lived for months without understanding that Charles was dead?
Skinwalker, the Old Medicine Man’s voice rolled through her head. Though she didn’t think he’d ever used that word in the … in the vision that Brother Wolf had sent her.
She cried because she didn’t know what else to do with the roil of fear and just-missed grief that was bound up in the thought of what the skinwalker could have done.
And when she was done with that, she cried for the woman she had thought was her friend. Thinking back over all the time she’d known Sage, Anna couldn’t decide if Sage had been very good at deception or just very good at avoiding things that were lies. Maybe Charles would know. Maybe it didn’t matter anymore.
She cried for Asil. For the romance with Sage that had been something else and for the friend that he had lost.
When they had found Devon, Asil went very still. He picked up Devon’s body without a word. He laid the bloody mess on the leather of the backseat of his Mercedes without any hesitation. Then he’d sat in the back with Devon’s head on his lap. He had not protested when Anna got in the driver’s seat, with Charles taking shotgun.
They had taken both of them, Asil and Devon’s body, to Bran’s house, where the rest of the pack would take care of them. Then she and Charles had gotten into Bran’s car and driven home.
Anna cried for Devon, too, though she hadn’t known him well. She’d never seen his human form—only known him through the stories of others. Asil had liked and respected him—and goodness knew Asil didn’t respect very many people on the planet. Bran. The mysteriously amnesiac Sherwood Post. She couldn’t think of anyone else offhand.
Jericho, the real Jericho, she had never met. Charles said that he was pretty sure that he’d been taken the same time all of the enemy soldiers had died. Hard to tell if those men had been killed by Jericho or by the skinwalker, to draw Charles to Jericho’s home. She thought that they would probably never know for sure.
Hester, Jonesy, Jericho, and Devon—they’d lost so many in a very short time. Anna put her ear to Charles’s chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart.
Suddenly, every muscle in his body tensed, and he sat up. He gave her a wide-eyed look. It seemed like an overreaction to her tears.
“Leah saved me,” he said, in a disgruntled voice.
She couldn’t help it—she laughed. And then she cried a little more.
He made love to her—which helped both her tears and his ruffled feathers.
But before he went to sleep, he murmured, “Leah is never going to let me live this down.”
“That’s okay,” Anna told him. “If you were dead, you wouldn’t be bothered by anything Leah had to say. I hope she torments you good and proper.”
He laughed then, a warm, sleepy sound that followed her into her dreams.
• • •
BRAN PARKED THE rented silver Camry on the road outside his house—there was no room for it any nearer. He left his suitcase where it was and walked home.
The lights told him that everyone was awake. He felt the subtle expectation that told him the pack could feel him, even if they didn’t know what was causing their restlessness. Standing on the porch, he straightened his shoulders and opened the bonds, accepting back the responsibility that he had handed to his son.
For a moment, the sensation was overwhelming. He took a step sideways to balance himself. Then everything settled back into place, and it was as if he had never left—except for the missing pieces—no Hester with her tie to Jonesy, who lit up Bran’s feel of the tie like a nuclear explosion; no Jericho, who could have taught Tag a thing or two about berserker fighting; no Devon, whose sweetness had survived the years that had robbed him of all else.
As Bran walked into the room, an expectant hush filled the air.
Juste, looking exhausted, rose from his seat and went down on one knee before Bran. “We have failed you, sire.”
Yes. They ran their packs differently in Europe.
“Get up,” he said, trying not to sound irritated. It had, after all, been he who had failed them. But this pack could not deal with doubts about their leader, so he could not apologize to them—as much as it would have relieved his guilt to do so.
“Get up, man,” said Tag. “We don’t bend our knees around here. If he wants your throat, you’ll know it. Otherwise, we can say we’re sorry while standing on our feet.”
Bran looked around the room—Asil met his gaze with wry sympathy. According to the pithy report Charles had left on Bran’s message app, Asil didn’t know that Bran’s absence was because he thought Leah was their traitor. But Asil was a wise old wolf, and it looked as though he’d worked things out.
“I think,” Bran said, “under the circumstances, we are lucky we didn’t lose more of the pack. Thank you.”
They had Devon’s body laid out on the bar, the dead wolf curled up as if he were merely asleep. Bran bent down and kissed his forehead.
For a moment, he saw a wild laughing young man, full of joy and adventures. “Come on, Bran,” he’d said. “It’ll be fun. We’re all werewolves—let’s join the wild hunt!”
Tag, standing at Bran’s shoulder, said, “Do you remember the day he talked us all into trying to find the wild hunt?”
Bran’s memories sometimes leaked out through the pack bonds if he wasn’t careful.
Bran shook his head. “Reckless idiot.”
“And so you told him,” agreed Tag. “But you came with us anyway.”
That had been … six hundred years ago, give or take fifty. And now, of those who had run that night, only Bran and Tag were left.
“So I did,” agreed Bran.
He stayed there for a little while, feeling his presence settle the pack down until they left by twos and threes, going home to rest. Until only he was left.
He found Leah in their bedroom. She was curled up in a chair, reading a magazine that she put down when he entered the room.
“You,” Bran said, “I can apologize to. I thought you were our traitor.”
“I?” she said. Her expression of astonishment changed to comprehension. “That’s why you left. If I had betrayed you, betrayed the pack, you’d have had to kill me.”
He nodded. “I can’t do that. You know why. So I left it to Charles.” He apologized again. “I am sorry.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Whatever for? I’m flattered that you thought that I was our traitor. It would take a lot of ingenuity and ability to be this close to you and betray you.”
She didn’t lie. But he knew her well enough to read the hurt in the set of her jaw.