It would probably be a long time before it happened again.
“I take it that this will be a onetime thing?” he ventured.
She shrugged, “Maybe. Anna suggested we make Tag plan it next time.”
He started to go, but Brother Wolf prodded him.
“I have never told you, thank you,” he said.
Her eyebrows raised—though he knew very well she understood what he was talking about.
“If you had not come back,” he told her, “the skinwalker would have killed me.”
She folded up the wet cloth and hung it over the faucet to dry. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “You weren’t dead when we got there. If there is one thing that I have learned over the time I’ve spent here with your father, it is that it doesn’t do to underestimate you.”
He folded his arms and looked at his father’s mate, and for the first time the reason he was glad he had not had to execute her for being a traitor had more to do with Leah and less to do with his da.
“Thank you,” he said, “for coming back to help when I needed you.”
She considered it a moment. “I didn’t do it for you.” She opened a drawer and took out a clean dish towel and set it out beside the sink. With her back to him, she said, “I do not like you. I have never liked you—and it is not your fault. He loves you. And he does not love me.”
She turned around and looked at him with clear blue eyes and an expressionless face.
Charles thought about how his da’s wolf had fought Bran to a standstill in Spokane, unwilling to leave Leah to her fate. When Bran knew that the safest place for everyone, if Leah had been their traitor, would have been Africa. His father, who had controlled that wolf for a very, very long time.
Maybe it hadn’t been just the wolf who couldn’t leave.
“What,” Charles said carefully, because he tried very hard not to interfere in his da’s marriage “would be different if he loved you?”
She stared at him. “You cryptic son of a bitch,” she said.
And that’s why he didn’t interfere in his da’s marriage.
“Do you know where Anna is?”
“She left,” Leah said coolly, as if the brief moment of accord over wet clothing had not happened. “I presume she went home.”
• • •
HE FOUND HER working her little gelding in the arena—she pointedly ignored him. Anna stiffened a little, though, and when she asked the gelding for a transition from canter to trot, she bumped down on his back, off balance.
The cheery little gray took a few more strides—and when it was obvious she wasn’t fixing matters, he stopped.
“You forgot to sit a couple of strides before you started posting,” Charles said cautiously, climbing on top of the arena fence. If she was mad at him, greeting her with an instruction seemed to be a bad way to make things right—but he couldn’t help himself.
Rather than responding—or trying it again—she walked Heylight over to where Charles sat, and said, “Think carefully over your next answer. Your father’s life might just depend on it.”
He met her eyes, but he couldn’t tell how serious she was. “All right,” he said.
“Did he pull you into his study so neither of you had to participate tonight?”
“I will answer that,” Charles said. “But first let me say that the pack has been wounded by Sage and by the death of the wildlings. Badly wounded in some cases.”
Asil had disappeared for a few days. When he returned, he had retreated to his roses and only come out when Kara went and got him.
Bran had been shaken badly—first discovering that they had a traitor, then that business with Mercy’s kidnapping, then believing that Leah was their traitor. But the worst issue, as far as his da’s confidence was concerned, was the way Sage’s betrayal had totally blindsided him.
“This party was just what the pack needed—wild hunt and all,” Charles told her. “Did Asil go with them?”
Anna nodded, “He said someone had to mind the idiots.”
“Da isn’t at a point, yet, where a good run would do him any good. If he had gone out, no one would have played. And they needed to play.”
Anna pursed her lips, her body swaying a little as the gelding shifted his weight. “Okay,” she said. “I can see that. What about you?”
“I would have loved to go chase the wild hunt,” Charles said truthfully. “But Wellesley sent my father a bunch of names and social security numbers. So I spent the afternoon working.”
Wellesley was keeping his home in the Marrok’s pack. But he’d asked, and received permission, to go out hunting witches. He’d left a few days ago with freshly minted identification, credit cards (which he now knew how to use), and a mission to drive him.
“What did you find?” she asked.
“This is bigger than the skinwalker—or at least bigger than just one skinwalker. It looks like the Hardesty family has managed to stay under everyone’s radar. They own a fast-food chain, large tracts of land, and a few buildings in New York City. And they are witches. The first powerful witch family for three hundred years—that we know of, at least.”
Heylight threw his head up and blew, as if challenging a strange horse. Anna petted him.
“And they are aimed at us?” she said in a small voice.
Charles nodded. “Looks like. But maybe not. Asil—” He sighed. “Asil found Sage.”
“No wonder he’s been troubled,” Anna said somberly. Charles knew he didn’t have to tell her that Sage was dead.
He nodded. “Asil told Da that the skinwalker was chasing down rumors that Wellesley, who was once Frank Bright, was here. She had targeted him originally—back in the thirties—because she knew about the collar spell. That was the main thing she wanted. But once she was here, and she captured Jericho, the skinwalker thought she might try to take over this pack—and use it as a weapon against another branch of the family.”
“Sage told Asil all of that?” Anna asked.
Charles shrugged.
Anna liked Asil. And even if it made Brother Wolf crazy, Charles was not going to interfere with that unless he had to. When she was ready to hear about how much of a monster Asil could be, she could ask him. Or Da. But Charles expected that she wouldn’t.
She looked toward the tree-covered mountains, and they were worth looking at. “You know?” she said. “I have been wondering what I’m going to do with my life. But meeting some of the wildlings taught me something.”
“What’s that?” When he looked at her with his grandfather’s gift, he could see the connections that centered in her—connections from the horse, from the trees, from the mountains—and from him. She was so beautiful.
“I may not know, right now, what I want to do with my life. But I have a long time to figure it out. I decided—at the party actually—that learning some things is a great way to start. Before I came out to ride, I signed myself up for online classes.” She frowned at him. “Do you speak Japanese?”
Brother Wolf said, No.
Charles laughed at his wretched tone. Brother Wolf did not want to disappoint Anna.
A wolf’s cry echoed from the mountain behind their house—and before it died away, it was answered by many throats. They had not found prey, Charles could tell, just joy in the run.
“Hey, Pretty Lady,” he said, leaning forward. “Does that horse sidepass?”
She gave him a demure smile. “Maybe,” she said.
“Why don’t you try it?” he asked.
She stepped the gelding sideways until he stood next to the fence, and raised herself in her stirrups. Charles had to bend down some, because her gelding was really short, but it was worth it.
Kissing Anna was worth however much effort he had to make.
We will learn Japanese, said Brother Wolf.