by Laura Taylor
“Welcome to England, sir. I trust your travels were uneventful.”
“They always are,” the man said, a wry quirk of a smile on his lips as he picked up his small travel case. It was a safe bet that it contained more weapons than clothing. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be doing my job.”
There was no point introducing himself. The emissary no doubt knew exactly who Baron was, and a small, childish part of himself was resenting this intrusion with all the passion of a two-year-old throwing a tantrum.
It wasn’t the lack of notice. It wasn’t even the high-handed way the Council tended to deal with things. No, the thing that pissed Baron off was that for the first time in months – no, years – there was someone on the estate who outranked him.
It was a petty complaint, even to his own ears. Council emissaries were trained as warriors, not just in fighting as a wolf, but also as a human. The man standing before him would be an expert in not one, but two martial arts, capable with a sword, a pistol and a bow, and trained in espionage until it was not a skill but an art.
Should Baron go toe-to-toe with the wolf in a fight, he would almost certainly come out the loser. But the thing that rankled him was not that he would lose. It was that he was forbidden from ever challenging the man. So the question of whether he was the more capable fighter or not would remain forever unanswered.
Council members themselves, of course, were not just fierce warriors, but diplomats, masters of strategy, patience, psychology and philosophy, charged with the sacred task of preserving their species for generations to come.
It was not a task that Baron envied at all.
“I’m Andre,” the man said, giving Baron a smooth once-over. “Please forgive the lack of notice. Given the disturbances from the Noturatii lately, we’re being more reticent than usual about our plans.”
“I see.” Fuck, things must be bad if even the Council was on edge. Baron returned the once-over, and if anything, what he saw only made him more tense. Despite the suit, there was no doubt that a warrior stood before him. Every movement was smooth, lithe, deliberate and efficient. Andre was scanning the estate in a confident, unhurried manner that implied he would obligingly kill anything that presented the least threat, and then his gentleman’s air would make him apologise for the mess afterwards. A stiff British accent had been coloured by his time in Italy, but it was clear the man was originally from England – though he must have left a long time ago, as Baron had never met him in all his years at the Den here.
“I’m afraid Dee’s out at the moment,” he began, not knowing if this was going to be a problem or not. The Council was not known for its patience. “She had a doctor’s appointment, and since we weren’t expecting you-”
“I’m in no hurry,” Andre said, his tone at once accommodating and commanding. “Perhaps, if you could show me to my room, I’ll freshen up, and then you can fill me in on how the young wolf has been progressing?”
It was a polite request, a question, not a demand, and yet Baron still felt like he’d just been given orders like a common servant.
“Of course. This way.” He led the man towards the manor, sending a Den-wide message from his phone alerting everyone to Andre’s presence. Strangers on the estate tended to be treated with a shoot first, ask questions later policy.
Caroline met them at the door, her characteristic scowl on her face, until she saw Andre. And then… well, in all honesty, it was hard to tell what she felt.
“Andre.”
There was the briefest, and yet most telling of pauses. “Caroline.”
“I didn’t realise it would be you.”
“You know each other?” Baron interrupted, not liking being left out of the loop.
“We met in Italy. Shortly after Caroline was converted,” Andre explained. And then said nothing more, which of course explained nothing at all.
“I see.”
“Would you like me to show you to your room?” Caroline offered, sounding almost eager. God, who the hell was this man, to get that kind of reaction from their resident heartless bitch?
But if Caroline was off balance from the unannounced arrival, then Andre was utterly unaffected, no doubt having known exactly who would be meeting him. And Baron was itching with curiosity to know more.
“If you would be so kind,” Andre answered, the perfect gentleman. “I’ll catch up with you a little later,” he said to Baron, a clear dismissal if he had ever heard one, and Baron fought to contain the glare he longed to shoot Caroline’s way.
“As you wish.” He prowled out of the room, heading for the library, determined to wring some answers out of the alpha female later.
Caroline was acutely aware of the man behind her as she led Andre up the stairs. Had it really been fifteen years? It seemed like yesterday.
“So you’re alpha now.” The smooth statement surprised her, and her foot caught the edge of the next step, a stumble quickly covered, and she glanced back at him.
“For the last five years. But I’m sure you knew that already.”
“I was briefed on the members of your Den, yes. And their respective histories.”
They reached the top of the stairs and turned left. But before they could get any further, Heron appeared from out of one of the hallways, and she looked both startled and delighted as she saw Andre. “Heshna, Andre,” she said with a smile. “It’s been a long time.”
“Heshna, Machia,” he said respectfully, giving her a slight bow.
Caroline was briefly surprised by the exchange, until she remembered that Andre had grown up on this estate. As the adopted son of a shifter couple, he’d been raised here until he was fifteen, when he and his family had moved to Italy. Though he’d left long before Caroline had arrived, Heron would have been here throughout his childhood, would have watched him grow up, helped raise him, and ‘Machia’, the term he’d used to greet her, meant ‘aunt’ in the Old Language.
Heron let out a pleased little laugh. “Always the gentleman. I’ll let you get settled in, but we must catch up when you have time. I’m sure you have some fascinating stories to tell.”
“It would be a pleasure.” Heron continued on down the stairs, leaving Caroline feeling slightly jealous of the easy camaraderie between the pair.
There were a number of visitors’ rooms permanently made up on the first floor, a precaution for exactly this sort of situation, and Caroline led Andre to one that would afford him the least disturbance and the greatest privacy.
“How’s Italy?”
“Warm.”
It was a hopeless attempt at small talk, and a far cry from the conversation Caroline wished to have, but one did not question a Council emissary, regardless of any shared history.
“This will be your room,” she announced, opening the door and preceding him inside. “There are towels in the bathroom, wireless internet on a secure connection, and you’ll find-”
“You’ve come a long way.”
“What?”
Andre had closed the door and was standing just in front of it, the sudden change of topic throwing Caroline off balance again. And if he had been anyone else, she might have resented how easily he could do that to her. Then again, if he had been anyone else, he wouldn’t have been successful.
Andre looked her over carefully, but the inspection was neither critical nor lewd. There was just a gentle curiosity and a hint of affection. The barest hint. His eyebrow twitched. A muscle tugged at the corner of his mouth, and Caroline found herself smiling almost bashfully.
“Yes. I suppose I have.” It was quite the understatement. As a newly converted wolf, Caroline had been out of control, too much anger and violence fuelling her actions, too little experience to temper rage with patience, and the only solution had been to send her to Italy for ‘retraining’. She’d been terrified at the thought, imagining all manner of torture, punishment and strict rules to make her life hell.
Instead, she’d been turned over to Andre’s care, a much younger, much l
ess severe version of the man who now stood before her. Since then, of course, Andre had been through not just the Council’s specialist training, but a large number of assignments, many of them dangerous, some of them no doubt quite painful, and that sort of thing tended to change a person.
There was a mere five years age difference between them, but at Caroline’s conversion, Andre had been a wolf for five years already, and serving under the Council for three of them. To say he was naturally gifted was a gross understatement.
“Is there anything you need?”
Andre’s calm gaze didn’t waver. “No. Thank you.”
“I’ll leave you to unpack then.”
“I’m glad you made it,” Andre said softly. “For a while there, we weren’t sure you were going to.”
And that, at least, made Caroline smile, though it was her usual sardonic smirk that came out. “I hear that about almost every wolf we convert. And yet nine times out of ten, we somehow manage to pull through.”
Andre’s smile widened into a real expression, rather than the pale shadow of one he had been wearing. “It’s good to see you again,” he said as Caroline turned to leave. And if she felt her face warm as she closed the door… well, it was probably just the heating system playing up again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
They were in a forest, Dee registered. Faeydir had been running for what seemed like hours, following God knows what path or scent, and after crossing a few paddocks and weaving through a few lanes, they’d entered the forest proper. And Dee was none too happy with proceedings.
It would be getting dark soon, and she’d tried repeatedly to pull the wolf up, to reason with her, even tried to force a shift, only to get shoved back with a snarl and an onslaught of anger.
The problem was, despite being rather more intelligent and alert than the average wolf, Faeydir still lacked a lot of the human understanding of cause and effect. According to her, it was the doctor’s fault that the Noturatii had found them. Men in white coats were not to be trusted. Dee had had no luck at all explaining that it was likely just a coincidence, and that the doctor himself had nothing to do with it. The wolf simply wasn’t listening.
Like a child, Faeydir was also able to plan ahead a little, but not always able to see the consequences of her decisions, and with the light fading fast, Dee was dreading being stuck out here come nightfall. The nights were still freezing, and while she was dressed warmly, she could still freeze to death-
Oh. The image in her mind was clear and vivid. A makeshift den, maybe under a tree root, or inside a fallen log. Faeydir’s fur would keep them warm, and she might be able to catch a rabbit for dinner. They would be well taken care of, Faeydir told her, not at all offended by Dee’s lack of trust. She didn’t trust Dee any further, knowing full well that she didn’t understand Faeydir’s needs and desires as a wolf. And it was humbling, as well as eye opening, to suddenly be so completely dependent on the wolf’s skills.
Dee had never really been able to get her mind around the other shifters’ insistence that the wolf was an asset, and not just an ultra-fancy toy to play with. Then again, Dee thought darkly, if she hadn’t become a shifter, then she probably would never have been stuck out in the dark, in the cold, needing a coat of thick fur to survive the night. Still, she was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
This was a good place, Faeydir reported suddenly, coming to a stop at the edge of a mossy clearing. A brief exploration turned up a deep puddle to drink from, a cosy nook underneath an overhanging rock – perfect for a makeshift den – and the scent of rabbits on the ground. Faeydir took the time to scent-mark the area, then padded off into the undergrowth, Dee watching her progress with a newfound respect and a sharp curiosity.
“Where the hell are they?” Baron snarled, all but ready to hurl his phone across the room. Night had fallen, the darkness thick without a moon tonight, and he’d been trying for the last hour and a half to reach his Den mates. Tank wasn’t answering, his phone just ringing out. Silas’s phone kept going straight to voicemail – which meant he was in wolf form, since no shifter out on assignment would ever turn their phone off – and Dee’s phone was simply ‘unavailable’ since she’d been lent a spare just for this excursion and no one had set up the voice mail on it.
“Where’s the van?” Every vehicle was fitted with a GPS tracker, and Skip had retreated to the office earlier to find it.
“Just south of Carlisle,” she reported, arriving back in the library. “And it’s stationary. Has been for hours.”
“Fuck.” He could feel Andre’s eyes on him, no doubt assessing his capabilities as alpha depending on how he chose to deal with this crisis. Three wolves MIA and one of them an untested newbie. That was bad enough, without the eyes of the entire Den on him. Once word had spread that the team hadn’t come back, the shifters had gradually congregated here in the library, a silent audience that was equal parts anxious concern and eager ferocity. It was heartening to know that each and every one of them was willing to drop everything and rally to the cause at a moment’s notice, but equally unnerving to have them all watching him when he didn’t know what the fuck he was supposed to do next.
Caroline was being unusually quiet. Normally she’d be tossing out ideas for finding them, sniping in his ear about how he could have let this happen, but she was sitting silently at one of the tables, legs crossed, her black leather making her look more of an assassin than the one the Council had sent to them.
“We need to search for them,” Baron said finally. It was the obvious choice, but not without its own risks. “Simon and Skip can go get the van. Check it out for bugs, bombs, mechanical tempering, the whole bit. Caleb can go with them. And you, Caroline. I’ll take Mark and Alistair and start at the clinic, see what we can find.” Mark had been pacing the room, understandably more agitated than the rest of the Den. He looked almost relieved at the announcement, no doubt eager to be out and doing something, rather than sitting around hoping his girlfriend magically came back on her own.
John, sitting in the corner ignoring the entire room, also looked up at the announcement, and Baron cast an uneasy eye over him. Should he…?
“John, you’re with me. You’re the best tracker in the Den, after Silas. We’re going to need you.” The predatory leer that appeared on John’s face was not at all reassuring.
“What about me?” Andre asked softly, and Baron held back a groan. Fucking politics.
“If you would like to join my team, your help would be most welcome,” he said, managing to be diplomatic.
“If I could make a suggestion? Perhaps you should leave Alistair behind. As I understand it, fighting is not one of his more refined skills.”
Fucking arsehole was calling one of his wolves weak? And in front of the man himself? Baron gritted his teeth. “Alistair comes,” he said, glancing at the man with a reassuring nod. “He’s a demon behind the wheel and he can drive the van while the rest of us do our thing. Everybody, be ready to leave in ten minutes.”
Dee was torn between being terrified and fascinated. Now that Faeydir had promised to look after them both, Dee was paying more attention to what she was doing and less to trying to get her to stop it. The scent of rabbit was strong – this was a path they used frequently, and up ahead they were likely to find a warren.
Faeydir crept along the path, her paws silent against the damp soil as she listened intently, focused on the scent trail, her thoughts on a tasty meal…
Without warning, a large wolf leapt out of the undergrowth, standing before them in open challenge. And Faeydir realised a moment later that there were two more flanking her, one on either side.
Run! Dee urged in her mind, terrified by their sudden appearance, but Faeydir paid the comment no heed. She simply stood there and watched the wolves come, hackles raised, teeth bared.
The three stopped, the leader coming to a halt just feet from where she stood, and Dee’s racing mind reminded her that there weren’t any wild wolves
in England.
Right on cue, the wolf in front of her shifted, becoming a tall, black haired woman clad in buckskin and grey wool, a long knife in her hand only a moment after the shift was complete.
“Who are you?” she asked without preamble. “You trespass, and Il Trosa has no rights here.”
The Grey Watch. There was a tattoo on the woman’s left cheek, another on her left hand, and no hint of compromise in her eyes. In the months that she’d been with the Den, Baron had warned her repeatedly to avoid the Watch at all costs, and Dee was already planning escape routes, weighing up whether Faeydir could fight the three of them all at once.
But Faeydir seemed almost relieved to have met them. An image came to mind of a warm den smelling of earth and wolf, of low tents and a fireplace, simple tools like knives and axes set out neatly.
These wolves are dangerous! Dee told her urgently. But Faeydir disagreed. Wild wolves, these were, living outside without cages and rules. Open skies. Cold winters. Wide forests. This was where Faeydir had wanted to come ever since they’d escaped from the lab, and Dee’s heart sank as she realised that she’d be fighting an uphill battle to get them out of here.
Faeydir huffed at her, and Dee sighed inwardly. Well, okay. If she couldn’t leave by force, then she might as well try to negotiate instead. She was getting rather a lot of practice at that, after all.
I need to talk to them, Dee pointed out, and Faeydir agreed, on the condition that she be polite. These were friends, Faeydir insisted. A throwback to simpler times, more in touch with their wolf side than anyone in Il Trosa.
Oh hell, Dee thought as she shifted, her feet not quite willing to hold her steady as tiredness overtook her. Faeydir sounded like she wanted to stay, that she would try to convince Dee that this was a better option than her newfound friends at the Den. How the hell was she going to convince the stubborn animal that they needed to leave?
