5
Andrew nursed a beer at the dark wood dining table while he waited for Michelle to arrive. He mostly managed not to listen to Susan’s argument with John, though he could hear it perfectly. Her conversation with Silver upstairs was much easier not to hear. Eventually, she thumped down the stairs and out to her car, leaving behind a tendril of sweaty fear that twisted into his nose. What had Silver said to her? Andrew considered staying out of it, but John would be pissed, and Andrew needed John’s undistracted help as well as Silver’s when Michelle got there.
The baby wailed in earnest, almost covering the sound of Susan’s car pulling away, as Andrew reached the head of the stairs. He followed the wail to the nursery. John bounced his son desperately, talking to him, while Silver watched longingly. After a few moments, she made an exasperated noise and smiled at the boy. After a suspicious look, he stopped crying, though he didn’t quite smile back.
“I have to go get ready for Michelle,” John muttered in frustration, and Silver held out her arm. When John opened his mouth to object, Andrew coughed. The man was holding the boy mostly with one arm himself. If he thought Silver wasn’t well practiced in doing things one-handed, he hadn’t been paying attention. John shot Andrew a glare, but after another moment’s dithering, he helped Silver settle the baby against her shoulder and clumped down the stairs.
“Edmond,” Silver introduced the boy, clearly quite proud of remembering the name.
Andrew came closer and gave the boy a quick smile too. Curiosity about the new people and situation had overcome his crying and he focused on Andrew. “Woof,” he said, solemnly.
“I am,” Andrew agreed. He put out his hand as if to shake, one finger extended. Edmond grabbed on. It wasn’t quite the tiny grip, it wasn’t quite the familiar mangling of “wolf,” but some combination of everything brought his daughter to mind. He jerked his hand away. She was a teenager by now, he reminded himself. A teenager raised by his in-laws, who’d made their opinion of him clear. She’d likely share it by now.
“His name is Edmond,” Silver said sharply, breaking Andrew out of his thoughts. “Another baby. Different. You can’t spend your whole life flinching from children.”
“Later, Silver,” Andrew said, rolling his shoulders to stop the tension before it got any worse. He didn’t have time right now to worry about things he couldn’t change. He’d fought years ago to get access to his daughter, fought hard, and he’d lost. Now, he needed to concentrate on battles he actually had a chance of winning. “What did you say to Susan, anyway?”
“Seattle never told her she could be killed for knowing about us.”
Andrew slid a finger under Silver’s chin, tilting her head up from the baby so he could see her expression. She was concentrating hard, attention miles away. “That’s a lot to spring on her.” Earlier, he’d compared Susan to Silver, but the fear he’d smelled suggested the flaw in that line of thinking. Susan was probably no coward, in human terms. The trouble was, many humans didn’t deal with the idea of killing up front in this day and age. At least Were hunted. “Are you sure she needs you interfering?”
Silver rolled her working shoulder muscles on her bad side as if she wanted to smack Andrew. He smiled, dropped his hand, and acted as if she’d succeeded, rocking back a step. “I’m going to interfere until people realize she’s capable of making her own choices. Like I am,” Silver said.
“But she’s not you.” Andrew put a hand on her bad shoulder. “No one here assumes you can’t think for yourself, or are as clueless as a human.”
“Want to bet?” Anything further from Silver was cut off by a car pulling into the driveway. The smooth purr of Michelle’s BMW was a contrast to whatever gutless gas-efficient compact Susan had been driving. The sound of John opening the door followed soon after. Andrew took his time helping Silver return Edmond to his crib. It wasn’t his place to welcome anyone to another alpha’s house, so better he stall a bit to arrive after the greetings were over.
When a new male voice joined Michelle’s downstairs in the foyer, Andrew stopped screwing around and headed to the stairs. If Michelle had brought her prickly beta, this meeting would be more difficult …
“Dare!” The official greetings apparently over, a lanky young man with dirty-blond hair bounded to meet Andrew at the foot of the stairs like an oversized puppy. Tom must have been twenty or so by now, but he still had the same grin. Andrew remembered that grin from when he was busting the kid for mischief as a teenager back in Roanoke territory. Tom slammed into Andrew’s chest. Andrew rocked with the impact and smacked a fist into the young man’s shoulder.
“Ass. What are you doing here?” He stepped back to examine Tom’s face. “You didn’t get yourself kicked out, did you?” Andrew looked up to catch Michelle’s smile of amusement.
“He joined for love, but young love is fleeting.” Michelle accepted the beer John held out to her and followed him toward the dining room. John put out another couple coasters at the end of the dining table. Michelle rested her hand on the back of a chair in front of one of the coasters and laughed at Tom’s hangdog look. “I think he wants to transfer.”
“You’re going to be Roanoke soon, aren’t you? Can’t I come back with you?” Tom made his eyes huge with pleading.
Andrew squashed a twinge of guilt. Tom was out here, safe, not back East anymore, but what about all the other Roanoke pack members Andrew had taken care of when he was Rory’s enforcer? Seeing the trust in Tom’s eyes only served to make the guilt twist in more sharply.
He sighed. “It’s a lot more complicated than that. I might not pull it off, and even if I do, it won’t be until the Convocation. You’d do better to stay in Portland for the moment or head back East yourself.”
Tom pulled a face. “It’s so weird with Emily now. Besides, I want to be in your pack, not any old pack. Can’t I stay up here with you?” He turned his pleading eyes on John. “Permission to stay temporarily…”
John suppressed a grin that had sprung up out of Tom’s sight. “You can stick around for a hunt. I want to see how you get along with everyone else before I say for sure.”
“Thank you, sir.” Tom bounced down to one knee and back up. It exasperated Andrew to see that limberness when he thought of all the trouble he’d had getting his legs up to strength after his back healed.
“Most of the pack are downstairs.” John stepped out of the dining room and pointed around the corner to the basement door, as if Tom couldn’t already smell them down there. Having everyone out of the way helped prevent eavesdropping on the alpha’s private business.
Tom nodded and wandered down, leaving them in peace. When Silver came into the room Michelle set down her beer and examined her. They formed a study in contrasts. Portland had black hair and a Latina skin tone, and while she was several inches shorter than Silver, she packed a sense of concentrated power into her petite frame. Silver’s dominance flowed much deeper below the surface, leaving her easier to underestimate.
Michelle seemed surprised after her study, like she’d expected Silver to start weeping or ranting or to fall into a seizure. Though that was how Portland had seen her last, Andrew supposed. Until he’d bled most of the silver nitrate out of her system, Silver had been prone to the latter two at least.
Silver met Michelle’s attention steadily, though without direct eye contact, for several seconds until Michelle turned uncomfortably away to Andrew. “Seattle said you wanted to talk to me about something before the Convocation?” She pulled out her chair and sat. Everyone else followed her lead.
Andrew saw Silver frown at the conversation being so clearly directed away from her, but she didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure of the best course of action himself. Given that he wanted to sweet-talk Michelle, it didn’t seem politic to make demands of her, like acknowledging Silver as an alpha dominant.
“With an old enemy campaigning against Dare, we could use the support of anyone who knows he’s not some bloodthirsty killer,” Silver
said.
Michelle raised her eyebrows. “‘We,’ huh?”
Andrew stiffened. That tone was too far. But Silver put a forestalling hand on his knee. “Let me.” Suppressed anger filled her voice.
Silver pushed her chair out so she was facing Michelle straight on, legs set wide. She leaned over them with false casualness. “Because I’m crazy?” Michelle sought first John’s, then Andrew’s, gaze in confusion. Silver snapped her fingers. “Look at me, not them. They’re not my caretakers.” Silver waited until Michelle met her eyes, then nodded. “It’s true, I can no longer shift. It’s true, some aspects of your world I can no longer quite … see. That doesn’t mean I’m still as you saw me last. My mind works.”
Silver stood in a sudden smooth movement, holding the eye contact. Michelle stood too, rather than break it. Silver walked closer until they were locked into more than a casual gaze. It wasn’t a challenge, where one would win and one would lose, but rather a measuring of strength.
It was always strange to watch such struggles from the outside. There was no external sign of what the women were thinking, but Andrew had participated in such contests often enough to fill in the feeling from memory. Contests with Silver, especially. Silver was surprising when you came up against her dominance for the first time.
Michelle made a choking noise and broke the stare first. “A mated pair of alphas. That’s … unusual. Impossible, I’d have said. I assumed dominants didn’t get along well enough long-term.”
Her expression twisted, apology mixing with instinctive hostility toward another dominant Were. “I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to be constantly underestimated as a female alpha. I should know better.”
“Not your fault,” Silver murmured. “But now you see why I’m part of the planning.” She dragged her chair back so she was leaning against Andrew’s side again, and he obligingly slid his arm around her.
“Silver’s something of a switch, I’ve found,” Andrew said. Silver snorted at the term, but didn’t object. Any Were could try to act like one of a higher or lower status, but it was a rare one who could make anyone believe it. When Silver decided a stranger shouldn’t notice her, she was damn convincing. “So it would have been surprising if you’d read her dominance when you first met.” He squeezed his hand on Silver’s arm. “Boston suggested we use it to win people over: that we’re a pair of alphas.”
Michelle started to look away and then changed her mind and looked at him, though they both avoided direct eye contact. The reluctance her initial look suggested didn’t reassure Andrew. Her scent was neutral, at least. “It’s going to be a tough battle. You know that, right? Your reputation is tarnished, to say the least. Sacramento has a lot of ammunition.”
“That’s why we need support,” Andrew said. He pretended relaxation he didn’t feel and sipped his beer. “You can be a character witness, since you know differently.”
“Do I?” Michelle sighed. “No one knows what really happened in Barcelona. Sacramento’s chasing that one hard. Everyone knows why, too, because most people hated his little shit of a son and didn’t shed any tears over his execution. But he does have a point about the Barcelona massacre.”
Andrew took a deep breath. All right. Time to practice in front of people ostensibly his allies before he had to do it in front of his enemies. He took Silver’s hand under the table, and she laced her fingers with his and squeezed tightly back. He could do this.
“The thing about Europe is that everyone has long memories, and there’s not much space.” Andrew tapped fingertips on the tabletop in lines corresponding to the territory divisions on the map in his mind. “They squabble over inches of land. Inches. Skirmish and it goes to Madrid, skirmish and it goes back to Barcelona. When I was there, it was popular to burn the other pack’s houses. That forced the noncombatants to pick up and move farther toward the center of the territory. Supposedly, the idea wasn’t to kill anyone, but they made a mistake with my wife. She’d forgotten something and returned to the house to get it. Barcelona thought we were out for the evening.”
Andrew saw John and Michelle’s attention sharpen as he left the generalities of Europe, but their expressions still suggested they expected some kind of redirection at the end. “So while Madrid and my in-laws sifted through the ashes, planning their retaliation, what house they would burn, what utterly pointless fight they would pick, I went to Barcelona. I found the beta out running with some others on their hunting grounds. He thought I was funny, coming out to chastise him all by myself.”
Andrew drew in a shuddering breath and brought Silver’s hand to his chest where he could clasp it with his other. Silver gave him a thin-lipped smile of encouragement, and the two alphas stared in shock at getting real details. Andrew’s satisfaction at shoving them off-balance was a dim thing in the face of the crushing pressure of the memories, but he clung to it anyway.
“Really, the only reason I managed to kill the beta was because he let his guard down, underestimating me that way. Then the others were so shocked, they were easier. Some may have surrendered at the end. I don’t remember. I don’t think I was able to hear them at that point. Then I set the hunting grounds on fire, so the remaining pack would remember what it was about.” Andrew took another breath. Just breathe. “I honestly can’t tell you much about my reasoning at the time. I wish I could. That would mean there was more to it than falling into blind, berserker rage and being like Were used to be, combining the worst of human and animal.”
Frozen silence fell for several moments. Michelle was the first to speak. “The rumors say their throats—”
“Death says he took their voices to the Lady regardless,” Silver broke in, making Michelle start. “I see no particular reason to believe otherwise.” She tugged on her hand until Andrew dropped it from his chest so she could scoot forward in her chair. She leaned in as if sharing a confidence. “Now, you’re thinking, ‘See, he’s admitted it, he did kill all those Were, he did tear out their throats so Death couldn’t take their voices to the Lady to give them their rest with Her. Why should we trust this man to be a leader?’”
Michelle nodded with a jerk. Andrew wanted to flinch. Why had Silver laid it out so starkly? Said like that, he wondered how he ever could convince someone differently.
Silver freed her hand and held it against her core. “You should trust him because he’s found that place inside himself, and now he knows where it is. You have that place, no matter that you may think you don’t. With the Lady’s grace you’ll never have cause to find it. But if you should stumble onto it unexpectedly, you’ll no more be able to control it than he could. None of his pack would ever need to worry he’d stumble, because he knows, and he’ll control it.”
Andrew turned to stare at Silver. She’d never said that to him before, but she smelled of absolute sincerity and belief in him.
Michelle put her hand out to her beer bottle, but didn’t drink. “But someone who has killed before might find it easier next time.” Her inflection trailed almost into a question at the end.
“Someone’s who’s killed before knows the cost,” Andrew said, and hesitated, choosing his words. “The madman who injected Silver and killed her whole pack, including the children, should I have let him walk away? Locked him up to escape again someday?”
“He deserved to die for his crimes.” John thumped his bottle on the table for emphasis.
“And who do you want to judge that? Someone who knows the cost, or someone like Rory, who was such a pussy that he demanded I run back to Virginia to protect him instead of tracking the killer down?”
Michelle turned her head away to hide her expression and her scent muddied. She seemed less sure than she had been at the beginning of the conversation. Less sure in what direction, Andrew didn’t know. He hoped she hadn’t revised her opinion downward.
“At the end of the hunt, what does it matter to me who controls Roanoke? The Mississippi’s a long way from my eastern border,” Michelle said.
“Because we help keep you safer,” Andrew said. He was on firm ground here. He’d thought this about the Western packs for years, and now he had the perfect example to back him up. “If a threat comes in through the East, we take care of it. We track lones, watch out for people, communicate. We caught a lot of problems and dealt with them before they ever got to the West because there was no way for people to slip between the cracks when they passed from one territory to another. Especially when two alphas happened to be in a snit and not talking that week.”
Andrew eyed Seattle and Portland, and they both looked guilty. “You’ll notice it wasn’t one of the Roanoke sub-packs that madman managed to get to. Better if all the packs had more cooperation, but at least Roanoke catches threats within a reasonably large area. And without an enforcer shoring him up, Rory’s too weak to hold what his father built, so the continent will lose that safety.”
“You’re such a philanthropist,” John said, ostensibly a joke, but Andrew could hear the edge buried in the words.
“What, you think I want power for power’s sake?” Andrew changed position in his chair, trying to ease muscles in his back that were aching from all the tension in the air. Did he need to show them the scars there? Would that make them understand that everything he did, he did to keep Were safe? To prevent what had happened to Silver, to Silver’s pack, to him, from happening to someone else?
“You’re the one talking about how great being together in one big pack is. Maybe you do want to take over all of North America for everyone’s own good.” Michelle raised her eyebrows. “You took over Seattle days after arriving.”
“And then gave it back.”
“When you were too hurt to hold it.”
Andrew slammed a fist on the table. “Because it wasn’t really mine! I needed to be able to track the madman without having to stop and persuade John into every step. But I didn’t really deserve it. John takes care of his people. I’m only going after Roanoke because someone needs to take care of them.” He looked at Silver, one of the stories she’d told once drifting into his mind.
Tarnished Page 4
