Tarnished

by Rhiannon Held

  Conscious of his audience, Andrew chose to stay in the doorway. Better to use the fact that this was occurring in front of everyone and their omega to his advantage. Rory would have a much harder time wiggling out of it if there were witnesses. “We have a challenge to settle, Roanoke.”

  Rory stepped from the other bedroom into the living room, a clone in both floor plan and furniture to Andrew’s cabin, and stopped a few feet back from the threshold. He was hulking enough in the first place; he didn’t need to push any closer to be physically intimidating. His lip lifted in a silent snarl. “How about now? Or are you too afraid you won’t be able to shift fast enough in the new?”

  “You disrupted the Convocation enough already by inviting Europeans to interfere in North American business.” Andrew raised his voice a little, playing to the crowd. He’d be fighting Rory physically, but the more psychological support he could rob him of, the better. “I’m not going to break the rules even more by shifting and then fighting on Convocation ground. We can wait two days until it’s ended, and then we’ll fight.”

  Rory’s gaze moved out past Andrew, probably judging reactions. “In two days,” he said, voice just as ringing. He lifted his hand like he was thinking of offering to shake on it, but he must have read Andrew’s expression because he dropped it again. Andrew didn’t trust his control if he let Rory get in punching distance, never mind touched him.

  “In the meantime, perhaps we could talk privately.” Rory lowered his voice. He gestured for Andrew to precede him and stepped out of the cabin. Apparently he meant off in the woods. Andrew supposed that made sense, though they’d have a fair hike to make sure no one could hear.

  Andrew drew a deep breath to try to read Rory’s intentions. His muscles were all wound as tight as Andrew’s felt and his scent was mostly composed of that sense of keeping a tight hold. On what, was the question. This stank, metaphorically. What could Rory possibly have to say to him? He knew Rory—he’d worked for the man for nearly a decade—and if there was one thing Rory trusted, it was his own physical strength. Fear of losing the challenge wouldn’t be making him want to talk Andrew out of it. And what else would he possibly want to talk about?

  Andrew backed up onto the path, and made no move to follow Rory. “Do I look stupid? Private with me and you and my in-laws, all ready to get a few licks in, three to one.” That wasn’t Raul’s style, but it was Arturo’s. Andrew’s brother-in-law had trouble dealing sometimes, and took out his frustration by hitting whoever had upset him. Andrew suspected he’d fit that definition for the rest of his life now.

  “Pussy,” Rory snarled, then his face blanked as he perhaps realized that he’d just verified Andrew’s guess by not being surprised by the idea.

  “That’s what I thought. Next time you want to talk, let me know and I’ll bring along my beta— Oh, I forgot. And your beta too.” Andrew threw Rory a sneer to drive home the last jab.

  To keep the last word, he left Rory and strode for the main hall. His stomach was protesting loudly that it was lunchtime and a cheese slice wasn’t cutting it. He didn’t really feel like dealing with other alphas in the main room, but he could steal something from the kitchen. The only people back there should be a couple of the teens, heating and carrying out the food the catering people had dropped off. At most, two or three people would be in the kitchen, depending on whether a mate or beta was directing. He’d have to hope they’d belonged to a sympathetic pack.

  After all the anticipation, a dark-skinned young woman of about twenty was the only one there. She had the look of Benjamin, and Andrew suspected she was one of his great-grandchildren, along as a single. She nodded at him and nudged a half-full foil pan of barbecued ribs along the counter. She picked up the full one next to it and disappeared through the double doors into the main room.

  Andrew tucked into the ribs, getting sauce all over his hands. He was too hungry for neatness. A door opened, not the double doors he was watching, but the kitchen’s back door behind him. He turned quickly.

  Felicia stood in the doorway, squinting like she was waiting for her eyes to adjust. Andrew would have thought it would be easier this time. He’d seen her once already, after all. But the feeling of a physical blow was the same, no softer. She stood so confidently. He’d wondered what kind of young woman she’d grow into, and now he knew some of it, at least.

  She seemed as frozen as him for that moment. It stretched even after her eyes had to be adjusted. So many things fought for Andrew’s lips, “I love you” foremost among them. But with so many, they choked each other off. Benjamin had told him not to say anything. That thought fought its way to the surface. Andrew had to avoid anything of substance for now.

  “Hello,” he said. He licked the worst of the sauce from a couple fingers as he crossed to the gigantic sink and washed the rest off. Felicia didn’t say anything, and it nearly killed him to have to turn his back and not be able to see her face after he spoke.

  “I thought—” Felicia stopped. Andrew wondered if Benjamin was right, and she wanted to get more reaction from him before she continued. When he couldn’t take it anymore he turned around anyway.

  “Maybe we could talk.” She looked at her hands.

  “Okay.” Andrew clamped down on his surge of hope. He couldn’t take this small step as proof everything would be all right, but at least she’d reached out, hadn’t she? She smelled suspicious of him, unsure, but at least she was here. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “I—” Felicia looked much younger for a moment as confusion crossed her face. Andrew remembered that strange, wobbly stage when teens wavered from emotionally adult to childish and back like a boy’s voice breaking. She must not have expected him to agree so easily.

  “We could go outside.” Less chance of someone coming back into the kitchen, and it would also give Felicia time to find her words. As Andrew approached Felicia to get past her to the door, he imagined grabbing her and pulling her into a crushing hug. He’d pet her hair, and it would be as soft as it was when she was a little girl. And he’d feel her, real and tangible and alive and his daughter. Isabel’s daughter. He’d hug her and hug her and everything would be all right.

  He didn’t touch her, of course. He played the imaginary feeling of holding her tightly every single step, but he didn’t touch her. She stared, a child’s confusion regaining control of her face as he passed. He made it out into the glare of the sun and felt like he could breathe again despite the light and heat.

  “Did your new mate really go through all that?” Felicia didn’t speak until Andrew was yards away. The question actually sounded like a question rather than a rhetorical inflection in an ongoing speech, though the “new mate” came out with a disgusted flip. Now Andrew had the space to pay attention, he was impressed by her accent. It was already better than her mother’s had been when he’d met her, and Isabel’s English had never gotten that idiomatic.

  He stopped and forced himself not to turn around. Make her come to him. He had to remember that’s what he was doing. “Yes.”

  “She’s nothing like Mama.”

  How much of Isabel did Felicia really remember, and how much had she built from what her relatives had told her? And how much of a lie was that? Even concentrating on those thoughts, Andrew felt the flicker of an old guilt, as he’d felt in varying degrees with every woman after Isabel, before Silver. Perhaps even a little with Silver, until he’d talked to a hallucination of Death with Isabel’s voice, and banished it. It didn’t serve Isabel’s memory or her voice, if you believed in that, to offer his utter loneliness like some kind of sacrifice at her altar. “Exactly,” he told Felicia, and left it at that.

  Felicia took a couple running steps to come even with Andrew. He moved to the side of the path to allow her to walk beside him without running into low pine branches, but still made himself not look at her. It was already bad enough, smelling her changed scent so very close to him. Or maybe it hadn’t changed so much as his memory of her scen
t as a child had faded.

  “So what is it they’re supposed to have been lying to me about?” she said finally, sullen.

  Andrew frowned at the line of a mountain peak at the horizon. “Your mother was dead before we even got there. Our house—the flames were climbing out of the windows. On one side wall you could still see the white paint, but then you turned the corner and the rest was just collapsed, the roof, the second floor, Isabel somewhere under that.” Andrew swallowed against the remembered taste of smoke in this throat. “And what could I do with you? I couldn’t set you down to cry in the street.”

  “Me?” Felicia stopped. Andrew kept going. His steps gave him something to focus on, so he didn’t fall apart. After a moment, she ran to catch up. “I was there? I remember something—but Uncle Arturo said I was with him. Everyone talked about it so much after, I must be remembering that.”

  Andrew snorted. “Arturo? Your uncle was a terrible babysitter. Extremely determined, but one wail and he’d fall to pieces, convinced he’d never be able to fix it and you’d cry forever.”

  Felicia laughed. A short, startled sound, but it was still a laugh. It was a beautiful laugh. The next moment her tone was even more sullen as if to make up for it. “There’s only your word she was already dead.”

  “Let Raul get Arturo to repeat his rhetoric. There’s no need for you to.”

  Silence, with a dangerous tinge. Andrew wondered if it meant that Felicia was planning to storm off. But she’d said she wanted to talk, and he’d been ready to hurt his friends for the chance to talk to her, so he needed to take advantage of this opportunity for as long as he had it. “I couldn’t leave you crying in the street, and I couldn’t leave you in a larger sense, Felicia.” He gave her name the proper accent and vowels, as her mother would have, soft and smooth. “If I’d been killed, you would have been alone. Certain people,” Andrew had to grit his teeth to keep that polite, “kept me from you later, but in that moment, I chose you over what would have made me feel better.”

  “Big talk, when you turned tail and left me after things went wrong for you in Barcelona. Couldn’t manage to contact me again.”

  Andrew stopped short and turned. He couldn’t not look at her any longer. She looked so hurt, it tore his heart and broke his voice. Normally Andrew would have fought the religious metaphor the moment he noticed it creeping into his thoughts, but he needed something, anything, to hang on to at the moment. Whether he believed it or not, that solid part of his upbringing was a comfort at this moment. He switched to Spanish to try to evoke the same in her. In the heat of the moment, the forgotten fluency surged back.

  “I fought, puppy. Fought the former Madrid and the pack physically to reach you, called every day for weeks, months, once I’d had to flee, sent you letters—I knew they wouldn’t give them to you at first, but I thought if I could wear them down…” Andrew’s throat closed and he couldn’t continue. Intellectually, he knew they’d burned every letter the same as they’d hung up on every call, but some part of him must have hoped they’d let one through, because he felt that hope die now. One more lie they’d told her. Just one more. A part of all the others.

  “Ask Arturo,” he begged. “Ask him and smell for his lie. He was always a terrible liar. Ask him if I ever called, ever wrote.”

  Felicia crossed her arms and hugged herself, folding in. “How am I supposed to know which of you to believe about any of this? No one else was there at the time of the fire.” Her lips thinned in an expression not quite a smile. “Or is able to remember it, if I was.”

  “I was,” Death said in Isabel’s voice as he paced on Andrew’s other side. The stark shadows of the trees and rocks seemed almost to yearn for him and his true blackness as he passed. Andrew couldn’t tell if Death meant his comment as himself, or if he was pretending that Isabel spoke through him. Andrew knew perfectly well she didn’t—or wouldn’t, if Death was real. Either way, the last thing he wanted right now was Death distracting him and making him look crazy by staring at nothing.

  “What do I have to gain by lying to you? If I supposedly walked away then, why shouldn’t I walk away now?” Andrew said.

  “I don’t know!” Felicia shouted it to the hills more than to Andrew, hands clenched.

  “You’ve got her stumbling now, Dare. Finish her. Maybe she’ll be too angry to accept you, but at least you’ll have been right. Is being right worth it?”

  Andrew opened his mouth to shout at Death to shut up. He closed it with a snap, just in time. Raul would feast for a month on something like that. Dare talks to the air? He’d clap his hands with joy when he found out. Andrew had no doubt that as her alpha, he was practiced at getting everything Felicia knew out of her, whether she intended to share or not.

  They started walking again in silence. Andrew had no idea where they were going anymore, except that they hadn’t come up against the mountains yet. Still more trees stretched out in front of them. Finally, Felicia drew a deep breath like she’d come to some sort of decision. “Roanoke’s planning to go after that human, you know. Take care of the problem simply and efficiently, as soon as possible. I heard him asking Uncle for help.”

  “What?” Andrew stared at her as he processed the non sequitur. Susan. In danger. He spun and sprinted back toward the cabins as Death laughed. How could he not have thought of it? He’d noticed Rory had been up to something when he’d threatened Andrew directly, but he should have considered others Rory might harm. Would Silver and the others think to keep Susan under watch now that she’d been cleared of the charges? Wouldn’t John be sticking close to her generally?

  “Wait!” Felicia must have been taken off guard by the strength of his reaction, because it took her several seconds to start running after him. “They’re not going to do anything there. They’ll take her somewhere. Maybe the place they’ve been meeting to plan while we’ve been here.”

  Andrew kept running, but his steps slowed. If Rory was going to move soon, where should he go? To the cabins, assuming they hadn’t grabbed her yet, or to where Felicia suggested, assuming they had? If he went to the cabins, they’d have all the time they needed to kill her before he reached the next place. But if he went to the private spot and they weren’t there yet, he could wait. Assuming Felicia was right about where they would go.

  And assuming she wasn’t leading him into a trap, the same as Rory had tried. That was two people in as many hours who had tried to lead him out into the woods alone. Andrew’s stomach twisted nearly to nausea. He didn’t want to even think it. If she was telling the truth, how could he refuse his daughter that way, when she was just beginning to reach out? How could he put Susan in that kind of danger? But. How could he ignore the instincts that screamed at him that this timing was too coincidental?

  Felicia stopped and turned back to him. “Don’t you trust me?” Her voice wavered.

  Andrew drew in a deep breath. In the end, it came down to trusting each other. If they didn’t, they could never reconcile. She’d reached out; so would he. “Show me where you think they’ll take Susan.”

  Felicia nodded and set off parallel to the line of cabins for a while, running until the dark square lines of the structures through the trees had grown small. They reached a cluster of metal outbuildings surrounded by odds and ends of abandoned equipment. The buildings seemed even more utilitarian in comparison to the old-timey feel of all the wood back in the main ranch compound.

  Andrew stopped the moment they were close enough to make out the door of the nearest outbuilding. He was a fool if he charged in without planning first. He lowered his voice to the barest whisper to speak to Felicia, who had followed his lead and slowed. “You said he was asking for help. Who else might be there with him?” He circled, nose to the wind, walking carefully to minimize the sound of his footsteps.

  “Uncle. Madrid wasn’t going to bother with a human.”

  It took Andrew a second to remember that Felicia meant Raul. It was so strange thinking of him as the alpha, not ju
st the puppet master behind it all. As he got the right angle for the wind, he found Arturo’s scent, but no one else’s. Was Rory not here yet? But why would Arturo wait here for someone to arrive with Susan, rather than helping with the kidnapping? The danger would be in Susan breaking free or summoning help before they could silence her. It didn’t take two Were to do the actual killing in private.

  Something fell around Andrew’s neck from behind. Behind. Downwind. Dammit! He hardly had time to see it before it tightened on his throat, but he knew from the feel what it was. A sturdy silver chain, with a silk sleeve to allow it to be held and minimize scarring.

  He scrabbled at the chain instinctively, but he couldn’t get any purchase. He kicked, jabbed back with his elbow. He felt the blows connect, but they didn’t have enough force.

  “Thank you, Felicia.” Raul’s voice came from behind Andrew as his vision grayed out. “I knew he would listen to you.”

  30

  Andrew woke with a heart-pounding start, the stench of silver metal in his nose. Where was Silver? She was in danger. Slowly the differences between his current situation and that memory filtered in. He was chained in a seated position surrounded by the stink of silver metal, yes, but the man who’d killed Silver’s pack was dead. They’d killed him together. A dead man couldn’t capture Andrew again.

  His enemies were the ones who’d caught him this time. At least that meant Silver was safer, if not completely safe. But his daughter had betrayed him. Worse than being in his enemies’ power, that betrayal pulled Andrew’s head under a tide of desperation. It had been a trap. Had the whole conversation been part of it, the reaching out only bait? Bait he couldn’t resist, apparently. Dammit. Damn her.

  Andrew drew a breath but couldn’t seem to get any air. Her contempt had been one thing. In contrast to this betrayal, it seemed almost neutral. Denying him a place in her life, certainly, but not delivering him to capture and undoubted torture. How much hate must she feel toward him, to countenance that?