“I don’t know.” Silver relaxed against Andrew now, exhaling on a laughing note. “I think he’s rather taken to being a beta. And he’s still got to come to terms with Susan before he goes back to being alpha.”
“We’ll have to ask him privately first.” Andrew turned the idea this way and that, and found it stood up. John had been good as a beta here, and as long as he wasn’t resentful, he’d make a good choice. “While we’re away he’ll have a lot of autonomy anyway. I could hand Rory’s home pack over to Laurence, let him take them to Richmond or something.”
Silver patted Andrew’s knee and then scooted to the edge of the bed. “That was easy.” She paused for his laugh, and dodged his grab after her. “You should eat some more.”
Andrew’s stomach growled, reminding him of how quickly calories burned away while healing. He sighed and slid his feet to the floor. “I should. We might as well let in some of the people who want to talk to us while I do, though.” No rest for the alphas.
36
It may have been all over but for the shouting, but there seemed to Susan to be an awful lot of shouting to be done. Or talking, at least. A parade of people tromped in and out of the cabin starting the moment Andrew was up and dressed. They didn’t even wait for him to finish breakfast. He ate continuously and Silver grazed as they talked to each person. Susan was glad she’d gotten her breakfast earlier before the Were demolished all of it.
Even without formal meetings the nursery was still operating, so Susan dropped Edmond off. Once she was back on the gravel path outside of that cabin, she found that she didn’t actually know what she was planning to do with her free time. She’d been acquitted, Silver and Andrew had what they wanted, and the bad guys were exiled. Shouldn’t she be breaking out the champagne instead of feeling so strange?
John came out of the Seattle cabin as she returned. He was much more polished this morning, the well-groomed man she’d met at a trade conference rather than the Were who looked like he’d forgotten to comb his hair half the time. Susan wasn’t sure she liked the change. Too much water had passed under the bridge since they’d been the people at that conference.
“Susan!” John put a hand behind her back, not touching, but urging her to the side. Even without that, the awkward way he shoved his hands into his pockets suggested he wanted to talk. “Dare—Roanoke says that he wants me as beta for all of the Roanoke pack, if I’m willing to give up alphaship of Seattle.”
Susan massaged her temple. Just when she thought she understood most of the Were’s hierarchy. “So who would be alpha of Seattle, then?”
John shook his head with a sheepish grin. “The Roanoke has a home pack. Kind of his White House staff, I guess you could say? If I agree, Silver and Dare will stay, and the old Seattle pack will become the Roanoke home pack.”
“And what do you want to do?” Susan searched his face. Did this sudden polish mean he wanted to go back to being alpha? He’d said the responsibility weighed on him, but maybe he thought it would be different under Andrew. She hadn’t liked John as alpha, but she didn’t want to hold him back. More than his refusal to touch her in public, she hated the feeling that it was a symptom of him feeling she was holding him back. If she kept him from being alpha, that would be even worse.
“I’m not sure. Roanoke’s a charismatic guy. You could make the argument that beta of all the Roanoke pack is a higher rank than alpha of one small pack.” John shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. “There’s Edmond to consider…”
Susan’s stomach clenched. There it was. It was almost a relief to have it out in the open. “And me. An alpha with a human mate. Or wife.” She held up her left hand and rubbed her thumb against the empty ring finger. “Because Christ, John, if you’re not taking that into account, you should be.” The words kept coming, buoyed on the high of finally saying them. She didn’t even care about the way John tensed his shoulders against them.
“I’ve seen the way Andrew and Silver balance each other. Whole greater than the sum of the parts. She evens out his temper, and he grounds her in reality. They’ll be better alphas together than they ever would alone. In the same way, if you were alpha, I’d want to balance you, not diminish you. But you have to let me, John.”
John finally brought a hand out of his pocket to brush a wisp of hair away from her face. “I love you, Susan. With all my heart—every tone of my voice, as we would say. I only ever wanted to protect you from the others…”
“Fuck them!” None of the people walking by or talking on the front steps of the other cabins looked at them, but Susan could feel their attention like they were in wolf form with ears to swivel. Susan gestured widely. Let them have a show. “Fuck all the other Were. My son is Were, the man I love is Were, I have friends among the Were. I killed to protect Were. I led them when they couldn’t lead themselves. I should be a fucking adopted Were by now for what I’ve done for all ‘the others.’”
Boston came out and shut the Seattle cabin door with a soft click. He did them the courtesy of looking at them directly as he wandered over. “A woman who knows what she wants. Also another very Were quality.”
Susan stared at Boston in surprise, and he nodded to her, paternally encouraging. That tipped her over, turning frustration fully into the high of not caring what happened. She dragged John into the middle of the path where the most people could see them. She laced fingers into his hair, mussing up the stupid groomed lines, and pulled his lips onto hers. She pulled up every drop of frustrated arousal she’d been shoving down, concentrated by their dry spell into something that flared up and all but took over her body. She arched to mold herself against him, holding tight to keep him there as she kissed him hungrily. Let the others see this. Let the others smell what she was feeling now.
And John kissed her back. It took a second longer for his hands to find her back, but he kissed her so hard it fanned the flames even higher, spreading them outwards from their low point of origin. When they came up for air, he looked bemused, but finally, finally not ashamed. “Like I said before, I have a lot to learn. Better I learn it as a beta.”
“Good.” Susan drew in a husky breath. Chasing, Andrew had said. Maybe they’d try some of that. She pulled away from him with a laugh, skipped a few steps backward and waited.
John stared at her in confusion and didn’t move. Susan opened her arms. “Well? Aren’t you coming?” She waited until he was nearly close enough to touch and skipped back again. She saw his realization in the spread of a smile across his face. She ran, and this time he followed with a loud bark of a laugh. Susan headed for the stables. It seemed like a good place to be alone.
37
Packing for the return trip two days later was mostly a matter of throwing things into suitcases and then throwing the suitcases into rental cars, but with every pack doing it at once, things got chaotic. Barred from heavy lifting by his newly confirmed beta, Andrew found himself in the position of watching it all happen rather than participating.
Andrew squinted at the mountains as he stood with his shoulder against the corner of the cabin. Late afternoon sunlight was still strong enough to give a slight warp to the air. He realized he was searching for something only when his eyes passed over the same sweep of trees a third time. No sign of Felicia, of course.
But then by now he didn’t really expect there to be. He’d put a pack with her clothes, her passport, and some cash out in a clearing, and had Tom guard it from a distance. He said she’d taken it. With that, she could go anywhere she wanted, and she’d hardly starve when she could hunt in wolf.
Andrew rubbed his thumb absently over his opposite knuckles. He’d been sixteen when he first set off roaming. Felicia wasn’t that much younger. She’d be fine.
John shut the side door of the van after buckling in his son. Susan passed him on her way back from ferrying the diaper bag to the trunk. His initial hesitation made the motion not quite smooth, but he patted her ass anyway. They both laughed, and Susan knocked her hip
into him before heading back into the cabin for another bag.
“Finally,” Silver murmured into Andrew’s ear after coming up behind him. He suppressed his laugh but not his smile.
“We need to leave soon if we’re going to make the flight.” John stopped respectfully in front of them. He followed Andrew’s glance out into the trees and huffed in exasperated sympathy. “You put the printout of the flight itinerary in with the stuff you left for her, didn’t you? If she wants to show up, she knows her deadline.”
Susan slipped by with her last bag and squeaked when she was out of sight behind the van. It had sounded surprised to Andrew, not fearful, but John’s head snapped around and he strode over. “I thought it was still too close to the new moon for you guys to want to be wolves,” Susan said in annoyance.
Someone being in wolf was strange enough to send Andrew jogging after John. When he rounded the side of the van, Susan was accepting a familiar pack from a black wolf. Susan grimaced at the wolf slobber on the strap, and tucked it at the top of their pile of luggage.
He’d never seen his daughter’s wolf form before, Andrew realized. Her scent made it clear that’s who it was. He had no idea where the color had come from. Something recessive in Isabel’s family, probably. He’d seen a few black wolf forms in Spain. His family was all gray. She had her mother’s shape, though, lean and built for speed.
“Are you coming with us?” Andrew’s heart thudded as he nodded to her pack, now shut away in the van. He didn’t kid himself that she’d love him now and everything would be wonderful. But if she came with them, maybe he’d have time to win her over with more than just words.
Felicia tipped her head up to look at him, gave a canine snort, and went to stand imperiously by the van’s side door. John opened it for her. She hopped gracefully in and flopped across the whole back row of seats.
“Silver, you can take the front. I’ll—” Silver waved away any need for Andrew to even finish the sentence. They had a lot of them packed into the van as it was, so someone would have to take the backseat. John was driving, and Andrew didn’t want to force Tom or especially Susan to share with Felicia.
Felicia eyed him and squished herself against the side of the van so no part of her would possibly touch him. He buckled in and looked out the window as Susan and Tom arranged themselves on either side of the car seat in the middle row.
Andrew watched the pines with great concentration as they pulled out of the ranch and onto the highway leading to the airport. He heard Felicia move, probably trying to curl comfortably in the small space she’d allowed herself, then move again.
After the third movement, her head slid onto his lap. She made a grumbling, growling sort of sound and finally relaxed. Andrew watched the hills and ruffled her ears. “Welcome to North America, puppy.”
TOR BOOKS BY RHIANNON HELD
Silver
Tarnished
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RHIANNON HELD is an archaeologist who works in the Pacific Northwest. Silver was her first novel. She lives in the Seattle, Washington, area.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
TARNISHED
Copyright © 2013 by Rhiannon Held
All rights reserved.
Cover photograph by Trevillion Images
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN 978-0-7653-3038-3 (hardcover)
ISBN 9781429991100 (e-book)
First Edition: May 2013
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Tor Books by Rhiannon Held
About the Author
Copyright
Tarnished Page 29
