“This isn’t for Roanoke.” Andrew hesitated, hating to voice the painful fact. “I’m no longer affiliated with that pack. And I don’t want your territory for myself either.” No going back now, win or lose. That thought brought a fighting calm with it. “But you won’t let me do what I need to do to address this threat to all North American Were.” He unbuckled his belt and started unbuttoning his shirt as John stared at him. He nodded to the living room, since the entryway didn’t have enough space.
The man’s growl died away into an edged laugh. “If you insist.” John kicked off his shoes and started undressing too as he moved into the living room. Andrew might have scored a few points in their verbal confrontations over Silver before, but John knew he had the advantage over Andrew in physical power. The confidence in how he moved, the smirk buried in his expression; they said he knew Andrew knew too. He rolled his shoulders, showing off the play of muscles beneath the skin.
Since it was a Sunday, the majority of the pack was home, and they pressed around three edges of the room and into the den beyond. Someone moved the love seat, someone else the coffee table, until only an empty swath of carpet surrounded by the bookcases against the walls remained. Andrew felt the press of their contempt mixed with a whiff of fear of the Butcher like the worst summer humidity he’d ever experienced. He had no doubt they’d love to see him pounded into a pulp, love every minute. Whatever you said about Seattle, he inspired loyalty. They arranged themselves behind John, leaving the wall behind Andrew and the arch into the entryway empty but for Silver.
“Even if you somehow manage to win, Portland and Billings will take you down,” John taunted, once he was down to his jeans. “They won’t let the Butcher of Barcelona take a Western pack.”
Andrew clenched his hands. It was only a nickname. It had no power over him. “I find it ironic that you’d all pull together against me, but let a more heinous butcher go free.” He forced himself to stand still as John circled him, sneering. He couldn’t show that he was physically intimidated—couldn’t be physically intimidated. They were still in human, still talking. This was when Andrew had the advantage.
“You say one of my people might know something—what about you, Dare? Selene says it wasn’t you, yes, but you know silver. You know Europeans. Maybe it was one of your little friends from Spain. Why don’t you question them instead? Or do you know they wouldn’t tell you anything after everyone you slaughtered in cold blood?”
Andrew couldn’t see for a moment, rage’s wildfire rush through his muscles showing as a red mist before his eyes.
“Or are you afraid of yourself?” John tossed out the words like arrows shot blind, trying to overwhelm the target with quantity. “I’ve talked to Were in Roanoke. They say you’re more of an alpha than Rory, but you won’t do anything about it. Why is that? Are you afraid that someone will die and you’ll end up dripping with blood and surrounded by people with torn-out throats again? Why should my pack be your test case?” John’s scent was off. He had to be working from logic, not from real knowledge. All Andrew had to do was not react. Keep his muscles leashed into stillness so strained he nearly shook.
Cold fingertips against his back. Andrew jumped, his muscles were wound so tightly, but his subconscious knew Silver’s scent so he didn’t touch her. “Calm,” she murmured. If he’d been properly listening to the word, he might have growled at her presuming to give him advice, but sensation was what grounded him. The coolness stood out against his anger’s heat and focused him.
John’s lips drew back from his teeth at seeing her touch. He snapped his fingers at his side. “Selene, get over here. You’re no loyal member of Roanoke. Stand with Seattle.”
“I’m alpha of my own pack of one, wild self or no wild self, before I’m a loyal member of yours,” Silver said, leaving Andrew to stalk over to John. “The warrior is speaking sense, but you’re not listening.”
“I know you want to be kind to your people, John. To protect them,” Andrew said, when he was sure his voice would come out evenly. “But I’ve been an enforcer for nearly a decade, and it’s taught me that sometimes you have to do the things people will hate you for. You have to let them hate you, if that will keep them safe.”
John shook his head, contempt in his expression so deep he couldn’t have heard a word. “Selene,” John said again, and grabbed Silver’s elbow to yank her over to him. The unexpected threat startled a whimper from Silver.
Andrew didn’t give him a chance to finish the motion. Thought left him at Silver’s whimper and he was just motion, any motion at all, as long as it carried him to John to pound him into a screaming, bloody pulp.
John growled and blocked Andrew’s blows as easily as Andrew usually did when fighting untrained Were. “I’m not hurting her—”
Silver hissed in rage, and slammed a kick into John’s knee. The man staggered out of Andrew’s reach, eyes wide with shock. A few gasps slipped from the watching pack. “I told you not to use that name, I told you to pay attention to what the warrior says, and yet you still don’t listen. Why don’t you listen?” Silver retreated to stand behind Andrew. Her voice reached down through his rage and caught at his attention too. He needed to listen, to think, not just react. He’d handed John the advantage.
John pressed a hand to a shelf of the bookcase behind him and panted with pain as his knee healed. “Well?” he sneered. “What are you holding back for now?”
Andrew drew in a deep calming breath and inclined his head to the injured leg. “It’s not a fair fight right now. I’m not trying to win by cheating, Seattle.” Good tactics to make sure the pack stayed with Andrew if he did win, but it also gave him welcome time to regain control.
John snorted, and leaned weight onto the leg to test it out. “You’re not going to win at all. You talk big, about doing what has to be done, but no one believes you. Let’s do this.”
Andrew dipped his head in acknowledgement, pulled off his jeans, and shifted. Residual anger gave him all the strength he needed, so it came as easy as the night of the full.
They circled each other. Andrew’s lupine instincts urged him to useless gestures, snapping in John’s general direction, but he suppressed them. John lunged forward a couple times himself, but then fell to circling too. True wolf fights were highly ritualized, since too many deaths didn’t serve the species. Werewolves could heal a lot more damage, but still stopped short of death, except in the worst European packs.
As Andrew had expected, John was the first to break, a dark shape barreling toward him to sink his teeth into Andrew’s neck. Andrew danced aside, snapping his own teeth down as John’s momentum carried him a little past. Andrew tasted blood, but couldn’t get a grip. John turned and slammed into him again, and again, both men falling into the whining growls of true wolf fights. Andrew made it back to his feet by thinner margins each time. Here and there he felt the sting of scrapes from Seattle’s teeth healing over.
The next slam carried him onto his back, and Andrew held John’s snapping teeth from his neck only with the rigid strength of his forelegs. He couldn’t hold that for more than a few moments; he could feel the strain each time John lunged and snapped.
With the last snap, Andrew rolled, writhing out from under John’s weight as the man’s teeth closed on his ruff’s loose skin. Pain seared through Andrew as he ripped free and danced back to stall until the tears healed. Blood seeped through his fur and down his shoulder. He couldn’t keep fighting defensively like this. He was more maneuverable than John. That should count for something, dammit.
John dropped his jaw in a triumphant canine grin at the blood and body-slammed Andrew. This time he didn’t snap for Andrew’s neck, but used his weight to smash Andrew’s bloody shoulder into the wall. The joint screamed in agony, and Andrew nearly fell when he tried to put weight on it to dance out of John’s reach. Now. He had to do something now, or John would wear him down and smash him into the ground.
On John’s next lunge, Andrew let him close
, close enough his instincts screamed at him that he was about to die. When John’s teeth were nearly in his throat, Andrew twisted and rolled up and got the grip he needed on John’s ruff. Deep, so John couldn’t pull free. Now Andrew just had to hang on. John slammed him over and over into the wall, bad shoulder first, but Andrew kept his teeth locked through the pain. He sawed his head back and forth to worsen the wounds and John’s agony.
That was when Andrew felt the turning point and began to believe that he might win the challenge. They were both injured, both exhausted, but Andrew could feel the pain wearing on John faster than it did on himself. Andrew was familiar with pain. He knew all about dragging yourself on through agony. He didn’t let his grip loosen, and John stumbled and fell when next he tried to throw Andrew off.
Andrew summoned all his strength for a last heave and John went down. The moment his side hit the ground, Andrew pinned him, letting go just long enough to get a good grip around the man’s neck. A grip good enough to kill, should he close his teeth.
John stayed rigid for a couple seconds and then slumped in defeat, rolling enough to present his belly. He whine-growled a last time in rage, then fell silent but for his panting.
Andrew stepped back and stood panting himself with all four feet braced, waiting for his healing to catch up with his shoulder. Silver ruffled his ears. He considered biting her hand for having precipitated this in the first place, and being crazy and hurt and just generally inconvenient, but the rush of winning mellowed the emotions. He’d actually done it. He’d taken John down.
Pierce pushed from the gathered Were and knelt by his former alpha, helping John sit up after he shifted back. He offered John his clothes, and then rocked back on his heels to eye Andrew.
Andrew shifted back and grabbed his jeans. It was easier to stand on two legs, since his bad shoulder no longer had to take weight. He ignored Pierce. He wasn’t going to force the pack to hide their sympathy and continued respect for their former alpha. Pierce could do as he liked with John, as long as he followed Andrew’s orders first.
“So now what?” John said, voice a little thin from humiliation and probably some self-recrimination. “What are your orders?” Where do you want me, he meant. Some alphas kept the old one on high in the hierarchy, in the old strategy of keeping enemies even closer than friends. Some busted the old alpha down to omega, or forced him from the pack entirely.
The Were gathered around them were still frozen, no one wanting to be the first to step forward. Even with the fight over, Andrew’s heart pounded with residual adrenaline as he buttoned his jeans and stood tall. That posture seemed to be a cue. Pierce straightened too, came forward, and knelt. It was different than the human gesture: rather than bowing his head he tipped it down and to the side, baring more of his neck.
The smell of John’s frustration at his defeat was too sour for Andrew to be able to read Pierce’s sincerity even when he came forward to stand over the man. The others knelt where they were.
“You know your territory better than I ever could in a few days,” Andrew said after taking a deep breath. “I’ll need your expertise as beta.” He came over and offered John a hand up. John stared at it for a while, and then accepted it, dropping it as soon as possible. They both knew it would cause the least turmoil in the pack if everyone simply moved one place down in the hierarchy. Whatever else Andrew thought about John, he knew the man wasn’t stupid, just out of his depth in some situations. He’d work with Andrew, to minimize the stress on the pack.
Andrew took a step toward the entryway and the illusion of privacy, taking a moment to himself as the last euphoria of victory drained away. If one of John’s people was working with the killer, the surest way to make sure Andrew couldn’t catch him would be to leak news of the challenge to someone who had it in for him, like Sacramento. Andrew couldn’t track anyone if he was defending himself from half the Western packs.
“All right.” Andrew turned back to the pack and raised his voice. “Everyone in this room. Cell phones here.” He pointed to a spot at his feet. “Pierce, you can call in anyone who’s not here, nothing else.” Everyone shuffled but didn’t otherwise move. The air turned bitter with scent of hostility.
Andrew unclenched his jaw to speak again. He couldn’t bark orders often enough to keep people in line if he ran things that way exclusively. He’d have to at least try to persuade. “Look, my only goal in this is to find the man who killed the Bellingham pack. Then I’m gone and everything’s back to normal. If any of you tell someone outside the pack about this, I’ll be taken out before I can accomplish that. So cell phones. Now.” He punctuated the last word with a loud clap. Everyone jumped. Phones clattered to his feet.
It took about fifteen minutes for the last stragglers to arrive, summoned by Pierce. Five minutes in, Andrew wished fiercely that he could drop to a seat as the majority of the pack had, but he continued to stand tall the whole time, no matter how much exhaustion sucked at him.
When the last family herded their toddler in the front door and came to sit with the rest, Andrew drew a deep breath. If he accustomed his nose to the background hostility and fear now, hopefully he’d be better able to read the nuances of changes in a moment.
“Does anyone here know anything about the man who killed the Bellingham pack?” He waited until every Were adult shook their head. The hostility intensified and grew layered with some fear at the talk of Bellingham’s fate, but the air held no hint of guilt.
“Does anyone know someone they suspect might know anything?” The same shaken heads, the same lack of guilt. “Were any of you involved in any way with what happened in Bellingham, intentionally or not?” Still negative. Andrew started to breathe a little easier. He’d been afraid of what he might have to do if someone had smelled guilty.
“Keep this to yourselves,” he ordered after taking a moment to consider whether there were any other questions he needed to ask. He might be forgetting something, but better not to strain everyone more than necessary by dragging it out. “Keep talking to your friends in other packs, cutting contact is suspicious, but don’t say a thing about the change of alpha.” With luck that would give him a couple solid days to work before anyone noticed that their Seattle friends were suspiciously strained in their conversation and started asking questions. He was under no illusions no one would notice for longer.
A ragged chorus of agreement reached him. Andrew let his shoulders drop and nudged the nearest phone forward with his toe as a signal the rest could be reclaimed. No one moved until he stepped back. “I’ll want to talk to you all individually,” he said as they came up in twos and threes. He suppressed an impulse to rub at his eyes. He’d cleared the pack, but he still needed a new lead. One of them might know something. He’d find it if he had to question everyone twice.
“Dare.” Silver rocked back a step and beckoned when he didn’t immediately follow. Andrew narrowed his eyes at her. Couldn’t whatever this was wait?
He strode to her and then beyond, hurrying them into the kitchen. “What?”
“You need to calm down.” She brushed her hand down his upper arm and raised her eyebrows at him when he twitched with the effort of not knocking it away. Maybe he was a little on edge, but who wouldn’t be? He had a killer to catch, as well as suddenly having the responsibilities of an alpha as well. Silver’s expression hardened. “I wouldn’t have thought I’d be the one to say this to you, but you need to step away until the voices of your past fade, Dare. It will do the others good too. Let them get used to the idea of a new alpha.”
Andrew swallowed. Even thinking explicitly about Spain made all his muscles tighten like he was still in the middle of the challenge fight. Silver was right, he hadn’t realized how much of his tension stemmed from that. He didn’t relish the idea of spending time alone with his thoughts at the moment, but maybe he could use the time to better craft his questions for the pack. He blew out a breath and Silver relaxed as she correctly interpreted the agreement.
&
nbsp; Andrew stepped back into the living room. “Get the master suite ready for me,” he directed the pack, concentrating this time on keeping any anger out of his voice. John would be the one moving his stuff, but it was more polite to order the lower-ranked Were than tell John directly to get the hell out. “I’ll keep out of the way for a while.” He jerked his thumb in the front door’s direction. He’d seen a few parks on the drive over here. Hopefully one would provide more than a five-minute circuit.
Once everyone nodded, Andrew strode outside. Silver had to run a few steps to catch up. He picked a direction at random, sidewalk taking him past driveways and the various polite shapes of landscaped shrubs. Just him and Silver and his past, as she’d said.
“Are you going to ask?” The possibility that he’d have to explain pressed in on him. It had been years, he realized, since the last time he’d been able to neither hide it nor use shorthand with someone who already knew the details.
“Would you tell me if I did?” Silver stopped before a gate into a deserted park. The paths along the central stream were a muddy mess only now starting to dry out in the summer weather. No surprise people were avoiding them. She started to reach out with her good hand for the latch and then stopped, frowning at it as if she couldn’t figure out how the mechanism might function. Andrew watched the frustration grow on her face for a moment, then lifted it and opened the gate when it was clear she couldn’t work it out on her own.
Did he want to tell her? Andrew stopped with his hand on the open gate and considered that. It was like as long as he didn’t close them in, he had space to consider his decision. After a moment, he stepped through, shut it with a bang, and jogged to join her on the path. He was occasionally an idiot, but never a coward.
Silver Page 14
