Reflected

by Rhiannon Held

John returned and tossed Felicia a brightly colored zippered foil bag. She barely caught it after hesitating too long figuring out what it could possibly be. She turned it over to stare at the foolishly grinning German shepherd puppy on the front. Dog treats? Was John trying to insult her, or Tom, or both? She sniffed and brought the bag closer to her nose. Well. It didn’t smell bad. Smelled pretty good, actually.

  “He should get his calories as soon as possible.” John made a show of grunting and settling the weight carefully when he picked up Tom to hide how easy it was for him.

  Felicia assumed John’s emphasis meant before he shifts back. She nodded. He did have a point about that. She jogged a few steps ahead to open the doors for John, but when she started to follow him across the parking lot to the truck, he jerked his chin in a clear order. “Get Silver,” he said.

  Felicia turned back to eye the woman huddled on the couch. What if she didn’t want to be the crazy-person guide? She went to grab Silver’s wrist to pull her up, but Silver reversed the grip at the last minute, catching Felicia’s wrist tightly instead.

  “You were on the other side. He was chasing you,” she said as they stepped outside, voice steady. Felicia avoided her eyes, not just to be polite and avoid the measuring of dominance but because that slightly scary intensity her father’s mate usually displayed had returned.

  “I know it was my fault,” Felicia hissed under her breath. “I’m sorry.” She’d make her apologies properly to Tom once he was awake, but beyond that, what else was she supposed to do? Promise not to do it again? Of course she wasn’t going to run out on the road again. She hadn’t even meant to do it then, she’d just got so caught up in the game of it all, running before Silver arrived and figured out what they’d been doing—

  Felicia stuttered a step. She’d forgotten about that in her worry about Tom. Did Silver know? John knew, definitely. Would they tell her father? Surely he wouldn’t come down on Tom, not injured as he was. As long as Tom didn’t get in trouble, Felicia would be happy to take whatever consequences her father dished out.

  Felicia tried to lead Silver around to the passenger side of the truck, but Silver dropped her wrist at the back and climbed up beside Tom. After a moment of hesitation, Felicia threw Silver the treats and closed the tailgate and canopy. She’d wanted to ride with Tom, but better the cab than awkward silence in the back.

  The passenger side door never shut properly on Tom’s truck unless you slammed it, which usually amused Felicia, because the driver’s side was the junkyard replacement of the wrong color. Felicia had to open and slam it again before it caught, but John waited patiently, not starting the engine.

  The silence was pretty damn awkward up here too, she realized. She turned and faced straight ahead out the windshield into an overenthusiastic bush at the edge of the parking lot, but John still didn’t turn the key.

  “Playing chasing games as well as literally chasing, were we?” he said. Felicia stayed stubbornly silent and stared at the bush. He knew the answer already. Was she supposed to apologize for that too? That wasn’t the part she’d done wrong.

  He snorted. “And a bonus game of ‘piss off your father.’” He turned the key and the truck cranked into reluctant life. “Tom doesn’t deserve to be part of that game, especially now. I didn’t smell anything—this time. You two start playing chase regularly, someone’s going to tell Roanoke Dare.”

  “Someone like you?” Felicia muttered in Spanish. It was childish, but her father liked to nag her about the rudeness of speaking in a language others couldn’t understand. Even though he wasn’t here, flicking her tail at him that way still made her feel better.

  John didn’t seem terribly insulted by her Spanish. “Lady preserve us from roamers who haven’t left yet,” he commented generally to the air and turned his attention to driving in silence.

  Felicia twisted to look back into the bed through glass dimmed by grime too ingrained to wipe away. She had no idea what that was supposed to mean. She wasn’t some kind of lone, wandering around without a pack. Maybe in North America that was an insult.

  John drove over a set of railroad tracks and growled in frustration along with Felicia. Silver kept Tom braced, but he was still jarred enough that his head came up groggily. Silver murmured reassurances and dumped some treats onto her palm for him. He accepted them delicately.

  Felicia let a breath of relief trickle out, hopefully slow enough John wouldn’t notice. At least Tom was all right. Maybe the talk her father would undoubtedly want to have would go well too. Felicia doubted it.

  3

  Silver could see the concern in her mate’s face when they arrived, but John must have warned him, because he didn’t look surprised at Tom’s condition. Tom insisted on walking inside on his own four feet, the food having done his healing some good already. Dare walked beside him into the den but didn’t support him, all confidence-inspiring alpha in his manner.

  If Silver watched very carefully, she could see the slight hesitation in Dare’s step from old injuries of his own. It added to the gravity created by the white locks at his temples, stark against his otherwise dark hair. His wild self, pacing beside Tom’s, showed his scars plain to see in its fur—though of course Silver was the only one who saw the selves not currently dominant.

  John came to walk on Tom’s other side. Though both the other men’s tame selves were taller, Tom was lanky and Dare lean, giving John the advantage in mass in both forms. That added to the feeling of strong support he projected as the beta.

  Felicia brought up the rear, practically slinking in. If she didn’t want her father to know she’d had a part in causing the incident, she wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding it. Silver caught Dare’s attention and tipped her head to the young woman, an offer to stop her slipping away to her own room, but Dare answered with a subtle shake of his head.

  “But discipline is so much more fun in front of an audience,” Death said, entering behind Felicia like the chill of twilight. He let his tongue loll in a canine laugh as he followed Felicia away. He must think the kind of excitement and trouble he liked would center around her, not Tom. Silver had to agree.

  “What happened?” Dare asked, as they got to the room Tom shared with one of the pack’s other single men. Before Tom could attempt the jump, Dare scooped him up and set him on his bed. Tom whuffed in annoyance but didn’t otherwise struggle. Dare sat down beside him.

  “The cubs chased each other onto the road, apparently,” John said, neutral but for the diminutive. “I was pretty far behind and didn’t know where they’d gone until Silver called me in.”

  Dare looked away from Tom and raised his eyebrows at Silver. “Called?”

  Silver looked away, suddenly doubting herself. Maybe she shouldn’t have put herself through that, maybe she should have let Felicia deal with her own mess, like an adult. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to do with children? Teach them how, and then let them stand on their own four feet? Silver didn’t want to be a cruel parent to her mate’s child, but she didn’t want to be too lenient, either. It was easier when she could let Dare handle Felicia’s discipline.

  But that excuse was wearing thin, three years on. Maybe this was a sign from the Lady it was time for her to take on some of the responsibility for Felicia herself. Silver didn’t regret having helped Felicia, but she didn’t want the young woman to take that for granted, either. She should be the one to make sure Felicia understood that. “I called him to come help deal with the things I couldn’t see,” she said. Let Dare make of that what he would.

  “Mm,” Dare said after eyeing her. Silver could smell that he knew there was more to it, but he didn’t push. “Tom? You up to talking? No rush.”

  Tom shook his head in denial of the offer of more time. All three of the adults looked away as he shifted back with panting grunts of effort. The process of shifting always brought more healing with it, so it was good to push him to it quickly anyway.

  “Who decided to go for the road? Was
it on purpose?” Dare put a calming hand on the back of Tom’s neck, making the gentle concern in his words clear. Not an accusation, or a challenge.

  Tom bristled anyway. “On purpose? Why in the Lady’s name would we do that?”

  “Boredom. A hankering for excitement and danger?” Dare looked into the intermediate distance. In Felicia’s approximate direction, perhaps. Silver certainly wouldn’t have suspected Tom of any of that, and she doubted her mate did either.

  Tom carefully touched the stitches along his human side, head down to watch his fingers. “I was running and lost track of where I was going, that’s all.” Even when he let his hand drop, he didn’t look up.

  “Before or after playing chase with my daughter?” Dare’s voice sharpened and Silver started forward. She wasn’t going to make him look weak by interrupting, but she wasn’t going to let him take out his anger on Tom either. Young people played chase, usually with all the wrong people. That’s what they did.

  Dare waved her away and only sighed when Tom clenched his jaw and didn’t say anything. “I know it doesn’t seem that way to you two, but you’re both still young. As her father, I’m telling you to stay away from her for a couple years. Then I won’t stop you two from doing whatever you want, if you still want to. Understand?” He sharpened the last word with an alpha’s command.

  Tom nodded with a jerk, head still down. “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” Dare gave the back of Tom’s neck a last squeeze and stood. John preceded them out, and Silver waited for Dare to come even with her so they could lace their fingers together. The touch felt like the warmth of summer sunlight on water-chilled skin. She reveled in the simple security of being with her mate until they were out of Tom’s hearing, alone as they could ever be in a den always filled with pack and guests.

  “We were all pretending we didn’t know,” she told Dare, letting humor give an edge to her tone. Pretending to no purpose, apparently.

  “I don’t think they would have believed me if I’d pretended too,” Dare said, bringing their hands up to kiss the back of hers. “I’ve smelled them for the last few weeks, and there’s no way to hide the fact that they were out there on the hunting lands alone before you and John arrived.”

  Silver searched Dare’s face and scent, finding resignation rather than anger. Understanding dawned all in a rush. “You did that to protect him.”

  “Yes, but don’t ever tell him that. Leave the poor boy some pride.” Dare laughed, low, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m well aware my daughter tends to—as the humans would say—take no prisoners. He seems the more likely to get hurt.”

  Silver nodded. She couldn’t argue with that. “I don’t think she was courting the danger either. When I spoke to her after she seemed … more shocked that such an outcome even existed than disappointed she’d failed to cheat it.”

  Dare’s lips thinned, but he nodded after a moment. “Either way, I still need to do something about her.”

  Silver squeezed his hand. Disciplining her couldn’t be easy for Dare either, when she’d been kept away from him by his in-laws for so much of her childhood. The least she could do would be to come along and support him as they went looking for Felicia. And Death, of course.

  * * *

  Felicia had relaxed enough to at least stretch out on her bed with her computer, checking the status updates of her friends in Madrid without really reading them, when the knock came. She took a moment to compose herself, shoved her computer under her pillow, and sat up straight. “Come in.”

  “Felicia?” Her father’s voice, of course. He didn’t come in, and Felicia swallowed. That meant he wanted to say what was coming in front of the others. She had really fucked up, then, if her punishment was going to be in front of the whole pack.

  “Coming.” Felicia started for the door, changed her mind, and shucked off her shirt. She added a bra from the pile of clean-enough-to-wear-again clothes on the floor before pulling the shirt back on. She wanted to look calm and collected for this, and looking like she had dressed in the back of a truck was the opposite of collected.

  Her father and Silver stepped back down the hall toward the head of the stairs when she came to the door. No one was so crass as to gawk out of doorways, but she caught one of the kids peeking around the gnawed banister at the bottom, which probably meant people were listening out of sight on the ground floor.

  “You’re not in trouble,” her father said, surprising Felicia into an exhaled laugh. Uh-huh. Sure she wasn’t. But at least he didn’t seem angry? She drew in a breath to see if she could distinguish him from the background noise of a house full of Were, and he seemed more frustrated than anything. A parental kind of frustration she recognized immediately, like she was failing at some grand quiz show when he thought the answers should have been blindingly obvious.

  “I warned you several times you had to plan for what you were going to do after high school. I let it slide while you still had classes, when you missed the college application deadlines and didn’t put out any résumés, but now you’ve graduated, this is it. You have three choices.” Her father dropped Silver’s hand to tap a finger for each option. “You can go to college—you missed the deadlines for fall, but you can start the next semester. You can get a job. Or you can go out roaming. It’s up to you. But what you can’t do is sit around home, doing nothing. If you don’t choose, there will be consequences.”

  Felicia stared at her father. She probably looked like an absolute idiot, her mouth hanging open. She’d opened it to say something, anything, but she couldn’t find the words at first. Consequences? Sure, her father had nagged her about applications, but that was what this summer was for. She’d planned to get around to them eventually. “You’d kick me out?” She slipped into Spanish without meaning to.

  “Language, Felicia.” Now her father did start to sound annoyed. “I’m not kicking you out. Go to school, find a job, or go roaming. Same choice every young Were gets. Be as much a part of the human world or not as you choose, though you’ll have to get used to interacting with it eventually.”

  Felicia pressed her fingertips to her lips, focusing on keeping her emotions even, so they wouldn’t show up in her scent. She could run off and scream at trees later, when no one could hear or smell her. She hadn’t been delaying on purpose, she just hadn’t thought it was that important. “What’s that supposed mean, anyway, roaming?”

  Her father was silent for a moment, surprised. “Madrid didn’t have anyone come through when I was there, now I think about it. Fits the European mind-set, I suppose, to close their borders, even to kids. That’s what teens do, in North America. Get a car, or even just a backpack, and start traveling. See the sights in human and wolf. Meet other Were, other packs, see who you get along with, where you like living. Everyone’s pretty relaxed about crossing territory, especially now they’re all sub-packs of Roanoke. You’ve met roamers visiting here.”

  Felicia tried not to flush. She’d played chase with a few, which her father had undoubtedly guessed. She’d assumed they were on vacation. She hadn’t realized North Americans had full-time wanderers like that.

  She chewed on her lower lip as she chewed over the idea. Her father wasn’t kidding, that was different from home—from Madrid. Home was in North America now. Being young and alone in Spain, even at the edge of your own territory, was asking to get your ass kicked from here to the Lady’s realm by a gang from the next pack over.

  “So what if I roam back to Madrid?” she shot back, more to give herself time to think than anything. Where was he expecting her to go? She was sure the other North Americans would be suspicious of her as some kind of evil European. She didn’t want to go run around in the wilderness, either. She liked this pack, and Tom, and even her father when he wasn’t being stupid and high-handed.

  “I’d recommend getting a job somewhere for a while to earn the money for the plane ticket,” her father said, face and tone neutral, though he took Silver’s hand again. Si
lver grimaced. Felicia couldn’t tell if it was because she was imagining his internal reaction, or because he’d squeezed her hand too hard and hurt her.

  Great. Just the way to convince her father not to kick her out: threaten to run back to the relatives who had kept her away from him for most of her childhood. Felicia liked it here. Even if she’d wanted to go back to Madrid, she doubted they’d let her after she’d chosen North America over them once.

  “Fine, whatever,” Felicia said, suddenly wanting out of this conversation. She needed time to think, to kick things, where no one was watching. This close to the full, the pressure of emotion and judgment brought a shift near the surface, yawning under her like a chasm under a thin bridge. She’d rather die than fall into wolf right in front of everyone.

  She strode into her room and shut the door on them all. She didn’t slam it, though. She wasn’t thirteen or something.

  4

  Felicia went running that night and slept in the next morning, purposely avoiding the time when the pack usually ate breakfast. They allowed her to avoid them, which did sort of drive home that she didn’t have enough to do, when she stopped to think about it. No one was nagging her about getting to school on time, or asking her pointedly if she needed help with her homework. Since it was the weekend, most of the adults weren’t at work, but everyone ignored her and went about their business.

  Around two o’clock, she slapped together a sandwich from what was lying around in the fridge and went in search of Tom. His room was empty, door open. Felicia peeked inside. It smelled vaguely of pain, but that was overpowered by the layered masculine scents of the two Were who shared the room. Tom’s side of the room was fairly tidy, considering: bed rumpled, but all his clothes in the closet, and his collection of Westerns on DVD stacked neatly on the shelf opposite his bed. His roommate Pierce’s side was scrupulously neat in a way that highlighted the decade he had on Tom. They shared because they were both single at the moment, and they seemed to get along well enough.