It had been easy to lay the destruction of the Chicago pack’s holding cell on the silver poisoning. But tonight, confronting Asil, he’d shown her that he wasn’t any different than any other male werewolf: angry, possessive, and dangerous.
She’d allowed herself to believe that it was just the Chicago pack. That the mess Leo and his mate had created was the reason for the terrible thing the pack had been.
She’d wanted a knight in shining armor. A voice of reason in the madness, and Charles had provided it for her. Did he know that was what she’d been looking for? Had he done it deliberately?
As the water matted her hair and ran into her eyes and over her cheeks like tears, her last question clarified and answered her greatest fear: of course Charles hadn’t set out to be her knight deliberately, that was just who he was.
He was a werewolf dominant enough to back down the Alpha of a pack without the resources an Alpha could draw on. He was his father’s hit man, an assassin feared even by other members of his own pack. He could have been like Justin: ravening and cruel.
Instead, he knew the madness of what they were and managed, not just to overcome it, but to use it, to make something better. She had the sudden picture of his beautiful hands gently arranging flowers while his wolf craved violence in the worst way.
Charles was a monster. His father’s assassin. She wouldn’t allow herself to believe a lie again. If Bran had told him to, he would have killed Jack. Killed him knowing that the human was only a victim, that he was probably a good man. But it wouldn’t have been casual. She’d seen the relief that had flowed over him when Bran had found an alternative to killing the human.
Her mate was a killer, but he didn’t enjoy it. Looking at it clearly, she was a little awed at how he’d managed to be so civilized and still meet the demands of who and what he was required to be.
The water was cooling off.
She shampooed her hair, enjoying the way the soap rinsed away so easily; Chicago water was much softer. She conditioned her hair with something that smelled of herbs and mint, recognizing the scent from Charles’s hair. By that time, the water was starting to become uncomfortably cold.
She took a long time combing out the tangles without looking at the mirror and concentrated on feeling nothing. She was good at that, having perfected it over the past three years. When she faced him again, she didn’t want to be a whiney, scared-of-herself nitwit again. So she needed to control her fear.
She knew one way to do that. It was a cheat, but she gave herself permission, if only for tonight because she’d made such a fool of herself by hiding in the bathroom.
She stared at herself in the mirror and watched her brown eyes pale to silvery blue and back. So much and no more. The strength and fearlessness of the wolf wrapped around her and gave her calm acceptance. Whatever happened, she would survive. She had before.
If Charles was a monster, it was by necessity rather than choice.
She dressed in the yellow shirt and jeans, then opened the bathroom door slowly.
Charles was leaning, still golden-eyed, against the wall opposite the door. Other than his eyes, he was the epitome of relaxation-but she knew to believe the eyes.
She’d checked her own with a glance at the mirror before she’d opened the door.
“I’ve decided you need to know about Asil,” he told her as if there had been no break in their conversation.
“All right.” She stayed in the doorway, the steamy room warm at her back.
He spoke slowly and distinctly, as if he were pulling his words out from between his teeth. “Asil’s not really his name, though it’s what most people call him. They also call him the Moor.”
She stiffened. Uneducated about her own kind she might be, but she’d heard of the Moor. Not a wolf to mess with.
He saw her reaction, and his eyes narrowed. “If there is a wolf in this world older than my father, it might be Asil.”
He seemed to be waiting for her to comment, so she finally asked, “You don’t know how old Asil is?”
“I know how old he is. Asil was born just before Charles Martel, Charlemagne’s grandfather, defeated the Moors at the Battle of Tours.”
She must have looked blank.
“Eighth century A.D.”
“That would make him…”
“About thirteen hundred years old.”
She leaned against the wall herself. She’d seen the weight of age on him, but she’d never have guessed how many years.
“So, the one you’re not sure of is your father?” Thirteen hundred years was a long time.
He shrugged, the answer clearly didn’t matter to him. “Da’s old.” He turned his amber eyes away from her face.
“Asil came here a while ago, fourteen-fifteen years, to ask my father to kill him. He settled for the promise of death instead-as soon as my father determines that he really is crazy.”
Charles gave her a small smile. “Asil didn’t have any problem with my father being his Alpha. But he had a problem with me being more dominant-which is why I think Da might be older than Asil. My relative youth is a thorn in his paw.”
Anna worked it out in her head. “Didn’t he talk about his Alpha in Europe? And I don’t remember him being an Alpha in any of the stories about him.” There were a lot of stories about the Moor. He was almost a folk hero-or villain-among the wolves.
“Being an Alpha isn’t easy,” Charles said. “It’s a lot of responsibility, a lot of work. Some of the older wolves get pretty good at concealing what they are from others-that’s one of the reasons Alphas don’t like old wolves moving into their packs. Asil’s plenty dominant.” He smiled again, but this time it was more a baring of teeth. “He’d been here a couple of months when I stepped between him and one of our nonwolf residents. He wasn’t amused to find out that I really was more dominant than him.”
“He could submit to your father because he is older, to his other Alphas-because he wasn’t really submitting. But, to have to obey you when you are so much younger and not even an Alpha…”
Charles nodded. “So he digs at me, and I ignore him. Then he digs harder.”
“That’s what tonight was?” Anna could see it. “He was using me to dig at you.”
Charles tilted his head in a gesture that was more wolf than human. “Not entirely. The Moor had a mate, but he lost her a couple of hundred years ago. She died before my time, so I never met her, but she was supposed to have been an Omega, like you.” He shrugged. “He has never said so in my hearing, nor has my father. There are a lot of stories about the Moor, and until I saw his reaction to you at Doc’s funeral, I’d put that one down to pure hype along with a lot of other legends connected to his name.”
The warmth from her shower was gone, and the coolness of the water it left behind was chilly-or maybe it was recalling the way the old wolf had stared into her eyes in the church. “Why did his reaction make you rethink it?”
She could tell from Charles’s nod that she’d asked the right question. “Because when he noticed what you are, he stopped bothering you to get to me-and became interested in you.” He took a deep breath. “That’s why he brought you flowers. That’s why, when he threatened to try to woo you away from me, I had such a hard time controlling myself-because I knew he really meant it.”
She decided to think about that later and keep her attention on the conversation so she didn’t push him inadvertently. “Why are you telling me about Asil? Is this a warning?”
He looked away, his face back in its blank mask. “No.” He hesitated, then said in a softer voice, “I don’t think so. Did you feel as if it was a warning?”
“No,” she said finally, as frustrated by the careful information that avoided something she could almost sense- the something that was keeping his wolf so close.
Before she could ask what was troubling him, he told her, face averted, as fast as he could get the words out. “He wanted you to know that if, in the time before the first full moon, you decide not to have me-you could pick him instead. ” Even with his head turned away, she could see the edge of his bitter smile. “And he knew he could force me to tell you so.”
