Her stomach raw, and tension tightening the back of her neck, Anna tried to keep an even pace all the way up to her apartment on the fourth floor. Bran waited beside her while she unlocked the door. She stepped aside so he could go in first, showing the others that he, at least, had her respect.
He stopped in the doorway and looked around her studio apartment with a frown. She knew what he saw: a card table with two battered folding chairs, her futon, and not much else.
“I told you I could get it packed this morning,” Anna told him. She knew it wasn’t much, but she resented his silent judgment. “Then they could have come just to carry out the boxes.”
“It won’t take an hour to pack this and carry it down,” said Bran. “Boyd, how many of your wolves are living like this?”
Summoned, Boyd slid past Anna and into the room and frowned. He’d never been to her apartment. He glanced at Anna and walked to her refrigerator and opened it, exposing the empty space inside. “I didn’t know it was this bad.” He glanced back. “Thomas?”
Invited in, Thomas, too, stepped through the door.
He gave his new Alpha an apologetic smile. “I’m not quite this bad, but my wife is working, too. The dues are pretty dear.” He was almost as far down the pack structure as Anna, and, married, had never been invited to “play” with her. But he hadn’t objected, either. She supposed that it was more than could be expected of a submissive wolf, but that didn’t keep her from holding it against him.
“Probably five or six then,” Boyd said with a sigh. “I’ll see what can be done.”
Bran opened his wallet and handed the Alpha a card. “Call Charles next week and set up a conference between him and your accountant. If necessary, we can arrange for a loan. It’s not safe to have hungry, desperate werewolves on the streets.”
Boyd nodded.
The Marrok’s business apparently concluded, the other two wolves surged past Anna, George deliberately bumping against her. She pulled back from him and instinctively wrapped her arms protectively around herself. He gave her a sneer he hid quickly from the others.
“Illegitimis nil carborundum,” she murmured. It was stupid. She knew it even before George’s fist struck out.
She ducked and dodged. Instead of a fist in her stomach, she took it in the shoulder and rolled with it. The small entryway didn’t give her much room to get away from a second blow.
There wasn’t one.
Boyd had George pinned on the ground with a knee in the middle of his back. George wasn’t fighting him, just talking fast. “She’s not supposed to do that. Leo said no Latin. You remember.”
Because once Anna realized that no one else in the pack except Isabella, who she had thought was a friend, understood Latin, she’d used it for secret defiance. It had taken a while for Leo to figure it out.
“Leo is dead,” said Boyd very quietly, his mouth near George’s ear. “New rules. If you are smart enough to live, you won’t hit Charles’s mate in front of his father.”
“Don’t let the bastards grind you down?” said Bran from her doorway. He was looking at her like a child who had been unexpectedly clever. “That’s horrible Latin, and your pronunciation needs some work.”
“It’s my father’s fault,” she told him, rubbing her shoulder. The bruise would be gone by tomorrow, but for now it hurt. “He had a couple of years of Latin in college and used it to amuse himself. Everyone in my family picked it up. His favorite saying was, ‘Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum europe vincendarum.’ ”
“ ‘Sometimes I have the urge to conquer large parts of Europe ’?” Boyd said, sounding a little incredulous. Isabella hadn’t, apparently, been the only one who understood her defiance.
She nodded. “Usually he only said it when my brother or I were being particularly horrible.”
“And it was his favorite saying?” Bran said, examining her as if she were a bug…but a bug he was growing pleased with.
She said, “My brother was a brat.”
He smiled slowly and she recognized the smile as one of Charles’s.
“What do you want me to do with this one?” asked Boyd, tilting his head toward George.
Bran’s smile fled, and he looked at Anna. “Do you want me to kill him?”
Silence descended as everyone waited for her answer. For the first time she realized that the fear that she’d been smelling wasn’t hers alone. The Marrok scared them all.
“No,” she lied. She just wanted to get her apartment packed and get done with this, so she never had to see George and those like him again. “No.” This time she meant it.
Bran tilted his head, and she saw his eyes shift, just a little, gleaming gold in the dimness of the outer hall. “Let him up.”
She waited until everyone was in her apartment to leave the anonymity of the landing. Bran was stripping her futon down to the bare mattress when she entered her apartment. It was sort of like watching the president mowing the White House lawn or taking out the trash.
Boyd approached her and handed her the check she’d left on the fridge door, her last paycheck. “You’ll want this with you.”
She took it and stuffed it in her pants. “Thanks.”
“We all owe you,” he told her. “None of us could contact the Marrok when things started getting bad. Leo forbade it. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent staring at the phone trying to break his hold.”
She was startled into meeting his eyes.
“It took me a while to figure out what you were.” He gave her a bitter smile. “I wasn’t paying attention. I tried really hard not to pay attention or think. It made things easier.”
“Omegas are rare,” said Bran.
Boyd didn’t look away from her. “I almost missed what Leo was doing, why he chose you for such treatment when he had always been the ‘kill ’em quickly’ kind. I’ve known him a long time, and he’s never condoned abuse like that before. I could see that it sickened him-only Justin really enjoyed it.”
Anna controlled her flinch and reminded herself that Justin had died last night, too.
“When I realized why Leo couldn’t rely on you following his orders, that you weren’t just a very submissive wolf, that you were an Omega…it was almost too late.” He sighed. “If I’d given you the Marrok’s number two years ago, it wouldn’t have taken you so long to call him. So I owe you both my thanks and my humblest apologies.” And he dropped his eyes, tilting his head to show her his throat.
“Will you…” She swallowed to moisten her suddenly dry throat. “Will you make sure it doesn’t happen again? Not to anyone? I’m not the only one who was hurt.” She didn’t look at Thomas. Justin had taken great delight in tormenting Thomas.
Boyd bowed his head solemnly. “I promise.”
She gave him a short nod, which seemed to satisfy him. He took an empty box out of Joshua’s hands and strode to the kitchen. They’d brought boxes and tape and wrapping material, more than enough to pack everything she owned.
She didn’t have any luggage, so she took one of the boxes and put together the basics to take with her. She was very careful to keep her eyes to herself. Too much had changed, and she didn’t know how else to deal with it.
She was in the bathroom when someone’s cell phone rang. Werewolf hearing meant she got both sides of the telephone conversation.
“Boyd?” It was one of the new wolves, Rashid the doctor, she thought. He sounded panicked.
“You’ve got me. What’s wrong?”
“That wolf in the holding room, he’s-”
Boyd and his cell phone were in the kitchen, and she still heard the crash through the speaker.
“That’s him,” Rashid whispered desperately. “That’s him. He’s trying to get out-and he’s tearing the whole safe room apart. I don’t think it’ll hold him.”
Charles.
He’d been groggy when she left, but had seemed happy enough to leave her in his father’s hands while he slept off the effects of having a few silver bullets dug out of him last night. Apparently things had changed.
Anna grabbed her box and met Bran in the doorway of the bathroom.
He gave her a searching glance, but didn’t seem upset. “It seems that we are needed elsewhere,” he said,
