me to her the first time I Changed. I didn’t know what she was, only that she smelled bad-like the beast. I thought for a while that she and the beast were the same creature, but then I saw them together.”
It had begun snowing gently an hour ago, but now big, fat flakes fell with more intensity, sticking to eyelashes and hair. A little more of his tension fell away; snow would hide them.
“Have you ever seen the wolf in her human form?” Charles didn’t know what Asil’s mate looked like in her human form, but a description might be useful.
Walter shook his head. “Nope. Maybe she doesn’t have one.”
“Maybe not.” Charles didn’t know why he was so sure that the other werewolf wasn’t what she seemed. They’d been running, it was possible he’d missed her tracks. But he tended to believe his instincts when they were whispering this strongly.
He turned his attention to Walter. Two months, and he’d had the control this afternoon to stop his attack as soon as he’d realized that Anna was a werewolf and not a victim. That was more control than most new wolves had.
“Your control is very good for someone who has only just been Changed-especially someone who didn’t have help,” Charles observed.
Walter gave him a grim look, then shrugged. “Been controlling a beast inside me ever since the war. Except that now I grow fangs and claws, it ain’t that much different. I have to be careful-like when I went after you. When I’m the wolf, I like the taste of blood. If I’d broken skin instead of ripping up your pack…well, then my control ain’t so good.” He glanced at Anna again, as if worried about what that would make her think of him.
Anna gave Charles an anxious look. Was she worried about Walter?
The thought that she might try to protect another male from him brought a snarl from his chest that never made it to his face. He waited until Brother Wolf quieted, then said, “For someone who’s been a wolf for only a couple of moons with no one to help him that is extraordinarily good.”
He looked directly at Walter, and the other wolf dropped his eyes. He was dominant, Charles judged, but not enough to think of challenging Charles-most wolves weren’t. “You thought Anna was in danger, didn’t you?” he said softly.
The rawboned man shrugged, making his crudely stitched-together cape of furs rustle. “Didn’t know she was a werewolf, too. Not until I was right between you.”
“But you knew I was.”
The man nodded his head. “Yes. It’s that smell, it calls to me.” He shrugged. “I’ve lived alone for all these years, but it’s harder now.”
“Wolves need packs,” Charles told him. It had never bothered him to need other wolves, but there were some wolves who never adjusted to it.
“If you’d like,” he told Walter, “you can come home with us.”
The man stilled, his eyes still on his feet, but every other part of him focused on Charles. “I’m not good around people, around noise,” he said. “I still…here it doesn’t matter if sometimes I forget it’s forest and not the jungle.”
“Oh, you’ll fit right in,” said Anna dryly.
Walter jerked his gaze to her face, and she smiled warmly at him, so Charles got to watch the man’s ears turn red.
“Charles’s father’s pack has a lot of people who don’t quite fit in,” she told him.
“My father’s pack is safe,” said Charles. “He makes it so. But Anna is right, he has more than a few wolves who would not be able to live elsewhere. If you want to move to another pack after a while, he’ll find somewhere that you feel welcomed. If you can’t handle it, you can come back here as a lone wolf-after we take care of the witch and her pet werewolf.”
Walter glanced up and away. “Witch?”
“Welcome to our world.” Anna sighed. “Witches, werewolves, and things that go bump in the night.”
“So what are you going to do with her?”
“The witch told us she was looking for Asil, who is a very old wolf who belongs to my father. So we thought we’d get out of these mountains, then we’ll have a long talk with Asil,” Charles told him.
“And in the meantime?” Walter rubbed his fingers over his forearm, where his knife once more lay sheathed under his clothing.
“You need to come and meet with my father,” Charles told him. “If you don’t, he’ll send me out to take you in, willingly or no.”
“You think you can force me to come with you to your father’s pack?” The man’s voice was low and deadly.
“Oh, that was well done,” Anna snapped, obviously upset with him, though Charles didn’t know what he’d done wrong. His father would not tolerate a rogue so close to his pack, and he wouldn’t agree to name Walter a lone wolf unless he met him for himself.
But Anna had already turned her attention to Walter. “What do you want to do? Stay up here all alone? Or come down with us when we go to get a little help-and come back here again to deal with the rogue and her witch?”
Charles raised an eyebrow at her, and she raised hers back. “That wolf harmed him. We’re here on pack business-for Walter this is personal.” She looked back at the other man. “Isn’t it?”
“Evil must be destroyed,” he said. “Or it takes over everything it touches.”
She nodded, as if he made perfect sense. “Exactly.”
They were going to sleep as wolves tonight, Charles declared. Anna didn’t object, even though her stomach tightened at the thought.
She’d been growing used to sleeping with Charles, but another wolf made her nervous, no matter how deferentially he treated her. But as soon as the sun went down, the temperature dropped another ten degrees. With only one sleeping bag, she knew that Charles was right, and there was no choice.
She changed a hundred yards from the males, shivering barefooted in the snow-where she’d moved after first trying the bare ground under a big fir tree-whoever called them needles knew what they were talking about.
The cold made the pain of change worse and stars dance in her vision. She tried to gasp quietly, tears leaking down her cheeks as her joints and bones rearranged themselves and restretched her flesh over them, and her skin split to become fur.
It took a long, long time.
Afterward, she lay panting and miserable on the ice-crystal-covered snow, too tired to move. Even cold, she discovered, had a smell.
Gradually, as her misery faded, she realized that for the first time since last night, when Charles had curled around her and surrounded her with his warmth, she felt toasty-warm. As the initial agony faded to aches and pains, she stretched, making her claws expand and lengthen like a big cat’s. Her back popped and crackled all the way down her spine.
She didn’t want to go back and curl up with a strange male only feet away. The wolf wasn’t afraid of the male. She knew he wasn’t likely to behave like the Others. But she didn’t much like the idea of touching anyone other than Charles, either.
Near but out of sight, a wolf, Charles, made a quiet sound, not quite a bark or a whine. Wobbly as a newborn foal, she staggered to her feet. She paused to shake the snow off her pelt and give herself a moment to get used to four paws before starting back, her clothes in her mouth. Charles trotted up to her, then grabbed her glove-stuffed boots and escorted her to their bed for the night.
Walter waited for them just outside their chosen shelter. As soon as she could see him, she knew that she wasn’t the only one who wasn’t excited about sleeping nose to tail with a stranger. Walter looked miserable, hunched over with his tail carried low.
Charles directed Walter with a flick of his ear to lie down in the shelter he’d found for them. Walter burrowed in, and it was Anna’s turn. Charles pushed her after Walter, set her boots where they wouldn’t fill with snow, then lay in front of them both where he could protect them. There wasn’t a lot of room, even though Walter had tucked
