The Thing About Weres

at that moment, Trowbridge was staring down his long nose at me in a way that felt both foreign and oddly menacing.

This is not going well.

Blue comets started playing a halfhearted game of tag around his pupils. Usually a lovely sight, that prelude to an Alpha’s flare, except now blue fire illuminated his face, and I could see well enough to perceive the fact that his features weren’t shaped in aching joy at the sight of me. They were set in a grim, faintly pained cast that appeared semipermanent, and his brow was—oh wonderful—visibly shifting. My mate was a breath away from his transformation into his Were.

“You’re”—I made hazy circle near my own temple—“turning wolf.”

And maybe I did wince with ill-disguised disgust, because at that precise moment, the bone in his cheek chose to move, and it was both ugly and fascinating to watch his skin roll, crest, and then recede back to resemble something reasonably normal.

“Shit,” I said, for want of a better word, as my inner-bitch moaned in disbelief.

I’m a card-carrying Trowbridge interpreter and have a mental catalogue of every expression his handsome countenance had ever assumed in my presence. I’d privately labeled them: cool curiosity. Covert lust. Simmering annoyance. Devastating tenderness. Pussy-melting possessiveness. Combustible passion.

By golly, to be scrupulously fair, I’d even kept a file on some of his less cozy displays of emotion—forced patience, annoying arrogance, bullheaded maleness, and perverse stubbornness.

I’d thought I’d seen them all—including, more than once, evidence of true love in his eyes.

But at that moment, I didn’t know how to read him—never mind the fact that he was on the cusp of turning into his Were.

Dismay coiled inside me; a fat, hungry worm hidden in the apple core. Had I imagined the depths of his feelings for me? Had I wanted to be loved so badly that I’d tinted every one of our shared dreams with soft, seashell-pink fantasies of forever after?

My cheeks grew hot.

“I want to sit up,” I said in a little voice.

He allowed me to slide free of the comforting band of his arms, though he didn’t entirely relinquish his hold on me. When I made a weak attempt to crawl a couple feet away, he used gentle pressure to keep me there, sitting cross-legged between the cradle of his hard thighs.

There are worse places to be.

I could have leaned back against his damp chest, if I’d wanted to. Flattened my palm over his heart, and checked for a beat. He had a streak of blood near his hairline.

Knox, I thought broodingly.

Add another dollop of guilt to my felony list.

That’s when the little brown wolf from Merenwyn let loose a low, menacing growl, and began to slink toward me, its amber eyes flicking between my mate and me in a way that might have unnerved me if I hadn’t spent six months holding a pack at bay.

This pissed-off fairy has had a day, puppy.

Behold the wrath of my flare.

“Don’t,” warned Trowbridge, before I could summon a spark. The light that had lit his face dimmed. “Don’t ever use your flare against a wolf. I’ve seen that, and it’s never good.”

I said, my heart twisting, “That’s bullshit, Trowbridge. Your father used his Alpha flare to control his pack.”

“My father was a Were.” His tone was implacable. “He had the right to use it on his kin.”

This time, I gasped.

The little brown wolf crept forward, nose crinkled.

“Anu!” Trowbridge said sharply, before breaking into a long string of Merenwynian, directed at the wolf eyeing me like I was the last hamburger on the grill.

Yes, I know. I should have thought, “What’s with that wolf?” or better yet, “Who the hell IS that wolf?” My inner-bitch certainly was suddenly on alert.

But my mind swirled over yet another puzzle.

Impossible, I thought, horror filling me.

In the space of a summer, Trowbridge had learned to speak my mother’s tongue. I’m not referring to the use of a few Fae curse words; I’m talking about fluid language skills. Verbs, and nouns, and maybe an adjective or two thrown in for good measure. I couldn’t tell what he was saying—I’d never managed to pick up the Fae language other than that freakish time in Threall when I became temporarily fluent in Merenwynian. But I’m thinking Trowbridge had issued a “cease and desist” order, because the little brown wolf’s ears flattened, and it paused, mid-stalk, hackles raised in a line of outrage, nape to rigid tail.

What was I? A language idiot? Trowbridge spent half a year in the Fae world and suddenly he’s fluent in a language I could never get my tongue around after twelve years of listening to my mum? Was it really that easy to pick up the language?

Goddess, did he think I’d deliberately kept him trapped in Merenwyn?

I gave the tip of my pointed ear a stroke or two and felt no comfort.

My One True Thing made a sharp “sit” gesture with his fist. The canine looked at it with something akin to frustration, issued a noise that sounded uncannily like a peeved Wookie, then lowered its ass to a choice patch of Creemore’s clover.

The remnants of my pink glow of happiness were eroding faster than a wad of cotton candy ground between two molars.“What happened here?” Trowbridge asked.

Good question.

He flicked a dread over his shoulder. “Why did someone try to kill you?”

“Not someone. A Were,” I said flatly.

“Why?” he asked grimly.

“Because the NAW came.” I tilted my head toward the woods. “Knox—the guy you dispatched—I take it he is dead?”

Trowbridge nodded.

“He was sent here to investigate claims that…” I floundered for a second, realizing that I was edging myself into turbulent waters and, Goddess curse it, I was already at sea without a life vest. “I was accused of breaking the treaty, and what you saw was the end result of a trial by my ‘peers.’”

“Why didn’t you claim your status as my mate?” he demanded.

Oh crap. The treaty and the mate question—two things I really wanted to avoid in the first few minutes of our fragile reconciliation—delivered in a one-two bitch-slap. “It must have slipped my mind,” I said, sarcasm dripping.

I know. I should have saved being a smartass for later, but it was so wrong … every bit of it. The Fae watching us with his head tilted in deep calculation; the pack listening in from the bushes; the little brown wolf shifting on its haunches yearning for leave to attack. None of it fit my script. I’d imagined my mate walking across the field toward me, top button undone on his blue cambric shirt. When his gaze fixed on mine—I usually got choked up at this part—his features would crease into an expression of deep tenderness, bordering on aching joy. Yup. That’s what I’d been anticipating.

I gave myself an inward kick and struggled to stand. He helped me up.

“This isn’t the homecoming I had planned for you,” I muttered.

Trowbridge’s eyes narrowed. “Considering I had to find my own way back home, I imagine it wasn’t.”

Low blow.

His nostrils flared. “Why wouldn’t the pack support you?”

For a second, I gazed up at him, feeling like I was on that portal again, the ground beneath me breaking into pieces. What had happened to my dream-guy?

Gone.

I looked back down at my knitted fingers. They were visibly swelling, payback pain’s itch finally starting to bother. My gaze skittered away from them, studied a blade of broken grass, found no enlightenment, and then twitched back toward the jaw of the man who stood between me and the rest of the world. It was slick with