The Thing About Weres

He waited for a beat and then said tersely, “You’ve got to stop messing with that blister. It’s driving me crazy to watch you hurt yourself.”

Don’t do that, Trowbridge—don’t get all tender with me—I’m not ready.

I folded my arms—awkwardly, since a blistered mitt is resistant to being tucked under an elbow. It sent prickles of pain messages.

He stared at my pose for a moment or two, decided not to go for the challenge, then let out some anxiety by blowing a stream of air through his teeth. “I knew Lexi didn’t know the location of the Safe Passage,” he said heavily. “If Lexi had known its location, he would have used it himself so that he could have avoided the Black Mage and collected the bounty for the Royal Amulet. I knew that, Hedi.” The general shape of his mouth got lost in his thick beard as he scowled.

Not a good look for you, Trowbridge.

“There really is a mother of a reward for the person who returns that pendant to the King of the Court,” he said. “But your brother ran for the fairy pond, which meant he had to be bringing it back to the Black Mage.”

“Ralph’s a person, not a pendant or an ‘it,’” I corrected darkly. Though His Nastiness sure looked like some sort of quasi-Celtic piece of flummery, resting placidly on Trowbridge’s manly chest, his stone not sending up one tiny spit of light. Why was that? I needed tongs to handle Ralph in a pissy mood and now he was all cheery blue stone, content and smug. “I don’t know why he’s not throttling you.”

Trowbridge lifted his eyebrows. Tested the emotional climate with an experimental waggle of them. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend?”

Probably more a case of like recognizes like. I mentally shrugged, dismissing the Ralph puzzle. There were more pressing questions to pose than the motivations of an Asrai amulet, and answers that might prove as painful as the blister I couldn’t leave alone. “Once you figured that out, why didn’t you just pull the trigger?”

He stared at my mouth for a moment, either gobsmacked by its lushness, or killing time as he tried to figure out what he should and shouldn’t tell me.

Just say the right thing, Trowbridge. It’s not difficult. All you have to do is tell me that you don’t mean to kill my brother.

But he surprised me. He gazed at me for a second in consideration, then firmed his shoulders and told me the truth, flat and unvarnished. “You needed to hear him lie. You needed to see him as he was.”

Did I? Everyone was telling me what I should be hearing, what I should be thinking, what I shouldn’t dare do. It didn’t change the inside of me. It didn’t stop me from wanting to fix things, or change things, or do something, anything, to stop things from going to hell.

“But now what?” I probed. “Lexi can’t return home—you won’t let him cross the gates with an amulet. Unless you’d let me…” My voice trailed off, because Trowbridge had lowered his head. “You can’t,” I said to the top of his dreads. “The pack has seen him steal from you. You can’t let that go without doing something. What are you going to do? If you hurt him, Trowbridge. If you kill him anyway—”

“Hasn’t he hurt you enough?” His chin lifted.

“Can’t you see he’s no good?” That’s what his expression asked.

I chewed the skin on the inside of my mouth rather than answer either question.

Trowbridge shook his head in silent frustration—man style—ear cocked toward the ceiling, eyes downcast and hooded, mouth thinned. “You can drive me right up the wall and back again.” He exhaled, long, slow, measured. Then he cautiously reached to touch my hair—just lightly, not quite a stroke, or a pat—as if he just wanted to make sure this time he could without me biting.

His voice was regret-heavy and sincere. “I promise you that I won’t kill him.”

There must be a special on promises today.

It should have been enough. I should have thrown myself into his arms right then, smothering his hairy cheeks with thank-you kisses. But there was something about the way his expression momentarily darkened after he’d made that vow, as if my happiness were something sharp sticking him in the ribs.

“Tink,” he said softly.

Damn you. Don’t you dare look like the weight of the world is on your shoulders.

“I haven’t slept for days. Or bathed for a week. Let me get some rest, and then I’ll think up something.”

There were blue shadows under his eyes to rival Lexi’s. “Will my brother be all right?”

“He’s locked in a room. No one will enter without my consent.”

Was there a loophole in that?

“Come upstairs with me. Keep me company,” he coaxed, his faint, hopeful smile half hidden by his heavy beard. “Promise me that for the next ten minutes you won’t worry and you won’t think. At least give me that.”

I let him pull me to my feet and gently tug me down the hall. At the living room’s threshold he paused. He lifted his chin in the direction of Harry, who stood by the open bay windows. “Do you still have contacts with people inside the NAW?”

Harry pruned his mouth. “I know one that could be bought.”

“Tell him there’s ten thousand dollars in it if he gives you a heads-up about any movement from the NAW.”

“He’ll want more,” warned Harry.

A sour look fouled Trowbridge’s face. “Of course he will.”

Anu shot out of her chair as he pulled me toward the stairs. Biggs had given her the shirt right off his back and her legs looked dainty and trim beneath its hem.

“Verstaler,” the Alpha of Creemore murmured. Lexi’s daughter broke into a brilliant smile and fell in behind us.

I balked. “Sharing a bedroom with her falls into the ‘In Your Dreams’ category.”

“Kid, I’m too tired to dream.” His fingers bit into my wrist as I stumbled on the first stair and again on the third. On the fourth step, he slid me a glance—a slant of Trowbridge blue through sooty lashes.

Your eyes are the only thing I still recognize of you, wild man.

His grip gentled. I knew that if I truly wanted, all I needed to do was slip my hand free of the manacle of his fingers. When I didn’t, his expression lightened—I hadn’t even realized he’d been worried—then he gave me an almost imperceptible nod and put his foot on the fifth riser. That’s how I followed him up the staircase, always lagging a step behind, my legs of jelly trying to keep up with his long muscular ones, a little Raha’ell breathing down my neck. Is this going to be my place now? One step behind the Alpha with another bitch at my heels?

Daylight streaked through the dirty window on the landing.

One step behind inevitably led to two steps behind.

I can’t do that.

“You’re thinking again,” he muttered as if he read my mind.

Yes. I was. Fate had propelled us willy-nilly to this point. And that was a problem. Because I suddenly didn’t know if I wanted to go or I wanted to stay. Whether I needed to be with him or needed to leave him. He came with so many problems. A pack. A hatred for my brother … Let’s not forget that “Fae shit” attitude.

We crested to the second floor. A layer of grit marred the soft golden gleam of the old oak floors. And the air—it smelled dead up here, too. Under Mannus’s squalid scent layer, there were faint signatures of lives lived before his tenure. The Trowbridge family had once slept here. Lived. Fought. Loved. And died.

Yes, I could smell their stale blood, too.

Despite that, my Were’s tail started to thump. She recognized a familiar scent, faded now, and mixed with other, less wonderful things. But she’d been searching for something to ease the growing anxiety inside her, and now, here in this dark passageway, she’d finally found it. There—coming from the bedroom to our right— Trowbridge’s old scent, so faint it was hard to catch, mixed with the scent of his dead wife, Candy. Mortal-me faltered. He’d called me by her name once. Did he still love her? A muscle moved in his cheek as he towed me past that door, but he kept his eyelids lowered, shielding me from whatever grief his gaze might reveal.

At the third bedroom, he said something in Merenwynian to my niece. She gave him melting eyes; a hard thing to accomplish when your irises are such a pallid green, but heaved a heavy sigh, and walked over to the bed. “Good night,” he said in English. She sank down on the mattress, all woebegone, as he firmly shut the door.

My Were’s tail thumped against my tailbone: happy, happy, happy. He’s all ours.