Impulse

“The end of the world,” Alec said gruffly, and Sera tensed before she realized Alec was smiling under that fake scowl, and it couldn’t have been a reference to Wesley’s tense warning.

If Wesley had told Alec at all.

Julio paused with a cookie halfway to his mouth. “You seem awful chipper about it. Care to elaborate?”

Alec and Carmen exchanged a look, and she spoke. “The Conclave is dissolving—on a trial basis for now. The members are heading to their home districts to take care of business.”

Shock made Sera blurt out the first thing that bubbled up. “What did you do to them?”

Alec huffed. “Good to see you’re still a brat.”

But Julio narrowed his eyes and stared at them both. “You told them people were getting ready to revolt, didn’t you?”

“Among other things.” Alec sat down, held up a hand and ticked the points off on his fingers.

“Without having to maintain homes in New York, they have considerably more resources. If they’re back at home, they can keep an eye on the troublemaking wolves and the members of their councils who might be thinking about replacing them. And, most importantly, we have immunity within our own territories. No more getting permission from everyone else before they can make changes in their region.”

Carmen laid her hand on his arm. “It’s the first step. It didn’t come easy, but it’s a big one.”

“A huge one.” Alec leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees. “It was a hard choice. Because life’s going to get a lot better in the Southeast…”

Sera squeezed Julio’s hand as she finished the sentence. “But it could get worse other places.”

“What happens then?” Julio asked. “If someone goes home and decides that making the peasants dance is fun entertainment?”

“Then the rest of us declare this a failed experiment and go after them.” Alec shrugged. “It’s a calculated risk, but Ochoa in the Southwest is happy to play nice based on my mother’s relation to him, and Enrica can’t cause too much trouble in the Northwest now that her son’s married to the Alpha’s daughter. The only person not allied with us through blood or marriage is Hoffman in the Midwest, but he’s one of the more moderate leaders.”

Every time he mentioned a region his gaze flicked to Sera, and she got the impression he was explaining so blatantly so she could follow the conversation without feeling stupid about her ignorance of wolf politics. Coming from Alec—someone who’d been friends with her father longer than she’d been alive—the tiny gesture might as well have been a ringing endorsement.

“So we’ll be on our own,” Julio mused. “That sounds good.”

Alec smiled. “Damn right it does. And all that money that’s been wasted on Conclave business? I’m funneling it right back into places like this. Which is why you’re going to be busy.

They won’t talk to me, so it’s your job to hit every wolf settlement in the Southeast. I want to know how many there are in each pack, how much has been taken from them, and what they need to live without desperation. Because desperation is dangerous to all of us.”

“Forget dangerous,” Carmen murmured, frowning. “It’s heartbreaking, not to mention unnecessary.”

“I know, honey.” Alec covered Carmen’s hand and squeezed it. “We’ll take care of it because it’s wrong, but we’ll get away with it because it’s smart.”

“Because it won’t look weak,” Sera said softly. The one thing she understood about survival among wolves. “They’ll trust you more easily if there’s something in it for you. If a strange wolf wanted to give me something that wasn’t in their best interest, I’d think they were trying to trick me. Or buy me.”

It seemed to mollify Carmen. “The money is the most urgent need. After we’ve taken care of setting up the packs for financial self-sufficiency, we can do things like open more clinics.”

“Carmen and I have to go back up to New York for one final Conclave meeting,” Alec said, looking to Julio. “I’ll talk to Andrew and Kat on the way. There are a few packs I want to send them to, ones made up entirely of turned wolves. And I have a couple towns I’d like you to visit before you head back to New Orleans, if Sera doesn’t mind.”

Sera glanced at Julio, unsure what to say, especially in the face of Wesley Dade’s vision. But he only nodded. “Wherever you need us to go.”

Us. She twined her fingers with his and turned back to Alec. “Teri has been wanting to take on more shifts at Dixie John’s. I can call and tell him I need more time. And I’d already decided to take summer semester off from school.”

Alec nodded. “Anna told me she got Josh pinned down long enough to have a witch she knows put a magical tag on him. If he strays more than a hundred miles away from his trailer, she’ll know.”

Julio’s jaw tightened. “Does she have standing orders on how to deal with that?”

“Anna doesn’t take orders from me.” Alec’s gaze shifted to Sera, and her stomach flip-flopped at the coldness in those brown eyes. This was the wolf who had taken vengeance for his first wife’s death with such unrelenting brutality that people still spoke of it in whispers.

His words now were brutal too. “No orders, but Anna agrees with me, and I had her deliver a message so there won’t be any misunderstandings. If he makes a move toward New Orleans, or any place you happen to be, his life is forfeit.”

Sera wanted to feel relief, or even nothing. God, she wanted to feel numb. Not this sick, twisted tangle of grief and confusion and fierce satisfaction. “I understand.”

“Then we can hope he’ll know better.” Julio rose. “Let’s take a walk, huh?”

Alec and Carmen didn’t seem surprised by the abrupt offer, leaving Sera to wonder how green she’d turned. Or maybe pale, the sickly white pallor that made her freckles stand out like a cartoon version of the measles.

She let Julio tug her to her feet and out the door and caught only a glimpse of her own reflection.

Pale and spotty. Great.

Julio rubbed her arm. “Anna will do what she has to do, but only what she has to do. You know that.”

“I don’t have feelings for Josh.” She winced as the words came out, wanted to cringe at how defensive they sounded. But she felt defensive, not to mention humiliated. “I know you know that. A lot of me wants him dead, because I don’t want to spend my whole life waiting for him.”

“A lot of me wants Josh dead too,” he confessed. “And not necessarily for the right reasons.

So I get not being able to separate the rational reasons from the rest of it, from the selfish shit.

Trust me, I get it.”

She clung to his hand, because his touch—his power—made her brave. “I’ll tell you my selfish reasons if you tell me yours.”

“Mine are easy. He hurt you.” Julio exhaled sharply. “No, that’s one of the good ones. The selfish one is that wolves don’t like competition.”

“No competition.” But that was a blunted truth, and he’d been honest. “None that matters,” she corrected softly. “You’ll never be a coyote, and I’ll never be a wolf. But the mating urge isn’t all that magical. It’s just another way of not having control.”

“It doesn’t change the facts. I can’t kill the guy unless I have to, and I can’t because it would be too pat and convenient for me.”

Sera ducked under his arm and pressed close to his side. “Another part of me wants him alive, not dead. I don’t want to have to face the possibility that he was always a crazy, dangerous bastard, and I was a stupid, gullible kid. I don’t want to be that dumb.”

“It wasn’t stupidity, honey. It was…” He shrugged. “Instinct. We’re all at the mercy of it, except when we’re not. That’s about as simple as it gets, and it’s still pretty fucking complicated.”

“It was a little bit stupid.” She sighed and rubbed her cheek against his chest. “Maybe the part I need to remember is that all teenagers are stupid. At least I survived to get smarter, right?”

“Arguable, I guess, since you’re with me now.”

“Good point. You’re a dumbass.” She bumped her hip against his as they followed the path toward the woods where the pack had run the first night. In the distance she could pick up the faint sounds of the trailer campground where entire families were packed into spaces that should have been claustrophobic for one or two.