Tarnished (3 page)

Silver said nothing and kept going past Death to catch up with Dare as he clasped hands with her cousin, Seattle, both measuring their strength while pretending they weren’t. If she tried to defend herself against Death’s too-perceptive questions, he only came up with even more infuriating ones.

“Seattle,” Dare said as they released their grip. “It’s good to see you. Sorry to have apparently brought trouble, but I hope to be able to get off your territory quite soon.”

Silver heard a hint of gritted teeth in Dare’s voice when he used her cousin’s title. This was no romp through a field for Dare either, meeting another alpha while he had no status of his own. She saw his discomfort even more clearly in his wild self. When Were’s tame selves were ascendant, their wild selves usually followed quietly at their heels. Dare’s wild self exchanged snaps of teeth with Seattle’s before they both settled back behind their tame selves and their polite masks.

“I’ve sent people out to deal with that trouble. I appreciate the warning. Welcome.” Seattle stepped aside and gestured into the den with more of that politeness that none of them believed.

Silver let Dare go first. As she passed her cousin, she stooped to ruffle his wild self’s ears while checking it for new scars. At the back of her mind, Silver knew that she was the only one who could see wild selves, but that gave her all the more reason to check, since no one else could.

Tame selves did not form scars, except for injuries caused with silver, but wild selves did. Silver glanced ahead at the band of roughed, bleached fur over the back of Dare’s wild self. In contrast, Seattle’s wild self looked weak with his pretty fur and muscles that flexed without the catch of scar tissue.

Seen together, the men’s tame selves formed a different contrast. Seattle was broad-shouldered and muscled where Dare was lean; Seattle still looked young, while Dare was silver-marked in the locks of white hair among the dark at his temples.

Seattle pulled her out of her thoughts with a squeeze of her shoulder that he extended into an arm across her back, guiding her inside like a child. “Are you hungry? Can I get you anything?”

Silver punched him in the side and he let go immediately. At least he learned. Sort of. He was family, so the smothering was a little easier to take from him. “I’ve yet to shatter into pieces since you saw me last, cousin.”

Seattle muttered an apology and hurried inside to get them drinks anyway. Silver ignored hers when he offered it. Something was amiss in the den. Dare and Seattle started making strained, meaningless conversation while they drank, all about the things she couldn’t see, so Silver slipped away, Death padding beside her. His tongue lolled out in a self-satisfied expression, so she guessed he approved of her curiosity. No wonder. Curiosity often led to trouble, and Death loved to see people off-balance.

The smell of one of the rooms caught Silver’s attention. Seattle’s human lover looked up as Silver approached, wariness written across her body in the awkward way of humans: they didn’t know what they were doing so they couldn’t hide their emotions, but neither could they choose to make a clear statement of a few emotions rather than always a muddled mess of several.

The human pushed to her feet. “Hello.” She laughed, mere awkwardness, not warmth. “I know we’ve met before, but I’ve forgotten your name. Are you here to talk business? Should I be out of the house already?”

“Silver.” Silver frowned, trying to suppress the sharp flash of frustration when the human woman’s name slipped out of her mental grasp. Names, at least, she’d been working on, trying to strengthen her memory for them through practice. She frowned at the woman, trying to find the name by studying her. She was shorter than Silver, more curved, especially in the hips, and her short hair was an undistinguished brown. Without a Were’s wild self to provide the rest of the appearance, it was a little like trying to recognize someone with half her face covered. Humans always looked so lonely.

Like Silver herself, she supposed.

Death butted his shoulder into the side of her knee as he passed to investigate the woman. Silver half-smiled. At least she did have someone to walk with her in place of a wild self.

“Susan,” the woman said finally. Her eyes had been on Silver’s injured arm in the pause and Silver realized that she’d forgotten to tuck it into her pocket when she and Dare arrived. The snakes inscribed there were dead now, only the diamond-backed white lines of their shed skins remaining. Silver traced them with her fingertip, thinking of when they had hissed and bitten her with every movement, before Dare had killed them.

“I suppose Seattle told you the story of what happened to me?”

Susan shook her head. “Seattle—that’s some kind of title, isn’t it? I’ve heard the others call him that.”

Silver winced. Her cousin was keeping his lover in staggering ignorance. Clearly, she was intelligent enough to begin to put things together without his help. “He hasn’t told you anything?”

“Some things, about how our son will grow up.” Susan shrugged, expression tightening. “I know I’m not supposed to know about you guys
at all,
but now I do, I don’t see that it matters how much more I find out. But he clearly wants to keep me…” Susan hesitated. “Separate from that part of his life somehow, including making sure I know as little about it as possible.”

Silver smiled, thin-lipped. “To protect you, probably. I understand about people trying to protect me by keeping things from me.”

“And what are you going to do about it?” Death said, brushing past Susan’s legs, first on one side, then the other.

Silver grinned, a quick flash that seemed to take the human woman aback a little. “Maybe I’ll have to tell you myself.”

Susan’s baby began to cry from somewhere deeper in the den and Susan reacted to the sound like she had werewolf hearing. A mystery of motherhood, perhaps. She pushed right past Death but hesitated halfway out of the room, desperate curiosity warring with the maternal instincts in her body language. “I do want to hear about you guys, I’m sorry, I just have to—”

“We can talk later,” Silver assured her and Susan disappeared with a nod.

Death came up beside her and yawned, white teeth stark against all of his blackness. “You might want to be careful. Her safety now is in being unseen. Knowing too much might give her the tools to put herself in danger.”

“Life is more than safety.” Silver rubbed her bad arm. “But you’re right. I should make sure she understands the risks and give her a choice before I continue.”

“And if you’re both extremely lucky, any choice she makes will even matter.” Death wandered off through the den in the direction of Dare and Seattle. After a moment, Silver followed.

3

Andrew stuck to small talk with John, waiting for Silver to get back before he got to the real point of the visit. As his mate she was as concerned with a challenge for alpha as he was.

Silver pushed through the door of a downstairs bedroom a moment after John’s human girlfriend jogged upstairs in response to the baby crying. Silver joined him in the kitchen, where he stood awkwardly opposite John, both with barely touched beers. She pressed up against Andrew, her bad side closest. He touched her bad wrist, and when she tipped her chin in a tiny nod, he tucked it into her front jeans pocket for her. It gave her a slightly more natural look she liked.

John offered her another open beer and Silver accepted it with a dry smile. “Talking to Susan?” he asked.

“I was quite interested to find out how little you’d seen fit to tell her.”

Andrew looked down at Silver in surprise at the sharpness in her voice. What was that all about? Of course John had told Susan as little as possible. He shouldn’t have told her about Were in the first place. He was only trying to keep her safe.

“You should tell Silver that,” a male voice said behind him.

Andrew swallowed hard when he heard that familiar voice. Death was a manifestation of his unconscious. Nothing more. No black wolf hulked at the edge of his vision in the doorway to the kitchen, and that black wolf didn’t laugh when he caught Andrew turning his head to avoid seeing him. “Better yet, tell her that you’re going to do something to keep
her
safe,” Death said.

Andrew suppressed a wince. If he ever did that, Silver would hand him his own balls on a platter. He looked up the stairs after the human woman. He hadn’t ever considered Susan in that light. Perhaps he should drop a word in John’s ear about the care and feeding of strong-minded mates.

“So you’re going to challenge at the Convocation?” John asked Andrew, sounding desperate to change the subject. “I assume, at least, given your timing. I invited Portland over like you asked, so she’ll be here to discuss it later tonight.”

“Yeah. I quit my job in Ellensburg and moved out of the apartment. Maybe it’s a little early, but I was going insane.” Andrew rubbed his temple. The last time he’d been in the human workforce and not on Rory’s payroll as enforcer, it had seemed much simpler, but since then he’d grown accustomed to holding more authority as a Were. He had a tough time giving it up among the humans.

John raised his eyebrows. “You were working at the university? College students?”

“The work-study types were about as intelligent as the paper clips, but that wasn’t the only problem. The department was underfunded and didn’t have a clear place in the university hierarchy. Add in an absentee head—” Andrew waggled his hand, and John nodded in understanding. Few Were liked dealing with the mushy undefined structure so many humans pretended they wanted.

John tipped back his beer. His scent soured, and Andrew wondered if he was stalling to avoid something.

“Silver and I are going to crash at one of those extended-stay hotels,” Andrew said. No alpha would want another dominant Were in his house for too long. Did John fear that he was inviting himself in for the couple weeks until the Convocation? It was so frustrating not to know anyone he could stay with on this coast. He hadn’t been able to go home since he broke with Rory, so all of his and Silver’s belongings were packed in the trunk of the car. “I plan to avoid Sacramento until the challenge is settled, but if he comes looking for trouble again, he’ll come looking there.”

John gestured generously with his bottle. “The basement here is all yours if you want it. I’m sure we can survive a few weeks.” He grinned briefly, Silver snorted, and Andrew chuckled his agreement. “Survive” was the operative word, but it was good of John to make the offer. “The thing is—speaking of Sacramento, I think maybe you should reevaluate your chances of even getting to the point of the challenge.”

He hesitated and Andrew let his questioning silence grow heavier. John needed to just spit it out.

“Sacramento’s been talking to a lot of people. I told him to go bite his own tail, but I’ve heard from Portland and Billings that he approached both of them. You can probably figure he talked to all of the Western alphas.”

Andrew clenched a fist, then forced himself to relax the muscles. “If I need to address the question of his son again, I will. The Convocation upheld my decision to execute him at the time. He was a disgusting little shit, even leaving aside the rapes. I doubt anyone besides his father has much sympathy for him.”

John shook his head. “It’s not just that. He’s aiming wider, and leaving his son out of it for the most part. He claims Rory is saying that you’re power hungry enough to want all of North America, and that was your goal when you challenged me before.”

“Do you believe that?” Silver asked. She unconsciously tipped her chin up to put her nose at a better angle to read him. John swirled his beer, probably to try to swamp his scent with that of the alcohol.

“If any Were in North America could pull it off, it would be you,” John said at length.

“But no one can.” Andrew snorted. He doubted John actually believed he could accomplish that impossible task, but it was worrisome if he thought Andrew would want to. He wasn’t power hungry. He’d explained his reasons for challenging John at the time. He’d needed the ability to chase Silver’s attacker without wasting time talking John into every single step. John should have smelled the truth of that on him. “So that’s not an answer, Seattle.”

“No. I don’t believe it.” John sighed. “However much you seem to attract trouble by nature, it’s not like you’re going out and picking fights to get it. But it sounds plenty plausible, and the kind of thing Rory would say.”

Andrew snorted. “He probably did say it. But he’s running scared. A lot of Were saw the danger he put his pack in when he let the man who hurt Silver get too close. The Roanoke sub-packs will have heard all about it, and they’ll remember all the other times he let his obsession with hanging on to power drive him to bad decisions. The Western alphas don’t know him like we do.”

John spread his hands, one open, one tilting the beer bottle. “I’m just saying, you might want to watch out.”

Silver cocked her head like Death was saying something. Her frown afterward didn’t reassure Andrew. Was Sacramento really going to be such a problem? “Well, there’s an easy way to find out what the Roanoke packs’ reactions to Sacramento’s shit are. I’ll call Boston, see what he thinks,” Andrew said. He pulled out his phone and rubbed a hand down Silver’s back as he nodded questioningly to the front door. He’d go outside to avoid anyone listening in, and she might want to join him.

“I’ll stay here. If Seattle doesn’t get to feed me something soon, I think he’ll explode from worry,” Silver said. She brushed imaginary John-bits off her shirt. “Not worth the mess.”

Under the humor, Andrew caught an edged note to her voice. It could be her usual frustration with being patronized by anyone, but he made a mental note to follow up later to make sure. He gave her a quick peck on the lips.

John stiffened with frustrated protectiveness, then wrestled it back under control. Andrew gritted his teeth. John’s mistaken concern about Silver being in a relationship given her mental state apparently wasn’t going to die either. After Andrew and Silver first made love, John had accused Andrew of taking advantage of someone who couldn’t give consent, until Silver verbally kicked his ass. Given his previous reaction, maybe silence was progress. Fine. Let John stew, Andrew wasn’t going to dignify his issues by defending himself.