Tarnished (36 page)

“No,” Silver said, distinctly but emphatically into his chest. “Don’t you dare.”

Andrew huffed a laugh and let his mind drift.

35

Silver woke to the feeling of cold where once there had been warmth on one side. Dare slept on at her other side. Death stood close enough that it made her wonder: had he been sleeping beside her? She couldn’t quite tell, though a feeling lingered of being tucked between two sources of warmth rather than just one from Dare. Silver decided to pretend she hadn’t noticed.

She rolled over and found Dare’s wild self at his feet. She buried her hands in its fur, searching for any lingering injury. The scars on his back looked only as bad as they always had. Rest and plenty to eat would help the hollow and pale look of his tame self’s face.

Silver could have stayed there a lot longer, watching Dare’s face as he slept, but a need to relieve herself drove her up. Dare didn’t even stir, a mark of how hurt he was. When she was done, hunger had also awakened, and Silver foraged for food as the light warmed and strengthened with dawn.

Silver slipped outside to eat and breathe in the fresh air, sweet with a day’s promise. She found a place to sit out of easy hearing but not sight of the dens. Death curled comfortably just far enough away he could not be said to be at her feet. She could come to like these mountains with time, she decided. Not the trees, too sharp and sparse, but the slopes had a beauty when considered from a distance.

Thank the Lady Dare had been all right. And somehow they’d won everything they’d been fighting for and more. Thinking about it still made her head hurt. When had it gone from being impossible to being inevitable, like running downhill? She hadn’t been trying to win anyone over, and she suspected Dare hadn’t either, they’d just done what they thought was right. Perhaps that was the point—they’d done what needed to be done because it needed doing, and the other alphas had seen that.

Felicia’s scent, filled with suspicion and anxiety, curled into Silver’s nose long before the girl herself appeared. Her dark hair was tumbled like she’d snatched only naps last night, curled up somewhere. “Hello,” Silver said, and then ate in silence. She was too wrung out to even wonder what the girl might want.

Felicia found a seat on a rock a short distance away. Not within reach, but not so far she had to raise her voice. “I still don’t understand why he left me,” she said finally into the small sounds of wind through branches and over grass, the world waking.

“Have you ever heard the story of how the Lady had to first leave her children?” Silver suspected Felicia had, and the girl nodded, but she didn’t object. Good. Sometimes you had to hear a story all over again to find a new meaning.

“It was the humans. In the beginning, their gods walked among them as the Lady did among us. But the humans breed too quickly. Their gods could not resolve so many conflicting desires when they were so easy to petition in person. So the human gods withdrew, forcing their followers to find their own strength or truly work for the help they needed.

“But the Lady’s children were few. Lost in Her love for them, She paid no attention to what the humans did, or to the human gods. The humans grew greedy, as humans do. Perhaps they wanted to take what we had, or perhaps they were simply envious, and wanted to make sure that if they were abandoned by their gods, so too were we.”

Felicia hugged herself. Thinking of abandonment, perhaps.

“In those days, we lived forever. Only fire could destroy us, because fire destroys everything created so creation can begin anew. But we did not know this, did not understand how a life could end. When the humans came with fire, we would have all fallen before them if not for Death. He took the first of us before the humans arrived, and taught us of mortality so we understood the threat the humans brought. We fought back. We were not all killed, but we could no longer live forever.

“And so to punish Death for his betrayal in harming us, the Lady had to take his voice, leaving him to use those of the souls he brought back to Her. And to punish Herself for failing to protect us, She had to leave us, so that She no longer attracted the humans’ envy to us with Her light.”

Silver paused until Felicia looked up in confusion, and she caught the girl’s eyes. They were a little wide, still frightened. “But we didn’t understand. We saw that we could die, and we saw that the Lady had left us. Some of us cursed Her name, and vowed to renounce Her as She had renounced us.

“And some clung to the belief that She would return someday, if we were somehow … good enough. But She never did. Because it didn’t matter what She wanted, She was caught by circumstance. It did not change Her love for us—in fact, it made it stronger. But sometimes…” Silver tried to find the right words.

“Things fall apart,” Death said, the cadence of his voice heavy too. “To quote a human.”

Silver repeated Death’s words. “And sometimes you build anew. Not the same, but still something.”

Felicia shook her head, like her wild self would to dislodge a burr from its ruff. Silver could only hope her story was like that burr, refusing to let go. “That isn’t how I heard the story,” Felicia said.

Silver shrugged. “Maybe the story changed. Maybe the listener did.” She pushed to her feet. “You must be hungry. Come in for some breakfast? Dare isn’t awake yet.”

Felicia shied back. “I’ll find something.”

“You have to decide soon.” Silver wanted to reach out to the girl, but she turned the gesture into combing her fingers through her hair. “You can’t stay here in the woods alone forever.”

“But I don’t have to decide yet.” Felicia twisted fingers into her hair too, bringing it over her shoulder in a tail. Then she turned and it all tumbled back out again. She loped away.

“No, not quite yet,” Silver said, and went back to the den. She left her breakfast on the rock. She could get more inside, and the girl would be hungry by now.

*   *   *

Andrew snapped into full wakefulness with a surge of panic. Where was Silver? Her scent around him, diffuse as it was, started his heart slowing before his mind worked out what had happened. He must have been too exhausted to wake briefly when she got up as he usually did. She was still safe.

And she’d left him breakfast. The smell of food reminded Andrew he was ravenous, and he groped for the bags on the nightstand. He assumed it was Silver who’d left them because the leftover sandwich fixings were still separate: a loaf of bread and packages of cheese and lunchmeat. Andrew didn’t bother with assembly himself, just ate the first package of ham slices all together in a single stack. Bread could wait.

Silver slipped out of the bathroom, still nude from the shower. Water glistened on her pale skin where she’d missed it with the towel she was currently using on her hair. She caught him appreciating and grinned as she dropped the towel.

Andrew tossed the empty lunchmeat package aside and stretched, testing how much he’d healed. He stuck with just appreciation for the moment. “Where’s your sling, love?” He held out his hand and Silver sighed. She turned back to the bathroom, giving him another good view, and returned with the sling as well as her shirt and bra.

Andrew pushed himself up and Silver sat down beside him. Getting her dressed without jarring her shoulder too much required a lot of concentration. When he finished, Andrew demolished the rest of the food in double- and triple-stacked sandwiches while Silver watched with amusement.

With the edge of his hunger gone, Andrew slid an arm around her waist and rested his cheek against her neck. Back to business, he supposed. With a night of rest behind him, food in his stomach, and breathing in Silver’s scent, things didn’t seem quite so overwhelming.

He laughed, a low breath of sound. “So we’re alphas of all of North America now.”

Silver laughed too. “It seems someone should be.”

Andrew thought back to another conversation, sitting close on another bed. Then, Silver hadn’t wanted to lead. “You’ll be a good alpha.”

Silver brought up her good hand to pet his hair. “As will you. If you won’t doubt yourself, I won’t doubt myself. Deal?”

Andrew kissed her neck. He was the luckiest Were alive, to have her to share the burden with. “Deal. Who should we make our beta?”

Silver cupped his jaw with her palm. “Where are we going to live?”

Andrew laughed. “One thing at a time!”

Silver smacked the side of his head lightly. “It’s related. Are we going to settle somewhere with an enforcer, like you used to be? Are we going to do the traveling ourselves? It changes what our beta would need to be good at.”

Andrew started to answer and caught himself, trying to consider more carefully. Just because Rory had used an enforcer didn’t make the position a sign of weakness. “If it were just me,” he said at length, “I’d say I’d have to travel. The Western packs aren’t going to be comfortable for a long time, if ever. I think it will help if the alphas show up personally to deal with their problems.”

“I agree.” Silver’s words had the smell of sincerity, but her muscles tensed in anticipation. “When you were enforcer, you still had a home, didn’t you? Even if you didn’t get to spend much time there.”

“Sort of. I had Laurence clear out the apartment and put my stuff into storage when I had to stay out West.” Andrew frowned, casting about for a mundane detail in the midst of all that had happened recently. He’d paid the last bill for the unit, hadn’t he? There was nothing there he’d particularly cry over losing, but he liked some of the furniture. “I’m not tied there, though. We can base the pack anywhere we want. I can’t think of a time when a Roanoke actually lived in Roanoke the city.”

When Silver didn’t say anything else, Andrew smoothed a hand down her side. “What’s wrong?”

“I think we should keep our home in Seattle. Or somewhere in the West. You said yourself, we won’t be there much. The original Roanoke sub-packs are used to working together, and listening to a distant alpha. The others would benefit more from the gesture of having the alphas settle nearby.” She hiccupped in her next breath. “And I am tied there, I think. The scents I grew up with, and being near my cousin—”

“Shhh,” Andrew murmured, tightening his arm around her soothingly even as he thought. She did have a very good political point, anything else aside. Being closer to the Western packs would be very good PR. In the East, he had Benjamin. If Andrew could talk him into it, he’d make an excellent … neither enforcer nor beta seemed quite the word that Andrew wanted. Leader, perhaps, for the other sub-alphas. Someone to provide an example to channel them in the right direction. “I think it’s a good idea. I presume your cousin will want his pack back, though. We probably can’t stay in Seattle itself.”

“I don’t know.” Silver relaxed against Andrew now, exhaling on a laughing note. “I think he’s rather taken to being a beta. And he’s still got to come to terms with Susan before he goes back to being alpha.”

“We’ll have to ask him privately first.” Andrew turned the idea this way and that, and found it stood up. John had been good as a beta here, and as long as he wasn’t resentful, he’d make a good choice. “While we’re away he’ll have a lot of autonomy anyway. I could hand Rory’s home pack over to Laurence, let him take them to Richmond or something.”

Silver patted Andrew’s knee and then scooted to the edge of the bed. “That was easy.” She paused for his laugh, and dodged his grab after her. “You should eat some more.”

Andrew’s stomach growled, reminding him of how quickly calories burned away while healing. He sighed and slid his feet to the floor. “I should. We might as well let in some of the people who want to talk to us while I do, though.” No rest for the alphas.

36

It may have been all over but for the shouting, but there seemed to Susan to be an awful lot of shouting to be done. Or talking, at least. A parade of people tromped in and out of the cabin starting the moment Andrew was up and dressed. They didn’t even wait for him to finish breakfast. He ate continuously and Silver grazed as they talked to each person. Susan was glad she’d gotten her breakfast earlier before the Were demolished all of it.

Even without formal meetings the nursery was still operating, so Susan dropped Edmond off. Once she was back on the gravel path outside of that cabin, she found that she didn’t actually know what she was planning to do with her free time. She’d been acquitted, Silver and Andrew had what they wanted, and the bad guys were exiled. Shouldn’t she be breaking out the champagne instead of feeling so strange?

John came out of the Seattle cabin as she returned. He was much more polished this morning, the well-groomed man she’d met at a trade conference rather than the Were who looked like he’d forgotten to comb his hair half the time. Susan wasn’t sure she liked the change. Too much water had passed under the bridge since they’d been the people at that conference.

“Susan!” John put a hand behind her back, not touching, but urging her to the side. Even without that, the awkward way he shoved his hands into his pockets suggested he wanted to talk. “Dare—Roanoke says that he wants me as beta for all of the Roanoke pack, if I’m willing to give up alphaship of Seattle.”

Susan massaged her temple. Just when she thought she understood most of the Were’s hierarchy. “So who would be alpha of Seattle, then?”

John shook his head with a sheepish grin. “The Roanoke has a home pack. Kind of his White House staff, I guess you could say? If I agree, Silver and Dare will stay, and the old Seattle pack will become the Roanoke home pack.”

“And what do you want to do?” Susan searched his face. Did this sudden polish mean he wanted to go back to being alpha? He’d said the responsibility weighed on him, but maybe he thought it would be different under Andrew. She hadn’t liked John as alpha, but she didn’t want to hold him back. More than his refusal to touch her in public, she hated the feeling that it was a symptom of him feeling she was holding him back. If she kept him from being alpha, that would be even worse.