Burn Bright (Alpha & Omega #5)(26)

But he didn’t bother handing her this camera—she’d already gotten the scent of the three people from the other equipment they’d found. If he could count on Tag’s letting him know if he found someone different, Charles wouldn’t have to have Brother Wolf check each one out. But Tag was Tag. Tag took great pride in letting you fall if you leaned on him too much.

“You knew them pretty well,” Anna observed to Tag in a gentle voice. “Hester and Jonesy.”

Tag had been ready to drop down, but at Anna’s gambit, he paused, hanging from a branch, like a nearly seven-foot-tall orange-maned monkey, swinging gently. He nodded at Anna’s comment without looking at her.

“You could say I knew them,” he said, dropping a hand to scratch at his head, his body as relaxed as if he were standing in the living room—or, Charles thought, dangling a thousand feet over an abyss. You didn’t get a permanent spot in the Marrok’s pack if you could function properly on your own.

“Hester better than Jonesy,” Tag told Anna. “Hester and I were lovers a few centuries ago.” He paused to consider that, his body stilled—so the swinging had been on purpose. Eventually, he added, “give or take a few centuries, I guess. She tossed me back in the sea, figuratively and literally speaking as it happens, but we stayed friendly anyway, mostly because she fished me out so I didn’t drown. Then she found Jonesy.”

He loosed his grip with seeming carelessness that nonetheless gave him a clear drop despite the hazards of the proliferation of tree branches and small trees between him and the ground. He landed lightly on his feet for such a big man jumping from thirty feet up, though he took a little hop like a gymnast who hadn’t quite stuck the landing.

An accident of position had Tag meeting Charles’s eyes, just as he landed.

Brother Wolf thought it would be interesting to pit himself against Tag. In Tag’s suddenly gold eyes, Charles saw the same desire. Tag was a little bit afraid of him, Charles knew. Other wolves might have let that fear cow them, but not Tag. Fierce joy and love of battle sparkled through the pack bond they shared. Wouldn’t it be fun? Tag’s wolf asked, and Brother Wolf agreed heartily.

Sometimes Brother Wolf was as crazy as all the rest of the wolves in his da’s pack.

“Another time,” Charles told Tag and Brother Wolf, both. “Someday when there isn’t a job to do.”

“Just for fun,” agreed Tag.

Anna looked back and forth between them and rolled her eyes.

“I guess since Hester fell for both Jonesy and me, she had a thing for dangerous men,” Tag told Anna. He grinned, but there was an edge to it that might have had something to do with the exchange with Charles, or it might have been grief. Or both. “Jonesy was all right back then,” he said. “Mostly. Mostly all right. But there was a dust-up with some of his people, some of whom died who shouldn’t have. He went from being wobbly at times to full out tilt-a-whirl. Hester took care of him.”

“I thought Hester was supposed to be wobbly, too,” said Anna. “Though she seemed pretty sharp today.”

“Hester is … was as stable as me,” Tag told her. “Well, no. Better than I am.” He looked at Charles for a moment, then shook his head. He tipped his chin toward Anna. “As sane as you are.”

“She tried hunting Da down last time he was here,” Charles said dryly. “Sane people usually don’t try that.”

Tag gave him an agreeable look under his brow. “Hester and Bran, they went out of their way to make Hester sound crazier than she was. Especially if Jonesy was having troubles, more than usual. Make sure that no one except he or I came up here. Keep everyone wary of Hester. Like all the wildlings, they were here on sufferance, and the Marrok’s power kept the other Gray Lords from bothering Jonesy. If Bran made them leave, they would have been on their own, and that would have been disastrous. For everyone.”

“Other Gray Lords,” Charles said.

Tag made a noise. “Well. Well. He wasn’t a Gray Lord, not really. Not by his choice, anyhow. But with his parentage, it wasn’t something he could easily get out of. And if any of the fae with an ounce of sense had talked to Jonesy this past fifty years, they’d have hunted him down and killed him. Had to. They take care of their problems, same as us.”

“Would they?” asked Anna. “Did they? Do you think this was something aimed at Jonesy because one of the fae found out he was here?”

Tag pursed his lips, but before he or Charles could say anything, Anna was already shaking her head. “No. Sorry. This was a werewolf thing—werewolves working with humans and technology.” She indicated Charles’s already mostly filled backpack. “A Gray Lord wouldn’t need technology to spy on someone.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Charles. “It’s too early to rule anything out. It doesn’t look like it from where we are standing, but that could change.”

“A Gray Lord might put all the cameras in place and zap them himself, just to watch us run around like half-wits,” muttered Tag. “Some of those guys are really off-kilter.”

Charles took pride in the self-control that allowed him not to respond to the maybe-unintentional irony in that statement. His self-control was aided by the short time it had to stay strong because, from somewhere out of sight, Asil called, “I’ve got another one up here for you techies. Está roto. What is it you said about the last one, Tag? Pretty borked. This one is pretty borked, too.”