Burn Bright (Alpha & Omega #5)(37)

“Maybe Hester knew who or what they were looking for,” Anna said soberly. “But she can’t tell us now.”

“Yes,” said Charles, very softly. “We know they were asking for information that was important enough to step up what has previously been a long game. We know they were asking about the wildlings, and they don’t know that. We’ll find out who their agent is, then we’ll use that person to hunt them all down.”

Anna inhaled and nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Okay. Yes.”

? ? ?

BOYD HAMILTON CALLED as they were pulling into Bran’s house. More specifically, he called Charles’s phone. Anna had texted him the photo from her phone.

Anna looked at Charles’s phone and gave an exasperated sigh. She turned off the truck and turned to the man who held her heart.

“I survived,” she told him firmly. “I don’t need to be coddled as though I’m some fragile doll. I can talk to Boyd—who never did me any harm anyway—and not dissolve into a spineless puddle.”

Charles gave her a look. If he were anyone else, she’d have been sure he had practiced those looks in the mirror: they were too effective to be naturally occurring. But he didn’t worry about things like that—he didn’t need to. Scary was easy—it was not-scary that was sometimes a problem for him.

She raised her eyebrow to show that she wasn’t impressed.

He almost smiled but caught it before it was more than a softening at the corner of his eyes.

“Maybe it’s not about you,” he told her. “Maybe it’s about a man who failed to protect you from Leo when he should have. If you want to punish him, you could answer my phone and make him tell you all about this dead man who he also did not protect you from.”

“He couldn’t do anything,” she said hotly, unable to let the attack on Boyd go on without defending him. Boyd had been the key to her getting out of Chicago, to her finding Charles. “Leo was his Alpha—and he kept everyone under his control. Boyd was not dominant enough to challenge him or disobey a direct order. Boyd protected people when he could. Without him, more bad things would have happened to people who couldn’t protect themselves.”

“You really believe that,” Charles said, as if he didn’t. “Good for you.” He sighed, his gaze focused somewhere in the darkness outside. Another car pulled into the Marrok’s driveway, pack members coming to gather with the others. That they were coming here instead of going home spoke to the unease that Hester’s death had caused.

The wolves who got out looked away from Charles’s truck with studious care.

Charles spoke after they were alone in the darkness again. “I sometimes think that you could be right. But mostly I believe that any dominant worth his hide protects those who cannot protect themselves. I expect that’s how Boyd looks at things, too.”

She, personally, had quit thinking about her first pack a long time ago. From the sound of it, she had been the only one. She used one of Charles’s grunts to express herself.

“A dominant wolf protects his own with his life, Anna,” Charles told her. “That means from everyone. If he felt Leo was too much for him, Boyd had Da’s number. He could have called it at any time.”

“He couldn’t disobey Leo,” she said doggedly—she’d watched him try. “Leo forbade it.”

“His wolf couldn’t disobey a direct order,” agreed Charles, so mildly that Anna flinched even though it wasn’t directed at her. She knew that mild tone.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he spoke again, the killing quiet was further away, and his eyes had returned to their usual almost-black.

“We are more than our wolves, Anna,” he said. “Boyd is also a man—and the man is in charge. He could have disobeyed by shutting down his wolf. It would have been difficult, but he is not a newly Changed wolf. He has the control to do it. He just didn’t try.”

She bit her lip. Did that change things? Knowing that Boyd could have stepped in earlier? No, she thought, with something approaching relief. There had been things that she could have done, too—if only she had known. One of the things she’d learned from being a wolf in Bran’s pack was that all the ability in the world did her no good if she didn’t know how to use it.

“He knows better now,” her mate continued in a low growl, as if he’d been following her thought path.

“Charles?” she asked, honestly unhappy. Charles wasn’t exactly tactful. Being in Leo’s pack had scarred her, no doubt, but it hadn’t been a picnic for anyone else, either. Boyd had been as close to broken as she had been, though she hadn’t seen it at the time. Boyd didn’t need her forceful mate telling him how he’d failed his pack—he already believed it.

“Not me,” Charles said. “It was Da. He educated him—then he put Boyd in charge of the pack. Boyd wasn’t strong enough to control the territory, not in his condition, especially when that pack was so broken. But Da thought that Boyd would heal better if he were put in charge for a while, so Da made it happen.” His phone had long since quit ringing. “As it turns out, Boyd rose to the occasion, and Da left him in charge.”

“That sounds … odd,” said Anna, feeling off balance. “Bran is all about the good of the many outweighing the good of the one.”