Burn Bright (Alpha & Omega #5)(40)

Charles gave an involuntary laugh. “I’d have kept it quiet if I could have, but I suspect that people in your pack are getting calls from friends and acquaintances right now. It’s harder to keep things quiet than it was fifty years ago.”

“I hear you,” agreed Boyd with feeling. “Talk to you if I hear anything interesting.”

“Sounds good.” Charles disconnected. He started to get out of the truck, stopped, and picked up the phone.

“Da,” he said, as soon as the message program picked up. “I don’t know what your game is, but let me lay out for you what happened today with all the important pieces that I know.”





CHAPTER





6


Anna let herself in Bran’s house. She felt jittery and unsettled. She’d much rather have been walking into her own house, so she could deal with the stir of old memories without witnesses. Despite the lateness of the hour, the whole house was abuzz with the chatter of voices and the smell of woodsmoke. She’d known by the cars outside that everyone had apparently decided to congregate at the Marrok’s house instead of going home to sleep, like sensible people.

Even with a fair warning, she almost turned around and walked back out. Only the knowledge that Charles would think something was wrong kept her moving forward.

She wondered how often Bran wanted to turn around and walk away from it all. Wondered if that’s what he’d done.

The thought of Bran’s not coming back, of his leaving this pack and the wildlings—and well, all the werewolves in North America—in Charles’s hands was almost enough to spark a panic attack. Of course he was coming back. He was a control freak. There was no way that he would stay away very long.

Her quiet house would await her until he returned.

Bran’s home was always teeming with people and noise; only the bedroom suites and Bran’s office were private. She knew that in most packs, the house of the Alpha’s second was nearly as busy. But most of the pack, dangerous as they were, were afraid of Charles. Having a house that was a haven rather than the pack clubhouse was a blessing she hadn’t fully appreciated until this week.

She entered the large gathering space filled with pack members—who all quit talking and looked at her as she walked in. They knew. Someone must have overheard her when she told Charles about the dead werewolf she’d once known. They had added two and two and gotten four somehow—she could see it in their faces.

There wasn’t a wolf here, not excluding Leah, who wouldn’t throw themselves between her and anyone who would harm her. Some of that was because she was Omega, but some of it was that they were her friends and family. There were compensations for living elbow to elbow with other wolves.

The problem was that she didn’t need rescuing, except maybe from them. The force of their concern, of their knowing that she had been a victim made her feel like a victim again.

“Hey, Anna,” said Kara cheerfully. Her rescuer appeared from the direction of the kitchen with a plate filled with peanut-butter cookies. “Leah and I made cookies.”

The teenager’s face was nearly expressionless except for the wry laughter in her eyes. As the youngest werewolf in the pack, Kara had dealt with her share of overprotectiveness. “There was some dough in the fridge, but Leah said she’d rather have peanut-butter cookies.”

Anna rolled her eyes. Passive-aggressive did not even approach describing Leah’s usual modus operandi. She regretted the gesture instantly—-partially because she’d sworn to herself that she wouldn’t let Leah bring her down to her level. But mostly because, mid-eyeroll, Leah walked around the corner into the far side of the living room and caught Anna.

Leah raised a superior eyebrow.

Anna shook her head at Leah and took one of the cookies off the plate because they smelled good, she was hungry, and Kara had started to look uncertain. Kara liked Leah, but she wasn’t unaware of Leah’s games. She also knew that usually Anna was more inclined to laugh about them than be offended.

There was no chocolate in the cookie, but it was good anyway. Especially since the whole cookie thing had broken up the way every wolf in the room had been focused on Anna’s history as a victim.

“Yum. Thank you,” Anna said—and Kara gave her a relieved grin.

Tag came up and picked a cookie off Kara’s plate. “Thanks, a leanbh, I’ll take another. Your cookies are always worth a second visit.” He was, Anna thought, deliberately unclear about whether his endearment was aimed at Leah or Kara.

He took a big bite and looked down at Anna. He was taller than Charles, who was very tall, and outweighed her mate by fifty pounds of muscle—and still the most impressive thing about him was his hair. Bright orange, it covered his head and hung nearly to his waist in strands of dreadlocks. His beard was a shade darker and exploded exuberantly down his chest in a mass that the members of ZZ Top could only envy.

“For the record,” he told her gently, in the light tenor that always seemed wrong for such a beast of a man. “We’ll not stand for any to hurt you.”

And so he undid all the good distracting the peanut-butter cookies had achieved.

Tag gave a nod to the rest of the room, and there was one of those low growls that, until she’d become a werewolf, Anna associated with groups of men watching their favorite football team when the official makes a bad call. Sage, perched on the back of the couch next to the fireplace, paused in eating her cookie to give her a grimace.