Cry Wolf (Alpha & Omega #1)(39)

The door opened, and for a moment, Asil saw what Sarai had.

The woman in the doorway was slight-boned and fragile-looking. Her dark hair, usually unruly and curly, had been tamed and rolled into a bun, but the severe style only made her look younger. She was sixteen years old. Like Sarai she was dark-haired and dark-eyed, but unlike her foster mother, her features were refined and aristocratic.

"Mariposa, child," Sarai exclaimed. "What are you doing riding so far on your own? There are soldiers everywhere! If you wanted to visit, you should have told me and I'd have sent Hussan out for you to keep you safe."

It had been two hundred years since anyone had called him by that name, and the sound of it hurt his heart.

Mariposa's mouth tightened a little. "I didn't want to bother you. I'm safe enough." Even in his dreams he knew that her voice sounded odd, unlike herself: cold. His Mariposa, his little butterfly, had been emotional above all, dancing from anger to sullenness to sunshine with scarcely a breath between.

Sarai frowned at her. "No one is safe enough. Not in these times." But even as she scolded her, she enfolded the girl she'd reared as her own in her arms. "You've grown, child, let me look at you." She took two steps back and shook her head. "You don't look well. Are you all right? Linnea promised she'd take care of you...but these are dark times."

"I'm fine, Sarai," Mariposa told her, but the girl's voice was wrong, flat and confident-and she was lying.

Sarai frowned at her and put her hands on her hips. "You know better than to try lying to me. Has someone hurt you?"

"No," Mariposa replied in a low voice. Asil could feel her power amass around her, different now than it had been when they'd first sent her to her own kind for training. Her magic had been wild and hot, but this power was as dark and cold as her voice had been.

She smiled, and for a minute he could see the child she'd once been instead of the witch she had become. "I've learned a lot from Linnea. She taught me how to make sure no one can ever hurt me again. But I need your help."

The doorbell woke Asil up before he had to watch Sarai die again. He lay in his empty bed and smelled the sweat of terror and despair. His own.

* * * *

Charles made himself at home on the old wolf's porch swing and tried to lose himself in Indian time. It was a trick he'd never quite mastered-his grandfather had always grumbled that his father's spirit was too strong within him.

He knew Asil had heard the doorbell, he could hear the spit of the shower-and he'd never expect Asil to do him the courtesy of a quick appearance, especially when his visit had come at such an ungodly early hour in the morning. He and Anna would be getting a late start, but their prey wasn't a fish who was best caught in the dawn's light anyway. And this was more important to him than catching a rogue, even if that rogue was killing people.

He'd almost gone to his father instead of Asil after he'd talked to Heather at Bran's house. It was only the scent of his stepmother that kept him from knocking on Bran's bedroom door. This morning, Charles hadn't been up to the dance Leah would insist he perform. When she had driven him to being rude (and she would), his father would intervene; no one, not even one of his sons, was allowed to be disrespectful of the Marrok's mate. And then there would be no discussion anyway.

So he went to the only other person who might understand what had happened, why the bond between him and Anna wasn't complete: Asil, whose mate had been an Omega. Asil, who disliked him almost as much as Leah did, though for different reasons.

Brother Wolf thought that there might be a lot of amusement to be found in this morning's talk. Amusement or fighting-and the wolf relished them both.

Charles sighed and watched the fog of his breath disappear into the cold air. It might be that this was a wasted effort. Part of him wanted to give it more time. Just because the slow part of the mating process, when wolf accepted wolf, had been finished almost as soon as he first saw her, didn't mean that the other half would work so fast.

But something told him that there was more wrong than time alone could solve. And a man who had a werewolf for a father and a wisewoman for a mother knew when he ought to listen to his intuition.

Behind him, the door opened abruptly.

Charles continued to rock the porch swing gently back and forth. Encounters with Asil usually started with a power play of some sort.

After a few minutes, Asil walked past the porch swing to the railing that enclosed the porch. He hopped on it, one bare foot flat on the rail, leg bent. The other fell carelessly off to the side. He wore jeans and nothing else, and his wet hair, where it wasn't touching his skin, began to frost in the cold, matching the silver marks that decorated his back; Asil was one of the few werewolves Charles had seen who bore scars. The marks sliced into the back of his ribs where some other werewolf had damaged him-almost exactly, Charles realized, where his own wounds were. But Asil's scars had been inflicted by claws, not bullet holes.

He posed a lot, did Asil. Charles was never sure if it was deliberate or only an old habit.

Asil stared out at the woods beyond his house, still encased in the shadows of early morning before dawn, rather than looking at Charles. Despite the recent shower, Charles could smell fear and anguish. And he remembered what Asil had said at the funeral: that he'd been dreaming again.

"Sometimes my father can ward your sleep," Charles murmured.