Dead Heat (Alpha & Omega #4)(38)

“We may have known each other for only four months,” she continued. “But those have been four months of sixteen-, sometimes eighteen-hour days. I know you, Charles Smith.”

You don’t even know my name, he thought in despair. And I don’t dare give it to you. He wanted to take what she offered, wanted to drown himself in her until he wasn’t alone anymore.

“I am not who you think I am,” he told her. I am a liar. I have lied because I could not bear for you to turn away from me.

“If you tell me you’re a murderer,” she said stoutly, “I’d say that whoever you killed deserved it. If you tell me you are a thief, I’d not believe it. Thieves don’t work as hard as you do, and I should know. My dad was a thief and a murderer—he killed my mother as surely as if he’d shot her. I know evil, Charles. And I know a good man when I see him.”

His father’s rules rang in his ears. No one must know what you are. Charles had lived long enough, seen enough, to know that his father was right—and still. She thought that he was a good man when he wasn’t a man at all.

“You know a good man, do you?” he asked, feeling anger sweep up and make him light-headed. “Do you?” asked Brother Wolf, hurt and enraged that he would be the cause of such tragedy. Brother Wolf loved her, too, but he knew that she could not love him. Would not love him. “Then see me, Margaret. See me and tell me again that you love me.”

In despair and anger then—knowing what would happen because even though she did not know him, he did know her—he did what he’d sworn he would not do. He let Brother Wolf’s shape take him, glorying in the odd quirk of magic that let him shift swiftly, faster now because it had been so long since he’d allowed Brother Wolf to stand out in the real world.

Maggie froze. For a moment there was no expression on her face at all, and then it went blank with fear. She screamed and stumbled away from him, falling to the ground and curling into a ball. Not physical fear, but fear of what he was, what he might turn her into. The Navajo had more experience than most with the ugly side of magic.

Joseph barreled out the front door and saw Maggie and Charles. He’d always been quick; he took in everything at a glance. Joseph, the son of a werewolf, knew what Charles was, had known what Charles was from the first.

But Joseph was also the son of his mother, who had been so frightened when she found out what it was she had married that she’d left them and gone back to the reservation. Joseph understood the terror that had stricken Maggie silent, too.

Joseph knelt and gathered Maggie into his arms and made soothing noises. She quieted, her head buried against his shoulder so she couldn’t see the wolf. Joseph looked up at Charles.

“Give her some time,” he counseled. “Let her see that the wolf is still you.”

If he’d listened, maybe his life would have been different, and so would Joseph’s. But he hadn’t listened; he’d left at a run, knowing that she’d be safe with Joseph. When he came back a year later, he had not been surprised to learn that Joseph and Maggie were married.

“Did you ever think about what might have happened if you hadn’t left that night?” said Joseph.

It didn’t surprise him that Joseph understood what Charles had been thinking about. Dying left a man very close to the whole spirit of the world, and odd things made it through. As long as he didn’t draw Joseph’s attention to it, Joseph wouldn’t even notice.

“Yes,” Charles said.

Joseph laughed. “You ever lie?”

“Not unless lives are on the line,” he told his old friend.

“Yeah, I remember a few of those times,” he agreed. “Now that you mention them.” There was a natural pause. “The stories I’ve heard about you and Anna—they tell me that you’ve learned to fight for what you want.”

Charles let that ride for a moment, trying to frame the truth. “I think I’ve learned what I wanted. Maggie could never have loved Brother Wolf the way we needed her to. In a stupid way, I think that’s why I wanted her so badly.”

“Man, that’s twisted,” said Joseph. “You loved her because she only loved your human half.” He thought a moment. “Is that, like, sibling rivalry? Does that mean you have a ménage à trois now, you old rogue, you?”

Charles found himself smiling. “Maybe à quatre, don’t you think? Anna has a wolf side, too.”

Joseph fell asleep as Charles drove up to the house. He slept while Charles carried him up to the door. Maggie opened it before he needed to worry about how to get through it without waking Joseph up. She followed him silently up to Joseph’s apartment and watched as he tucked Joseph in. The host of medical equipment had been pulled to the side of the room and stood like a grim, silent reminder that this chance to talk with his old friend was a finite thing.

“You don’t sleep in here?” he asked. Because this room was all Joseph.

“He sent me away,” Maggie told him. “Right after the cancer came back. Told me I needed my sleep.” She leaned against the wall and looked at Joseph. “He probably meant it. But the pain makes sleep very hard for him to find; mostly he dozes because he can’t really sleep. I move in my sleep, I always have. He can’t sleep with me in his bed.” She pushed off the wall and walked to the bed.