Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(75)

He ignored her impatience because she wasn’t important just now—Leo was.

Charles met the Alpha’s eyes and said, “The Marrok has sent me here to ask you why you sold your child into bondage.”

Clearly, it wasn’t the question Leo had expected. Isabelle had thought it was Anna, and Charles hadn’t disabused her of the notion. They would deal with Anna, too, but his father’s question was a better starting place because it was unexpected.

“I have no children,” said Leo.

Charles shook his head. “All your wolves are your children, Leo, you know that. They are yours to love and feed, to guard and protect, to guide and to teach. You sold a young man named Alan MacKenzie Frazier. To whom and why?”

“He wasn’t pack.” Leo spread his arms, palms outward. “It is expensive to keep so many wolves happy here in the city. I needed the money. I am happy to give you the name of the buyer, though I believe he was only acting as a middleman.”

True. All true. But Leo was being very careful how he worded his reply.

“My father would like the name and the method you used to contact him.”

Leo nodded at one of the handsome men, who passed Charles with his eyes on the ground, though he spared an instant to glare at Anna. She flattened her ears at him and growled.

He had been a poor influence on her, Charles thought unrepentantly.

“Is there anything more I can help you with?” Leo asked politely.

They had, all of Leo’s wolves, used Isabelle’s trick with perfume, but Charles had a keen nose and Leo was . . . sad.

“You haven’t updated your pack membership for five or six years,” Charles said, wondering at Leo’s reaction. He’d been met with defiance, anger, fear, but never with sadness.

“I thought you might catch that. Did you and Anna compare lists? Yes, I had something of a coup attempt I had to put down a little harshly.”

Truth, but, again, not all of it. Leo had a lawyer’s understanding of how to be careful with the truth and use it to lie by leading a false trail.

“Is that why you killed all the women of your pack? Did they all rebel against you?”

“There weren’t so many women, there never are.”

Again. There was something he wasn’t catching. Leo hadn’t been the wolf who had attacked young Frazier—it had been Justin.

Leo’s wolf was back. He handed Charles a note with a name and phone number written in purple ink.

Charles tucked the note in his pocket and then nodded. “You are right. There are not enough females—so those we have ought to be protected, not killed. Did you kill them yourself?”

“All the women? No.”

“Which of them did you kill?”

Leo didn’t answer, and Charles felt his wolf perk up as the hunt commenced.

“You didn’t kill any of the women,” Charles said. He looked at the model-perfect men and at Justin, who was beautiful in an unfinished sort of way.

Leo was protecting someone. Charles looked up at Isabelle, who loved beautiful men. Isabelle, who was older than old Willie O’Shaughnessy had been when he’d begun to go crazy.

He wondered how long Leo had known she was mad.

He looked back at the Alpha. “You should have asked the Marrok for help.”

•   •   •

Leo shook his head. “You know what he would have done. He’d have killed her.”

Charles would dearly have loved to see what Isabelle was doing, but he couldn’t afford to take his eyes off Leo: a cornered wolf was a dangerous wolf.

“And how many have died instead? How many of your pack are lost? The women she killed for jealousy, and their mates you had to kill to protect her? The wolves who rebelled at what the two of you were doing? How many?”

Leo raised his chin. “None for three years.”

Rage raised its ugly head. “Yes,” Charles agreed, very softly. “Not since you had your little bullyboy attack a defenseless woman and Change her without her consent. A woman who you then proceeded to brutalize.”

“If I’d protected her, Isabelle would have hated her,” Leo explained. “I forced Isabelle to protect her instead. It worked, Charles. Isabelle has been stable for three years.”

Until she’d come to Anna’s today and realized that Charles was interested in Anna. Isabelle had never liked anyone paying attention to other females when she was around.

He risked a glance and saw that though she hadn’t moved from the mantel, Isabelle’s legs were back to dangling down so she could hop down quickly if she wanted to. Her eyes had changed and watched with pale impatience for the violence she knew was to come. She licked her lips and rocked her weight from side to side in her eagerness.

Charles felt sick at the waste of it all. He turned his attention back to the Alpha. “No deaths because you have an Omega to keep her calm. And because there are no females to compete with except for Anna, who doesn’t want any of your wolves, not after they raped her on your orders.”

“It kept Anna alive,” Leo insisted. “Kept them both alive.” He ducked his head, an appeal for protection. “Tell your father that she is stable. Tell him I’ll see she doesn’t harm anyone else.”

“She tried to kill Anna, today,” Charles said gently. “And if she hadn’t . . . She is insane, Leo.”