Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(90)

She looked up at him, surprise on her face, as if she weren’t used to someone defending her.

“Of course,” said Bran. He sounded tired. “I should have thought of that. You are willing?”

Able is what he meant. It was a good question. Asil was very old, and his wolf was given to fits of rage, both of them nearing the end of their very long life. He tested his wolf, who seemed perfectly happy with an afternoon in the greenhouse with an unhappy adolescent.

“I think it shall be delightfully entertaining for both of us,” he told his Alpha.

Bran laughed. “All right. Bonne chance.”

Asil disconnected.

“Who was he wishing good luck? You or me?” She sounded wry.

“Knowing Bran, it could be either of us,” he said. “But it is probably you because he knows me. I do not need luck to deal with one young wolf.”

He put her to work deadheading roses because there wasn’t much she could do to screw it up. In his hothouse, with deadheading, he could keep roses all year long, though most of them he eventually let go dormant in the winter for the health of the plant.

It was early fall yet, so the rose section of his greenhouse was filled with flowers and heady perfume. He wished for the great gardens he’d grown in Spain, but most of his beauties would not live through a Montana winter without protection. He made do with the greenhouse and some hardy specimens planted near his house, where they were sheltered from the worst of the weather.

“Why roses?” Kara asked.

“Why not?” he said lightly as he mixed potting soil with his favorite concoction of rose food.

“Why not orchids or daisies or geraniums?” Her voice was thoughtful. “My mother has a greenhouse, and she grows all sorts of flowers.”

“I have many different flowers here,” he told her. “And I grow vegetables.”

“Most of the greenhouse—all of this room and half of the other one are all roses,” she said.

He opened his mouth to give her the easy answer, the one he used for everyone. He knew roses. It was better to be an expert in one thing than a dabbler in dozens. But he thought better of it.

“We all know about your trouble, do we not?” he said. “Your life has been spread out for total strangers—even though we are pack, we are still, right now, strangers—to look at and make judgement calls. You are not allowed secrets anymore—and we all should have things that we may keep to ourselves.”

Her mouth tightened. “It’s okay. Hard to hide that my parents are separated because my mother is scared of me, and my father is mad at her about it. Hard to hide what I am.”

“All true,” Asil said. “But here I think you need some secrets in return. So I will tell you something about me that no one else knows.”

“Okay.” She hesitated. “But what if I forget it’s a secret and tell someone?”

“It is not a harmful thing,” he said. “Only a tender thing that is hard for me to talk about. You are welcome to shout it on the streets—though I would rather you did not.”

She nodded.

“I am very old, and once I had a mate,” he told her. “She was everything to me. I would have filled her arms with jewels or gold if I could have. I would have destroyed the world for her—I was young and dramatic, you understand.”

Kara’s eyes widened. “You meant that. That you would have destroyed the world for her—it wasn’t just exaggeration. The Marrok is teaching me to smell when people lie or tell the truth.”

He gave her a formal nod. “Indeed. Being dramatic does not mean you do not have honest intentions. But destroying the world would not have saved her. She said, once, shortly before she died, that roses smelled like happiness. Whenever she smelled a rose, she thought of the day we met.” He brought a bloom up to his nose. “And after she told me that, I also think of that day when I smell roses.”

He cleared his throat and brought their conversation out of murky water. “And it is also true that with roses I am a genius, there are no others who breed roses such as mine. Why would I not choose to share my genius with others?”

“Okay,” she said. “And I won’t tell anyone the other reason. It is private.”

She was not a chatterer. The rest of the afternoon she worked quietly at whatever task he gave her. Someone, probably her mother, had taught her that, which made her more useful than he expected.

When Devon came, as he did sometimes, she didn’t look at the ragged old gaunt wolf or talk to him—though she kept a little closer to Asil than she had been. Devon settled on the ground with a sigh and didn’t look at Asil or Kara, either.

Devon was not as old as Asil, but like Asil, he was on his last years. If Asil were being honest, which he didn’t always choose to be, Devon was a lot closer to the end than he was. In all the time Asil had been in Montana, he’d never seen Devon use his human form. Like Asil, he sometimes shadowed the pack’s moon hunt, but he never participated. Devon’s presence in the pack spiritual weaving was dark and murky.

Several years ago, he’d started to come to Asil’s greenhouse. Usually, he’d sleep for an hour or two, but with Kara there, he just curled up and rested. His head turned away from them both.

“Bran says,” Asil told Kara as they began to clean up, “that all wolves need company. Devon is worried that he’ll hurt someone, so mostly he stays by himself. Me?” He told her grandly. “I am the Moor. He does not have to worry about hurting me. So he comes here.”