Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(92)

He’d never seen her take her wolf’s shape when it hadn’t been forced upon her by the moon’s call. Just last week, he’d suggested that the Marrok encourage her to do so because she wasn’t having much luck controlling her wolf without a more dominant wolf around. But the moon’s call made the wolf more difficult to deal with. Maybe she would have better results if she tried when the moon was in hiding.

“I told her that,” Bran had responded. “We’ve been trying to get her to attempt a change, but unless the moon forces her, she won’t do it.”

“You can make her do it,” Asil had told him.

Here, he thought, kneeling down to pull the pitiful, half-grown wolf against the warmth of his body, is the result of your meddling.

“Can’t change back?” he asked.

She moaned at him and shivered again. Partly, he thought, it had worked. It wasn’t a wolf who was looking up at him with such misery. Kara was in charge.

“No worries,” he told her. “You can do it.” He could force her change, and he would if he had to. But a forced change—like what the Marrok had done—hurt even worse than when the moon called the wolf from human shape. Better if she managed it herself.

He coaxed her into his rose room, where the sweet scent of his mate’s favorite flower filled the air with memories, and sat on the dirt floor with his back to the foot-high stone wall that edged his raised rosebush beds.

He patted the ground beside him, and she curled up in a miserable ball, wiggling and restless until finally she put her muzzle on his leg and sighed. He put a hand on her back and sang to her.

He didn’t have the Marrok’s voice—at various times Bran Cornick had made his living as a bard—but he could carry a tune. He crooned a child’s lullaby his father had sung to him. It wasn’t Spanish, but African, a Moorish tune his father had learned from his grandmother. Like Asil, it was old and worn, the words in a language that no one, to his knowledge, had spoken for a thousand years. Even he had forgotten what the words meant, but the song was for children. Its intent was to let them know that it was the job of adults to keep the young ones safe from harm. When he was finished with the song, he switched to stories he had told his own children; maybe she’d heard them from her parents in happier times.

She relaxed against him—and he thought she was more than half-asleep. But she was still caught in wolf form. Instead of letting her scare herself again, he coaxed her wolf to let the girl back out. It was still a use of force, of the dominance of his wolf over hers, but it wasn’t brutal or abrupt.

When she began changing back, he slid out from under her and quit touching her because he didn’t want to hurt her—and touching something made the shift hurt more. Quietly, because she was caught up in the change, he slipped out to his house to gather sweats for her to change into. It took her the better part of a half hour to emerge from the rose room garbed in clothes that were much too big for her.

“Thank you,” she told him, eyes averted. “I couldn’t change back. He called me to his study, made me change, then pushed me outside. Told me to come home in my human skin. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t change back.”

“Miss Kara,” he said after weighing his words. Not from him would she get any criticism of the Marrok, especially when he’d suggested it to Bran in the first place. There was no reason for him to be angry with Bran—though he was. “My greenhouse is flattered to have been your refuge from the storm.”

“I failed,” she said.

“Did you?” he asked.

She gave him an irritated look, and he smiled. “Let’s get you home, shall we?”

He carried her out to his car because although he had sweats she could wear, he didn’t have shoes. He handed her the leftovers from his vegan-restaurant excursion. She ate the food as fast as she could move fingers to mouth.

He drove up to the sprawling manor that was Bran Cornick’s house. Before he turned off the engine, Leah was there to collect his charge. She didn’t look at him—he’d scared her once, and she had learned her lesson about flirting with the Moor. She smiled at Kara, though, and his irritation with his Alpha’s mate died away. He waited until Kara was safely in the house before he drove off.

He hadn’t quite pulled into his driveway before his phone rang.

“Asil,” said the Marrok’s voice. He wasn’t happy.

“Bran,” replied Asil, who was still fighting down his own temper.

“It does her no good for you to help her to change. She has to be able to do it herself,” Bran said.

Asil took a deep breath and turned off his truck before he answered.

“When she came to my greenhouse and asked me to help, she was in full control of her wolf—even though she was scared because she couldn’t change back.”

“She has to do better than that,” snapped Bran uncharacteristically. He knew as well as Asil that it was a big step for her to be in control. It was a sign that she had finally begun accepting what she was—and it was a bigger sign that she’d be one of the ones who made it.

The people who would be Changed a couple of days before the next full moon would have one year to prove they could control their wolf—which included changing at will from one form to the other. Those who failed would be killed—no one could afford to have werewolves who couldn’t be trusted. Especially not now that the werewolves had revealed themselves to the humans. It was imperative that the public not know just how dangerous werewolves really were.