Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(93)

“Is she in danger?” asked Asil, trying to keep the menace out of his voice. Kara couldn’t afford for him to challenge the Marrok over her, not unless she was truly at risk.

“Not right now,” said Bran after a moment. He sounded exhausted. Asil thought about how he had not been able to face all the impending grief coming—and how the Marrok had to be in the center of it. His rules about Changing had saved countless lives—and probably the werewolves as a species—but it had not been without personal cost.

Bran sighed. “She’s just a baby. But unless she can control her shift and her wolf, I’m going to have to take her out with the new wolves—and that’s going to mean trouble. She’s too dominant to go without challenge, and she’s too young to prevail.”

Asil hissed at the thought of his Kara out in the First Hunt with a double handful of new werewolves out of control and ready to kill each other and anyone else who got in their way. Bran’s rules were good ones—they gave wolves a cage to protect themselves with. That did not mean those rules were without cost.

“Send her out tomorrow, too,” Asil said. “Tell her that I’ll be home around sunset and she can come to me for help if she needs it.”

“No,” said Bran. “She has school tomorrow.”

“This is more important than school.”

Bran sighed. “It is. I’ll send her out, but she needs to do the shift on her own. I might have Leah mention that you’ll be out doing things until sunset tomorrow.”

•   •   •

She wasn’t as frightened when she showed up the next night. He took her to his roses, where she tried to change back to human—tried very hard. But only with his help could she regain her human shape.

She was examining the sweats she wore doubtfully (today’s were gray and had a hole in the knee) when a car pulled up outside. She stiffened and gave him a panicked look.

“Peace,” he told her.

And Sage came in the door a moment later, looking as though she’d stepped off a walkway in Paris instead of a breezy autumn in near-wilderness Montana. She was tall, cool, and elegant with sun-streaked hair and warm blue eyes, and if he weren’t so old and fragile, he’d have been courting her as none of the idiots in the pack seemed able to do properly.

“Hello, hello,” she said. “How is my favorite evil monster who wants to die?”

Asil made a point of looking over his shoulder and all around before saying, “I don’t know. Had you asked where the handsomest, most noble creature on earth was, I could have told you. Had you asked where the most dangerous wolf in all the world was, I could have told you that as well. But there are no monsters here.”

She grinned at him. “Well, kitten,” she said to Kara, who was watching them openmouthed. “When I told him I was headed up to the big house tonight, Bran asked if I’d mind picking you up and save his Nobleness a trip.”

“Sure,” said Kara.

He closed the door behind them and put his forehead against it. His keen ears picked up a conversation he was not meant to overhear.

“He really likes you,” Kara said. “Really, really.”

“Well,” Sage’s voice was dry. “That’s not news, sugar. But he won’t do anything about it until it dawns on him that though he’s been waiting more than fifteen years for this famous ‘madness’ that is going to break him and turn him into a ravening monster—it just might not happen.”

“Fifteen years,” said Kara.

“Asil,” said Sage clearly, “needs to get over himself.”

Asil smiled at the acid tone that told him that she knew he was listening in. Clearly, she deserved him. If this were fifty years ago, he’d hunt her down and take her as his.

•   •   •

For a week, he managed to stay away from his home until sunset. When he got home, Kara would be waiting, a smallish half-grown werewolf. First she waited by the door of his greenhouse—but then Devon came and waited with her, his nose turned away and his eyes shut. After that, she came to his front porch and lay on the mat because Devon would not intrude so far into Asil’s territory.

On the seventh day, while she got dressed, he cut a few long-stemmed roses and put them in a pretty vase. Four of the peachy-colored ones because they smelled the best, and one (because that bush had only one rose that wasn’t too old) that was a deep red with a hint of blue or purple along the edge of each petal.

“Why are you bringing that?” Kara asked him in the truck when he gave her the vase to hold.

“Because a week is a unit of time,” he told her. “As in, let’s give this a week and see what will happen.”

She touched the rose petal sadly. “You think he’s going to be disappointed.”

“I never make predictions about other people’s responses,” Asil lied easily. She was not experienced enough to see through his lies, and he was happy to soften her life with them where he could.

The Marrok met them at his door.

“I need to see you both in my study,” he said, not unkindly.

Asil handed him the vase, and Bran took it—a bit bemused by the gift. Which is why Asil had brought it. He would not, would not defy the Marrok. He needed to be in this pack, so that when his wolf finally broke, there would be someone strong enough to hunt him down and kill him before his body count grew too high. Sage might disagree, but Asil knew his own fate. But that did not mean he intended to sit back and watch what might come. He would request leniency in such a way as not to challenge Bran’s authority.