Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson #13)(9)

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About twenty minutes later, the pack began drifting out singly or in small groups. Adam stood by the door, touching each one as they left. Sometimes he’d hug them, sometimes it was a brush of his fingers on their cheeks or a pat on the shoulder. A good pack leader knew what his wolves needed.

I retreated to our table, sipping my third glass of icy limeade. I should be with Adam, but I wouldn’t be able to hide my tension. It was important to let the pack be happy tonight. A few of them looked at me, and I rubbed my cheek in answer. My headache was real enough, even if it wasn’t my problem.

Adam said something to Darryl, his second-in-command, that made the big man laugh. Auriele, Darryl’s mate, reached up and smacked Darryl on the top of his head, but she was laughing, too. Darryl hadn’t competed because he and Adam had set up the stations around the maze, but Auriele had. Her team had made it out in time but hadn’t found two of the ribbons.

Sherwood got up to leave. He limped a little on his way to the exit, proving that he’d given his all to the games in the maze. Usually, he was so graceful that most people wouldn’t notice that he had a prosthetic leg.

Rather than interrupt Adam’s conversation, Sherwood started past. Adam, without taking his attention off the other two wolves, caught Sherwood’s arm, holding him where he was. Sherwood stiffened, drawing back—and Adam didn’t let him go.

Nor, despite the quick, almost worried glance Darryl gave Sherwood, did Adam allow their good-byes to be hurried. When they left, Auriele was frowning.

Adam said something to Sherwood, and Five Finger Death Punch’s “A Little Bit Off” belting through the overhead speakers made sure no one else heard what it was. The big man stared at Adam with unfriendly eyes for a moment, then took a deep breath. He made a deliberate effort to relax his posture, gave Adam a quick nod, and turned back to stride toward me.

Showtime, I thought, taking a deep breath. I needed to be calm.

Sherwood’s limp was not in evidence as he prowled toward me. I did not think that was a good sign. Wolves don’t show weakness before their enemies. Not that anyone who knew him would think that having only one leg made Sherwood vulnerable in the slightest.

I’d never heard of a werewolf missing a limb before. Werewolves either die from injuries, or they heal them. If a leg gets severed, it should regrow.

In the case of a human who was crippled or missing a limb prior to becoming a werewolf, there are ways to fix that. Those ways are horrible and involve reinjuring the damaged but healed body part. I’d heard that those methods had been tried unsuccessfully on Sherwood.

Sherwood had been found in the laboratory of a collection of black witches who had been taken down by werewolves a few years ago. No one knew how long he’d been there or what had been done to him, but I’d been confined in such a place for a bit, and I still had nightmares.

His rescuers had brought Sherwood to Bran, who had forced him to shift back to his human form. Maybe because he’d spent too long as a wolf, maybe because the witches had done something to him, Sherwood had no memory of who or what he had been.

Bran had known Sherwood’s identity, but for his own Bran-reasons hadn’t seen fit to tell Sherwood, or anyone else. Instead, Bran had thrown up his hands, given the three-legged wolf (or one-legged man) a name, and sent Sherwood Post to us.

I’d first thought the move had been for Sherwood’s sake. Bran had told me that Sherwood had complained about the horrible Montana winters and asked for assignment to a pack that lived in a warmer climate. Most places have better climates than Aspen Creek, Montana.

After the last few months, months during which Sherwood had proven to have some useful and unusual skills, I was beginning to think Bran might have had other reasons for sending Sherwood to us.

Had Bran known what was going to happen here? Had he known our pack would become the center of fae political maneuvering before we did? Because Sherwood came to us not long before I’d made our territorial claim on the national news. How had Bran known? And if so, why hadn’t he warned us that he’d be forced to leave us (leave me, some childish part of me murmured) out in the cold without the protection of the Marrok and the whole of the wolves under his aegis?

If I thought too much about Bran’s planning capacity, I usually ended up with a headache. I didn’t need more of a headache, but I couldn’t keep myself from wondering.

Had Bran, knowing that we would need every advantage we could muster, given us Sherwood Post as a secret weapon? Sherwood wasn’t just any werewolf. He was witchborn. Maybe. Or at least he could manipulate magic with skill. His power didn’t smell corrupted, nor did it smell exactly like witchcraft. And he had a lot of magic for someone who wasn’t tainted by black magic.

I didn’t know quite what he was. But I did know he was someone, a Power whose name would be known. Someone a few of the really old wolves would probably know on sight. We had only a couple of those—Honey and Zack. Age is one of those things that you just don’t ask, but you get a feel for it after a while. I knew that Honey didn’t know who Sherwood was, but I was not so sure about Zack. Zack could keep secrets.

Bran might have given us Sherwood as a weapon, but Adam thought it was about to explode in our faces.

Sherwood slid out the chair Adam had been using and sat in it. There was a significance to that, just as Ben’s not sitting in it earlier had been significant. This left Sherwood facing me, his expression as grim as I felt.