Dead Heat (31 page)

It was Hosteen who said, “That was a betrayal of everything an Alpha is supposed to be.”

“Yes,” said Anna. “I’m telling you this story, not as a one-upmanship kind of thing.” She dropped her voice and added a little radio announcer. “You think you have it bad, you have it easy compared to me.” And then returned to her own voice. “Because that isn’t true. You have it different. But you need to know that you aren’t alone; I do understand what you’re going through.”

She set down her fork because eating was beyond her. “Yesterday you woke up and were just grateful you were alive. That your kids were okay. Tonight you are beginning to understand the price that you are going to pay for that. You aren’t entirely sure it is worth it.”

“Dying is easy,” said Hosteen. “Living is brutal.”

“There are a lot of downsides,” Anna said. “You probably know what most of those are.” She wasn’t going to enumerate them. Nothing like taking a person who feels bad already and telling them how horrible their life might be to turn mild depression into suicidal. “The people who go to Bran to be Changed know what they’re getting into and they have time to make a choice. You and I? We didn’t get time to make a choice. But the downsides are only there because you’re alive. You have people who love you. And you have what will hopefully be a very long time to come to terms with what you are.”

Under the table, Charles put his hand on her knee. She swallowed hard. “You’re going through a period of mourning what you once were because there is no going back. Just keep in mind that there are good things, too.”

“One of the good things is that you don’t have to be afraid of the dark witches anymore,” said Hosteen casually.

Chelsea stiffened and looked up at him.

“You’re not dumb. Of course you are afraid of them.” He turned his coffee cup around between his hands, watching it instead of Chelsea. “If you’re born a witch and you don’t want to kill and torture for power, then you’re ripe for being killed and tortured yourself. That’s why you worked so hard to keep what you are secret. Kage worried for you. He didn’t talk to me about it, but he told Joseph, who came to me. I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t offer my help.”

“Maybe I am a dark witch,” she said hostilely.

“No,” said Hosteen, raising his eyes. “I can smell a dark witch from a mile away. No. You were hiding. But now you belong to a pack, and our pack can and will protect you from the dark witches.”

“Why now?” she asked, her blue-gray eyes lightening to near-Arctic white, like those of Charles’s brother, Samuel. “Wasn’t I worthy of protection when I was just Kage’s wife?”

“Yes,” said Hosteen slowly. “But I was not worthy of protecting you.”

“What does that even mean?” asked Chelsea, pushing away from the table abruptly. She stood up, clenching her hands into fists.

“It means that I am a stubborn old wolf,” Hosteen said. “And maybe I am more interested in my own opinions than listening to my grandson, who is a smart man. That is my failure. Perhaps one of the things that will be a good thing about your becoming a werewolf is that it has changed me, too. And that will mean our family is more welcoming, as it should have been from the beginning.”

“I can’t think,” said Chelsea, breathing hard. “Why can’t I think?”

“Mom?”

Anna had been so distracted by Chelsea that she hadn’t heard Max until he spoke from the doorway.

Chelsea turned wild eyes to her son and fell to the ground, convulsing.

Anna got up and put her hand on Max’s shoulder to keep him from going to Chelsea. “It will be okay,” she said. “But she wouldn’t want you to see this.”

Chelsea cried out, her voice hoarse and guttural.

“Mom,” Max whispered, resisting Anna.

She quit trying to move him, just put her shoulder between him and his mother so he couldn’t get to her without going over Anna.

“Changing hurts,” Anna told him. “It hurts every time, but the first time is the worst. Almost all werewolves awaken from their first change completely out of control. There is nothing you can do to help or stop it. And I guarantee you that with Hosteen and Charles in there, your mother will be fine.” She waited and said, “You need to be out of here before she changes. If she hurts you, it will break her.”

He stood firm for a moment more, muscles twitching with the desire to help. Then he nodded once and let Anna tug him out of the room. She took him into the big living room and led him to the far side of that before she let him stop. They listened to Chelsea’s pain from there for a few minutes, Max flinching and fisting his hands as the noises his mother made changed from human to something else.

“Would it be easier with three werewolves in there?” he asked.

“You mean me?” Anna shook her head. “Not while she’s changing. Charles will call me in when she’s done. My wolf has a calming influence on other werewolves. Right now she needs to keep her fighting edge. As soon as she’s found the wolf shape, I’ll be more useful.”

Someone knocked at the front door just as Chelsea’s voice roared out again. Before Anna could decide how to handle visitors, the door opened and Wade started in at a run.

He saw Anna and Max and paused in his dash.

“Chelsea?” he asked Anna.

She nodded. “In the kitchen.”

Wade glanced at her. “Are you coming in?”

“No,” she told him. “We’ve found that having an Omega too close slows down the first change.”

He grimaced; no one wanted to slow down a change. Then he sucked in a breath. “Omega?” He blinked at her a moment. “That’s what it was.” He gave her a smile. “Thanks. I’ve never had such a weird reaction to a wolf before.”

Chelsea made another noise and he bolted for the kitchen. After fifteen minutes or so, the sounds all died down.

“Have you seen Hosteen in his wolf form?” Anna asked Max, though her eyes were directed at the kitchen. She had a vivid memory of how alone she’d felt the first few months she’d been a wolf.

“Yes,” he said.

“Scare you?”

“Not after the first time,” he said.

She turned to him. “Truthfully. No judgment at all on you. Even a normal wolf makes most people want to find a door to hide behind, no matter how often they see them.”

He smiled. “He’s beautiful,” he said, and there was no fear in him.

“Anna,” Charles called out quietly.

“That’s my cue,” she told Max. “Wait here and if everything is okay, we’ll introduce you to your mother’s wolf.”

When Anna got back to the kitchen, Chelsea had pushed her butt into the corner between the fridge and the wall. Her head was half-lowered, but her nose kept wrinkling into a snarl.

Like Charles’s older brother, Samuel, she was icy white with bluish-white eyes, but the tips of her ears and her eyes were lined in the same medium brown that covered her belly and the underside of her tail.

Wade was the closest to her. He was on one knee with his head bowed. Yeah, Anna had been pretty sure Chelsea was going to come out dominant. They were going to have issues trying to put her down on the bottom of the pecking order with the females who had no wolf mate to gain rank. Not when the pack’s second was already acknowledging her dominance over him.

“Hey, Chelsea,” Anna said cheerfully. Silver eyes met hers and the snarl slid off the new wolf’s face. Anna kept talking. “It’s okay if things are a little mixed up right now. Just wait a second and it will all come back.” She walked in front of Wade and let her wolf bring the tension in the room down.

“Having warning doesn’t help at all,” said Hosteen.

“Sure it does,” Charles said. “You aren’t giggling this time.”

Hosteen made an odd noise, a half growl, half laugh that attracted Chelsea’s attention. The new wolf’s hackles rose and she let out an unhappy whine.

The Alpha left his post leaning against the sink and walked up to Chelsea. He took her muzzle in his hand, meeting her eyes and holding them. If he worried that she had insufficient control to keep her wolf from biting him, Anna couldn’t see it.

Slowly, shivering with stress, Chelsea dropped to the ground and rolled over, giving Hosteen the unprotected vulnerability of her belly. He held her there a moment, then let her up.

“Good,” he told her. “Begin as you mean to go on, Chelsea. You are in charge and the wolf must listen to you.”

“Max is waiting,” said Anna. “Do you think it’s safe, Hosteen?”

Chelsea gave a panicked yip and scrambled back into the corner.

“Chelsea,” Hosteen said. “I promise you won’t hurt him.”

She held his eyes for three heartbeats.

“It will be okay,” he said.

She dropped her eyes and took two steps away from the corner, still looking unhappy.

Max, summoned by Anna’s call, stopped in the doorway, and for a moment Anna thought it was going to be bad. But then he grinned. “Wow, Mom. Kage is going to have a heart attack, you came out so pretty. He’s going to have to carry a silver-loaded shotgun to keep off the wolves in Hosteen’s pack. You’ve gotta see this in a mirror. Come on, there’s a full-length one in the main bathroom.”

They had about an hour of light left when they got to the barn. Anna was tired and stressed. She was pretty sure that Charles was in worse shape even though he didn’t show it.

Hosteen had taken a good look around the kitchen and decided that what everyone needed to “heal the spiritual wounds of the day” was a ride out into the desert. That he could deliver phrases like that and not sound hokey was impressive, Anna decided.

Chelsea came down with them, running beside the four-wheeler with Charles, who was also in his wolf form. They’d driven around back this time, where there were tie posts outside the back of the barn. Four horses were tacked up with western saddles. A harried-looking Teri was hastily brushing out one horse’s tail with a hairbrush.

“New dogs?” she asked Hosteen as they all disembarked from the four-wheeler, looking at Chelsea. “Sure are pretty.”

Pack magic let people see what they expected to see. Otherwise werewolves could never have stayed hidden as long as they had.

“One new dog—the white female. The red one belongs to Anna, our guest,” Hosteen told the woman.

“What’s her name?”

“We haven’t decided yet. Would you go get Kage? I’ll take over here. We’ll put them away properly when we’re done.”

Teri gave him a bright smile. “Sure thing. He said to tell you he’d be right out, but I’ll let him know you’re here anyway.”

As soon as she disappeared inside the barn, Charles returned to human form, a little more slowly than was usual for him. This was his second change of the day, Anna thought. If he had to do another one, it would be slower yet. Charles stretched, trying to loosen cramped muscles.

“Chelsea,” said Hosteen. “The horses won’t care as long as you don’t stare them in the eye for very long. If you make eye contact, they recognize you as a threat.” He turned to Anna. “Let me introduce you to Portabella while we’re waiting for Kage.”

Chelsea stayed close to Hosteen as they walked over to the horses. As promised, none of the horses seemed particularly bothered by her.

“Here she is,” Hosteen said, then stood back and let Anna look.

Portabella was a big mare. Anna had to stand on tiptoes to look over her back. Her color was not dark enough to be black, but very dark just the same. Bay, Anna thought, though the characteristic black points—legs, mane, and tail—were really very close to the same color as her body. A white streak dropped from a star between her big eyes to another splash of white on her nose. She was polished and beautiful. Even Anna, amateur that she was, could see that she was spectacular.

Anna couldn’t help but put her hands out to touch and found herself stroking steel clothed in silk. She ran her hands down the horse’s legs, and the mare lifted her front hoof to Anna’s asking. She wasn’t shod and the bottom of her feet looked—like the bottom of a horse’s foot. She laughed inwardly at herself, because she didn’t know enough for the examination to tell her anything except that the mare would stand quietly while an idiot ran hands all over her.

Somewhat to her own surprise, Anna’s fingers found a bump on her neck that struck her as odd. She was more surprised by her understanding that it was out of place than she was at finding something wrong with this paragon of a horse.

She glanced at Hosteen.

“From a vaccination,” he told her. “Some horses just do that sometimes. I have a vet report on it in her file.”

“Is she a mare you bred?” she asked, after looking for a question that wouldn’t make her sound too stupid.

Charles was being very quiet, even for Charles. He must have been as exhausted as she was. Hosteen was right: it was a tiredness of spirit rather than body. Even so, she was pretty sure she should have insisted that they retire to their room.

Hosteen shook his head. “Three years ago, Joseph was out at a trainer’s barn looking for interesting horses,” Hosteen said. “And he found this mare. She’d been soured in the ring so they’d put her in the breeding barn, but she wasn’t sound for breeding. So they’d sent her back to the trainers. But sour didn’t even touch on how much she hated arena work. She put the trainer’s assistant in the hospital and he was done with her.”

Hosteen shook his head. “My son is magic on a horse, and game for any challenge. He wanted to retrain her himself. We got her for more than we should have paid for her, but a lot less than she’d be worth if he could fix her. Before he could start working with her, his health started going downhill again.”

Hosteen turned away and ran a hand down the mare’s shiny neck. The smile he gave Anna when he turned back was unhappy, but not, she was sure, because of the horse. “Anyway, since then she’s been one of our trail horse band. We keep them in shape and ready to go for buyers or clients who want to take a ride out in the desert. So she’s been ridden steadily since she came, but not in the arena.”

“Portabella,” Anna said, having thought about the name and come up with an alternate theory for it, instead of the one attached to the mare’s pedigree. “Because someone fed her BS until she turned into a mushroom.”

Hosteen laughed. “Kage tried working with her last spring and he wanted to call her Soyuz.”