Reflected (Silver Series) (8 page)

“So don’t posture,” she told Craig. “Mention this to no one and I’ll consider your petition. Yes, and discuss it with Dare.” She cut him off as he drew breath for a further objection.

That didn’t stop Portland, however. She stood and crossed her arms, anger rolling off her in waves. “Roanoke, how can you—”

“Roanoke?” Tom’s voice was loud, to be heard over their argument, but his wild self had its tail tucked far between its legs. “One of the patrols found an unknown Were. He was at the—”

He said a word Silver knew she should know, but at the moment, that was about as much use as looking up at the tiny dot of a bird against the clouds and knowing it could be eaten. Both hypotheticals, when they were impossibly far out of reach.

“The place where people arrive from far away,” Death said. “Another visitor for you. Wouldn’t want you to get lonely, with your mate gone, would we?”

“Have the patrol bring him in,” Silver told Tom. He bounded off. She wished she could escape this situation so easily. “I’ll have to ask the two of you to find accommodations of your own while I deal with this. Rest assured, we are not done with our discussion.”

She held her arm wide to the exit, and Craig left without fuss. Of course he would, he’d gotten what he wanted. Now she would be mired in talk and argument when her voice was already heavy with the weight of the decision she wanted to make.

Portland hung back. “Roanoke, please.” Her voice was low, thin with the frustration of the choice her beta wanted to force her into.

“If this could be fixed with a pronouncement, Portland, I’d make it.” Silver massaged her temple as she walked with Portland to the exit. “We need to work things around carefully, all right? Leash your temper.” She glanced ahead to make sure Craig wasn’t lingering to listen. “What does the father think?”

“You just heard.” Portland tipped her chin ahead of them.

Silver stopped short to stare at her. “Lady preserve us, tell me you’re joking.” When Portland shook her head, Silver smacked the back of her head, as she would a cub. “Why do I have to
say
this to any of you? Don’t play chase with your beta! Look what happened to Sacramento and hers. Did watching that fall apart teach you nothing?”

“Sacramento’s girlfriend was crazy,” Portland said challengingly, but her wild self’s tucked tail admitted her guilt. “We’re not lovers anymore, anyway. We were already drifting apart, before—” She dropped her hand but stopped before touching her abdomen. “And arguing about it finished off the intimate parts of relationship.”

She sighed. “However much of a cat he’s being, it’s not about him wanting to keep a woman from holding authority. I’m sure of that. He supported me without reservation when I challenged for the alphaship back in the beginning. I think the idea of having a child has just got his voice so twisted up, he doesn’t know what he’s saying anymore.”

“Mm,” Silver murmured, still dubious. That was a nice excuse. He loved his child too much. What about loving his child’s mother?

Once she’d seen Portland out, Silver returned to the den and found some more substantial food. She waited for the unknown Were to arrive and ate while staring into nothing in particular. As a healthy den, their home had a deep glow of the Lady’s light about it, and Silver drew on the sight of it as a comfort.

Felicia arrived home and lingered just out of sight, probably catching up on all the gossip from Tom or one of the others. Silver felt irrationally like her decisions were being judged by the young woman, being compared to what Dare might have done. What Dare might have done didn’t matter—they were equal alphas, and he wasn’t here right now. Still, the itchy feeling of a judging gaze lingered. When things died down, Silver would have Felicia lay out today’s accomplishments in finding herself occupation, even if Silver couldn’t understand all of them. Just because Felicia had been out of the den didn’t mean she’d been working.

Silver had time to finish her food, clear it away, and set her chair to face the entrance with Pierce standing near, an alpha relaxing ready to deign to offer an audience, before the new Were arrived.

He was younger than she’d expected, only a few years older than Felicia. He was dark in coloration in both tame and wild selves, as Felicia was, though his wild self was more dark gray than black, in a wash along its back and head.

He knelt before her and tipped his head to one side to show his neck, formal in his respect. Too smooth by half, Silver decided, as he lifted his head to smile at her. His wild self held its head high, pleased with itself. But arrogance didn’t necessarily mean evil intentions. “Roanoke. My name is Enrique. My birth pack is in South America—” He said a name of a place, but it meant nothing to Silver, especially tinted into something warm and exotic by his accent. Not North America, not Europe, that was the important part. If he was telling the truth. Silver could smell no particular lie. Dare had warned of Madrid sending someone, but to an outlying pack. Silver doubted Madrid would be so foolish as to send someone to Roanoke’s home pack.

“We are very isolated. I want to see more of the world. I hoped you would give me permission to … explore?” The stranger hesitated over the word.

“Roam,” Silver suggested. She glanced at Death, to read his reaction to the young man, but he was apparently dozing, watching events through half-open eyes. “Felicia? Do you know this man? Is he someone Madrid could have sent?”

Felicia started. “What? No.” She shook her head a beat later to emphasize the answer, though her face still showed confusion at the question. Her wild was on high alert, ears high and nose straining forward at the young Were. Silver narrowed her eyes at it. Was Felicia trying to hide something?

But then understanding dawned. Young was the important part here. Young woman, young man. Silver gave the face of Enrique’s tame self more careful attention in that light. He was handsome enough, she supposed, though his self-satisfied air was too much a barrier for her to class him as truly attractive. Felicia smelled sharply of excitement and anticipation under her surprise.

“You may roam Roanoke territory,” Silver told him, and motioned for him to rise. She needed to get back to dealing with the problem Portland’s beta presented. “So long as you don’t cause trouble, and you seek permission again before you settle anywhere.”

“Thank you.” Enrique smiled even brighter and sought out Felicia immediately among those of the pack who had gathered to watch. Silver rubbed at her temple. A new chase might put Felicia in a better mood, but it wouldn’t keep her nose to the trail of her father’s orders. But if Silver needed to drag the young woman back on track, she would—Dare would come home to a united Roanoke and a daughter with work, if Silver had anything to do with it.

*   *   *

Felicia could hardly wait to speak until she’d pulled Enrique out to the backyard. She dragged him across the wild grass to the bushy trees planted at the fence to block nosy neighbors. It wasn’t completely private, but it would do. She faced the house and watched for any windows edging up to indicate one of the kids was eavesdropping. She used Spanish too, just in case.
“I can’t believe I lied for you. Lady. What are you doing here?”

She pressed fingertips to her temples. She hadn’t even thought about the lie, it had just slipped out, which was probably why Silver hadn’t smelled it. She’d seen her childhood reflected in Enrique’s face so strongly, she couldn’t stand the thought that he’d be sent away before she could at least talk to him.

“What kind of greeting is that?”
Enrique laughed. Felicia remembered him being hot when she’d been back in Madrid, but Lady above. He’d cut his hair shorter since she’d seen him last, turning curls into lush black waves. Just standing here smelling him, she wanted to run her fingers through it.

He opened his arms, and after checking for observers again, she embraced him. Inhaling his scent filled her voice with all the tones of home, but she quickly pushed away.
“Lady, you’re so lucky my father wasn’t here. He’d have seen right through you even if he didn’t recognize you from when you were a child. Chilean? Seriously? That accent never even watched a TV documentary about Chile. You didn’t smell even a little like you were lying, though. How’d you manage that, when it was a planned lie?”

“You think that was luck? I knew Dare would never let me near you, so I was bumming around in Mexico until he was out of town or you went traveling on your own. Mexico City has too much to do with keeping his people out of the human violence to worry about lones. And Silver’s too crazy to understand place-names. You only smell like a lie when you’re worried about it.”

Felicia snapped off a twig and tapped the flat needles against her upper lip, as if in absent thought, to discreetly use the evergreen scent to block out his distracting one. She needed to remember that he was—or had been, at least—part of the Madrid pack that had kept her from her father when her mother died, and then tried to use her as a pawn against him. Even as she reminded herself of that, though, memories kept intruding of nipping at his tail in childhood games.
“My father wouldn’t let you near me to say what? Why are you here, Enrique?”
Her chest tightened at a sudden thought.
“Is everyone all right? I haven’t e-mailed anyone since just after I decided to stay here, but I noticed everyone’s still posting status updates. I mean, it’s stupid stuff, since it’s where their human friends can see, but it means they’re still online, with enough time for the stupid stuff.”

Enrique clasped her upper arm briefly, but his expression twisted.
“It’s not that bad for most of the pack. After what your father did, Madrid lost everything outside the city limits to Barcelona, except for one hunting ground. But inside the city, we’re reasonably safe. Madrid himself makes sure of that.”

Felicia looked down at her feet. What she’d helped her father do, Enrique could have said. But her father hadn’t injured Madrid, he’d only humiliated him in front of the other European alphas. If Madrid didn’t have the physical strength to keep his territory after that, it wasn’t her father’s fault. But being constrained to a single city sounded pretty frustrating to Felicia. No wonder Enrique wanted to get out. But he’d chosen to get out to here, not actually to South America, or anywhere else in the world. She let her silence indicate her first question still stood.

“As for why I’m here—they didn’t treat you fairly.”
Enrique bowed his head, granting her a greater angle of respect than she really deserved. He was presenting himself as a lone and she was pack, yes, but he was also a few years older and more experienced.
“I told Madrid that, I told my parents that, but I finally got tired of arguing. So I left. I figured you’d be old enough now that your father would finally let you out on your own a little, so I could talk to you.”
He hesitated.
“I do think … if you came back, it would be different. Madrid obviously couldn’t show weakness to me, but he knows how he treated you was wrong—”

“No.” Felicia tossed her twig at his chest. “Never in the Lady’s cycle am I going to go back because things might be different this time. I’m not that stupid.” She didn’t realize she’d fallen back into English until halfway through, but she went with it, emphasizing how little accent she had compared to him.

Enrique held up his hands.
“I completely understand. I didn’t come to try to coax you back or something.”
He dropped his hands, but to her waist, fingertips settling lightly over her hips. Easy enough for her to pull away, but one of his thumbs happened to slip under her shirt hem and slide over bare skin above her jeans, and she got distracted. He smiled, a slow expression. “Like I said. Time to get out and see the world and its beauties.”

His accent wasn’t so bad after all. Felicia knew his compliment wasn’t particularly special to her, that he’d say that to any Were he wanted to charm into a game of chase, but she smiled anyway. “You just wanted to get out of the city.”

Enrique shook his head, amused, as if that accusation was too patently untrue to deserve a reply. He wasn’t that much taller than her, something that must have been true before she’d left as well, but she’d never had a chance to realize it so viscerally as when he leaned in to kiss her.

“Does that line work on South American girls?” Tom stuffed his hands into his pockets after closing the back door, but the way his strides ate up the distance across the yard spoiled his nonchalant act. “If you’re here to roam, go roam.”

“Why do you care, Tom?” Felicia jerked her head away from Enrique and stepped out to block Tom before he could get too close to Enrique. Tom looked over her shoulder and tried to catch the other man’s eyes for a dominance contest anyway, but she held up her hand to block that too. “It’s not like he’s impinging on territory
you
wanted.”

Tom’s eyes flicked to hers and then away. His mouth twisted like he’d bitten into something rotten and he turned away. “Fine. Whatever.”

Felicia watched him slouch back across the yard, fighting a sick feeling in her stomach. She hadn’t meant to hurt him. She couldn’t have anyone watching her with Enrique too closely, though. It would soon become noticeable that they already knew each other. Besides, Tom going all hackle-y when he’d passed up that right was damn annoying.

A chuckle behind her jerked her attention back Enrique.
“He doesn’t appreciate what he’s passing up, if I understood that right,”
he said. This time, Felicia smacked him. Enough was enough. She wasn’t going to be swayed by a gorgeous face and a bunch of empty compliments.

He dropped his head, acknowledging the rebuke.
“I would like to see the local sights, though. If you’d be willing to show me?”

Felicia looked back at the house a final time. Tom was out of sight again, probably back at Silver’s side, dancing loyal attendance on his alpha. It seemed lazy to take the afternoon off, but other than filling out yet more applications, she could only wait around for calls for interviews. And she’d already sent an application this morning.