Tarnished (21 page)

“And I can come because both Mommy and Daddy are here and Daddy doesn’t want to leave me at home anymore.” Ginnie looked a little put out by the idea of such smothering, but her excitement at being there overshadowed it a second later.

“Look, there’s Mr. Dare too!” Ginnie leaned over the railing to point at the full extent of her arm. Susan leaned too. Andrew sat down at one of the tables below, Silver beside him. John seated himself on Silver’s other side a beat later. Susan’s heart sped seeing him without the baby, but then she remembered the nursery. They must have decided it was getting too late, and left for the meeting without waiting for her to return to the cabin.

Seeing Were she already knew in this context, their positions undoubtedly so carefully calculated, made Susan’s perceptions twist again. She supposed every decision on how to sit or stand down there reflected dominance in one way or another.

Footsteps on the stairs up to the balcony distracted her. Another girl arrived from the stairwell, expression haughty. “No wonder it stinks up here. What’s a human doing here?”

The girl looked momentarily like a young woman in the uncertain light, but Susan was familiar enough with teens to subtract two or three years’ worth of makeup and plunging neckline. That yielded an age of roughly fifteen or sixteen. She would be a knockout in a few years if she stopped trying so hard. She had deep black hair and a smoky quality to her skin and eyes. A faint flavor of accent to her words completed the exotic picture.

Ginnie pushed past Tom to face the older girl. Tom seemed to hardly notice, he was staring so hard at her. “Don’t be a cat,” Ginnie told her sternly. “Just because she’s a human doesn’t mean you don’t have to be polite.”

Susan rubbed at her temple. Sea wolves, cats … Maybe that was the girl’s translation of catty? Then she got it. Were would hardly call someone a bitch, would they?

“What’s your name?” Tom asked, still staring.

Ginnie finally seemed to notice that his attention had wandered away from her. She tugged on his hand. “Her name’s Felicia. She’s from Spain. Her and her family’s staying with Daddy right now.”

“Hi, Felicia.” Tom scraped Ginnie off his hand so he could offer it to shake. Felicia considered it suspiciously for a moment before accepting it. She dropped it almost immediately to glance over her shoulder at the room below. She seemed nervous, perhaps about someone down there.

“I have an appointment,” she said abruptly. She encountered Ginnie’s stern look once more and snorted. “See you later,” she added with precise politeness, then disappeared down the stairs. Tom followed her with his gaze until she was completely out of sight.

Susan turned her head so Tom wouldn’t be able to see how much she wanted to roll her eyes. She could practically see his metaphorical tongue hanging out. Ginnie looked so unhappy, Susan bent to put herself on the girl’s level. She pointed into the room. “Which alpha is your daddy?”

“My daddy’s Roanoke. He’s really important.”

Tom finally snapped out of it. “Staying with your daddy, Ginnie?” When the girl nodded, he grabbed Susan’s wrist and dragged her toward the stairs. Susan jerked out of the hold on principle, but then decided to follow anyway. What was wrong? What did he know that she didn’t?

“See you later, sweetie,” she told Ginnie as she jogged after Tom. She caught up to him at the foot of the stairs, where he hesitated, staring through the kitchen to the doors into the main room.

“What was that about?” Susan asked in a low voice.

Tom rocked on the balls of his feet, full of thwarted urgency. “Ginnie’s father is the one Dare wants to challenge. But Dare’s in-laws are from Spain. Rumor says they wanted to kill him, before he came back here. If Roanoke’s working with them, that’s really bad.” He listened, head tilted. “Lady damn it, they’re starting already. They’ll notice an interruption, but someone should warn him. I don’t want to leave you alone either, though.”

Susan drew in a deep breath. The family showing up for revenge fit with what Silver had told her about what happened with Dare and his wife. “Go,” she urged Tom, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll walk straight back to the cabin from here, no detours. Cross my heart. And you’re just a good-for-nothing roamer sneaking around, right? No one will think anything of it.”

Tom nodded and strode through the kitchen. Susan hung back, sending silent good luck wishes after him. Just when it seemed like the politics of the situation were impossibly complicated, something else sprang up.

22

Silver watched Dare sideways during the opening prayer. While he bowed his head and pressed his thumb to his forehead with the rest, his lips didn’t move with the words. Death snickered, and she tried to kick him under the table. Things would be very serious from here on out. She needed her attention on what the alphas were saying, not on Death’s remarks.

Roanoke rose. Silver had met him once, but the snakes in her arm had been alive then. Her memories were full of holes. He gave the same impression of muscle-bound strength, but she saw less confidence in him than she remembered. More bluster. “We are met in Convocation. I stand for Roanoke. Who else stands?”

“I stand for Boston.” Boston rose next.

Silver tried to keep track of the names at first, as the Roanoke sub-alphas and then the Western packs introduced themselves in order of the length of time that each alpha had held that rank. But names were slippery. She found more value in watching everyone’s wild selves. Wild selves couldn’t hide emotions the way tame could. More than just Roanoke seemed ill at ease. Several wild selves snapped defensively at the air while their tame selves smiled blandly.

The wild self of Roanoke’s beta was the worst. Where the other wild selves stood beside the tame’s legs, his hid behind them. A bad sign, that the man who they’d hoped would have information seemed so afraid, crouched low with ears flat and tail tucked in. But they couldn’t ask him anything until this ceremony was over.

They came to the point that her cousin—she needed to learn a new name for him now he was no longer Seattle, she supposed—should have stood. Silver schooled her face to neutrality and kept her breathing slow. Her heartbeat should follow, and hopefully her excitement would not be too much of a stink in the air. They had far more controversial things to convince these alphas of later. Her becoming Seattle with Dare should be the least of her worries, but it was the first obstacle to jump, so it loomed largest at the moment.

A few people murmured, but Denver seized the opportunity to jump in precedence and stood. It was hard to pick out words with so many overlapping comments, but Silver gathered the sense that people thought her cousin was stupid for having missed his moment. Now he’d have to wait until last. Silver let her held breath trickle out. Good.

“I stand for Sacramento.” The new Sacramento stood a few moments longer than the other Western alphas had, giving people time to murmur about the new alpha being a woman. Not loudly; that gossip had carried around like a dry wind over a desert already, Silver guessed. Portland, who had stood already, cleared her throat, not quite a growl. The murmurs subsided. Sacramento nodded once in thanks to Portland and sat.

Dare squeezed her hand. Their turn. Silver drew a deep breath. She rose with him. “We stand for Seattle,” they said, overlapping. What had been listening silence became stunned, and every pair of wild-self ears in the room focused on the two of them. This time, the voices were loud, like a slap of sand against the face, carried on the dry gossip wind.

Silver didn’t allow herself to wince. For all they might be scandalized, no one else had any say in this. Dare might have his reputation and she might have her appearance of weakness, but she knew now that Were would follow her, trust her, when she proved her strength, same as anyone else. She could stand tall and unafraid, knowing that.

“This was not a dishonorable challenge.” Silver’s cousin repeated it, louder, when no one listened. He started to stand to draw people’s attention, but he was beta, and that wasn’t right. He subsided when he remembered. “Dare has always had honor in his dealings with me, and I abdicated to him.”

Silence settled, like wind suddenly falling away so you staggered in the direction it had come from. Abdications happened, but not often. By the time an alpha was old or tired, usually one of his pack had already sensed that his voice no longer rang with authority, and challenged him.

Silver let the silence stretch a little longer, listening and smelling with every breath to judge Dare’s breaking point. When frustration overcame his good sense, he might snap at them. She stepped in before he could. “Are we going to stare at each other all day, or are we going to get on with dinner? Lady knows he’s nice to look at, but I’m hungry.”

Dare choked at the inappropriate joke, but that was a trick she’d stolen from Death, and it worked as well as she’d hoped. The laugh was low, under people’s breaths, but the moment ended. Everyone broke into talk at once.

“Silver! Dare!” The urgent whisper behind her made her turn. Tom must have been there for some time. Silver had been too focused on the alphas to notice him. Dare gave a look that said clearly “You or me?” Silver kissed his hand before dropping it and turning back to talk to the young man. She’d shaken things up, better Dare be the one to now begin the process of quieter politicking.

Tom pulled her back as far as he could. There was really no way to avoid being overheard without going outside, but there was always some privacy in the fact that people often didn’t bother to listen.

Dare nodded to her once before turning back to the gathering. At least the worst part of the evening was over for now, and they could eat dinner in peace.

*   *   *

Andrew didn’t spend too much time wondering what Tom wanted. Something Susan-related, perhaps, but with all the Were except the teens in the main hall at the moment, Andrew doubted she could have put herself in the way of serious harm. He could only chase one rabbit at a time, and he trusted Silver to handle it.

“Before we eat, I have a point of business, if no one objects.” Rory stood and rapped a knuckle on the table for attention. Andrew had worked with the man long enough to see that he was practically vibrating with excitement under his calm act. What now? What was he up to?

Whatever it was, Andrew didn’t intend to let him put his plan into effect unopposed. Convocation tradition said no business on the first day, just prayers, introductions, and dinner. Anyone else, Andrew wouldn’t have objected, but Rory was probably trying to assert control of the whole meeting from the beginning. He stood.

Silver gasped, left Tom, and crossed to clutch at his shoulder. “Dare!” Andrew lost the thread of what he’d been about to say. What had made Silver smell so fearful?

Rory didn’t delay in seizing the opportunity Andrew’s distraction had given him. “Everyone agrees, then? Good. There’s someone else who needs an introduction. I know there’s been bad blood in the past, but when I received a request to host a delegation for the Convocation, in the interests of developing a closer relationship among all our packs, I judged that it was worth changing the way things have always been done.”

The front door opened with the bang of a visitor who wanted every eye to be on his entrance. His wife’s younger brother Arturo entered first and Andrew felt like he was suddenly drowning. How could the Madrid pack be here? It was like a nightmare, too nearly his deepest, blackest fear to be real. It was impossible. They shouldn’t be here. Each breath was an effort to fight it past the constriction in his chest. The Madrid pack. Here.

But he couldn’t break down, or run, or launch himself at the man. Andrew fought his face into impassivity, though he knew he probably stank of fear and rage. He had to hang on to control. Someone who wanted to be Roanoke didn’t have the luxury of giving in to his emotions in public. Andrew took a metaphorical white-knuckled grip on his emotions and started cataloging the little details of Arturo’s appearance to distract himself.

Arturo had grown into himself a little since Andrew had seen him last, cut his hair shorter to tame the curls and trimmed his beard down to black lines along his jaw. That jaw was clenched in an expression that was much more familiar: aggression hiding discomfort. He still lacked some indefinable measure of confidence.

Since Arturo had entered first, that meant whoever followed would be the high-ranked one. When North Americans even bothered with precedence, they put the highest-ranked first. In Europe, the highest-ranked always entered last, as if sending their vassals to scurry forward and prepare the way for them.

Raul followed. He must have moved up in the ranks of the pack, if Madrid was sending him out on errands like this. Andrew clenched his teeth on curses. He remembered Raul well, for all the man liked to fade into the background. Raul waited and listened. When he’d been quiet for so long everyone had let something slip around him from pure inattention, he struck. One key piece of information in the right ear, and suddenly everything was going Raul’s way. Andrew had learned that the only way to deal with him was to be just as quiet in return, so he had nothing on you. And that was hard, because he played a long, long game.

Andrew tried to catalog appearance details again, to hold down the stomach-churning thought: what key piece of information did Raul have now? Raul still carried an air of cockiness that combined with his impeccably styled hair, manicured nails, and defined muscles to suggest he had stepped out of the bullfighting ring for a night of wooing the ladies.

“Who are they?” John asked beside Andrew’s ear.

Andrew started violently. He hadn’t heard John move to stand behind him in the beta’s position of support. Silver pressed herself against his other side. This must be what she’d tried to warn him about. How had Tom known? On the heels of that thought came another: few others in the room knew who these people were. Maybe if he acted quickly, he could get this under control. He needed to do something at least before Raul locked his jaw with teeth too deep in flesh to tear out.