She stepped around Asil and slapped Wellesley’s upraised hand with her own.
Anna was a werewolf. She had been working out with Charles virtually since he’d brought her to Montana. Her reaction time was good; she was quicker than a lot of the wolves.
And she had no time to respond as Wellesley’s hand closed over her wrist, and he plowed into her like a grizzly bear, sending them both to the floor. She hit the hard-packed dirt floor underneath his not-inconsiderable weight. He wrapped himself around her, his body shaking. Her stomach lurched with memories that she thought were long behind her.
Something hit the ground right next to her ear, startling her out of her panic. She turned to see that Asil had buried a knife … a sword … something with a beautifully crafted hilt in the dirt. The blade was only visible for about a quarter of an inch.
Asil had been going to kill to defend her, she realized. But he’d apparently understood much faster than she exactly what had happened—and more importantly, what hadn’t.
Wellesley hadn’t attacked her … hadn’t meant to attack her, anyway. He was trying to get as close as he could while sobbing wildly and muttering something in a language she couldn’t understand.
“Omega,” said Asil quietly, he crouched beside her, his face only a few feet away from hers. “I should have stopped you from touching him. My wife, she had better control of what she was. No one would have understood what she was, or been affected by her by a casual touch unless she wanted them to.”
“What do I do?” she whispered, partly so that she wouldn’t startle Wellesley into anything more violent. But mostly because her throat was so dry with fear and remembered horror that she couldn’t have made a louder sound if she tried.
“Stay still,” he said. “Hopefully, his reaction will ease after a few minutes.”
She looked at him. She wasn’t going to be able to lie here, with a stranger on top of her, for a few minutes.
He saw it. “If I try to pull him off,” he told her, “it’s not going to help anything.”
She nodded. She understood that Wellesley was getting some sort of relief from her, and he would react badly if someone tried to take it away from him. Asil didn’t think Wellesley was rational enough to let her go.
“Okay,” she said, trying not to sound panicked. Hoping that Charles wasn’t picking up on this. He wouldn’t if she managed to keep herself from blind terror. “Okay.”
“What can I do to help?” Asil asked.
“Talk,” she said. “Distract me.”
“How about a story?” He reached out and put a hand on Wellesley’s shoulder. “His mate died, and his wolf wanted to die with her. It happens that way sometimes. As far as I know, they’ve been at war ever since, he and his wolf. A hundred years more or less, I think. Like a split personality disorder, but your other half is a killing machine, and you can never let it take over.”
“The girl in Tennessee?” Anna murmured, fairly certain that Wellesley wasn’t attending the conversation between her and Asil. He was crying noisily, and it was a horrible thing to hear from a grown man. But it reassured her, because he didn’t sound like …
Anyone else.
Asil nodded to her almost-question. “After Tennessee is when Bran brought him here. Back in the 1930s, I think. He’d been a well-known artist under a different name when his wife died.” The old werewolf, whose mate had also died while he survived, made a sympathetic sound. He patted Wellesley again, and this time left his right hand on the other werewolf’s shoulder.
“He tried to keep up his life, but one day he just left. Left his pack. Left his house with everything in it. A wolf who was there, a member of his pack, told me it was eerie. As if one morning, just after breakfast was ready to eat, he decided he was done with it. No one heard of him for a while. It was the Depression, and traveling on trains was a way of life for a lot of people. There was no easy way to find him.”
“Not like now,” Anna said. It was hard to get the words out of her throat, but at least she didn’t have to whisper.
“Not like now,” agreed Asil. “Technology has made a lot of things easier—but also Wellesley’s case in particular made Bran decide that it was important not to lose track of any werewolf if he could help it.”
“You were in Spain during the 1930s,” Anna said. Her voice was shaky. She didn’t like sounding like that—fear was dangerous around werewolves. But even knowing that there was nothing sexual about what Wellesley was experiencing, she couldn’t help the cold sweat that trickled down her back.
Asil made an assenting sound.
“You know a lot about this for a man who was on another continent at the time.”
Asil’s smile flashed. “I know everything worth knowing,” he told her. But his face grew pensive. “I asked after I started to visit with him. I wanted to know as much as I could in hopes I could help him. I knew a little before, of course. His story was widely published at the time. I think part of what has made Bran so harsh on the wolves, now that the public knows about us, is that he is afraid that someone will remember the old story of Wellesley.”
“Tell me?” she asked.
“As you said,” Asil told her, “it was easier to be lost and wander back in those days. Lots of men without families or pasts wandered the railroad and the highways in the Depression era. Wellesley was just another one of them until he finally lost control of the wolf in a little town with a population of about four hundred people. It’s not around anymore, that little town, or maybe more people would remember this story. Wellesley is sometimes certain that there was a black witch—or something like a black witch—involved. But in the aftermath, there was only Wellesley and some bodies: a black man in a mostly white town.”
Asil patted Wellesley again, but the other werewolf didn’t appear to notice him. After a moment, Asil started talking again.
“That’s when Bran became aware of him. He sent Charles to break Wellesley out.” There was a pause, and Asil said sourly because he didn’t want to respect Charles, “I understand he broke into that jail where Wellesley was under heavy guard and left with him. But if you can get that closemouthed wolf to tell you how he did it in plain sight of two guards, leaving an empty and locked cell behind them with no one the wiser, there would be a lot of people who’d love to hear that story.”
“Can’t you ask Wellesley?” Anna asked.
Asil shook his head. “He doesn’t remember anything except bits and pieces—mostly that’s his wolf, anyway. Wellesley doesn’t have enough memories to defend himself from anything someone wants to claim about that day if someone goes digging up old newspaper records or someone’s diary about the matter.”
“You think he is innocent?”