Charles agreed with him wholeheartedly … but he knew what Anna would do. He knew it was not his job to make her smaller, safer. It was his job to lift her up as high as she wanted to soar—and to kill anything that tried to interfere.
“She’ll be safe enough with all of us there,” Charles said. “And—”
There was a sharp yip of pain, and all of them ran toward the sound. Brother Wolf chose the change before Charles could decide if it was a good idea or not.
There are two werewolf wildlings nearing the end of their days, Brother Wolf told him. We are all of us wolves, but sometimes the only answer is fang and claw, and we can do this faster than the others.
More and more, Brother Wolf spoke to Charles in whole sentences, when previously he was more likely to communicate with emotions or wordless gestalt statements that conveyed an entire conversation as a whole. Charles thought that it was the need his brother had to speak to their mate that was causing the evolution.
Leah had taken the lead. Brother Wolf contented himself with running beside Anna and following those who knew where they were going.
The cave where Jericho had retreated wasn’t a real cave, but a sheltered place where two great boulders rested against each other. It smelled lightly of Devon and more heavily of Jericho. From the scent layers, this was a place where Jericho slept more often than he used the small cabin they’d just left.
“Jericho,” called Leah.
“Coming,” said a man’s voice. Jericho’s voice.
I have never heard Jericho sound like that, said Brother Wolf in surprise.
Anxiety peaked in the whole group. In Brother Wolf’s shape, Charles’s nose was sharper. What had happened to Devon? Jericho’s voice had sounded almost casual, and Jericho was never casual.
No one liked where they saw this going.
There was a shuffling noise, then a muscled man emerged. He had to crawl to get out of the sheltered space, but he stood as soon as there was room. He had a cloth wrapped around his loins in a fashion that Charles hadn’t seen in a long time. It gave Jericho the appearance of wearing baggy shorts instead of an old bedsheet.
Jericho looked much as he had the last time Charles had seen him. His beard and hair were long and scraggly, with bits of leaves and other forest detritus caught in it. His hair was tangled every which way and randomly hacked shorter here and there. His eyes were ice blue—the wolf dominant, in that moment at least. There was something odd about that cool stare, but Jericho looked away before Charles could put a finger on what bothered him.
Jericho’s body was fit and strong. Which was a good thing—hunger tended to destabilize even the most controlled werewolf, which none of the wildlings were to begin with. He hadn’t, Charles thought, eaten any of the dead men—though it was usual for an out-of-control werewolf to eat his victims.
Most of the wildlings were twitchy in human form, as if the wolf were ready to climb out at any moment. Jericho’s body was very still and balanced on the balls of his feet. He glanced around at their group with his wolf-blue eyes, then away. He shivered.
“Where is Devon?” asked Leah.
“I …” He stopped, swallowed, and began again. “He wanted me to run. He doesn’t want me to die. But I killed those men. The only rule is no killing. I had to tie him up in the cave.”
And that was more coherent sentences in a row than Charles had been able to get out of him in ten years. To top off the performance, Jericho walked up to Charles, dropped to his knees, and presented his throat.
“Well,” said Anna briskly after a moment of silence. “That’s all very dramatic and heartfelt, I’m sure. But we’re pretty sure those men attacked you. Self-defense is always legal.”
Jericho eyed Anna. “No killing. The Marrok was very clear.”
Behind Jericho, Asil crossed to the cave and ducked in.
“Those men belonged to our enemy,” said Leah. “A similar group killed Hester yesterday. Her mate followed by his own hand.”
Jericho swayed a bit then, and his eyes darkened to human blue. “Felt that,” he said. “Hester … didn’t like me at all.” For a second, he grinned widely. “Damn near killed me first time we met.” Then he blinked, and the human left his eyes again. “Not sorry I killed them. But the rule is no killing.”
“How did they find you?” asked Anna. “Do you know? Did you hear anything that can help us find them?”
Jericho growled at her.
Brother Wolf growled more savagely, and Jericho subsided.
“Don’t do this,” Sage said, apparently to herself because her voice had been very quiet. “You don’t need to do this.”
Charles gave Sage a sharp look—but her attention was on Jericho.
Jericho’s attention was on Charles.
Asil exited the cave and a very thin, patchy-coated wolf followed him, head low and tail tucked. Asil nodded at Charles—he’d found Devon just as Jericho said he would. Charles looked carefully at Devon, but the wildling seemed unharmed—if not particularly happy.
“Assume that we’ll take care of an execution if it needs to happen,” Anna told Jericho dryly. “Moving on to a different topic. Did you overhear anything they might have said? Any clues to who or what they were?”
Jericho focused his ice-blue eyes on Charles’s mate. Charles would have been happier if he hadn’t done that.
“She said not to come here. To wait. That this attack is too likely to give her away,” Jericho said, in a hard, oddly deep voice. His voice changed again, becoming both lighter and quicker. “She is not in charge; she is not the boss. And I don’t know about you, but I’m more afraid of the boss than of her.”
And Charles realized that Jericho had taken Anna’s question literally. He was repeating back exactly what they had said in his presence.
And they had been talking about a “she.”
Charles looked at Leah—he couldn’t help it. But she was watching Jericho with her brows furrowed—Charles didn’t think she’d quite figured out what Jericho was doing.
“Our job,” continued the wildling coolly “is to get the information from this one if he has it. No one will miss him for a long time. If we can’t get it from him, then we hit the other one.” Jericho sighed loudly and dropped into the first voice. “And that will be a cluster because someone keeps taking out our surveillance equipment, I know. I don’t like going in blind, eith—” Jericho stopped speaking.
“Anna can help you,” said Sage intently. “She just broke a hundred-year-old curse on another wildling. I was there.”
The first statement was a lie. Charles turned his attention to Sage—because he’d never heard her lie before. Even more interesting than the lie was the implication that she didn’t believe Anna could help Jericho.
Even though he’d once rescued her—and Charles remembered the incident pretty much the way she’d told it—she was scared of Jericho. Charles could tell that much, though her control was very good. Probably he and Jericho were the only ones who could smell it. Charles because he had Brother Wolf, and Jericho because he was mostly wolf even when he wore human skin.