Tarnished

by Rhiannon Held

  Now he had to shift back, of course. He couldn’t have his first official act as alpha be to collapse, panting, still in wolf. Euphoria made him light-headed, brought a laugh nearly bubbling up. He knew it would hurt, but for a few moments he just didn’t care. He’d won! Andrew pushed back into human before good sense could reassert itself.

  Muscles and bones always screamed protests in the new, but this time they were injured, and exhaustion dragged the process almost too long to stand. But Andrew made it, shaking with the relief of being fully back in human. He pushed to his feet immediately, telling himself the movement couldn’t be as bad as shifting. It wasn’t, but the way his head pounded, graying out his vision, wasn’t exactly good. He made it up and tried desperately not to sway. He concentrated on looking like surveying the Were ranged around them was his true purpose for standing still, not that he was unable to walk.

  People fidgeted, like they weren’t quite sure whether to kneel again, as they would after a normal challenge fight. Rory’s wife had joined the group, and she pushed to the front now with Ginnie held on her hip. Sarah had smoothed most other signs of anxiety from her body, but if she was holding her ten-year-old like that, she couldn’t be calm. Humans weren’t usually strong enough for that, so Were avoided the gesture in case they slipped up in public. “It seems we have a new alpha, Ginnie,” Sarah said softly, as if wrapping up a previous conversation. Andrew inclined his head to her.

  With only a slight scrabbling in warning, teeth sank deep into Andrew’s calf. He yelped with shock and staggered. Did Rory want to be killed? That was how challenges sometimes ended in Europe, when someone refused to concede when bested.

  “That’s what you want your daughter to remember?” Andrew’s voice came out rough, but there was nothing for it. “Her father’s dishonor? I would value her opinion a little higher than that, if I were you. Trust me, I would know.”

  “Daddy?” Ginnie’s voice startled Andrew, focused as he was on Rory’s teeth in his leg. “Why are you cheating?”

  Rory slowly released his hold and backed up, shaking his head in a canine gesture that still evoked the one in human: no, no, no! Silver darted in and placed herself solidly beside Andrew, arm across his back. The relief was so great, Andrew’s vision went blurry for a moment before he adjusted his stance so he could lean on Silver but not collapse on her. She accepted all the weight he put on her without showing a sign of it.

  “Since Rory has made such great friends, I think he should join them. Put him on the plane with Madrid.” The pleasure of saying it gave Andrew’s voice a little more strength.

  Rory’s body language sharpened with sudden fear and Raul snorted from where he was being held. The Madrid pack would not welcome Rory into their territory, Andrew was certain. He’d have to find his own way in Europe once he was on the ground.

  Sarah set her daughter down and tugged Ginnie with her to her knees. “Roanoke, please. For Virginia’s sake. Exile us if you must, but not to Europe. That’s no place to raise a child.”

  Andrew cursed mentally. Of course she’d follow him. He should have considered that. “I said him, Sarah, not you and the girl.” Dammit, why did she have to force his hand? He didn’t want to appear weak by backing down, but in a rather ironic mirror to Raul, he’d try to save any child he could from Europe’s culture of violence. “There’s no reason you have to go with him,” he said heavily. He gestured for her to rise.

  Sarah rose and placed a protective hand on Ginnie’s back as the girl clung to her waist. “He’s a good father, a good husband, whatever his other faults.”

  The certainty and loyalty were so strong in her voice Silver inclined her head in respect. Andrew exhaled in a rush. That made his only possible choice clear enough. If it made him look weak, so be it. “Ottawa.” He waited until the alpha stepped forward from the crowd. “I’m sending Rory and his family back with you. Find them somewhere to live beyond your border, in northern Quebec maybe, and make sure he stays there.” Andrew underscored the last pronoun with a snarl—Rory’s family was welcome to leave the wilderness to visit other packs. Rory was not.

  Sarah half-sobbed with relief and strode to Rory to bury her hand in the fur of his ruff as if seeking comfort. Because Silver had done it to him so often, Andrew noticed how that touch also nudged Rory toward Ottawa and out of his presence. Good for her.

  Andrew could only hope Sarah would take advantage of her ability to leave sometimes, and that he hadn’t just ruined Ginnie’s childhood by exiling her without a pack. His chest tightened at the thought, but there was another young life he would have to trust to her own inner strength.

  Andrew looped an arm over Silver’s shoulders as another point of support. Her loose hair made his grip slip until he pushed it aside. A moment later he realized someone had just said something to him. What had it been? No matter how he tried, he couldn’t find any memory of the actual words. “Later,” he said. Apparently that answer made sense, because the alpha stepped back.

  He drew a deep breath. Time to make a fast exit as gracefully as possible. “Other decisions will have to wait until morning. I need to consider who would be best suited to any positions that need filling.” The murmurs seemed positive, so Andrew pushed forward along the path back to the cabins. His vision narrowed to the ground immediately in front of his feet long before they reached the buildings and the gravel grew tinged with light from each cabin they passed. After the small eternity to reach the cabins, the walk among them was almost too much. Why had he picked the farthest, again?

  John opened the door for him when they reached the cabin. “So you’ll be moving back East?”

  Andrew and Silver couldn’t fit through the door very well side by side so he nudged her on ahead. Of course John was impatient. He wanted to know if he’d get his pack back. Well, he could wait like everyone else—

  The floor slammed into Andrew’s hands. He caught most of his weight short of a full faceplant, but he let himself down to sort it all out in his head. He’d fallen, obviously. It must have been the lip of the doorframe. In another moment of delayed memory, he recalled the feeling of his foot catching.

  “Lady above, how’d he get this bad?” John helped Andrew to a sitting position before pulling him farther inside. “I thought he smelled hurt, sure, but…”

  Andrew would have protested the indignity, but he heard Silver burst into tears. The last thing he wanted to do was worry her. This would pass in a moment. “Love. Love, I’m fine.” He tried to push away from John and reach for her. Things … tilted, and next thing he knew, John was holding his shoulders again.

  “Shut the door,” John snapped. “Boston, are you sure you need to be here?”

  Andrew couldn’t see Benjamin from where he was sitting, but he heard the low warmth of the man’s laugh after the door clicked closed. “I’m familiar with the concept of those in power falling to pieces in private once in a while. My loyalty to Roanoke won’t be shaken, beta.”

  John hesitated for a second, but he must have come to some decision. “Help me with him,” was all he said.

  The next time things made sense, Andrew was on his bed and Silver was climbing in to press herself against him as if trying to find every single point that one body could physically intersect another. She was crying more quietly now, a tang of salt and dampness against Andrew’s skin. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. For worrying her, for getting caught, for having such terrible in-laws, and probably more he couldn’t think of.

  “No,” Silver said, distinctly but emphatically into his chest. “Don’t you dare.”

  Andrew huffed a laugh and let his mind drift.

  35

  Silver woke to the feeling of cold where once there had been warmth on one side. Dare slept on at her other side. Death stood close enough that it made her wonder: had he been sleeping beside her? She couldn’t quite tell, though a feeling lingered of being tucked between two sources of warmth rather than just one from Dare. Silver decided to pretend she hadn
’t noticed.

  She rolled over and found Dare’s wild self at his feet. She buried her hands in its fur, searching for any lingering injury. The scars on his back looked only as bad as they always had. Rest and plenty to eat would help the hollow and pale look of his tame self’s face.

  Silver could have stayed there a lot longer, watching Dare’s face as he slept, but a need to relieve herself drove her up. Dare didn’t even stir, a mark of how hurt he was. When she was done, hunger had also awakened, and Silver foraged for food as the light warmed and strengthened with dawn.

  Silver slipped outside to eat and breathe in the fresh air, sweet with a day’s promise. She found a place to sit out of easy hearing but not sight of the dens. Death curled comfortably just far enough away he could not be said to be at her feet. She could come to like these mountains with time, she decided. Not the trees, too sharp and sparse, but the slopes had a beauty when considered from a distance.

  Thank the Lady Dare had been all right. And somehow they’d won everything they’d been fighting for and more. Thinking about it still made her head hurt. When had it gone from being impossible to being inevitable, like running downhill? She hadn’t been trying to win anyone over, and she suspected Dare hadn’t either, they’d just done what they thought was right. Perhaps that was the point—they’d done what needed to be done because it needed doing, and the other alphas had seen that.

  Felicia’s scent, filled with suspicion and anxiety, curled into Silver’s nose long before the girl herself appeared. Her dark hair was tumbled like she’d snatched only naps last night, curled up somewhere. “Hello,” Silver said, and then ate in silence. She was too wrung out to even wonder what the girl might want.

  Felicia found a seat on a rock a short distance away. Not within reach, but not so far she had to raise her voice. “I still don’t understand why he left me,” she said finally into the small sounds of wind through branches and over grass, the world waking.

  “Have you ever heard the story of how the Lady had to first leave her children?” Silver suspected Felicia had, and the girl nodded, but she didn’t object. Good. Sometimes you had to hear a story all over again to find a new meaning.

  “It was the humans. In the beginning, their gods walked among them as the Lady did among us. But the humans breed too quickly. Their gods could not resolve so many conflicting desires when they were so easy to petition in person. So the human gods withdrew, forcing their followers to find their own strength or truly work for the help they needed.

  “But the Lady’s children were few. Lost in Her love for them, She paid no attention to what the humans did, or to the human gods. The humans grew greedy, as humans do. Perhaps they wanted to take what we had, or perhaps they were simply envious, and wanted to make sure that if they were abandoned by their gods, so too were we.”

  Felicia hugged herself. Thinking of abandonment, perhaps.

  “In those days, we lived forever. Only fire could destroy us, because fire destroys everything created so creation can begin anew. But we did not know this, did not understand how a life could end. When the humans came with fire, we would have all fallen before them if not for Death. He took the first of us before the humans arrived, and taught us of mortality so we understood the threat the humans brought. We fought back. We were not all killed, but we could no longer live forever.

  “And so to punish Death for his betrayal in harming us, the Lady had to take his voice, leaving him to use those of the souls he brought back to Her. And to punish Herself for failing to protect us, She had to leave us, so that She no longer attracted the humans’ envy to us with Her light.”

  Silver paused until Felicia looked up in confusion, and she caught the girl’s eyes. They were a little wide, still frightened. “But we didn’t understand. We saw that we could die, and we saw that the Lady had left us. Some of us cursed Her name, and vowed to renounce Her as She had renounced us.

  “And some clung to the belief that She would return someday, if we were somehow … good enough. But She never did. Because it didn’t matter what She wanted, She was caught by circumstance. It did not change Her love for us—in fact, it made it stronger. But sometimes…” Silver tried to find the right words.

  “Things fall apart,” Death said, the cadence of his voice heavy too. “To quote a human.”

  Silver repeated Death’s words. “And sometimes you build anew. Not the same, but still something.”

  Felicia shook her head, like her wild self would to dislodge a burr from its ruff. Silver could only hope her story was like that burr, refusing to let go. “That isn’t how I heard the story,” Felicia said.

  Silver shrugged. “Maybe the story changed. Maybe the listener did.” She pushed to her feet. “You must be hungry. Come in for some breakfast? Dare isn’t awake yet.”

  Felicia shied back. “I’ll find something.”

  “You have to decide soon.” Silver wanted to reach out to the girl, but she turned the gesture into combing her fingers through her hair. “You can’t stay here in the woods alone forever.”

  “But I don’t have to decide yet.” Felicia twisted fingers into her hair too, bringing it over her shoulder in a tail. Then she turned and it all tumbled back out again. She loped away.

  “No, not quite yet,” Silver said, and went back to the den. She left her breakfast on the rock. She could get more inside, and the girl would be hungry by now.

  * * *

  Andrew snapped into full wakefulness with a surge of panic. Where was Silver? Her scent around him, diffuse as it was, started his heart slowing before his mind worked out what had happened. He must have been too exhausted to wake briefly when she got up as he usually did. She was still safe.

  And she’d left him breakfast. The smell of food reminded Andrew he was ravenous, and he groped for the bags on the nightstand. He assumed it was Silver who’d left them because the leftover sandwich fixings were still separate: a loaf of bread and packages of cheese and lunchmeat. Andrew didn’t bother with assembly himself, just ate the first package of ham slices all together in a single stack. Bread could wait.

  Silver slipped out of the bathroom, still nude from the shower. Water glistened on her pale skin where she’d missed it with the towel she was currently using on her hair. She caught him appreciating and grinned as she dropped the towel.

  Andrew tossed the empty lunchmeat package aside and stretched, testing how much he’d healed. He stuck with just appreciation for the moment. “Where’s your sling, love?” He held out his hand and Silver sighed. She turned back to the bathroom, giving him another good view, and returned with the sling as well as her shirt and bra.

  Andrew pushed himself up and Silver sat down beside him. Getting her dressed without jarring her shoulder too much required a lot of concentration. When he finished, Andrew demolished the rest of the food in double- and triple-stacked sandwiches while Silver watched with amusement.

  With the edge of his hunger gone, Andrew slid an arm around her waist and rested his cheek against her neck. Back to business, he supposed. With a night of rest behind him, food in his stomach, and breathing in Silver’s scent, things didn’t seem quite so overwhelming.

  He laughed, a low breath of sound. “So we’re alphas of all of North America now.”

  Silver laughed too. “It seems someone should be.”

  Andrew thought back to another conversation, sitting close on another bed. Then, Silver hadn’t wanted to lead. “You’ll be a good alpha.”

  Silver brought up her good hand to pet his hair. “As will you. If you won’t doubt yourself, I won’t doubt myself. Deal?”

  Andrew kissed her neck. He was the luckiest Were alive, to have her to share the burden with. “Deal. Who should we make our beta?”

  Silver cupped his jaw with her palm. “Where are we going to live?”

  Andrew laughed. “One thing at a time!”

  Silver smacked the side of his head lightly. “It’s related. Are we going to settle somewhere with an enforcer
, like you used to be? Are we going to do the traveling ourselves? It changes what our beta would need to be good at.”

  Andrew started to answer and caught himself, trying to consider more carefully. Just because Rory had used an enforcer didn’t make the position a sign of weakness. “If it were just me,” he said at length, “I’d say I’d have to travel. The Western packs aren’t going to be comfortable for a long time, if ever. I think it will help if the alphas show up personally to deal with their problems.”

  “I agree.” Silver’s words had the smell of sincerity, but her muscles tensed in anticipation. “When you were enforcer, you still had a home, didn’t you? Even if you didn’t get to spend much time there.”

  “Sort of. I had Laurence clear out the apartment and put my stuff into storage when I had to stay out West.” Andrew frowned, casting about for a mundane detail in the midst of all that had happened recently. He’d paid the last bill for the unit, hadn’t he? There was nothing there he’d particularly cry over losing, but he liked some of the furniture. “I’m not tied there, though. We can base the pack anywhere we want. I can’t think of a time when a Roanoke actually lived in Roanoke the city.”

  When Silver didn’t say anything else, Andrew smoothed a hand down her side. “What’s wrong?”

  “I think we should keep our home in Seattle. Or somewhere in the West. You said yourself, we won’t be there much. The original Roanoke sub-packs are used to working together, and listening to a distant alpha. The others would benefit more from the gesture of having the alphas settle nearby.” She hiccupped in her next breath. “And I am tied there, I think. The scents I grew up with, and being near my cousin—”

  “Shhh,” Andrew murmured, tightening his arm around her soothingly even as he thought. She did have a very good political point, anything else aside. Being closer to the Western packs would be very good PR. In the East, he had Benjamin. If Andrew could talk him into it, he’d make an excellent … neither enforcer nor beta seemed quite the word that Andrew wanted. Leader, perhaps, for the other sub-alphas. Someone to provide an example to channel them in the right direction. “I think it’s a good idea. I presume your cousin will want his pack back, though. We probably can’t stay in Seattle itself.”