Silver

by Rhiannon Held

  The warrior’s wild self was ascendant now, so he must have switched it with his tame during the night. Both selves dozed, curled against each other.

  Death sauntered into the den. He didn’t even acknowledge the warrior this morning. Instead, he sat on his haunches, watching Silver. The grace of his movements was arrogance today, the Lady’s full light glinting on his fur as it ruffled up with his strides.

  Silver looked down at her hand to find it bathed in familiar dimness and waited for Death to speak, but he was clearly enjoying her anticipation and discomfort. She gave in and spoke first. “You seem pleased with yourself.”

  “He’s going to take you away, Silver.”

  Silver shivered. Death had never used her mother’s voice before. She wanted to wince and promise to obey like the cub she had been when she heard it last. “He doesn’t have the monster’s smell on him. Maybe he’ll protect me as he promises. I’m tired of running. Maybe the Lady is telling me I should look for help instead.” She lifted her chin, defiant.

  “Leave him. He doesn’t care for you like we do. Why won’t you come to us? We’ll help you. Your brother and his mate, we’ll all help you find your wild self.”

  The guilt pulled as strongly as if her mother really had spoken, even when Silver focused on Death’s tongue-lolling smirk. Why didn’t she join her family? If Death hadn’t taken them, she would have run to them first. She had to remember that these were not her family’s words, they were Death’s. Her family would never want her to surrender to the fire. And if Death didn’t want her to go with the warrior, perhaps that was just what she should do.

  * * *

  Andrew woke to Silver’s voice, but it was quiet enough he didn’t register specific words for several moments. Probably just rambling again. He shoved himself back to human during a pause.

  When he was done, he found Silver watching him. “Where will you take me? To your pack? The monster follows me. You might be leading danger to them.” She looked at his face, rather than off into empty space like before.

  “What danger?” Before, he’d assumed the monster was a hallucination, but someone had injected her. Was that who she feared? But she folded in on herself, whimpering again. Andrew blew out a frustrated breath. One moment the woman seemed lucid—he’d had no idea she’d processed enough of his conversation last night to understand he was taking her somewhere—and the next he asked a simple question and she was lost to the poison again.

  “Yes, I’m taking you to the Roanoke pack. You’re in Roanoke territory now, remember?” If she even knew what Roanoke was. It might be better if she didn’t. The Western packs believed it was only a matter of time before Roanoke started pushing its territory past the Mississippi. If she came from a Western pack, that mistrust might have survived subconsciously.

  Silver straightened. “Will they help me? Help me find my wild self?” She tipped her chin to her arm. “If any of them speak Snake, they could ask. I think the snakes know where she went.”

  “Uh. Sure…” Andrew said. Snakes? Rory’s mate was a patient woman. Maybe she could find some sense in the hallucinations if the doctor couldn’t stop them.

  Silver stayed still while he dressed and packed but followed willingly enough when he shouldered his bag and took her arm. “You never said they were your pack,” she commented as he guided her across the parking lot to the car. “Where’s your pack?”

  “Rory is my alpha, but I’m not part of his pack. Since the Roanoke pack unites a number of alphas, it’s a huge territory and Roanoke himself can’t be everywhere.” Andrew had heard Rory’s father managed to make it seem like he could by sheer charisma, back when he built the pack before Andrew’s time, but that was neither here nor there. “That’s why he has me as his enforcer. I can’t really belong to a particular pack when I have to keep them all in line.”

  Andrew nudged Silver to sit in the passenger seat. He didn’t try to buckle the seat belt this time, and she sat calmly. “It must be nice to be lone, then,” she said.

  Andrew eyed her for a second before he shut the door on her. Something about her tone was disconcerting. She sounded like she knew too much even while she spouted nonsense. He wasn’t lone by nature. He felt the itch to have Were around to talk and run with, sure, but circumstances had intervened. He left her in the car and stomped to the lobby to check out.

  He hit the same drive-through again on the way to the highway. The half-dozen breakfast sandwiches smelled greasy and tasted worse, but they provided a fast way to replace the calories he’d burned. He pulled across two parking spaces to unwrap them and tossed three to Silver. She almost choked herself trying to eat the first one-handed and too quickly, but she growled at him when he put a hand out to try to slow her down. He let her be. Who knew how long she’d been on the run, half starving.

  “Where did you come from?” he asked when they were on the road again and she’d had time for the food to settle.

  Silver stared out the window. “All I can remember is fire. Ask Death. He remembers the path I took escaping.” She paused a beat. “Why does it matter to you so much? I’m not in your pack.”

  Andrew scrubbed a hand along his jaw, feeling the bristles. He hadn’t bothered to shave this morning. He was just doing his job, that was all. He’d have been taking the woman to speak to his alpha as a normal lone anyway, just less gently. “I’m taking you to my alpha, so you’ll be somewhere safe. Then I’ll catch whoever did this to you because I’m the enforcer. If someone’s doing that to Were, they have to be stopped before they do it to someone else. So anything you can tell me about where you came from or who did this…”

  “Death will love your voice if you chase that trail,” Silver snapped. She maintained a stubborn silence after that and Andrew let her be. He snorted to himself. He’d dealt with worse in his time than an imaginary Death. He’d drop her with the pack and then he’d get on with doing his job, dealing punishment.

  5

  Silver and the warrior ran through flat fields all day without trees to shield them, sometimes flushing prey from the taller grass. He gave her the first part of his kills like an alpha making sure the old or the ill got their share. It burned, to be forced to acknowledge that she was so weak and unable to catch her own prey with her wild shape fled. She would find it soon enough, but until then, fresh meat made a change from carrion.

  But she didn’t understand him. He smelled like a pack wolf too long alone. She had thought that ache was the emptiest feeling in the world in the before times, but it was nothing like the emptiness of half yourself ripped away. And yet he implied he was a lone. Perhaps he was running from something too. It was a comforting thought until she remembered that soon it wouldn’t matter. He’d leave her with his not-pack and be gone again.

  “You don’t need this warrior. If you come with me, the monster won’t be able to find you,” Death said in the voice of her brother’s mate. Always sensible. Sensible advice.

  “If I go with you, he will have won.” Silver gritted her teeth. “I won’t let him win. You can’t have me.”

  Death laughed. “Better I don’t have you yet. Better you lead him to others, and then I’ll have many voices.” It was the same voice, but sounded nothing like Silver remembered her brother’s mate. Too smug. Silver hugged her knees closer to her chest. She’d never thought she might be selfish, until now. The warrior could at least give the monster a good fight. This not-pack of his would have cubs and those couldn’t fight, and the monster would take them all when he found Silver with them.

  What voices would Death take, because of her?

  * * *

  As twilight fell, Silver looked forlorn, a scrawny thing with her knees pressed to her chest and white hair catching glancing flashes from streetlights. Andrew was counting his exits, but she kept muttering to the air, catching his attention. Her words seemed to revolve around people not being able to have her, but they didn’t seem to be addressed to him.

  “Silver. We’re almost there
.”

  She jerked her head up to look at him, a little white around the eyes, then subsided with a nod. He had to watch that he didn’t miss any turns for the last few miles as trees tended to obscure the street signs and opening the windows gave him only the scent of exhaust, nothing trackable.

  Andrew’s headlights showed several cars in the long driveway loop as his crunched over the gravel. The house had the raw newness and huge floor plan of one of the backwoods mansions that had sprung up across the country. Andrew thought it was ugly, but he supposed one didn’t have much choice in designs for a place with five or six guest rooms. Besides, it wasn’t his money that had been sunk into it.

  The front door opened to show Rory waiting, bulky shoulders filling the frame. He was built on football player lines, hulking muscles under his deep tan. He might have actually played football back in human high school for all Andrew knew, though young Were were discouraged from participating in activities where their enhanced strength could be noticed.

  Silver’s head came up, her attention fixing on the alpha. She pushed at the car door, unable to figure out the mechanism on her own. She tumbled out the moment Andrew came around to open it for her. She sniffed the air.

  “Roanoke. Is Sarah there?” Andrew dipped his head and then guided Silver to the front steps with a hand on her shoulder. He could have made his greeting less abrupt to avoid any appearance of disrespect, but Rory had never required much ceremony of him. He was especially glad of it at times like this. Tonight he was not in the mood for groveling when everyone already knew his status.

  Rory frowned, but stepped aside so Andrew could see his wife. She stood inside on the staircase’s bottom step so she could see over the heads of Rory’s beta, Laurence, and another woman who loomed behind him. The scent of their hostility drifted to meet him. Laurence had his arms crossed over his chest like a cheap rent-a-thug, trying to make up for his slight stature with bravado. The golden-haired woman beside him wore her strength with more loose-limbed confidence. She’d joined the pack recently and Andrew still couldn’t remember her name.

  “This is her? The one they injected?” Rory came forward, and though Andrew motioned Sarah to follow, the woman stayed where she was, head bowed. She was pretty enough, in a long-legged, willowy way, but Andrew hated when Were wouldn’t look him in the eyes. They made him feel like he would hurt them if he wasn’t constantly on his guard.

  “Yeah. In her arm. If Sarah wants to take her, we could talk—”

  Rory ignored Andrew and came over to unzip Silver’s jacket.

  Silver bristled and slapped his hand away with enough force to make a sharp crack. Rory stared, apparently unable to immediately process the insubordination. The rest of his Were seemed similarly frozen.

  “I’m sorry, have we been introduced?” Silver speared him with a glare. “Death says he does not know you, and you don’t seem particularly blessed by the Lady’s light to lord it over all.”

  Andrew suppressed an impolitic bubble of laughter. Good for her. Rory had deserved that for treating a strange Were like she was automatically low-ranked. “Rory, this is—” He hesitated over her name. But if they couldn’t tell something was off about her even before the name, they needed their eyes and noses checked. “Silver. She’s been talking about Death the whole time. It seems part of her delusion.”

  Sarah gasped and pressed her thumb to her forehead at the name. Rory only looked disgusted. At his gesture, his beta and the golden-haired woman settled. There was no point in trying to teach a lesson about insubordination to a madwoman.

  Andrew took hold of Silver’s zipper himself, giving her time to object if she wanted to. She stood quietly. He drew her arm out, angled so his fingers would be well away from the welts. “You have to look closely to see the needle mark, but it’s there.”

  “After the monster killed all the others trying to burn away their wild selves, he did the same to me. But mine ran too fast for him, and now she’s lost. I can’t find her.” Silver’s eyes settled on Rory’s face with tight intensity. “Have you smelled her? Did she precede me here? The Lady’s light is blinding, and all I can see is Death.”

  Andrew ignored the part about Death and the Lady and frowned down at Silver. Others? What others?

  “You poor thing.” Obvious concern made Sarah push past Laurence. Andrew shook himself out of his thoughts, folded Silver’s arm back against her chest, and stepped aside. Sarah brushed Silver’s hair from her face. “Don’t worry. The Lady still watches over you.”

  Andrew frowned. “Are you sure you want to encourage her delusions? She thinks she sees the Lady. Literally.”

  Sarah turned away from finger-combing Silver’s hair into some kind of order. “If the Lady can help her to keep calm—”

  “Yes, but—” Andrew cut himself off even before Rory’s expression warned him that arguing with the man’s mate was a bad idea. As the only atheist in the room, or at least the only one who admitted it, it wasn’t an argument he was going to win.

  “Come to my office. We’ll talk.” Rory jerked his head at the office door. Laurence started to fall in behind Rory, but the alpha gestured him away with a flick of his hand. “Help Sarah and the doctor with the girl,” he told the beta.

  Laurence’s shoulders snapped taut and his scent soured with anger as Andrew passed him. Andrew gritted his teeth. The beta and other high-ranked Were hated his position above them in the hierarchy enough without Rory emphasizing it.

  Rory’s office was decent sized, but shelves on every wall stuffed with a staggering DVD collection made it feel small and dark. A messy snowdrift of work from Rory’s telecommuting surrounded the computer and a spreadsheet was open on the screen.

  Andrew waited until the door shut behind them to describe the circumstances in which he’d found Silver. Not that it clarified much. It was clear she’d been running for some time, so who knew where her injury had occurred.

  Rory stood frowning out the window as Andrew spoke. When he finished the alpha flopped down in his leather computer chair and propped his feet up on the secondary desk with his printer. “Well, she’s not Roanoke.”

  “Your powers of observation astound me,” Andrew said. Why did the man have to be so short-sighted? The point wasn’t that they didn’t technically have responsibility for her, the point was they had a responsibility to deal with what she represented.

  “Pardon?” Rory stretched his knuckles against his opposite palm, not quite popping them. Andrew should possibly have apologized, but Rory allowed his enforcer a fair amount of leeway in private. When Andrew remained silent, Rory continued. “I doubt she’s from one of the Western packs, either. We would have gotten an inquiry before now, however much they hate us. She looks like she’s been living rough for months. She’ll have been a lone. Or one of the splinter pairs. Someone no one would miss.”

  After he killed all the others, she had said. “I’m not so sure.” Andrew pressed his lips together for a moment, thinking. Rory wouldn’t like what he was about to suggest, but she acted like a pack Were, not a lone. “I think it’s time the Western packs sounded off.”

  “What?” Rory swung his feet back to the floor. “They’ll never stand for us poking into their business like that.”

  Andrew drew in a breath. How important was this? How sure was he based on some ramblings and vague instinct that she was pack? He couldn’t explain it, but that instinct was very strong. “What if she is pack? How would we even know one of the Western packs was missing? Discounting Alaska, since I don’t think she could have survived coming cross-country from there even in this season, I don’t even know how many there are at the moment. Seven? Eight? They’re always splitting, combining, or moving and not bothering to tell us. And if a whole pack is gone, it’s serious. Really serious.”

  Rory rubbed a thumb across his opposite palm. “I’m not sure it’s a good use of Roanoke resources to deal with this, though. Her injuries must have happened in the West, so it’s the West’s respon
sibility to take her in and kill the humans that did it.”

  Andrew’s lip curled on a snarl he didn’t voice. No one could know for sure the injuries had happened in the West. He took a deep breath and tried to stand relaxed so frustration wouldn’t leak into his scent. The more you pushed Rory, the more he dug in his feet on the path he’d chosen, no matter how stupid. “No harm in calling to see if someone doesn’t answer, is there?”

  “I’m not going to threaten what little reputation I have scraped together with them these past decades just to ask after some girl.” Rory pushed himself to his feet.

  “The reputation your father built and you’ve been steadily pissing away,” Andrew snapped before he could stop himself. Once he started the swing, better not to pull the blow, though. “Don’t be a coward. If something’s coming after packs, we need to stop it before it leaves the West.” Andrew clenched his muscles so hard he could feel them shake to keep himself from moving and distracting Rory from his words with a physical challenge.

  “She’s fucking crazy. And you’re out of line.” Rory came to stand before Andrew, letting the other man feel viscerally how much he was outmuscled, then casually smashed a fist into his jaw. “Call them to convince one to take her. She’s not staying here.”

  Andrew took the blow like a good underling, and stayed with his head bowed until Rory had left the office. Then he kicked savagely at the desk’s leg. Purchased for a Were household, it was of sturdy construction and hardly wobbled.

  Even knowing he could twist the order to accomplish what he wanted didn’t ease the sting. Rory needed to get his nose out of the sand. His difficulty in dealing with threats outside Roanoke’s immediate sphere had never been so starkly illustrated before.

  Since Rory had left his computer on, Andrew sat down and browsed until he found the man’s address book. Permission to poke around in the personal data could be considered implicit, if one stretched. Andrew certainly didn’t have numbers for all the Western packs. The ache in his jaw faded with healing as he worked.