Silver

by Rhiannon Held

  Everything else aside, his need to use the bathroom was getting too desperate to be ignored. He concentrated, trying to make his leg muscles move by sheer force of will. Nothing happened. Well, the bathroom wasn’t that far away. He had dragging down by now.

  He hadn’t counted on the getting up and down part. The sink helped him in the bathroom, but getting back on the bed was impossible. The rest and food had helped, but he still didn’t have the strength in his arms to lever himself straight up.

  He leaned his head against the bed and stared into middle distance, feeling the quicksand of self-pity dragging him under. No matter how much he pushed it down, the thought kept coming back. He’d seen Death, like Silver. What if he could never shift again, like her?

  Andrew couldn’t remember everything from when Stefan had pulled him into the house to when Silver had drawn him away, but he would remember something like an injection. Wouldn’t he? A residual hallucination or two didn’t mean he’d been permanently poisoned like Silver. Andrew pressed a hand to his back, feeling the scar tissue ridges through the bandages. Did they radiate toward his heart as Silver’s did?

  “Poor baby,” a male voice said. Andrew closed his eyes, but when he opened them, the wolf-shaped hole cut into deep-space blackness remained. “Crying to himself. It’s so sad.”

  “You’re not real,” Andrew spat at him. “You’re a hallucination. From the silver.” His heart surged too fast again. He reached for the shift with every fiber of his being and nothing happened. But of course nothing happened. By now his own panic was just screwing him up. This didn’t mean anything. He was like the teen girl, trying too hard in the wrong direction. He needed to heal, calm down, and then try again. Have a little patience.

  He balled up his fists in his lap, and pain flared in the burn on his hand. He ignored it. Lady, please. Let all of that be true. Let him not be crippled, stuck in human forever.

  “For one who claims to not believe, you call out to Her often enough.”

  Andrew blinked at Death through a film of tears. “A handful of times is hardly often.” And much good the prayers did him, as ever.

  Death came to sniff right up in Andrew’s face. Andrew flinched back, but he didn’t have far to go with the bed right there. Death sat back on his haunches. “So you delight in telling yourself.” Death let his tongue loll out in a canine grin. “A little faith won’t kill you. I would know.”

  Andrew flexed his hand again to make the pain flare. “Where was She, then? When all but one of the Bellingham pack was killed? Didn’t they pray to Her?”

  Death’s manner drained of all animation. “You know why I brought mortality to Her Children. It is the way of the world. We are none of us outside of the world. She cannot change that.”

  Andrew looked away. He would think about that truth later. Not now. He looked back at the sound of Death shaking himself all over, the earlier smug humor returned. “The only constant of the world is change. I’d wait to see what change brings before I fell into despair, if I were you.”

  A knock sounded on the door, and Andrew found himself alone and light-headed. Lady, what a realistic hallucination.

  John entered after a pause. “Oh, good. You’re awake. Silver’s downstairs eating. You should have called earlier.” John’s tone held no hint of how much he’d heard of Andrew’s conversation with Death. The household would have heard Andrew moving around from the start, though, so something must have prompted John to stop waiting politely to be called.

  He crossed to Andrew as if he planned to boost him up onto the bed, but checked when he saw Andrew’s expression. Andrew wasn’t going to let another alpha pick him up like a child.

  John considered him in silence for a moment. “You planning to keep your pride and sleep on the floor all day?”

  Andrew let himself acknowledge the weakness that permeated his entire body. He hurt. All over. And the floor was hard. “All right,” he said, and didn’t struggle when John gave him the boost. He dragged himself back to lean against the headboard without any help.

  “I’ll get breakfast.” John returned a few minutes later with a tray bearing a heart-attack special. The plate was piled high with bacon, ham, eggs, and toast slathered with butter. Andrew didn’t waste any time before digging in, though he did use the fork this time.

  John hovered. Andrew eventually paused between bites to eye him. The food made it easier to pull up a confident mask and the mask reminded him of something he needed to do. “You should consider yourself alpha again. I’m in no shape to hold the position, and I was planning to give it back anyway. I don’t need to be in your room.”

  “You can transfer power officially when you’re up again. I don’t want it said I stole it back while you were too injured to resist. Besides, Silver wouldn’t settle until she was right next to you. My room has the biggest bed. And the shortest path to the bathroom.” John looked over his shoulder at that door. The drag marks on the carpet stood out clearly.

  He seemed to realize he was looming, so he dumped a jacket off the chair and nudged it to face the bed more directly. He flopped down, confident body language proclaiming his resumption of authority, even if he didn’t acknowledge it directly. There wasn’t much difference between being beta to an invalid alpha and an alpha yourself, after all. “You up to telling us what happened? We lost you in the crowd and then bumped into Silver coming back the other direction. No trace of you.”

  Andrew picked up a bacon strip and snapped it in half. “He caught me off guard. Threatened me with silver bullets. They weren’t, as it turns out, but I couldn’t risk letting him shoot me and then snatch Silver unopposed.”

  John hissed between his teeth in sympathy. “It doesn’t make sense, though. We saw his dead arm when we—dealt with him. It looked like Silver’s wound. Why would he be using silver at all?”

  “He was injected by humans in Europe at the turn of the last century. I found out about him just before everything blew up, never remembered to tell you. He took his torturer’s words to heart. He thought he was saving us for the human God.” Stefan’s voice came back to Andrew in memory, and his stomach flipped, threatening to reject his breakfast. Saved, purified, killed. Was Stefan to blame, or were the humans who had begun this all, over a century ago? Did it matter now?

  Andrew pushed the tray away, about a quarter of the food left. His memories were stronger than his remaining hunger. He leaned back into the pillows. “I wonder how Silver knew where to find us.”

  “She said Death told her.” John looked at his hands, and Andrew closed his eyes to shut out the tone. Did John believe Silver talked to religious abstracts? It sounded like he was at least considering the possibility.

  Did Andrew believe it?

  “She’s used him as a mouthpiece before for things she could have figured out by simple logic,” Andrew said. It sounded halfhearted compared to his usual protests.

  John didn’t argue. “What I still don’t understand is how Silver got there. I mean, we know how—she climbed out a window and took the beater we keep around for when someone’s car is in the shop—but I had no idea she even remembered how to drive.”

  Andrew focused on the opposite wall rather than see her expression again in memory. Older, more aware, but twisted with such pain. “It wasn’t Silver. It was Selene.”

  Silence. John jerked to his feet. “You mean she—? But this morning she seemed less lucid, not more.”

  Andrew swallowed, remembering Selene’s words. Andrew. I want to stay, but I can’t— The only words she’d ever spoken to him as herself, he supposed. “I think the effort cost her more than she had. Not only facing up to the knowledge about her pack, but having to do it in the house with their blood on the walls…” He clenched his hands. “No wonder she took refuge in deeper madness.”

  John opened his mouth as if to ask another question, but he seemed to think better of it and took away the tray instead. “She’ll be back up here soon, I expect. I think she feels safer with h
er rescuer.” He still sounded a little annoyed that Silver wouldn’t accept the protection of family over a stranger, but the emotion was mellower than before.

  “Funny, considering she was the one who rescued me.” Andrew rubbed a hand over his back. It would heal in time, and then he’d be able to shift. He had to keep telling himself that.

  John switched the tray to one hand to open the door onto a waiting Laurence. He growled at the other man. “I told you. He’s still healing. Out.” He pointed down the hall.

  “Just five minutes.” Laurence wiggled past, his slight frame an advantage for once. “Dare, please. I just want to talk to you.”

  Andrew sighed and beckoned Laurence forward. He might as well get this over with. He assumed Laurence was going to whine about Rory again, but while Andrew agreed that Roanoke should never have treated his beta that way, Andrew couldn’t do anything about it.

  Instead of speaking, Laurence knelt beside the bed, head bowed. Andrew stared at him in shock. No. Not that. “I can’t,” he said, gesturing desperately for Laurence to stand.

  The man refused, though he did raise his head. “We need you as Roanoke, Dare.” When Andrew just shook his head, he drew out his phone, chose an address book entry, punched the speaker phone on, and held it out as it rang. “Boston agrees. You’ll listen to him, won’t you?”

  John placed the tray outside in the hall and returned to place a warning hand on Laurence’s shoulder, grip tight. “I told you, he has to heal.”

  “Is that Seattle I hear?” Boston’s voice came from the phone. “I couldn’t agree more. Is Dare there?”

  “Not from lack of trying on some people’s parts.” Andrew was grateful Boston wasn’t present to smell or see his false bravado.

  Benjamin’s chuckle was rendered only a little less rich by the phone speakers. “Excellent. Well, much as I disagree with Laurence’s timing, I do agree with his basic thesis. We need you here, when you’re healed. Rory has stabilized things for the moment, and I suspect he’ll be anxious enough to get his beta back to ask no questions, but things will only last until the next crisis. We need someone with true strength at the helm.”

  Andrew pressed a hand to his face. “I can’t.” Not when he might never be able to shift again.

  “Dare.” The word had a snap Andrew remembered from the dark, suicidal days when he’d first returned home from Spain. “Remember a decade ago, when I told you to take the time you needed to pull yourself together? I didn’t mean forever. I’m not going to let you go back to running now you’ve proved to yourself you can do better. Trust me, I’m not the only one who’s not planning to let you wiggle out of this, Roanoke.”

  John exhaled in amusement, possibly in agreement. Well, of course Seattle would agree, he’d much rather have Andrew on the other side of the continent and out of his business. Andrew pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. Flattering, certainly. But Benjamin didn’t understand. It would be literally impossible for him to be an alpha if he couldn’t shift. “If I heal—” He growled to stop Boston objecting to the “if.” “If I heal, I’ll come back and see about dealing with Rory. My word.” He pressed a thumb to his forehead to mark the oath. It was true enough. If he healed enough to shift.

  A thought occurred to Andrew, shaken loose by hearing Boston’s voice. “Your woman, that you sent after that lone—Stefan must have been up there casting about for Silver’s trail, before finding it at the pack house—is she all right?”

  Benjamin’s strained silence gave Andrew all the answer he needed. The older man sighed after a moment. “If that falls on any head, it’s mine. Don’t be taking that on too.”

  John must have smelled a hint of Andrew’s stomach-churning guilt because he jerked Laurence to his feet and stole his phone. “There. Five minutes. Out.” He shut off the speaker phone and put the phone up to his ear. “I’m afraid visiting hours are over.” John said “mm” a couple times dryly and ended the call.

  “You should probably sleep,” John told Andrew after Laurence had left looking pleased with the promise he had secured. A suggestion, not an order. It was respectful of him. And however little Andrew liked the idea of finding Death again in his dreams, speaking with a nameless Boston woman’s voice, exhaustion sucked him down the moment he closed his eyes.

  26

  It was pleasant to drift in the mist. Silver ate sometimes, and kept the warrior’s presence near her, but didn’t otherwise think about anything. It was restful. Just her and Death and the soft Lady’s glow of the mist.

  It didn’t last, of course. The mist cleared, the Lady’s light changed to indicate the passage of days and weeks, and memories slid in like sparkles at the edge of her vision. A name, most of all. Dare. Silver drew her nail along the diamond-backed skins the snakes had left on her arm and remembered him killing them.

  “Have you decided to rejoin us, then?” Death curled against her side. She sank her hand into the inky blackness of his fur to scratch, and he pretended he was in no way enjoying it. “Your mate will start harming himself soon if you don’t do something about it.”

  “What?” Silver looked down at Death. “Harm himself how—” She stuttered to a stop as she realized that her moment to contest the mate part had come and gone. But it didn’t matter what she called the two of them if Dare didn’t agree.

  “He is trapped, unable to walk, in another alpha’s room. You think he won’t reopen the injuries pushing himself too hard? He needs someone to channel his effort.”

  Silver pushed herself to her feet. “I should have realized myself how trapped he’d feel.”

  Death rose with her. “What, and make the same mistake yourself? Walk before you run, girl. You’re only lately come back to awareness.” He laughed when Silver glared. “Go help him find his wild self. Tell him you can see it.”

  Silver frowned. “Why? He knows it’s there.”

  Death bumped the back of her legs, and didn’t answer. She allowed him to channel her in the right direction.

  She found Dare just placing his feet on the floor, wiggling his toes. His wild self pressed close to his legs as if frightened. He looked hurt, coarser white fur coming in as a stark bar across his back, but it was clear he had no thought of leaving Dare.

  Silver let another memory in, Dare dragging himself to her using only his arms. Her heart squeezed. “You’re not supposed to be walking yet,” she said, crossing to playfully shove him back onto the bed. Dare yielded under the push but sat right back up again.

  “I can almost walk. Even if I can’t shift.” He said it like he wasn’t paying attention to her, too caught up in his need to push himself until he proved he was strong enough.

  “I think you need to wait to walk.” Silver knelt so she pressed against his lower legs, holding them against the bed. “And I don’t know why you feel your wild self doesn’t come when you call, but I think it’s most likely you’re so afraid of failing you call too softly.”

  Dare’s face twisted and he put a hand to her hair. “I know you want to give me hope—but I can’t feel it. It’s been weeks. I’m nearly fully healed. And I should be able to feel the shift right there now we’ve gotten so close to the full again, and I can’t.”

  “My wild self is dead,” Silver said, needing to hear it out loud as much as he did. It hurt, but not as much as yesterday. And she knew tomorrow would be better still. “And I know that because she’s gone. Your wild self is right here.” She ruffled the wild self’s ears and Dare shivered like maybe he felt it. “Don’t worry so hard. He’s waiting for you.”

  Silver scooted away and turned her back as he pulled off his pants, to give him a little privacy for the moments of transition from tame to wild self. She shrugged off her jacket and then slung her arm over Death’s flank and scritched along his side, burying her nose in his fur.

  Dare was silent for a long time. His next grunt of effort still came from a tame throat. Silver growled. “Don’t try so hard! Just fall,” she said without turning.

/>   Her next breath, she smelled the change in scent from bare skin to musky tang of fur and she sighed in relief. The wild self sprawled on the bed like his back legs didn’t work right in that form either, but he panted open-mouthed in satisfaction.

  The bandages no longer fit, so Silver ran her fingers along Dare’s belly and back to pull them away. The white fur stuck up awkwardly as she brushed her fingers along it. Dare growled. His tame form’s smooth skin took gradual shape under her fingers.

  “You should leave those on,” he said, twisting to frown at her. His joy at finding his wild self robbed the expression of any heat, but that joy quickly flickered out. “Oh. Silver. I’m so sorry. Here I am celebrating, when you…”

  She tossed away the bandages. “You’re healed enough,” she said. The rest of his worries she just ignored. Later, she could better explain to him why she was finally at peace with Death to walk in the place of her wild self.

  His tame self’s skin wasn’t so smooth after all, there along his back. It had the same white ridges as her snake skins, only his were a landscape of mountains and valleys where hers were barely raised. She explored them with her fingers until he shivered, and then she kissed them instead.

  She heard his enjoyment in the deep, warm quality of his huff of surprise. She saw it in the way his wild self opened his mouth in a panting grin. But then he twisted over and away from her, covering his lap as he sat up. “We shouldn’t—”

  Silver’s heart squeezed. Lady. Had she been wrong? But she’d heard his attraction in his voice, seen it in his body. She could smell it. He wanted her. Death laughed, and his words popped into her memory without him having to repeat them. So hold him down. Well, then. She’d try that. She brushed her hair from her face and climbed to kneel over him, straddling him. “Why not?”

  He looked up into her face. Resistance slipped away from his expression and she could smell his attraction come ascendant once more. Then he smiled, and Silver’s heart soared.