Reflected (Silver Series) (17 page)

Death bared his teeth, sharply pleased, and Silver smiled back as Billings’s silence once again stretched. “You should still reconsider. A leader needs to do what’s best for her people, or she won’t be leader long,” he said shortly, and then Silver had the sense that he was no longer within range to hear her in his distant place. His last threat about not following her as alpha had been less veiled than she’d expected. Under the politeness did lie bluster in the end, then. Interesting.

Tom released a huff of breath, some of his habitual bounce returning to his manner. “That’ll show him.” He grinned at her.

Silver threw him a wan smile in return, even as she shook her head. “It won’t be so easy. When he has time to twist it around, he will be back, howling the same song, working himself up to declaring independence. But hopefully he will stop and think for at least a little while.”

An unexpected scent assaulted her nose and Silver turned in confusion. It smelled like flowers, but flowers that had died in sweating misery, squeezed to their last drop so humans could smell it over the miasma of unpleasant odors that so often accompanied them.

Felicia tried to slip past the room, shoulders already braced, probably from stares others in the den had given her. She was
wearing
the scent of agonized flowers. Silver couldn’t help staring herself. What in the Lady’s name did Felicia think she was playing at? Covering over her scent that way might as well have been a snarl in everyone’s face. Unconscionably rude. Silver pushed to her feet. Was this in response to her questions last night? If so, it was even more important she continue asking them.

Silver planted herself in the doorway and coughed. Felicia lifted her head, caught Silver’s look, and flushed. “I”—she cleared her throat, uncomfortably—“was just going out.”

“Smelling like that?” Silver crossed her good arm over her chest. “What are you thinking?” Her voice grew sharper than she’d intended, the edge she would have loved to turn on Billings twisting free.

Tom interrupted her with a diffident touch to her arm. “I’ll go take her to wash it off,” he offered, head very low. He’d take her aside and explain how lucky she was to escape the alpha’s wrath, Silver was sure he meant.

She drew a deep breath to try to read Felicia’s emotions underneath, but she only made herself sneeze. Lady-damned flowers. She waved Tom to go ahead. Let him deal with it for now. Clearly, she needed to let her mood calm after dealing with Billings. Tom grabbed Felicia’s wrist and towed her away.

Death sneezed too. “I was wrong the other night. The most subtle one around here is clearly her, not you.”

Silver rubbed her face. Just what she needed to be doing. Handling a tricky political crisis and a young hormonal mystery while being choked by flowers.

11

Felicia gritted her teeth as Tom pulled her through the living room and into the backyard. Clearly her plan had backfired. It had seemed like a good idea at the time to give herself a little cover for any further worry about the situation with Enrique that might leak into her scent.

Tom rounded on her. “Perfume? Seriously? Where did you even get that? What are you trying to hide? If you’re trying to tweak Roanoke Silver’s tail, I’d think again. She’s got a lot to worry about right now, so she’s not going to be as sympathetic to you as usual.”

Felicia scrubbed at her cheeks. They felt so hot, they were probably betraying her emotions as much as her scent might have. “I’m not … look, there was this winter gift exchange last year at school, I got the stuff and I never remembered to throw it out. I just want people to stay out of my business for a while. I didn’t know Silver had something going on, but I don’t care what she does, as long as she doesn’t poke her nose in my business.”

Felicia brought up her wrist and sniffed where she’d splashed it. She sneezed violently twice. She hadn’t realized this damn stuff was so strong. Obviously, unscrewing the misting top had been a mistake. It seemed such a pain in the tail, though, pressing and pressing for almost no liquid at all. She’d assumed it would diffuse the longer she wore it. No such luck so far.

“Well, stop fucking around and no one will be worried about you enough to be in your business,” Tom snapped. He seemed to surprise even himself with his tone’s harshness. He looked at his feet, returning to the puppyish droop he usually got when upset.

Felicia scrubbed her wrist on the hip of her jeans. She’d have to shower a second time and start again with the stuff. Maybe like two molecules of it this time. Calculating perfume amounts kept her metaphorical voice from tightening up at Tom’s worry, and her from blurting out everything about Enrique. She really did have a reason for all of this; she just couldn’t tell him.

Lady damn it.

The sound of a car came from close enough someone must have turned into their driveway. It made a convenient reason to cut short the conversation, so Felicia raised her eyebrows at Tom to show her curiosity, then headed into the house. Tom followed her toward the front door. A knock sounded before they reached it.

Silver had already opened the door on Portland’s beta when they arrived. “Will you let Portland know we should get going?” he said, a sense of betrayal in his tone and body. Felicia couldn’t smell anything over her own perfume, but he hadn’t shaved this morning, and the stubble on top of his already square, rugged jaw make him look exhausted and hard. He turned and started for the end of the driveway without waiting for an answer. There was no sign of an extra car, so Felicia assumed he’d taken a cab and now planned to wait at the curb.

“Portland’s not here,” Silver called after him. “Why would she be?”

The beta jerked to a stop and looked back slowly. “She didn’t come back to the room last night, and her phone’s off. I assumed she was speaking to you privately and stayed over, but it’s past when we planned to leave for the airport. If she’s not here—” He cut off and looked in the direction of the main road, like something about one car among the many had caught his attention. Maybe his senses were keener when picking up a vehicle familiar to him, because a moment later a sleek BMW did turn into the side street.

Portland pulled into the driveway and swung out gracefully to her feet. On the passenger side, Sacramento stayed seated. Portland gave her beta an apologetic grimace. “Hey, Craig. Sorry I was late this morning. I promised Allison we’d give her a ride to the airport. Had to pick her up. Got your text, but not in time to save you the trip out here.” She said it matter-of-factly and settled the black waves of her hair back over her shoulder. That hair always filled Felicia with envy, since it curled so attractively even after air drying as it undoubtedly had that morning. Portland might have been nonchalant about her excuse, but Felicia didn’t need to smell the woman to guess that Sacramento would be freshly out of the shower too, and both of them would have little hints of the other woman’s scent all over them.

Craig clenched his hands to what must have been the point of pain and looked from one woman to the other. The way his expression softened from anger when he looked at Sacramento to hurt when he looked at Portland screamed jealousy to Felicia.

Susan’s questions abruptly made much more sense. Felicia suspected what Susan had really meant was, “Is Portland really interested in the chase itself, or just in having one right under her beta’s nose?” Portland seemed uncomfortable and a little apologetic, but watching Craig, Felicia had a pretty good guess as to which
he
thought it was.

Just like when you danced with Enrique. Seems even stupider from the outside, doesn’t it?
a little voice in Felicia’s head commented. She swallowed to try to loosen the tightness closing around her voice. And that had been something she’d done on her own, not something he’d blackmailed or manipulated her into. She was never doing it again, the Lady as her witness.

Craig stomped over to the passenger side and yanked open the door on Sacramento. “You have no business poking your muzzle into any of this.”

Sacramento put out her feet and kicked at Craig when he didn’t move back to give her room to stand. He retreated enough for that, no farther. She stood up so she was toe to toe with him and jabbed a finger into his chest. “You misunderstand, beta, who’s chaser and chased.”

“Not beta anymore.” Portland’s voice was arctic. She held up her thumb and forefinger close together. “Just another Were who’s this close to walking the two hundred miles back home.”

Craig looked over Sacramento’s shoulder, expression crumpling at the demotion. “Michelle—” he begged, but she shook her head. Craig growled, a rumble beginning deep in his chest and bursting up. “What are you planning to do, join territories with this cat? She can’t even manage to keep a competent beta.”

“Another thing we have in common, then,” Portland threw back, but Sacramento had already seized a handful of Craig’s shirt and tilted her head to catch his eyes for a challenge.

“Inside. In wolf. You’ll answer for this,” she ground out.

“Gladly.” Craig stepped aside to allow Sacramento to lead the way, ignoring Portland’s order to wait as she strode around the car.

Silver stopped Portland with a hand on her arm before she caught up with the other two. “You can’t stop them from following their dominance fight through, now they’ve made the challenge,” she said thinly. “If you didn’t want this, you should have thought about it earlier, Portland. For the love of the Lady, how old are all of you?”

Portland looked at the ground. “I just wanted to relax with a friend. It wasn’t supposed to be related to any of this—that was the whole point.”

Felicia had been so caught up watching—what did the humans call it so aptly?—the train wreck, she had to move aside quickly to avoid getting run into by the challengers. They headed for the living room, which was the obvious choice. It had heavy bookshelves around the edges, but otherwise all the furniture was movable, leaving a large space without anything to crash into. Felicia had always suspected the blood-camouflaging dark brown carpet hadn’t come with the house but had been added later. It had certainly cleaned up well after the few minor dominance fights among the lower ranks she’d witnessed since she’d been here.

Felicia grabbed one side of a couch and Tom lifted the other when the drag marks she was making in the carpet became obvious. Sacramento and Craig began to strip, leaving all the furniture moving to Felicia and Tom and then other pack members as people snuck in to see what the excitement was about. Pierce stepped in to direct the helpers and then push people back from a large enough space.

Craig shifted a little more quickly, but his emotions had probably been boiling up all morning, just waiting for an outlet. He was much heavier than Sacramento in wolf. In human, her challenging attitude, clothes, and hairstyle made her stature less important, but in wolf her smaller size stood out. She made enough noise to make up for it, snarling and snapping at the air, lips pulled far back from her teeth.

Craig didn’t bother to growl. He gathered himself and went straight for her. Sacramento danced neatly out of range of the snap of his teeth. Craig seemed to have expected as much, however, as he just lunged at her again. Lunge and dodge, lunge and dodge.

Portland lifted her hands to her mouth, one in a fist, first knuckle against her teeth, the other clasped around it. She’d blanked her face, but Felicia could imagine what was going through her mind—she was probably urging Sacramento on, as the more likely of the two to get badly hurt, as if a concerted effort of thinking would transfer some of Portland’s strength to the other woman.

Silver glowered, weight forward like she longed to throw herself between the combatants to stop the challenge. In Spain, the same as here, everyone watched challenge fights in human to remind them not to interfere, but Felicia had never seen the point of that before now. Interfering was something you just
didn’t
do, but she could tell Silver longed to.

As the fight dragged on, Felicia noticed that Craig never extended himself very far. He was saving his energy, not blundering all out after his more nimble opponent. Maybe Craig would win after all. That didn’t seem right, but then again, who was on the right side of this argument? Craig had been rude to Sacramento, yes, but his alpha and Sacramento had both been thoughtless about how their chase would affect him. But maybe Craig had been thoughtless in whatever had brought them to Silver, Felicia didn’t know. It all seemed like a stupid reason to fight.

Sacramento dodged in the wrong direction and Craig’s teeth ripped into her shoulder, releasing a gush of blood to mat the fur of her leg before it healed. She gave a canine shriek at the surprise rather than the severity of the wound, and Portland’s next breath sounded more like a sob.

Felicia imagined herself standing there, in Portland’s place. What if Tom had challenged Enrique, when she’d danced with him right under
his
nose? She stole another quick glance at Portland. She imagined her face would have looked similar.

The shoulder wound healed quickly, but it still disturbed Sacramento’s rhythm and seemed to drag at her energy. She stumbled and Craig got her down on her side. Portland choked down a curse. Sacramento squirmed away, momentarily recovering her earlier speed, but she was flagging, and he was just plain bigger, heavier, stronger. Enrique wasn’t big by the standards of someone like Craig or John, off with her father right now, but that wasn’t the point. He only had to be heavier and stronger than Tom if they fought, and Tom was so rangy in wolf.

An idea was taking hold of Felicia, as much as she tried to push it away. It was all Silver’s fault for making her even consider it. She couldn’t interfere, she
couldn’t,
yet she had to do something. And if it looked like an accident, who would ever know? The combatants would have to stop if they knocked into a bystander. She rocked slightly on her feet as she watched the rhythm of the fight. Close to the end now, with more stumbles from Sacramento, and another rake of Craig’s teeth over her leg.