Reflected (Silver Series) (7 page)

John raised his eyebrows. “It’s been three years, Dare. That’s an awfully long time for him to be plotting revenge for you humiliating him, without doing anything about it.”

Silver rather agreed with her cousin about the length of time, but she also trusted Dare’s judgment, so she stayed silent, searching her mate’s face for hints of his reasons.

Dare shook his head. “Madrid plays a long game. He gathers information for years before acting on it. I’d estimate he’s due to try for a better source by now. I’d recognize any of his pack he tried to send, so while I’m away would be a perfect time.” He dropped her hand and paced a few steps.

“Wouldn’t Felicia recognize someone he sent too?” Silver cupped the side of Dare’s jaw, stilling him from further pacing. It would be good to be on their guard, but she thought Dare perhaps underestimated the effect of distance. She had no doubt Madrid would carry a grudge against Dare until Death took his voice, but Madrid was very far away. Revenge at such a distance took more energy than most people had. “I’ll ask her about any strangers. Promise.” She pressed her thumb to her forehead, sealing the promise in the Lady’s name.

“Fair enough.” Dare kissed her forehead where she had touched it. “I promise not to worry about it, then. Much.” They both laughed and Dare took both of her hands. His squeeze, though it looked equal, felt uneven to her, conveyed in a muffled fashion by her bad hand. “Don’t feel like you have to enforce anything with Felicia until I get back.”

Silver squeezed back, one-handed. The situation couldn’t be clearer: this was her time to learn to deal with Felicia properly. “We’re alphas of all of Roanoke. I can handle one sulky cub. If she doesn’t choose to go roaming, Susan can help me judge her progress.”

“Thank you.” Dare gave her a wan smile. “If you can think of some time-consuming task to give her as well, don’t hesitate. When I was that age, half the restlessness came from not having something to focus my energy on.”

“I can think of
plenty
of ways to provide her that,” Death said in the voice of a past enemy, the one Susan had killed for them. Silver took his point. Lady ensure that circumstances wouldn’t step in to provide excitement once more.

*   *   *

After the hunt, Felicia went straight back to her room, absently picking pine needles out of the ends of her curls. She wanted to know what was going on, but she wasn’t going to seek out her father and ask him.

She stopped with her hand on the knob, sniffing. Everyone’s scent was all over the pack house, but her father’s had just reached her more strongly. Lady, was he waiting for her? Lovely. She jerked the door open a little harder than necessary.

Her father sat at her desk, working on a laptop. She thought it was hers for a moment, since she’d left it there, but a quick scan found it closed and sitting neatly on a flat spot in the piled blankets on her bed.

He tapped a last few keys and looked up. “John and I have to take care of some things up in Alaska. Our flight leaves pretty early tomorrow morning.”

Felicia shucked off her shirt and dumped it beside the door. Scent marking her space like that was a little rude when someone was in it, but she hadn’t invited him in. She left her jeans beside the bed before removing the laptop and forming the blankets into a nest. She’d sleep in wolf tonight, she decided. “So this is when you tell me to listen to Silver?”

“If I have to tell you to listen to your alpha, you have deeper problems,” her father said. He closed his laptop and stood. “Just don’t”—he sighed—“poke at her because you’re angry at me, all right?”

“I’m not angry at you.” Felicia jerked one blanket off the bed entirely. She actually was a little. He’d smell that. But it wasn’t him so much as being European and not having a pack company job to look forward to and not really knowing what she was doing, searching for a job. And now Tom was talking about
friends,
and that
was
her father’s fault. “I don’t have any problems with Silver.”

“Good.” Her father paused at the door, maybe thinking about saying something else, but he left it at that.

Felicia bit her lip. She couldn’t let him go with that kind of good-bye. She threw her arms around him for a quick hug. “Watch out for helicopters. They said on TV they hunt wolves that way up there.”

Her father petted her hair. “I will.”

6

Over the next week, Silver didn’t know if Felicia was being particularly effective in her efforts, but she certainly worked hard at something Silver didn’t understand. Susan pronounced herself satisfied with the girl, even impressed with her intensity, so Silver put off their talk. Cowardly, she supposed, but as long as the girl was working on something, why push her harder?

A distraction arrived at the end of the week, in any case. Portland spoke with Silver over a distance to warn her that she wished to meet with a Roanoke but didn’t mention the reason. Silver didn’t press her, but the omission made her all the more curious when she opened the door to the den that morning and invited Portland and her beta in. Pierce stood just inside, watching. He didn’t have John’s build to hulk even with his wild self dominant, but he watched with an intensity that the visitors couldn’t miss, ears tight on them.

“Roanoke,” Portland said, and they embraced on the doorstep. Two less familiar alphas might have shaken hands to test each other’s grip, but this was an even deeper offering and testing of trust. Portland was a short woman, black of hair and dusky of skin, and her wild self had a hint of reddish sand mixed among the gray. Silver paid close attention to that wild self to find what Portland was hiding in her tame self’s body language, because she was hiding something. That was clear enough.

“My beta, Craig.” Portland motioned the man forward. He was square jawed and stubborn looking, tame and wild self alike.

“And you without any hackles to raise,” Death said. He came to sniff the newcomers as Silver’s wild self should have, had she still been alive.

Silver drew a deep, calming breath. Death wasn’t wrong. She did not like Portland’s beta at all. She had to dig mental fingertips into the name to avoid losing it in a rush of anger. Before Dare had bled the worst of the silver from her veins, this man—Craig—had been in favor of killing her. Her own memories of that time were too jumbled to remember that, but Dare had let it slip once to explain his avoidance of the man.

But as Roanoke, she had to set that aside. She had only words to hold against this man, not actions. Not even words she’d heard herself. So she would be polite but wary.

Death’s attention lingered on Portland’s wild self, which surprised Silver. She would have expected him to nip and harass Craig’s. Death held his nose close to Portland’s flank for several moments, then sneezed and wandered off. When he opened his mouth, his voice was a wail of a newborn, slicing right through defenses to the pure emotion beneath. Protect. Protect the cub.

Silver closed her eyes. That child was dead. She’d heard Death use that voice once before. One of Portland’s, lost during shifting. She opened them again and gestured to dismiss Pierce. This was definitely private business, and he knew to wait within easy distance, should she need him. When he was gone, she spoke. “You can’t be very far along. I can hardly smell it.”

Craig jerked in surprise and Portland smiled in satisfaction. “I told you she’d figure it out.” She patted his shoulder teasingly but sobered quickly. “That’s why we need to talk to you.”

“Come in.” Silver gestured for them to precede her deeper into the den. She hung back to speak to Tom, who was waiting just out of sight, curiosity quivering beneath the surface of all his muscles. “Get some food and drinks, then chase people out of earshot,” she told him. He bobbed a nod and bounded off. She had to call the rest after him. “Including you!” He waved to acknowledge it without turning around, and she had to laugh.

They all sat and Silver and Portland made strained conversation about the weather and how it was affecting the prey populations in Portland’s territory until Tom had set down the food and drink and disappeared. Silver only sipped at her drink, but Portland nibbled and nibbled, probably not even realizing how much she was eating.

Silence fell, compacting under the weight of important things to follow. Craig broke it first. “I have a petition for you, Roanoke.”

Portland jerked straight backed. “You said that you wanted to discuss it, not—” The rest of her words trailed off into a rolling growl, and her wild self bared its teeth and snapped at Craig’s.

Silver straightened too, stalling through her assumption of a formal expression. She and Dare had continued a tradition of Roanoke under other alphas: A Were of any rank could formally present them with a petition and be heard in full, their alpha barred from making any arguments until the petitioner was finished. It had come up only a few times, and she’d never before felt so biased. She’d much rather believe anything Portland said than Craig, but that didn’t matter. She needed to hear him out. “Do you wish to make your case privately?”

Craig hesitated and glanced over at his alpha, who didn’t give him time to answer. “You mean for a formal petition I can actually be kicked out?” Portland glared first at Craig, then at Silver.

Silver wanted to grimace, but she kept up her formal mask. “If the petitioner requests it. Or if keeping silent proves difficult for you at any point.” She pressed her lips together, then unbent as much as she dared. “It’s to keep low-ranked Were in a bad situation from being intimidated out of getting help. Obviously, there’s no intimidation here.” She raised her eyebrows at Craig for confirmation, and he dipped his head in a nod and even exhaled on a note of humor.

“She can stay.” Craig waited as Portland crossed her arms and settled back, scent indicating she was seething inside. He grew even more expressionless in his own version of formality. “I am petitioning to have Michelle removed from the position of alpha.”

Death laughed. Silver closed her good hand into a fist in her lap, hidden from view. Oh, how she’d love that fist to connect with his square jaw. “What?” She didn’t growl, but she put that vibrating rage into her tone. How dare he ask such a thing? “Why?”

Craig set his hands flat on his thighs. “Alphas come under a great deal of stress. Stress that could trigger an unwanted shift and harm the child.”

Silver could see the thought so plainly on Portland’s face she voiced it for the other woman, though with less anger. “Stress like having an unsupportive beta?” Death’s smugness deepened so markedly that she examined the words and winced internally at how badly she was doing at listening as an unbiased alpha. When she shoved emotion aside, this did not seem to be as similar to his opinion of her in the past as she’d thought. She’d supposed his suggestion to kill her had been laziness and a wish to avoid trouble, unleavened by empathy. This wasn’t avoiding trouble, it was causing it—in pursuit of what goal? Was Craig really motivated only by worry for the safety of his alpha’s cub?

“Are you trying to say that no woman can be alpha without choosing between the position and having cubs?” Silver spoke quickly to dispel her last jab with a more logical argument. Female alphas were clearly the real issue here.

Craig drew in a deep breath and glanced at Portland with a flash of concern so deep and surprising that Silver reevaluated her earlier assumption of his lack of empathy. “That depends if the other female alphas have lost children before.”

Portland choked something back, and Silver was grateful for the excuse to stall before giving her response. She knew Portland had lost a cub to an early-term shift, but she hadn’t thought of it in quite those terms until Craig voiced them. These things happened, but they happened to some women more than others, and only the Lady knew all the causes and factors. “I will have to think about this.”

Silver hated the words even as she said them, but she couldn’t think properly with both of them staring at her, and Craig was right: it wasn’t just about being a female alpha, it was about being a female alpha who had already lost one cub. Portland smelled frustrated but didn’t protest.

“And consult with your mate?” Craig dropped his head in acknowledgment without waiting for an answer, as if his question was only a formality. If anything, that made it worse.

Silver shoved to her feet, the violence of the movement cutting off Portland’s reaction. A small part of Silver whispered urgently that she was supposed to keep her temper because she was Roanoke, but the rest was all icy clarity for her next words. “Think very carefully. Are you telling your alpha that she cannot make a decision on her own?”

Silver took one step, another, and touched Craig’s chin to make him meet her eyes. She didn’t bother to measure her dominance against his, as one might normally. She overpowered it, smashed him flat as he gasped. She’d told him she’d consider his petition, and yet he still felt the need to bully her. She walked with Death in the place of her wild self, and he
dared
to say she could not make a decision on her own?

Craig twisted his head away from her, panting. “I can make this big, Roanoke. I’m not the only high-ranked Were in the sub-packs who feels this way. Not by a long shot. Children are too precious to endanger them for posturing about status.” His voice was a frightened whine, but his words stopped Silver short anyway.

She stepped back. She could believe that he’d get support. Lady, she didn’t want to, but she could. Were had few children and they all felt the longing, if not as strongly as she often did, denied the chance for her own. And what a convenient excuse for the packs that disliked being united under Roanoke to agitate for their independence. The Western packs had been united for only three years, and even the original Roanoke sub-packs had their share of troublemakers, always bucking for more power.

Thinking about defending against all that made Silver realize she knew her answer to the petition, even without time to think further. You couldn’t let fear for yourself, or fear for your cubs, keep you from living your life. At some point, you had to leave it in the Lady’s hands. But having made the decision, now she couldn’t voice it. She couldn’t match dominance with everyone across the entirety of their territory, one by one. And if she lost one sub-pack, others were likely to follow. Better she and Dare work together, Dare using his skill with words on them, persuading and ordering where necessary.