Little Wolf (62 page)

“That Dirus name again. That means what now?” Carl, wily and awesome, stayed with him despite not really understanding what Dirus meant to a were. Tim had tried to explain it in Carl’s living room, who his uncle was, who his family was, what Silas was capable of if properly motivated, but Carl had yet to seem impressed by any of it. “So your uncle makes the werewolf world jump, but he’s also the man who raised you and made you the difficult boy we know today?” Carl’s summary was cutting. “He kept you away from the world and you think he might try it again? Then it might be right to avoid him.”

Tim stamped his foot to fight off his tremors. “Silas might try to keep me again, but he won’t hurt me. I don’t think. Not like that.” He didn’t have half the faith in his uncle that he had in Albert and Carl, and until today it had never occurred to him how dysfunctional that was. “I think he was protecting me. But I don’t know for sure.” He raised his head. “I need to know why he did it.” Tim frowned and let the guard think the frown was for him. “And I need him to leave you guys alone. Hey!” He addressed the guard directly and stopped a few feet from him. “Tell Silas I’ve arrived. Go on!” Tim huffed at him a second later when the guard didn’t move, and then, because he was probably going to end up dead or locked up again anyway, he grinned enough to show fangs.

The guard didn’t seem intimidated, but he did move and slipped into the room with his key, then closed the door behind him. Tim probably had a minute or less to prepare himself. He turned to consider Albert and Carl.

“I don’t expect you guys to go in there with me if you don’t want to. Or to charge in after me if you… if you hear anything.” Part of him couldn’t believe they’d even come this far. “Look, he won’t hurt me.” He said that louder, as if that would make it more true. “But it might not be good. I don’t know if he’s going to let me walk out of there. So… I’m not going to make you stay.”

Carl was every kind of disgruntled. “As if you could make us leave.”

“Well, no.” Tim was too thrown to argue. “But that guard could.”

“Let us worry about that guard.” Albert acted like he hadn’t been swatted aside by Luca earlier. Then again, Luca had run immediately after shoving Albert away, according to Albert, so maybe a fight between them would have ended differently if Luca had stayed.

Tim had his doubts. “Really, guys.”

“
Really
.” Albert settled in, as if he had no intention of moving from his position. “You wanted us here to make sure you did this, didn’t you? For support? And to witness? We can do that.”

Carl pulled his hat down hard so the gold embroidery seemed to gleam in the light. It read,
2nd Battalion 5th Marines
, which Tim still didn’t understand, but he recognized a powerful symbol when he saw one, even if it wasn’t magic. He met Carl’s eyes under the brim of the hat. Carl growled in a fair imitation of a were. “We got you here and we’re not leaving until you say we are.”

“Shit.” Looking at them made Tim want to bolt, because he wasn’t brave like them. “Fuck you both.” He scrubbed at his face and wondered how an offer of support would make him feel so unsteady. “Okay,” he agreed, although his agreement seemed to be irrelevant. “Okay. Just… look unaffected. Show no weakness. Remember he probably won’t do anything to either of you.” The weakness was starting to go away, doomed in the face of their certainty. “You’re really going to stay with m—I mean, if anything happens, run. Go to Nathaniel and… and… tell him I hate his face.” Tim let the words fly out of him in their last few moments of privacy and then lifted his eyebrows when the door reopened. He chose to ignore Albert’s disapproval of his choice of last words.

The guard stepped out of his way. “Just you, Mr. Dirus. The human and the other stay here.”

That was kind of what Tim had expected. It was still bullshit. But it increased the odds that Silas would be alone in that suite of rooms. He didn’t want witnesses for whatever Tim might do. Tim thought about arguing anyway, insisting on bringing them with him or he’d walk away, claiming one or both of them was his lawyer and hiding behind business. But then he thought Silas might be right in one thing at least. This was probably going to be embarrassing, if not flat-out painful.

He glared at the nameless member of Silas’s pack. “You hurt either of them and you can expect a visit from Nathaniel Neri.” Tim didn’t feel guilty for making a promise he knew Nathaniel would keep. “If there is anything left of you after that, you’ll have me to contend with.” Nobody in Wolf’s Paw would take that threat seriously, but this were knew who Tim was and all the resources Tim had at his disposal. Maybe that was why he snapped his gaze to Tim and kept it steady on him until Tim was inside the room. Then the guard quickly shut the door with himself on the other side.

Tim took in his surroundings, the space of the suite, the open plan letting him see into several rooms at once, all of them empty of people except the room he was in. A sitting room of sorts, it was filled with chairs and a large fireplace of its own, as well as a bank of windows looking out over the mountains and part of the town.

Silas was standing in front of the last window. The last time they had been like this, Tim had been fifteen and trying not to show the bruises Luca had left behind. He had thought if he mentioned them to Silas, Silas would have been disappointed in him, ashamed.

There was no hiding his bruises now. He hadn’t waited long enough to let the swelling on his face go down. He reeked of blood, the stab wounds in his stomach possibly beginning to close. Silas smelled him before he turned. The motion was sharp, startled. But his slip was brief. A moment later and he’d closed his expression off, leaving Tim to stare into his fierce eyes and guess what Silas thought of Tim’s current appearance.

Tim was injured. He couldn’t hide it, but Tim had been through a lot already today and didn’t especially feel like concealing anything. His throat locked again, so he let his blood speak for him while Silas looked his fill at his disgrace of a nephew.

Silas was too far away for Tim to scent him out, even if Tim were good enough to try. Silas had chosen a good tactical position. Tim stayed where he was. He’d already come here; he didn’t need to give up any more by approaching the old man first.

Tim studied Silas in return. Silas nearly blocked the light from one of the windows with his sheer mass. Silver streaked through his dark hair, with more at his temples than Tim had last seen. He wore a suit he would have had made in New York, but he had probably removed his necktie on arrival. The top two buttons of his white shirt were unbuttoned. His face was grim, his thick eyebrows drawn, his mouth a hard line. Even without his reputation, his expression and size would have been intimidating. But the scar at his throat marked him for who he was, ruthless businessman and head of one of the oldest known were families.

Tim had a brief, odd flashback to Ray Branigan. Ray, with his broken nose, was one of the few weres aside from Silas who Tim had seen with a glaringly visible wound from a past battle. Ray, the calmest were Tim had ever met, who spoke quietly and yet never once hid what he was. He had seemed happy to meet Tim. So few weres lived in the cities. He must have been lonely for someone else, even with his friends and his scary lady partner. He could imagine how disappointed Ray had been to find out what a disaster of a were Tim was.

Tim wore layers of clothes to try to appear bigger and didn’t shift and go for runs. Tim had been so frightened of everything. He should call Ray, Tim realized thinly, distracted and nervous. Ray was probably worried. A lot of people were worried about Tim. It was the strangest thing.

He released a long breath.

“You’re bleeding.” Silas startled the ever-loving crap out of him by speaking first. Tim twitched but thankfully didn’t shift.

Tim had thought his bleeding had stopped, but if he lifted his shirt to look he’d probably see that he had reopened the wounds. Silas would know fresh blood, although it shouldn’t have upset him into breaking the silence.

Tim tilted his head like Nathaniel did and ignored the pull from his shoulder and neck, which hadn’t healed yet either. “Yeah, well, Luca won’t be joining us tonight.” The whisper wasn’t dramatic, but Tim didn’t think dramatic was possible for him at the moment.

Silas had likely already been informed by the guard that Luca wasn’t with Tim. He wasn’t surprised, not by that at least. “And yet you are here.”

“I’m not going to say it’s of my own free will… except it’s exactly like that.” Tim was going to blame any insane statement on his recent trauma. “On my own, if it was only about me, I would still be running. I would not be here, trust me. But that isn’t—wasn’t—the best course for me. Running is exhausting.” He’d never slept so much in his life until this town. He owed it for that alone. He would do this and then if it was okay, he would find Nathaniel and fall asleep right on top of him. It probably wouldn’t be okay, but Tim could dream. Maybe it was blood loss, although he didn’t feel that faint. “I am fucking tired. No more of this running shit.”

The lifted eyebrow spoke volumes about Silas’s opinion of Tim’s eloquence. Tim jabbed a finger at him. “Obscenities are not a degradation of speech! They are tools like any other word, and you use them to suit your purpose as needed.” The old argument was easy to fall into and it allowed Tim to raise his voice.

Silas raised both eyebrows and flicked a glance down to Tim’s dirty shoes. “Human language is already limited and you claim a few vulgarities will enhance it?”

“Maybe I would choose to express myself more as a were if anyone had ever taught me how,” Tim snapped, jumping a step forward and then tripping as he realized what he’d done. He didn’t retreat, but flailed a hand to a chair to keep himself up. Grace wasn’t a trait he possessed, but he could have taught classes in attacking wildly from all directions. “I mean, fuck, it’s one thing to tell someone how werewolf history and culture are so great, but it’s another thing to actually show them that. Then they might see how full of shit you are.”

Silas was motionless. Tim thought of all the things he’d planned on saying in the rare moments he’d imagined coming face-to-face with Silas, then forgot them. He’d also pictured meeting Silas again under duress, with Luca at his elbow to keep him there. Luca was gone. Luca had his ass handed to him, and if Tim wanted, he could bring the same down on his uncle.

“You—” Tim began hotly, then choked and turned his head away. “Or of course, the other option is, you didn’t think I was worth anything more.” He hadn’t meant to say that. “I was bashed into a wall earlier. My thinking might not be the clearest.” He gestured toward the windows to try to distract Silas from his cracked voice. “Nice town.” Tim lowered his head but kept his glare.
I’ll fuck you up if you so much as touch it.
Tim wasn’t so bad at were-speech, for a beginner.

He was giving away what he cared about, but fuck it, one thing werewolves did not have to be was subtle. He should try, Silas would admire that, but he couldn’t, and yearned for Nathaniel so much it took his breath away. Nathaniel would have calmed him down, reminded him to think. Right now he didn’t want to think. He wanted to claw until he saw some blood.

Silas ignored Tim’s comments, both spoken and unspoken. “You’ve grown.”

If Tim shifted, his hackles would have been raised. He felt spiky and heated, and curled his lip in something too bitter for a smile. “An inch or two,” he dismissed shortly, “that’s all.”

“You’re still a boy.” Of course Silas had more to say about it.

Tim jumped in place. “I’m twenty, which is enough to know I’m not going to grow any more, and old enough to know I’m sick of talking about it.” He dragged his fingers through his hair, sort of amazed he hadn’t shifted. A real growl would have been satisfying. Silas would sneer at the loss of control, but when wasn’t Silas sneering at Tim? “I’m little, Silas. Nothing you do is going to change that. You can take me away, but I’m not staying this time. I’m not being hidden because you’re embarrassed. Some Luca replacement kidnapping me isn’t going to work a second time.”

Silas condescended to move a single step forward. “I assume this time your word choice was deliberate and not reckless impulse?” He went on before Tim could snap at him, his gaze drifting back down to Tim’s stained shirt. “I sent Luca to fetch you. There was a problem?”

“Yeah.” Tim could be an arrogant bastard with the best of them. “Yeah, there was a problem.” He shut his mouth and kept his attention on the man across the room from him. Silas might be able to sniff Tim’s jangling nerves, but he wasn’t going to get anything else out of Tim without asking. He’d wanted Tim there so badly he’d chased him for years; he could ask one follow-up question now.

Tim turned so the bruised side of his face was prominent. Even Silas would have protective alpha wolf instincts. Well, maybe. If he didn’t, he should feel guilty as hell. He’d filled Luca full of old ways nonsense and set him loose on the world.

Silas regarded Tim’s injuries with a deeper frown. “I told him to bring you here.” He said it, but not as an apology or even an excuse. He made it as a statement. A statement wasn’t enough.

“But you didn’t stop to think about how he would do that if I was unwilling?” Tim scoffed. “
You
? You consider everything. You probably assumed I wouldn’t fight back. Or what, he’d sling me over his shoulder. Yes. That’s perfect. That’s quite the image for the Dirus heir.”

There was an edge in Silas’s voice. “Timothy—”

“No.” Tim stared at him. “Don’t ‘Timothy’ me. I want to know. And after this….” He passed a hand over his stomach. “After today, I get an answer. You truly thought Luca would persuade me to go back to being locked up? I don’t know which part of that to laugh at first.”

“I could hardly call you.” Silas was definitely starting to get irritated, most likely at Tim’s insolence.

“He tried to take me.” Tim raised his head. “I objected to being taken. This isn’t only my blood, you know.”

His uncle widened his eyes a fraction, the one reaction he allowed himself. He wasn’t fooling Tim, if that was his aim. Tim had made his words vague on purpose, and Silas had never been so still. Silas was hiding something. But he wasn’t going to ask, not about that. “Did the town allow him to live?”