Tarnished (35 page)

“Felicia!”
Raul stopped and shouted it to the woods.
“Hurry up.”
Raul tried again with her name while everyone waited in charged silence, and his pack grew more restless. Raul snarled at them. “
She’ll follow.
No one would choose to stay in a pack with such mongrels.”

Laurence prodded him to get moving again. Raul made a show of walking cooperatively only to lunge at Andrew. Rage twisted his expression to a degree Andrew had never seen in him before.
“You’ve earned your death—”
he spat in Spanish. Laurence wrestled him back, and he fought him every inch of the way, his calm manipulation apparently subsumed under the thought of what awaited him at home.

More Were joined the effort, throwing Raul to the ground. A kick landed in his side, then another.

Silver growled. “There’s no need for that.”

Andrew was glad she’d said something, much as he would have loved to mete out a little punishment himself. A lot of punishment himself. But intellectually, he knew she was right. They had to take the high road. Were pulled Raul up and pushed him on his way with no further blows. As they walked, the trees grew sparser around the trail and people started to spread out to the grass on either side, talking excitedly in little groups.

Something slammed into him from the side.

Andrew struggled for breath from the impact as he skidded along the grass. Silver cried out, and Raul laughed.

Andrew got one arm up defensively as he pushed to his knees through pure instinct. He didn’t have time to process what had just happened before his attacker rushed him again, on four feet. Andrew caught the wolf’s teeth on his arm, keeping them from his throat. Rory! Rory was attacking him, already in wolf. Blood dripped as Rory forced Andrew’s arm back toward his throat, teeth sinking deeper and deeper. Andrew had to clench his own teeth to hold back a gasp from the pain.

Of course Rory wouldn’t give up his pack without a fight. Dammit, Andrew should have expected that. Andrew dug the fingers of his free hand through fur into the tender skin of Rory’s throat. He gouged until the man choked and relaxed his grip enough for Andrew to rip free and stumble back and up to his feet. He was at an incredible disadvantage, stuck in human while Rory was in wolf. The cat’s bastard must have been off in the woods for quite a while, giving him the time he needed to change in the new.

“If you want anyone to follow you if you win, give me time to
shift,
” Andrew snarled. He probably should have also expected Rory wouldn’t care about an honorable challenge when his power was on the line. Growls rippled around them both, other Were reacting to Rory’s dishonor. In a real challenge, opponents faced each other in human before shifting at the same time. But Rory had drawn blood, marking the challenge fight officially joined. No one could stop it now, or they would have committed an offense worse than Rory’s.

Andrew’s arm seeped blood steadily. Not good. Not only did it mean he was dangerously low on energy, despite the boost adrenaline had given him, it meant more was dripping away even as he stood still.

Rory ignored his words and lunged again. Andrew could hardly have shifted completely between an enemy’s lunges in the full, never mind in the new, so he dodged, and dodged again. But sooner or later Rory was going to trap him against one of the pines surrounding them and then Andrew would be at the mercy of his teeth, with none of his own to answer.

Andrew’s vision smeared and he stumbled against a tree trunk of his own choice to hold himself up. He snarled again, to show Rory he wasn’t going to give in, whatever dirty, cheating tricks the coward pulled. Andrew had defeated and humiliated
Raul,
a man whose cleverness made Rory look like a Pomeranian in comparison. Andrew wasn’t going to lie down because Rory’s teeth were currently sharper. Never.

No amount of rage or confidence could give him a wolf’s teeth, but maybe they could help him shift. Andrew focused on every short-sighted, cowardly, selfish, and dishonorable thing Rory had ever done, and braced to block Rory’s next lunge while he scrabbled for the shift. He just had to hold Rory off long enough, feel angry enough that the shift came quickly in the new. But the shift was still so damned far away …

But Rory’s next lunge didn’t come. Andrew refocused on his surroundings to find John blocking Rory’s path, soon joined by Benjamin, and others. “You’ll wait until he shifts,” Benjamin snapped, contempt draped over every word.

Rory growled, and prowled on the other side of the wall of people, but didn’t try to shoulder through. Andrew dragged off his remaining clothing and reached for the shift through the buzzing, grayed-out feeling of adrenaline that was almost gone.

And then he had it, and the transition was almost easy. Or maybe not easy, but filled with a rightness that got Andrew on four feet within a minute. This was what he’d come here for, to challenge Rory. All for this, and he wouldn’t fail.

The shift scabbed the wounds on his arm—now foreleg—and Andrew took the fight to Rory as the others stepped back. He lunged and they both went to their hind legs, each grappling for a grip on the other’s neck as they growled. Andrew broke away first, when Rory’s greater strength began to tell. He was faster, better suited to quick lunges in and then out again.

The pain and the growls and the hovering fog of exhaustion made it hard to think, but something about the fight didn’t feel right. Andrew danced back and once more Rory’s snap missed him by inches. A realization hit Andrew as hard as Rory had at the beginning of the fight: Rory had gone soft. Andrew had been his enforcer for nearly a decade. When in that time had Rory fought a battle of his own? Not once.

“More fool he,” said a wolf-shaped shadow between the feet of the spectators. Andrew caught only a glancing glimpse of Death before he focused on Rory again, but he felt almost like laughing. Rory
was
a fool. A fool who probably still believed in his greater strength.

The realization gave Andrew a burst of energy, and he used it to act the opposite. On his next stride, he dragged his leg, just enough for Rory to notice the limp. Andrew bet Rory was too arrogant to think twice or question an opening like that … Rory lunged for him like he was certain he was about to finish him off, but Andrew twisted and closed this teeth around Rory’s throat, good and deep, ready to go deeper. Soft, slow, and predictable. Fool.

Rory still tried to shake him off, and fresh blood filled Andrew’s mouth. As Rory realized how close to death he was if he didn’t stop moving, Andrew changed his grip to bear Rory to the ground. Rage vibrated in Rory’s muscles, but he slowly relaxed, ceding the fight.

Andrew let him go and stepped carefully back. He was shaking a little himself, and his legs felt like they might collapse any minute. He’d done it. Won Roanoke. Won it twice over.

Now he had to shift back, of course. He couldn’t have his first official act as alpha be to collapse, panting, still in wolf. Euphoria made him light-headed, brought a laugh nearly bubbling up. He knew it would hurt, but for a few moments he just didn’t care. He’d won! Andrew pushed back into human before good sense could reassert itself.

Muscles and bones always screamed protests in the new, but this time they were injured, and exhaustion dragged the process almost too long to stand. But Andrew made it, shaking with the relief of being fully back in human. He pushed to his feet immediately, telling himself the movement couldn’t be as bad as shifting. It wasn’t, but the way his head pounded, graying out his vision, wasn’t exactly good. He made it up and tried desperately not to sway. He concentrated on looking like surveying the Were ranged around them was his true purpose for standing still, not that he was unable to walk.

People fidgeted, like they weren’t quite sure whether to kneel again, as they would after a normal challenge fight. Rory’s wife had joined the group, and she pushed to the front now with Ginnie held on her hip. Sarah had smoothed most other signs of anxiety from her body, but if she was holding her ten-year-old like that, she couldn’t be calm. Humans weren’t usually strong enough for that, so Were avoided the gesture in case they slipped up in public. “It seems we have a new alpha, Ginnie,” Sarah said softly, as if wrapping up a previous conversation. Andrew inclined his head to her.

With only a slight scrabbling in warning, teeth sank deep into Andrew’s calf. He yelped with shock and staggered. Did Rory
want
to be killed? That was how challenges sometimes ended in Europe, when someone refused to concede when bested.

“That’s what you want your daughter to remember?” Andrew’s voice came out rough, but there was nothing for it. “Her father’s dishonor? I would value her opinion a little higher than that, if I were you. Trust me, I would know.”

“Daddy?” Ginnie’s voice startled Andrew, focused as he was on Rory’s teeth in his leg. “Why are you cheating?”

Rory slowly released his hold and backed up, shaking his head in a canine gesture that still evoked the one in human:
no, no, no!
Silver darted in and placed herself solidly beside Andrew, arm across his back. The relief was so great, Andrew’s vision went blurry for a moment before he adjusted his stance so he could lean on Silver but not collapse on her. She accepted all the weight he put on her without showing a sign of it.

“Since Rory has made such great friends, I think he should join them. Put him on the plane with Madrid.” The pleasure of saying it gave Andrew’s voice a little more strength.

Rory’s body language sharpened with sudden fear and Raul snorted from where he was being held. The Madrid pack would not welcome Rory into their territory, Andrew was certain. He’d have to find his own way in Europe once he was on the ground.

Sarah set her daughter down and tugged Ginnie with her to her knees. “Roanoke, please. For Virginia’s sake. Exile us if you must, but not to Europe. That’s no place to raise a child.”

Andrew cursed mentally. Of course she’d follow him. He should have considered that. “I said him, Sarah, not you and the girl.” Dammit, why did she have to force his hand? He didn’t want to appear weak by backing down, but in a rather ironic mirror to Raul, he’d try to save any child he could from Europe’s culture of violence. “There’s no reason you have to go with him,” he said heavily. He gestured for her to rise.

Sarah rose and placed a protective hand on Ginnie’s back as the girl clung to her waist. “He’s a good father, a good husband, whatever his other faults.”

The certainty and loyalty were so strong in her voice Silver inclined her head in respect. Andrew exhaled in a rush. That made his only possible choice clear enough. If it made him look weak, so be it. “Ottawa.” He waited until the alpha stepped forward from the crowd. “I’m sending Rory and his family back with you. Find them somewhere to live beyond your border, in northern Quebec maybe, and make sure
he
stays there.” Andrew underscored the last pronoun with a snarl—Rory’s family was welcome to leave the wilderness to visit other packs. Rory was not.

Sarah half-sobbed with relief and strode to Rory to bury her hand in the fur of his ruff as if seeking comfort. Because Silver had done it to him so often, Andrew noticed how that touch also nudged Rory toward Ottawa and out of his presence. Good for her.

Andrew could only hope Sarah would take advantage of her ability to leave sometimes, and that he hadn’t just ruined Ginnie’s childhood by exiling her without a pack. His chest tightened at the thought, but there was another young life he would have to trust to her own inner strength.

Andrew looped an arm over Silver’s shoulders as another point of support. Her loose hair made his grip slip until he pushed it aside. A moment later he realized someone had just said something to him. What had it been? No matter how he tried, he couldn’t find any memory of the actual words. “Later,” he said. Apparently that answer made sense, because the alpha stepped back.

He drew a deep breath. Time to make a fast exit as gracefully as possible. “Other decisions will have to wait until morning. I need to consider who would be best suited to any positions that need filling.” The murmurs seemed positive, so Andrew pushed forward along the path back to the cabins. His vision narrowed to the ground immediately in front of his feet long before they reached the buildings and the gravel grew tinged with light from each cabin they passed. After the small eternity to reach the cabins, the walk among them was almost too much. Why had he picked the farthest, again?

John opened the door for him when they reached the cabin. “So you’ll be moving back East?”

Andrew and Silver couldn’t fit through the door very well side by side so he nudged her on ahead. Of course John was impatient. He wanted to know if he’d get his pack back. Well, he could wait like everyone else—

The floor slammed into Andrew’s hands. He caught most of his weight short of a full faceplant, but he let himself down to sort it all out in his head. He’d fallen, obviously. It must have been the lip of the doorframe. In another moment of delayed memory, he recalled the feeling of his foot catching.

“Lady above, how’d he get this bad?” John helped Andrew to a sitting position before pulling him farther inside. “I thought he smelled hurt, sure, but…”

Andrew would have protested the indignity, but he heard Silver burst into tears. The last thing he wanted to do was worry her. This would pass in a moment. “Love. Love, I’m fine.” He tried to push away from John and reach for her. Things … tilted, and next thing he knew, John was holding his shoulders again.

“Shut the door,” John snapped. “Boston, are you sure you need to be here?”

Andrew couldn’t see Benjamin from where he was sitting, but he heard the low warmth of the man’s laugh after the door clicked closed. “I’m familiar with the concept of those in power falling to pieces in private once in a while. My loyalty to Roanoke won’t be shaken, beta.”

John hesitated for a second, but he must have come to some decision. “Help me with him,” was all he said.

The next time things made sense, Andrew was on his bed and Silver was climbing in to press herself against him as if trying to find every single point that one body could physically intersect another. She was crying more quietly now, a tang of salt and dampness against Andrew’s skin. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. For worrying her, for getting caught, for having such terrible in-laws, and probably more he couldn’t think of.