Charles set the lamp down and pulled the sword free of soil and mattress in a careful movement, shedding all of the particulate matter back onto the quilt. When he had it free, he laid it back down, parallel to the dirt but a handspan apart, careful to touch only the leather of the grip. There was a solemnness to his action that confirmed her suspicion.

“Jonesy?” she said. Upon death, the bodies of some of the fae, especially the very old fae, did unexpected things—like become earth and plant matter.

Charles nodded.

“You knew he would do this?” she asked. “You gave him time?” She didn’t know how she felt about that.

Charles met her gaze. “No. Yes. Maybe. I think I expected that he would destroy this mountain and possibly much more than that—especially if he had an audience. I wanted to give him time to make a different decision, to keep his word to Hester, that he would not harm anyone.”

• • •

CHARLES CALLED HIS da’s house from the house phone and organized a cleanup crew. He’d been lucky that Sage had answered: she was all business; there was none of the political maneuvering that Leah was prone to.

Because he was talking to Sage, he could watch his mate through the largish picture window in the main room of the cabin. Anna was leaning up against the truck staring at Jonesy’s parting gift of flowers—or the flowers that the earth had given Jonesy as a parting gift.

She had been hurt—and he wasn’t talking about the wounds she’d taken from the silver or the ones she hadn’t taken from the flying bullets. His mate had been hurt, and, for all his best efforts, he had not been able to stop it.

If she had never become the victim of the Chicago pack’s desperation, who would she be?

Would she have found someone else? A boy her age? Sweet and strong, full of hope—unfouled by centuries of killing? Could she have made a home with some other man? Had a dog, a couple of cats, and 2.3 children?

The only thing that he knew for sure was that Anna wouldn’t have been crying over a pair of dead werewolves, one whom she’d tried to save and the other whom she had killed herself.

Brother Wolf huffed at Charles’s self-indulgence. And maybe she’d have been crying over the death of someone else she couldn’t save. Grief is not the sole purview of werewolves.

Even more indignantly, Brother Wolf continued, Maybe she’d have found a serial killer to marry, maybe she’d have married a gentle soul like herself and always wondered why she was so bored. But she didn’t. She found us. She didn’t need to find anyone else.

Charles felt Brother Wolf stir restlessly inside him until he found some surety amidst Charles’s guilt.

She would have found us even if she had never met Leo or Justin. There was no doubt in Brother Wolf. She has always been ours. She will always be ours.

“Charlie?”

Sage’s voice was a tentative question where she’d been all business before. The change brought his attention back to their conversation.

“Yes?”

“Have you heard from Bran? I mean, we all felt her die through him. Leah thought he’d call the house to see what happened, but he hasn’t. She tried his cell, but it went right to voice mail. I know he’s supposed to be out of the country, but his phone is a satellite phone. It should work wherever he is.”

Charles frowned. “Both of us left our cell phones at home. They’re in the office—you can check to see if he called.”

“We know, we did. And there’s been nothing. We were hoping that maybe he’d gotten in touch the other way.”

If something had happened to his phone, Bran could talk to his pack mind to mind. He couldn’t hear them in return, but it was still a handy thing.

“No.” And wasn’t that odd? And unlike Bran. Almost as unlike Bran as taking a vacation in Africa.

Sage squeaked, then Tag’s soft voice said, “What are you doing with Hester’s body and Jonesy’s … leftovers? He was the sort who wouldn’t leave a body.”

Charles paused. He’d been going to bring Hester back for cremation and burial—the same as for any pack member who had no other family to make decisions for her. Tag sounded like he knew Hester and Jonesy a lot better than Charles did, enough better to know what would happen to Jonesy’s body.

“What do you think we should do?” he asked because Tag wouldn’t have voiced the question without having an opinion.

“Hester’s people burned their dead with their homes and possessions—freeing their spirits from the mortal world.” Tag was enough of a Celt to make that sound poetic and stubborn enough that he would insist on it now that Charles had asked him his opinion.

Charles shouldn’t have asked.

“It’s high summer,” he told Tag. “The cabin is in the middle of the forest. If we start a fire here, we’ll have the whole forest up in smoke.”

Tag made a negative sound. “All due respect,” he said. “But that cabin had a firebreak all around it. I recleared it this spring myself. We had rain last week, so the underbrush is damp. If we light it at night, we can keep an eye out for stray sparks.”

Tag had been Bran’s contact with Hester and Jonesy, Charles realized. Bran liked to do that. Give the wildlings some contact in the pack other than himself in the hopes of helping the wildling to remain stable. Usually, that other person was Charles, Leah, or Asil. If not one of them, he should have at least picked a wolf more stable than Tag, who was nearly a wilding himself … but if the two wolves had known each other from an earlier time, it would make some sense.

Outside, Anna pulled the emergency blanket out of the truck and climbed into the truck bed. She shook the blanket out, then, with a graceful flick of her wrists, flipped it to cover Hester.

“She was old,” Tag was saying. “And tough. She survived things that would make your red fur turn gray—and she did it with style. On her own terms. She deserves what we can do for her.”

“I agree,” Charles said. “Tell Sage I’ve changed my mind. We’ll still gather all the pack up here to check things out—but it will be a funeral, too. We’ll need food and drink. Fuel enough to burn the house to the ground.”

“Gasoline and diesel?” Tag asked, as Anna came into Hester’s living room.

“Ask Asil,” said Charles.

“Asil?” Tag said doubtfully. “He’s old. Older’n me. What’s he know about setting a house on fire?”

Sage said something that Charles couldn’t quite catch.

“Oh, okay,” said Tag. “That’s all right then. I’ll make sure Asil knows he’s in charge of the fire. No worries. We’ll organize this end of it.”

Sage took the phone back. “Don’t worry,” she said dryly. “Leah and I will organize this end of it.”

CHAPTER 4

The pack came by twos and threes, on four-wheelers, on motorcycles, or driving various four-wheel-drive cars. Tag came on his backhoe.

They retrieved the invaders’ bodies first. Those went into Charles’s truck, all six of them, while Hester’s body was removed to the cabin. By the time they’d finished with that—the whole pack was present.

Charles put Leah in charge of figuring out how to get the four-wheelers, now grown into the forest, out, without leaving obvious signs that magic had been worked there. It was obviously the most difficult job and, to his surprise, she tackled it with enthusiasm.

He’d flattered her, he realized, in front of the pack. And as a result, she hadn’t even resented his giving her orders. Maybe Anna was right when she said that Leah wasn’t the only reason he and his stepmother had a difficult time with each other.

Leah grabbed a half dozen wolves and, eventually, several chain saws. It had taken a few hours, but Tag’s truck held the cage Hester had been trapped in as well one of the four-wheelers. Leah’s truck held the other three—chopped up into parts. Even removed from the forest, the mangled vehicles were an odd sight. Desultory leakage of various fluids attested that they had been running, but all of them had freshly sawn tree bits growing through the metal.

Charles didn’t know exactly what he was going to do with them. What he wasn’t going to do with them was stage them in his father’s backyard as art pieces—as Sage had advised.