And it whispered in her ears. It whispered terrible things, the kinds of things that sounded just like those vines smelled.

There was magic in those vines, which she had known. But what she had not been sure of was whose magic it was. Now she knew that Asil had been very wrong—this was absolutely not a case of Wellesley’s human half and wolf half at odds because their mate had died.

This was a curse, something done to them by someone else. The blood of the vines smelled horribly familiar—Anna knew what blood magic smelled like. In Asil’s story, there had been a mention of a black witch. She could now inform him that the rumor was true. There had definitely been a black witch involved, someone powerful enough to set a binding spell on a werewolf that lasted … however long this had lasted.

She didn’t know how to help him.

She could soothe the wolf spirit of any werewolf. She’d learned to send them to sleep, too, for a while. With her help, they had reduced the number of newly turned wolves who died because they could not control their wolf within the first year after their Change.

But if she sent this wolf to sleep, no matter how much he needed the rest—and she could tell that he was as exhausted as his human counterpart, if not more so—he would lose the fight against the thorns.

This was witchcraft, and she knew nothing about how to break a cage wrought by witchcraft. But she knew someone who knew more than she did—and who had his own kind of magic.

Charles, she thought, reaching for him without letting go of the carnivorous vines. Charles, I need you.

CHAPTER 8

“She put us together just to be annoying,” Sage told Charles, sounding not in the least annoyed.

They had taken her SUV because she refused to drive his truck. Her SUV was pretty upscale for the rough roads—she was a Realtor, selling high-priced Montana dreams to very rich people who wanted to get away from the city. When he’d told her that the road was too rough for her overly civilized SUV, she’d laughed and told him she’d rather replace her vehicle than put those scratches on his beloved truck.

He’d rather she not scratch his truck up, either. If she was planning on doing that, then taking her car made good sense.

“Leah?” asked Charles, though he knew quite well which “she” Sage was talking about.

She nodded. She gave him a glance out of the corner of her eye. “Why didn’t you put a stop to it? Everyone knows that she can’t order you around. No one would have been surprised—not even Leah, I don’t think. So why did you let her do it?”

Charles eyed Sage, evaluating what answer to give.

Like his stepmother, she liked to wear nice clothes. Part of the reason for that was her job, and part of it was she wore them like armor. She didn’t wear soft things, colors and fabrics to make her look sweet. The clothes she wore gave her visual power. Here, they declared to the world, is a strong woman.

To him, they said something a little different. Here, they said, is a woman who needs armor, a shield to hide behind. Here is a woman who is afraid but puts her chin up and whistles in the dark.

He remembered what she’d looked like when Bran had brought her here, the look in her eyes the same as Anna’s eyes when they’d first met.

“Leah is my father’s mate,” he told Sage. “As long as she does nothing that will harm the pack, it is not my place to object.”

Sage raised an eyebrow at him in disbelief before returning her attention to the road. Sage didn’t look at him with fear in her eyes anymore. He liked her. She was smart, funny, and wise. Someone he could trust to have his back.

He relaxed into the too-cushiony seat and gave her all of his truth instead of bits and pieces as he might have another of his pack mates.

“Though Asil and I are not friends, he likes Anna. He will give his life to make her safe. She likes him, too, and is comfortable in his company.”

“You left your mate with Asil because she likes him?” Sage asked archly. “Charlie, I’d never have thought it of you.”

She was the only one who ever got to call him that. Because the first time she’d said it, she’d been bruised and scared. When his father had introduced him to her, she’d raised her face to look him in the eyes, terror making her shake. Then she’d said, with hopeless defiance, “Hello, hello, Charlie.”

He took a better hold on the door as she turned her tame car off the road as he directed. The track they traveled on had tall grass that brushed the underside of her car. He half expected that they were going to be running back on four feet.

“I left my mate with Asil because neither of them is capable of betraying a trust,” Charles told her. “And, as much as she dislikes me, no one could ever say that Leah works against the pack’s best interest. As long as that is true, I will follow her as I follow my father.”

Sage laughed when he said that. “Yes. We’ve all heard the battleground of your obedience to Bran.” She laughed harder. “Or Leah. The funniest part of that statement, though, is that you actually believe it.”

It was the truth, he thought, a little indignantly. But he seldom argued with people other than his da or Anna, so he let it go. She’d slowed down, so he released his hold on her car and folded his arms impassively. He stood by his word: he’d follow Leah exactly as well as he followed his da.

She glanced at him. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll let it go. Here’s another question, then. Why did you bring that thing along?”

“That thing” was the witch gun.

“Some of the wildlings we are going to visit have interesting backgrounds,” he told her. “All of them are old. I want to know if any of them have heard of something like this.”

She pulled into a flat meadow and stopped in front of a ranch-style house that would have looked more appropriate on a city street than in the middle of the woods. His home was a ranch-style, too. But in this setting, the little gray house looked like a house cat in a tiger’s den.

He knew these wildlings well enough to have put the probability of their being his traitor pretty low. Long-term deception wasn’t so much beyond them as beneath them. Cowardly.

He got out of the car, and as soon as he did so, he felt eyes on the back of his neck. He let Brother Wolf do the work of finding their watchers.

Long-term deception was cowardly, but ambushing your allies was just fine.

“Behind us,” Sage said, having walked around the front of the car—and then returned to his side.

She wasn’t afraid, not exactly. She smelled of stress, worry even. She probably should have been afraid. She was also wrong.

They weren’t behind them—though that was an interesting ploy. He wondered if they actually were able to use the pack magic to manipulate the wind, as Bran could, or if it was a trick of the geography that they’d learned to take advantage of. With wildlings—especially with these wildlings—it could be either one.

“We bring a word and a warning,” Charles said, without raising his voice. “Hester and Jonesy are dead at the enemy’s hands. An enemy that included a helicopter and teams with werewolves willing to attack the Marrok’s wolves. They hit Hester’s place with the intention of taking her captive. They had her caged. When we freed her, they killed her on purpose.”

He turned, as if to get back into the SUV, and a man dropped out of a tree twenty feet in front of the car.

He was, like Bran, the kind of person who would fade into a crowd even without using pack magic. He wasn’t tall or short, good-looking or ugly. There was nothing particularly memorable about his face at all. Except for his eyes. His eyes were white, wolf’s eyes, and they were predatory.

“Bran’s gone,” the man said, his English very British. “Now Hester is dead because you aren’t capable, Charles Marroksson, of protecting the pack.”

He had already known about the attack on Hester. It wasn’t surprising. These wolves had closer contact with others in the pack than most of his da’s wildlings because one of them regularly participated in pack hunts and had a few friends in the regular pack. If it weren’t for his brothers, he’d probably be out in the world, a safe-ish, sane-ish member of a normal pack.