She nodded.

Without tightening his muscles in warning, without a word or a sign, he jumped her.

They rolled down the steep side of the mountain so quickly that Devon and Charles didn’t catch up with them until they were nearly to the bottom. They rolled up against a tree and slammed into it, Anna letting out a grunt that had more startle than pain in it.

Charles would have snapped Jericho’s neck if Devon hadn’t knocked him sideways, then stood in front of the tangle of bodies. His head was lowered, tilted submissively, his tail was tucked, and he was shaking like a wet horse in a snowstorm, but he still stood between them.

“Second time in one day,” Anna complained with a tremor of shock in her voice. “What is it with people? Did they forget their manners? Hello, how are you? No, I get the full tackle like I was a quarterback.”

If she was complaining, she wasn’t badly hurt—though rolling down that rocky mountainside wouldn’t have done her any good.

“No manners at all,” said Jericho’s muffled voice. “Oh God. Oh God. You don’t parade surcease like this in front of wildlings, you young idiot. What were you thinking?”

It took Charles a second to realize that he was the young idiot Jericho was talking about.

Charles growled.

Jericho gave a shaky half laugh that was full of tears. “I’m sorry. So sorry. God. I can think. I can breathe.” There was a little pause, and he said, in a lost voice with a touch of panic, “What I can’t do is let go. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt.”

“Well, I hurt,” Anna said in a grumpier voice than before. “We just rolled down the side of a mountain.” This time there was a thread of panic in her voice. “Don’t get me wrong, but I would really, really be grateful if you would let me up.”

“I can’t,” Jericho said.

They were so fragile, these wildlings of his da’s. Dangerous as all get out, but they were fragile.

He is frightening our mate, growled Brother Wolf. If he doesn’t stop, it won’t matter how dangerous or fragile he is—he will be dead.

Devon whined anxiously—and Brother Wolf nosed him to reassure him that they wouldn’t kill Jericho unless they had to.

Talking seemed like a good idea if no one was to die, so Charles changed. He let his human shape come upon him more slowly than usual. That way he could do one more quick change if he needed to be wolf again without pulling on the pack.

Fully human again, though the stress of the last minute or so showed in that he was wearing buckskin and moccasins instead of jeans and boots, he stood up and shoved Devon aside.

“It’s okay,” he told Devon, “But I need to sort this out.”

Anna’s eyes were panicky, and he could see that she’d about reached her limit. Understandably, she didn’t like anyone on top of her at the best of times. Brother Wolf would have just killed Jericho and been done with it. Death was coming for that one sooner rather than later anyway.

But with his stepmother’s accurate assessment of Bran’s sorrow at losing another wildling and the understanding that probably, unless Leah beat him to it, he was going to have to kill Sage, Charles had little taste for more death. Though at least, he thought with some relief, he would not have to kill Leah nor meet his da in mortal combat.

Not yet.

Instead of killing Jericho, Charles peeled the werewolf off his mate while Anna helped by scrambling body parts out of reach as soon as he’d freed them. When Jericho’s skin lost contact with Anna’s, he screamed, his whole body locking up in agony. Charles finally took him all the way to the ground and pinned him, facedown.

Wrestling with werewolves was complicated by the fact that weight didn’t hold a werewolf unless his opponent was the size of an elephant, maybe. Joint locks still worked, though.

“Move again,” Charles snarled, letting Brother Wolf’s dominance color his voice, “and I’ll break your neck, and you won’t have to worry about touching my mate ever again.”

Devon made a soft, frightened sound.

Anna, on her feet and winded, said, “Don’t worry, Devon. He doesn’t mean it.”

But he did. Fortunately, the right person believed him, and Jericho subsided, panting and sweating. And sobbing.

Anna crouched and touched the skin on his arm with her fingers. She frowned a little, reaching with her other hand to touch Charles. Her pulse was still fast, and her grip was just a little too hard—she was using Charles to calm herself down.

Jericho was lucky Charles didn’t break his neck anyway for the way the wildling had made his Anna’s heart race with reflexive panic.

As soon as Anna touched him, Jericho’s whole body relaxed, though he still panted with stress.

“Gods,” he said, again.

Carefully, Charles let him go, keeping himself between Anna and Jericho without breaking Anna’s grip on Jericho’s arm. Which left him too close to the other wolf. He liked to give himself a little distance if he might have to kill someone. A little distance gave him more options.

He saw Jericho’s eyes do the weird blue-swirl shift to the ice of his wolf again. And for some reason, his long-dead grandfather’s voice echoed in his head.

You can always tell them by their eyes. The old medicine man’s hushed voice rang in his ears as if his mother’s father had been standing right behind Charles. He could picture where he’d been when he’d heard those words the first time—ten or eleven and huddled by the fire with a handful of other boys his age as his grandfather taught them the things they would need to know when they were men.

He had no idea why he was thinking of that tale right at this moment.

Hadn’t Sage said that werewolves were just the tip of the iceberg as far as monsters were concerned? And she had been right.

Anna said, “Some days, this Omega gig sucks worse than others. What is it with everyone’s throwing themselves on me?”

“It’s the wolf,” said Charles absently. “The wildlings, most of them, have worn out their ability to control their wolf. The wolf spirit wants to be close to you—and their human half cannot restrain it.”

“Sorry,” said Jericho, closing his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Charles could hear it in his voice, smell it in his scent. Jericho was sorry.

So why was Charles feeling like he was overlooking something important. He asked Brother Wolf, who understood what he was feeling but didn’t know what it was, either. He was no help at all.

“Sage will be long gone,” Anna said. She didn’t sound too unhappy about it.

He understood how she felt—a lifetime of never hearing “Hello, hello, Charlie” again. But they could not allow a traitor to live.

Devon made a noise—and then Jericho said, “No. No. We can still get there—” He started to get up, moving away from Charles to do so. He also moved away from Anna.

And Charles had to put the wildling back down on the ground to keep him from attacking Anna again.

“No,” growled Charles firmly.

“You and Devon go,” said Anna. “If Devon knows the shortcut?”

She put her hand on Jericho’s. He gripped her—and relaxed again.

Devon yipped.

Anna looked at Charles. “You and Devon can go and help them with Sage.” Tears welled up, and she wiped them off impatiently as she continued urgently. “Sage. Of all people. Damn it. I know she can’t be allowed to live. I know that. But you can make it quick. Leah won’t. You know Leah—she plays with her prey as if she were a cat rather than a werewolf.”

Jericho, released from Charles’s hold again, sat up but made no other move.

“Jericho and I will stay here,” Anna continued. “We will wait for someone to come back and tell us what happened. Then we can figure out something to do about this.” She made a waving motion to indicate their joined hands.

Rare, his grandfather’s voice. But deadly.

Charles, watching Jericho’s icy-wolf eyes, abruptly remembered the story his grandfather had been telling that day when Charles had been a child.

• • •

“SHE WORE THE skins of her victims,” his grandfather told them, his voice shaky with age. “She wore the spirit and memories, too, as if they were clothing. She cried when my aunt would have cried, laughed when she would have laughed. Her own husband and their children could not tell that the monster in their home was not their beloved one. Only I saw the monster wearing my aunt’s skin—and I was only a little boy younger than any of you are now. I had no one to show what I had seen because there was no one else in the village to see her for what she was. My mother’s uncle, who was our medicine man and my first teacher, had died the year before.