Andrew drew in a deep calming breath and inclined his head to the injured leg. “It’s not a fair fight right now. I’m not trying to win by cheating, Seattle.” Good tactics to make sure the pack stayed with Andrew if he did win, but it also gave him welcome time to regain control.
John snorted, and leaned weight onto the leg to test it out. “You’re not going to win at all. You talk big, about doing what has to be done, but no one believes you. Let’s do this.”
Andrew dipped his head in acknowledgement, pulled off his jeans, and shifted. Residual anger gave him all the strength he needed, so it came as easy as the night of the full.
They circled each other. Andrew’s lupine instincts urged him to useless gestures, snapping in John’s general direction, but he suppressed them. John lunged forward a couple times himself, but then fell to circling too. True wolf fights were highly ritualized, since too many deaths didn’t serve the species. Werewolves could heal a lot more damage, but still stopped short of death, except in the worst European packs.
As Andrew had expected, John was the first to break, a dark shape barreling toward him to sink his teeth into Andrew’s neck. Andrew danced aside, snapping his own teeth down as John’s momentum carried him a little past. Andrew tasted blood, but couldn’t get a grip. John turned and slammed into him again, and again, both men falling into the whining growls of true wolf fights. Andrew made it back to his feet by thinner margins each time. Here and there he felt the sting of scrapes from Seattle’s teeth healing over.
The next slam carried him onto his back, and Andrew held John’s snapping teeth from his neck only with the rigid strength of his forelegs. He couldn’t hold that for more than a few moments; he could feel the strain each time John lunged and snapped.
With the last snap, Andrew rolled, writhing out from under John’s weight as the man’s teeth closed on his ruff’s loose skin. Pain seared through Andrew as he ripped free and danced back to stall until the tears healed. Blood seeped through his fur and down his shoulder. He couldn’t keep fighting defensively like this. He was more maneuverable than John. That should count for something, dammit.
John dropped his jaw in a triumphant canine grin at the blood and body-slammed Andrew. This time he didn’t snap for Andrew’s neck, but used his weight to smash Andrew’s bloody shoulder into the wall. The joint screamed in agony, and Andrew nearly fell when he tried to put weight on it to dance out of John’s reach. Now. He had to do something now, or John would wear him down and smash him into the ground.
On John’s next lunge, Andrew let him close, close enough his instincts screamed at him that he was about to die. When John’s teeth were nearly in his throat, Andrew twisted and rolled up and got the grip he needed on John’s ruff. Deep, so John couldn’t pull free. Now Andrew just had to hang on. John slammed him over and over into the wall, bad shoulder first, but Andrew kept his teeth locked through the pain. He sawed his head back and forth to worsen the wounds and John’s agony.
That was when Andrew felt the turning point and began to believe that he might win the challenge. They were both injured, both exhausted, but Andrew could feel the pain wearing on John faster than it did on himself. Andrew was familiar with pain. He knew all about dragging yourself on through agony. He didn’t let his grip loosen, and John stumbled and fell when next he tried to throw Andrew off.
Andrew summoned all his strength for a last heave and John went down. The moment his side hit the ground, Andrew pinned him, letting go just long enough to get a good grip around the man’s neck. A grip good enough to kill, should he close his teeth.
John stayed rigid for a couple seconds and then slumped in defeat, rolling enough to present his belly. He whine-growled a last time in rage, then fell silent but for his panting.
Andrew stepped back and stood panting himself with all four feet braced, waiting for his healing to catch up with his shoulder. Silver ruffled his ears. He considered biting her hand for having precipitated this in the first place, and being crazy and hurt and just generally inconvenient, but the rush of winning mellowed the emotions. He’d actually done it. He’d taken John down.
Pierce pushed from the gathered Were and knelt by his former alpha, helping John sit up after he shifted back. He offered John his clothes, and then rocked back on his heels to eye Andrew.
Andrew shifted back and grabbed his jeans. It was easier to stand on two legs, since his bad shoulder no longer had to take weight. He ignored Pierce. He wasn’t going to force the pack to hide their sympathy and continued respect for their former alpha. Pierce could do as he liked with John, as long as he followed Andrew’s orders first.
“So now what?” John said, voice a little thin from humiliation and probably some self-recrimination. “What are your orders?” Where do you want me, he meant. Some alphas kept the old one on high in the hierarchy, in the old strategy of keeping enemies even closer than friends. Some busted the old alpha down to omega, or forced him from the pack entirely.
The Were gathered around them were still frozen, no one wanting to be the first to step forward. Even with the fight over, Andrew’s heart pounded with residual adrenaline as he buttoned his jeans and stood tall. That posture seemed to be a cue. Pierce straightened too, came forward, and knelt. It was different than the human gesture: rather than bowing his head he tipped it down and to the side, baring more of his neck.
The smell of John’s frustration at his defeat was too sour for Andrew to be able to read Pierce’s sincerity even when he came forward to stand over the man. The others knelt where they were.
“You know your territory better than I ever could in a few days,” Andrew said after taking a deep breath. “I’ll need your expertise as beta.” He came over and offered John a hand up. John stared at it for a while, and then accepted it, dropping it as soon as possible. They both knew it would cause the least turmoil in the pack if everyone simply moved one place down in the hierarchy. Whatever else Andrew thought about John, he knew the man wasn’t stupid, just out of his depth in some situations. He’d work with Andrew, to minimize the stress on the pack.
Andrew took a step toward the entryway and the illusion of privacy, taking a moment to himself as the last euphoria of victory drained away. If one of John’s people was working with the killer, the surest way to make sure Andrew couldn’t catch him would be to leak news of the challenge to someone who had it in for him, like Sacramento. Andrew couldn’t track anyone if he was defending himself from half the Western packs.
“All right.” Andrew turned back to the pack and raised his voice. “Everyone in this room. Cell phones here.” He pointed to a spot at his feet. “Pierce, you can call in anyone who’s not here, nothing else.” Everyone shuffled but didn’t otherwise move. The air turned bitter with scent of hostility.
Andrew unclenched his jaw to speak again. He couldn’t bark orders often enough to keep people in line if he ran things that way exclusively. He’d have to at least try to persuade. “Look, my only goal in this is to find the man who killed the Bellingham pack. Then I’m gone and everything’s back to normal. If any of you tell someone outside the pack about this, I’ll be taken out before I can accomplish that. So cell phones. Now.” He punctuated the last word with a loud clap. Everyone jumped. Phones clattered to his feet.
It took about fifteen minutes for the last stragglers to arrive, summoned by Pierce. Five minutes in, Andrew wished fiercely that he could drop to a seat as the majority of the pack had, but he continued to stand tall the whole time, no matter how much exhaustion sucked at him.
When the last family herded their toddler in the front door and came to sit with the rest, Andrew drew a deep breath. If he accustomed his nose to the background hostility and fear now, hopefully he’d be better able to read the nuances of changes in a moment.
“Does anyone here know anything about the man who killed the Bellingham pack?” He waited until every Were adult shook their head. The hostility intensified and grew layered with some fear at the talk of Bellingham’s fate, but the air held no hint of guilt.
“Does anyone know someone they suspect might know anything?” The same shaken heads, the same lack of guilt. “Were any of you involved in any way with what happened in Bellingham, intentionally or not?” Still negative. Andrew started to breathe a little easier. He’d been afraid of what he might have to do if someone had smelled guilty.
“Keep this to yourselves,” he ordered after taking a moment to consider whether there were any other questions he needed to ask. He might be forgetting something, but better not to strain everyone more than necessary by dragging it out. “Keep talking to your friends in other packs, cutting contact is suspicious, but don’t say a thing about the change of alpha.” With luck that would give him a couple solid days to work before anyone noticed that their Seattle friends were suspiciously strained in their conversation and started asking questions. He was under no illusions no one would notice for longer.
A ragged chorus of agreement reached him. Andrew let his shoulders drop and nudged the nearest phone forward with his toe as a signal the rest could be reclaimed. No one moved until he stepped back. “I’ll want to talk to you all individually,” he said as they came up in twos and threes. He suppressed an impulse to rub at his eyes. He’d cleared the pack, but he still needed a new lead. One of them might know something. He’d find it if he had to question everyone twice.
“Dare.” Silver rocked back a step and beckoned when he didn’t immediately follow. Andrew narrowed his eyes at her. Couldn’t whatever this was wait?
He strode to her and then beyond, hurrying them into the kitchen. “What?”
“You need to calm down.” She brushed her hand down his upper arm and raised her eyebrows at him when he twitched with the effort of not knocking it away. Maybe he was a little on edge, but who wouldn’t be? He had a killer to catch, as well as suddenly having the responsibilities of an alpha as well. Silver’s expression hardened. “I wouldn’t have thought I’d be the one to say this to you, but you need to step away until the voices of your past fade, Dare. It will do the others good too. Let them get used to the idea of a new alpha.”
Andrew swallowed. Even thinking explicitly about Spain made all his muscles tighten like he was still in the middle of the challenge fight. Silver was right, he hadn’t realized how much of his tension stemmed from that. He didn’t relish the idea of spending time alone with his thoughts at the moment, but maybe he could use the time to better craft his questions for the pack. He blew out a breath and Silver relaxed as she correctly interpreted the agreement.
Andrew stepped back into the living room. “Get the master suite ready for me,” he directed the pack, concentrating this time on keeping any anger out of his voice. John would be the one moving his stuff, but it was more polite to order the lower-ranked Were than tell John directly to get the hell out. “I’ll keep out of the way for a while.” He jerked his thumb in the front door’s direction. He’d seen a few parks on the drive over here. Hopefully one would provide more than a five-minute circuit.
Once everyone nodded, Andrew strode outside. Silver had to run a few steps to catch up. He picked a direction at random, sidewalk taking him past driveways and the various polite shapes of landscaped shrubs. Just him and Silver and his past, as she’d said.
“Are you going to ask?” The possibility that he’d have to explain pressed in on him. It had been years, he realized, since the last time he’d been able to neither hide it nor use shorthand with someone who already knew the details.
“Would you tell me if I did?” Silver stopped before a gate into a deserted park. The paths along the central stream were a muddy mess only now starting to dry out in the summer weather. No surprise people were avoiding them. She started to reach out with her good hand for the latch and then stopped, frowning at it as if she couldn’t figure out how the mechanism might function. Andrew watched the frustration grow on her face for a moment, then lifted it and opened the gate when it was clear she couldn’t work it out on her own.
Did he want to tell her? Andrew stopped with his hand on the open gate and considered that. It was like as long as he didn’t close them in, he had space to consider his decision. After a moment, he stepped through, shut it with a bang, and jogged to join her on the path. He was occasionally an idiot, but never a coward.
“Probably.”
Silver waited in silence for a moment, as if acknowledging the effort of the answer. “How did the woman with the accent die?”
Confusion distracted Andrew for a moment. “Accent?” Of course Isabel had had an accent in English. Before he’d even met her, he’d heard her musical voice across the room at a crowded party and sought her out. But how would Silver know anything about that?
“Death speaks with her voice.” Silver grew more hesitant, as if afraid she was reminding him that Isabel was dead.
As if he could ever forget.
But if it was Death that knew, Andrew supposed that whatever part of Silver’s mind that had created the character had simply stored away the references to Spain. It was a logical jump.
He found a patch of only partly muddy grass and stood to stare down into the stream and watch the rippling motion of the shallow water. He summoned the polished set of empty words he’d created at the time, memorized so as to have no association with the actual memories. “Fire. It was a territorial dispute, and the other side decided to start making examples of Were homes. Isabel—” Saying her name made Andrew stumble. He’d forgotten he needed to avoid that. “My wife had forgotten something at the house, she went back while I took our daughter on to the restaurant. She was taking so long, and then I saw the smoke—” Too many details again. The words were tearing his throat on the way up. He had to stop and find the polished, meaningless ones again.
“I tracked them down, the ones who had done it. I found a hunting party out running. They said they’d thought our home was empty. I didn’t know if they were lying, but I killed them anyway. Seven of them. One was Barcelona’s beta. I killed him first—it was half luck, since he wasn’t expecting me, wasn’t expecting me to fight so hard. The others were scared after that. They didn’t coordinate attacks as they should have.”