Hunting Ground

He closed his eyes and controlled himself. There were no enemies here to slay. “Never,” he told her with utter sincerity he hoped she heard. “I will never regret it. If you could have seen my life before you came into it, you would not ask that question.”

He felt her warmth, smelled her closeness before she touched him. “I cause you a lot of trouble. I’ll probably cause you more before we’re done.”

Charles opened his eyes and let himself drown in her scent, in her presence, and kissed a freckle that graced A

She kissed him-a rare enough occurrence that he held perfectly still and savored it for the gift of trust it was. She’d been tortured by monsters, and sometimes they still held sway over her.

A

Good, he thought. But he knew there were things she still needed to discuss, so he lay back down and pillowed his head on his hands though there were at least three layers of pillows on the bed.

“I keep feeling like we’re doing it wrong,” she said. “That this bond between us is meant to be much more than we’re allowing it to be.”

“There is no wrong between us,” he told her.

She made a frustrated noise, so he supposed that wasn’t the answer she was looking for. Charles tried again. “We have time, love. As long as we are careful to set our feet on the path we want to follow, we have a very long time to get it right.”

He could feel her focus her attention on him. “Okay,” she said finally. “I can live with that. Does that mean I get to tell you when I think you’re walking in the wrong direction?”

He gri

“There is no wrong between us,” she repeated his words with more satisfaction. “That means yes, right?”

He looked at her again, “That means yes. Right.”

“And you are as confused about this as I am?”

It seemed important to her that they were on equal ground. But he could not lie to her. “No. Differently confused, I think. And possibly more confused. You haven’t had the better part of two hundred years to decide who you are and who you aren’t. When that all changes…” Charles shrugged.

He wasn’t used to all of this emotion. He’d taken the feelings and desires of his human half and stuffed them somewhere so they wouldn’t interfere with the things he had to do. And now they were all back, and he had no tools to deal with them-and he wasn’t stupid enough to think that they would ever allow themselves to be stuffed away again.

“Differently confused,” she said. “Okay. That’s okay.”

She reached out and touched his arm, drawing a finger down. “When I touched you today… it feels as though you have two souls in one body. Is that how I am?”

“A

He looked at her pale hand on the green silk shirt he wore. “I am not my grandfather, to look into the heart of man,” he told her. “I don’t know that what I’ve told you is truth. It is just what I’ve seen and felt.

“Brother Wolf and I reached a different compromise. In situations where I am better able, he allows me full control-and I extend him the same courtesy.”

“Two souls,” she said.

“No,” he shook his head. “One soul, one man, two spirits. We are one, Brother Wolf and I. Inseparable. If he died, so would I.”

“Have I crippled my wolf?”

He rolled on his side, drawn closer to her by her concern. “It isn’t something to be mourned. It is simply survival. But if it helps, I think you and your wolf have reached a different compromise altogether.” He smiled. “I think that’s why Brother Wolf chose you in the first place-before we’d had much more than a chance to say hello. We balance, you know. You to me, your wolf to mine. She’s shy unless you are threatened, but she’s all there.”

A

“Do you need any more words between us?” he asked, her touch making his voice go husky.

FOUR

BEFORE she could answer, his cell phone rang. It wasn’t his da’s ring-and if they’d been home, he’d have let the answering machine pick up. But this wasn’t home. He was here to do a job, and that meant answering phone calls at inconvenient times. So he snagged his coat off the floor and took his cell out of the pocket.

“Charles,” he said.

He was answered by a stream of southern French that flowed by so fast he caught one word in four. But that was enough.

“I’m coming,” he said, and hung up while the other wolf was still speaking.

“Did you catch that?” he asked pulling on his boots.

A

“The Spanish wolves were eating at the restaurant that Jean Chastel decided to bring his wolves to. Matters are escalating-and to add to the fun, the British Alpha is there, too.”

“Who called you?”

“Michel, one of the other French Alphas-who’ll be punished if Jean ever figures it out. I gather our informant called from the men’s room. Hopefully, he’ll take proper precautions to protect himself.” He jerked on his coat. “ Seattle is a big city. Hard to fathom that three factions of werewolves ended up in the same restaurant at the same time. If I find out someone pla

“If the restaurant is Bubba’s Basement Barbeque, it might be an accident,” A

Charles looked at her thoughtfully. “People talk to you,” he said. “That could be useful.”

APPARENTLY, they were going to jog to the restaurant. A

Charles, cat-footed as he was, slipped and slithered in the pouring rain. His cowboy boots were slick-bottomed, though she didn’t think it really slowed him down much. They both ran quietly, but she could feel the attention they were drawing. In the city, people pay attention when you run because it makes you either predator or prey.

It concerned her for a moment, but risk assessment was something she’d have to leave to Charles. She didn’t know the wolves involved-or how far they were from the restaurant, exactly. He kept their speed to easily within human limits, so he was giving some consideration to the attention they were gathering.

She liked ru

After a few blocks, he slowed to a brisk walk, and they turned onto a level street paralleling the Sound. Like Lake Michigan in her native Chicago, the water had a presence, a weight that she’d have felt even if she hadn’t been able to see it peeking out between buildings and streets.

A red neon sign proclaiming Bubba’s Basement the best barbecue in Seattle had an arrow that pointed down a wide set of steps to the basement of something that might have been some kind of bank or office building-it had that neutral upscale look.