Fair Game

Clothed and shod, she ran her fingers through her hair to dislodge leaves, grass, mud, and whatever creepy crawlies might have come to rest there. Charles went down to one knee and pressed the shirt into the ground

which ate it.

He murmured one more phrase and came back to his feet. He saw her watching him and smiled, his face more open than she’d seen it in a long time. ‘I wasn’t going to put it back on,’ he explained. ‘And leaving something like that lying around when we’re traveling with a witch is just not smart. The apple tree will absorb it eventually and guard it until she does.’

‘Are you done yet?’ called Isaac.

Charles tilted his head and called back,‘I suppose that’s why they call you the five-minute wonder.’

A

Charles smiled, kissed her gently, and said,‘Samuel won’t believe you.’ Then he took her by the hand and started off in the others’ wake.

9

As they climbed, scrambling over broken cement, rocks, and bits of assorted underbrush, A

It had been her fault.

Charles had been trying to raise her wolf– because apparently the black magic had been affecting her. She cringed away from the self-pitying stupidity she’d allowed herself to wallow in. Talking hadn’t worked to pull her out of it, so he’d kissed her, and her wolf had risen up to shrug off the effects of the magic, just like he’d thought she would. And then her wolf had changed the game.

A

‘A

‘That was really dumb,’ she said without looking at him. ‘My fault. I’m sorry. We could have been attacked by the killers.’ She threw up her hands. ‘We might as well have set up cameras and invited everyone to watch. And now we’re going to have to go meet up with our audience and explain ourselves.’

He stopped abruptly and jerked her to a halt beside him with a hand on her wrist. It startled her with its hint of violence– Charles was never out of control.

‘If you think that it was dumb, u

Charles smelled like home, warm and right. She knew she should pull back, knew that this was more distraction they couldn’t afford, but she was so hungry for him – not just for sex, but for the simple touches, the absolute certainty of knowing she was welcome to pet and tease and laugh. A

They were both breathless when he pulled back.

‘When we get back tonight, we will talk,’ he told her. ‘I just learned something.’

‘That my wolf is shameless,’ she muttered, though she couldn’t pull away.

He laughed, damn him. More of a huff than a chuckle, but she knew amusement when she heard it.

She’d thrown him down in the middle of a hunt when there were a herd of people listening in. All the werewolves, he’d reminded her – and Beauclaire, who was here to find his daughter, not to listen to her make out in the woods. And now, to show that she hadn’t learned her lesson, all she wanted to do was take up that last kiss where it had left off.

‘No help for it,’ A

‘Shame is

not a very productive emotion,’ Charles told her. There was a fu

I regret your embarrassment but otherwise agree with Brother Wolf.’

A

‘As for the other

’ Charles gri

‘You’re the man,’ Isaac called back.

‘We’ll trail them closely,’ Charles said. ‘If something happens, we’ll be right there – but if we wait until there are more interesting things about than we are, they won’t give you a hard time.’ He didn’t need to say that no one would give him a hard time.

‘Thanks,’ A

He put his hand on her shoulder as they started back up the trail. While they hiked, there was none of the reluctance to touch her that had characterized him for the past few months. He kept a hand on whatever part of her was closest to him.

Charles had tried to open their bond and call up her wolf to defeat the black magic and hadn’t been able to. Brother Wolf had panicked because Charles had somehow messed up their bond – and then A

interesting, in the same way that a grizzly attack is interesting. Because neither he nor Brother Wolf was capable of letting her go.

It had been something of a revelation.

The bottom line was that he was a selfish creature, Charles decided more cheerfully than he’d been about anything in a long time. He guided A

any price except for losingher.

When they got back to the condo he would tell her about the ghosts who threatened to kill all that he loved unless he could find the key to releasing them. It was a risk– but quite clearly, he had damaged their mate bond by trying to do this alone – and that was worth any risk to fix. He’d see if, between the two of them, they could mend what he’d broken – and if not, he’d call his da.

If this trip had done nothing else, it had given him distance from the unrelenting grimness that his life had become since the were wolves had revealed themselves to the public. He’d been so focused on duty, on need, and on just getting the job done that he’d lost perspective.

Honor, duty, and love. He would not sacrifice A

That meant he had to find a way to deal with the ghosts– or quit being his father’s hatchet man. It wasn’t the result his father had been hoping for from this trip, but Charles couldn’t help that. He would not lose A

The decision left him feeling oddly peaceful, if more than a little selfish.

‘We found it,’ Isaac called.

Charles started jogging and A

The place where the others awaited them had once been a yard with a small house or storage shed, maybe ten feet by fifteen, in the center. The wooden part of the structure was long gone, but the granite foundation blocks were still in situ. The eyebolt that was driven into one of the blocks might have been original, but the chain and cuffs attached to it were bright and shiny new.

Beauclaire was standing in the center of the foundation, his eyes closed and his lips moving. Charles was pretty sure he was working some magic, but with the feel of the blood magic that had already been done here clogging his senses, he couldn’t sense it.

Along the perimeter of the clearing, Malcolm trailed after the FBI agents, who were busily using their flashlights to examine the ground for clues or a trail.