Alpha Omega 02 - Hunting Ground

come.”
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    THE battered and abused Corolla was a four-speed stick shift with a touchy clutch, and it kept Anna’s attention firmly on driving until they were on the interstate headed for the city.
    â€œOkay,” she said. “I need to understand more. I should have asked more questions, but this came up awfully fast. The British Alpha, by not bringing more wolves, is telling everyone he can handle anything anyone can send after him?”
    Charles nodded. “There’s some bad blood between Arthur Madden, the British Alpha, and Angus.” He paused. “Actually, I think there’s some bad blood between Arthur and my father, too. If it looks like an issue, I’ll call Da and see what it was about. Da says that Arthur’s the only Alpha who will stand up to Chastel—and that’s a good thing to have. We’ll need every advantage we can get.”
    He sounded . . . not worried. Intrigued. It was, Anna thought, going to be a different manner of fighting this week; not fangs and blood but a battle of wits. All those dominant wolves . . . most of the Alphas in the same room. Arguing. Maybe it wasn’t going to be a different way of fighting. But for now, she was driving and had absolutely no idea where they were headed.
    â€œAre we going to the hotel?”
    â€œYes.” And he gave her directions. But as they turned off the highway and onto the streets of downtown Seattle, he said, “Let’s do something first. Why don’t we go see Dana, the fae who’s agreed to moderate this mess.” And maybe, like his father, he’d been doing some mind reading. “She’s not just . . . a stand-in for a UN ambassador, a graceful host to help Angus. She’s the one who’s going to keep this civilized and keep us from paying to have Angus’s carpets cleaned of bloodstains. I have a gift to give her from my father, to thank her for the help we are paying her a small fortune for.”
    â€œI didn’t hear about the fae.” Anna had never seen a fae before, not one she knew was a fae anyway. She felt a frisson of excitement and tightened her hands on the steering wheel. “Bran brought a fae into werewolf business?”
    â€œIt’s necessary to have a neutral party to make sure the violence doesn’t get out of hand.”
    Anna thought about the wolves she had known: the violence that had always gotten out of hand. She tried to imagine someone who could put a stop to it. Bran, Charles—but they would have to do it with more violence. “She can do that?”
    â€œYes. And more importantly, everyone knows it.”
    â€œWhat kind of fae is she? Isn’t Dana a German name? I thought most of the fae were British—you know, Welsh, Irish, and Scots.”
    â€œMost of the fae we see in the US are Northern European: Celtic, German, French, Cornish, English. Dana isn’t her real name. This decade or so she’s been using the name ‘Dana Shea,’ a variant of daoine sidhe. A lot of the older fae and some of the witches won’t use their own names—anything that belongs to them for such a long time develops power over them and can be used against them, the same way scraps of hair or fingernails can.”
    â€œDo you know what her real name is? Or what kind of fae she is?”
    â€œI don’t know it—I don’t think even Da knows it. Though she is a Gray Lord, one of the most powerful fae. They rule the fae sort of like Da does the wolves.” He glanced at her. “If Da was a psychotic serial killer, maybe. I do know what kind of fae she is, though. You meet her and talk to her a bit. Then tell me what you think.”
    Anna gave a half-amused huff. “What do I get if I’m right?”
    His eyes lightened with the wolf who lurked inside him, and the hunger in his gaze told her exactly what he meant when he said, “The same thing you get if you’re wrong.”
    She waited for the fear or even trepidation that thoughts of sex had usually brought to her—but it never came. Just a welcome tickly feeling in her stomach. In less than a month’s time, he’d made serious inroads on her problems in that area. “Good,” she told him.
    He smiled at her and relaxed against his seat.
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    SEATTLE highways had a lot more vertical variation than those in Chicago. The roads rose above water, tangled and burrowed under hills where houses