Alpha Omega 02 - Hunting Ground

fae sighed. “You know what I like best about you—and hate the most—is that you never have known how to play properly. I am the jilted older woman whose onetime flirt has found a younger, prettier woman. You are supposed to be embarrassed that your new love knows about us.” She looked at Anna. “And you. I expected better from you—you are his woman. You should at least be angry with him for not warning you we’d been lovers.”
    Anna gave her a cool look, remembered that they had come here to make nice with someone who would help them accomplish their task, and didn’t say, “You aren’t worth getting angry about.” Instead, she simply told her, “He is mine, now.”
    Dana laughed. “You might just do, after all. I was afraid he’d found someone who would always give him his own way, and that would be dreadfully bad for him. Just look what being mated to that whiny fashion plate has done to his father.” The fae started to put out a hand, but then gave it a rueful look. “I would shake your hand, but I’d get paint all over you. I am known here as Dana Shea and you must be Charles’s mate, Anna Cornick, who was Anna Latham of Chicago.” Anna, remembering what Charles had told her about True Names, was a little uneasy with how . . . precise the fae woman had been in naming her.
    â€œI’m not the only one,” Dana continued, “who has been curious about the woman who managed to tame our old wolf. So be prepared for a lot of rudeness from the women”—her voice took on a serious warning note as she looked at Charles—“and flirting from the men.”
    â€œYou’ve heard something?” Charles asked her.
    Dana shook her head. “No. But I know men, and I know wolves. None of them are dominant enough to face you directly—but they’ll see her as a weakness. When your father chose to stay home, he gave them an opportunity for challenge. You are not an Alpha—and they’ll resent having to listen to you.” She took up a turpentine-soaked rag and cleaned her hands. “Now I’ll quit lecturing you, and you can come around here and take a look at what I’ve done instead.”

THREE

    BRAVE woman, thought Anna, to thoroughly antagonize us, then show us something that matters to her. There was nothing in Dana’s face to show that their opinion was important to her—but Anna could see it in her body language.
    Anna didn’t know what to expect, but she drew in her breath when she got her first view of the painting. It was skillfully executed, exquisite in detail, color, and texture. A robust young woman with reddish hair and pale complexion leaned her head against a plastered wall and stared out of the painting at something or someone. There was a yellow flower, delicate and fine-textured, held in hands that were neither.
    The colors were wrong, brighter—but there was something familiar in the curve of the woman’s cheek and the shape of her shoulder.
    â€œIt looks like it was painted by one of the old Dutch masters,” Anna said.
    â€œVermeer,” Charles agreed. “But I’ve never seen this one.”
    The fae sighed and moved to a table. She began cleaning her brushes with quick, almost fevered movements.
    â€œNo one has, not since it perished in a fire a couple of centuries ago. And no one ever will because that painting isn’t it.” She looked at Anna. “Vermeer. Yes. What is the woman looking at?”
    And it was then Anna saw it, the alien beneath the glamour. Alien and . . . recognizable. She didn’t hurt me too bad, the troll had said. This woman was a predator, a top predator.
    Uncomfortable under that strange gaze, Anna shook her head. “I don’t know.”
    Dana made a sharp gesture with her hand. “You aren’t looking at it.”
    True enough. Anna looked at the woman in the painting, who met her stare with clear blue eyes, several shades lighter than Dana’s. The only answer that occurred to her was stupid, but she said it anyway. “Someone here in this room?”
    Dana’s shoulders drooped and she turned to Charles. “No. You see? When he finished the original, he dragged a peasant in from the streets—and even that uneducated fool could see it. Vermeer’s students, the ones who were there the day the painter finished it, called it that, what the peasant told the