Alpha Omega 02 - Hunting Ground

pack behind him, she wouldn’t have been able to bespell him so easily. But this was Dana’s territory (one of the reasons the Marrok had decided to hold these talks in Seattle). Chastel had only his collection of unhappy Alphas who did not share their power with him, no matter how cowed they were, because Chastel would never have let them that close to him. Chastel was not the Marrok.
    He could have been—wasn’t that a frightening thought. There had been a European ruler equivalent to Charles’s da at one time.
    After the Black Plague . . . he wasn’t old enough to have been there—but Da and Charles’s brother had been. It had been horrible. Dehumanizing. Especially to those who weren’t truly human anymore. So much death, so many lost. Someone had seen the writing on the wall, knew that humanity would recover—and had come looking for the monsters who had fed upon the dying. So the first Marrok had been created. He hadn’t been called the Marrok—that was Da’s decision in the New World—but that’s what he’d been. Made Alpha of all Alphas and by the power of that, able to take on any other. Or he should have been.
    Chastel had killed him—and anyone after him who tried to reestablish rulership. Chastel could have taken it for himself, but he didn’t want it. He didn’t want the responsibility. He just wanted the freedom to kill and keep killing as he pleased.
    Arthur Madden, Master of the Isles, was the closest equivalent to the Marrok that Chastel had allowed in Europe—mostly because Chastel didn’t consider the British Isles to be a threat to him.
    Even with so much power, Chastel did his murdering more secretively these days than he had when he was first Changed. And that, Charles thought, was because there was one person on this planet the Beast feared. And his da had told Chastel that he didn’t want to hear about any more ravaging monsters in France. That had been a couple of centuries ago.
    Thinking about it, Charles wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Chastel could care less about the Marrok bringing the werewolves out to the public. He’d as near as never mind done it himself centuries ago. The most probable reason Charles could think of for Chastel’s presence at this summit was that he’d wanted a chance to take out the Marrok—which he didn’t get.
    At least he’d be quiet for now.
    Charles turned his head to Dana and nodded his appreciation. She looked frumpier than usual today. She’d given herself twenty pounds more on the hips, lost six inches in height, and wore an expensive but unattractive suit and schoolteacher shoes. He wondered if she’d done it to see if she could get any of the wolves to challenge her—or if, as Anna had said, her other guise had been too distinctive, too beautiful.
    â€œNice shooting, Tex,” murmured the Emerald City Pack’s witch in a voice that would, for all its softness, carry into the crowd. She and her mate stood just behind the small table Charles and Anna sat at—honor guards.
    The witch was a little thing, the mate to one of Angus’s top wolves, a quiet, scar-faced man named Tom Franklin, who was nearly as unhappy about his mate’s being in the room as Charles was about his, if for entirely different reasons. The witch was blind, and that meant—at least to her mate—that she was vulnerable.
    Normally this wouldn’t be a problem for Tom. Charles knew him as a tough son of a gun, but no second was going to be able to protect his mate in this crowd. In other circumstances, Charles would have counted on a witch’s being able to protect herself pretty well—but this one smelled clean and pure. White witches weren’t nearly as powerful as their black counterparts.
    Charles wanted his mate out of this room, too. He tried to focus on the Russian, who’d continued speaking now that the interruption had been taken care of. But too much of him was focused on Anna.
    She’d started out all right. She sat close to him and paid attention. But there were more than fifty Alphas in the little auditorium. Fifty Alphas, some of their mates, and a smattering of lesser wolves, over a hundred in all—and most of them were more interested in seeing his Omega wolf than in watching whoever was speaking. And under the weight of all of those eyes, Anna was shaking.
    I will kill them all, Brother Wolf