Fair Game

at the thought of Mercy ordering around a bunch of werewolves, Bran settled back in his chair.
    “Bran? Are you all right?”
    “Don’t worry,” Bran said. “I’ll get David Christiansen to do it. The FBI will just have to wait a week or so until he gets back from Burma.”
    “That’s not what I was asking,” Adam said. “‘Volatile’ is not a word I’d normally apply to you—but you aren’t yourself today. Are you all right?”
    Bran pinched his nose. He should just keep it to himself. But Adam…He couldn’t talk to Samuel about this; the only thing that would do would be to make his oldest son feel guilty.
    Adam knew all the players and he was an Alpha; he’d understand without Bran having to explain everything.
    Adam listened without comment—except a snort when he heard how neatly Asil had turned the tables on Bran.
    “You need to keep Asil around,” he said. “The rest of them are too intimidated to play games with you—and you need that now and again to keep you sharp.”
    “Yes,” said Bran. “And the rest?”
    “You have to back off on the death sentences,” Adam said with certainty. “I heard about Minnesota. Three wolves took out a pedophile stalking a third grader with a rope in his hand and a stun gun in his pocket.”
    Bran growled. “I wouldn’t have objected except they got carried away and then left his half-eaten body to be discovered the next day before they told their Alpha what happened. If they’d just snapped his neck, I could have let it go.” He pinched his nose again. “As it is, the coroner is speculating all over the papers.”
    “If you backed off, Charles wouldn’t have to go out and kill so often, because you wouldn’t have so many Alphas refusing to take care of discipline.”
    “I can’t,” Bran said tiredly. “Have you seen the new commercials Bright Future has sponsored? The endangered species hearings are beginning next month. If they classify us as animals, it won’t be just the problem wolves being hunted.”
    “We are what we are, Bran. We’re not civilized or tame, and if you force that upon us, it won’t be only Charles who loses it.” Adam let out a breath and in a less passionate voice he said, “In any case, maybe giving Charles a break on other fronts will give him more rest.”
    “I’ve freed him entirely from his business obligations,” said Bran. “It hasn’t worked.”
    There was a pause. “What?” said Adam carefully. “The business? You’ve turned pack finances over to someone else?”
    “He’d already backed away from most of the daily chores of running the corporation, put it in the hands of five or six different people, only one of whom knows that it’s owned by Charles’s family. He does that every twenty years or so, to keep people from noticing that he doesn’t age. I brought in a finance firm to take over the pack’s other holdings, and what they aren’t handling, Leah is.”
    “So Charles is doing nothing at all except going out and killing? Nothing to distract him, nothing to dilute the impact. I know I just said he might need a break, but that’s almost the opposite. Do you really think that’s a good idea? He enjoys making money—it’s like an infinitely complicated game of chess for him. He told me once it was even better than hunting because no one dies.”
    He’d told Bran that, too. Maybe he should have listened more carefully.
    “I can’t give him the finances back,” Bran said. “He’s not…I can’t give him the finances back.” Not until Charles was functioning better, because the money the pack controlled was enough to mean power. His reluctance to trust Charles, who had engendered it, made Bran admit, at least to himself, that he’d noticed that Charles was in trouble a while ago.
    “I have an idea,” said Adam slowly. “About that task you had for me—”
    “I’m not sending him to deal with the FBI,” said Bran, appalled. “Even before…this, Charles would not be the right person to send.”
    “He’s not a people person,” agreed Adam, sounding amused. “I imagine the last year and more hasn’t helped that any. No. Send Anna. Those FBI agents won’t know what hit them—and with Anna as a cushion, Charles may actually do them some good. Send them in tohelp as well as consult. One of us can tell the cops a lot about a crime scene that forensics can’t. Give Charles something to do where he can be the good guy instead of the executioner.”
    Let him be a