Fair Game

protected him with her grandmother’s marble rolling pin. She was the woman he fell in love with.
    Then why are you hiding your ghosts from her?
Brother Wolf said.
    Because I am afraid,
Charles answered his brother, as he would have answered no one else. He had lived a very long time, and only since he gained Anna had he learned to fear. He’d discovered that he had never been brave before—just indifferent. She had taught him that to be brave, you have to fear losing something.
I am afraid I will lose her. That they will take her from me—or that I will drive her away when she sees what I really am.
    Beauclaire had addressed that. Charles couldn’t remember the fae’sexact words, but he felt them. People as old and powerful as he should never be given someone to love.
    For Anna he would destroy the world.
    ANNA FELT CHARLES more than heard him, even though he’d taken his hand off her back and let her go ahead. She could hear the others walking in front of her, but Charles was a silent, reassuring presence behind.
    She could smell the wrongness in the air and it made her wolf nervous. It felt like something was watching them, as if the wrongness had an intelligence—and it didn’t help to remember that at least one of the people they were hunting could hide from their senses.
    Anna fought the urge to turn around, to take Charles’s hand or slide under his arm and let his presence drive away the wrongness. Once, she would have, but now she had the uneasy feeling that he might back away as he almost had when she sat on his lap in the boat, before Brother Wolf had taken over.
    Maybe he was just tired of her. She had been telling everyone that there was something wrong with him…but Bran knew his son and thought the problem was her. Bran was smart and perceptive; she ought to have considered that he was right.
    Charles was old. He’d seen and experienced so much—next to him she was just a child. His wolf had chosen her without consulting Charles at all. Maybe he’d have preferred someone who knew more. Someone beautiful and clever who…
    “Anna?” said Charles. “What’s wrong? Are you crying?” He moved in front of her and stopped, forcing her to stop walking, too.
    She opened her mouth and his fingers touched her wet cheeks.
    “Anna,” he said, his body going still. “Call on your wolf.”
    “You should have someone stronger,” she told him miserably. “Someone who could help you when you need it, instead of getting sent home because I can’t endure what you have to do. If I weren’t Omega, if I were dominant like Sage, I could have helped you.”
    “There is no one stronger,” Charles told her. “It’s the taint from the black magic. Call your wolf.”
    “You don’t want me anymore,” she whispered. And once the words were out she knew they were true. He would say the things that he thought she wanted to hear because he was a kind man. But they would be lies. The truth was in the way he closed down the bond between them so she wouldn’t hear things that would hurt her. Charles was a dominant wolf and dominant wolves were driven to protect those weaker than themselves. And he saw her as so much weaker.
    “I love you,” he told her. “Now, call your wolf.”
    She ignored his order—he knew better than to give her orders. He said he loved her; it sounded like the truth. But he was old and clever and Anna knew that, when push came to shove, he could lie and make anyone believe it. Knew it because he lied to her now—and it sounded like the truth.
    “I’m sorry,” she told him. “I’ll go away—”
    And suddenly her back was against a tree and his face was a hairbreadth from hers. His long hot body was pressed against her from her knees to her chest—he’d have to bend to do that. He was a lot taller than her, though she wasn’t short.
    Anna shuddered as the warmth of his body started to penetrate the cold that had swallowed hers. Charles waited like a hunter, waited for her to wiggle and see that she was truly trapped. Waited while she caught her breath. Waited until she looked into his eyes.
    Then he snarled at her.
“You are not leaving me.”
    It was an order, and she didn’t have to follow anyone’s orders. That was part of being Omega instead of a regular werewolf—who might have had a snowball’s chance in hell of being a proper mate.
    “You need someone stronger,” Anna told him again. “So you wouldn’t have to hide when you’re hurt. So you could trust