Frost Burned

to me. Bruises shouldn’t hurt so much.
    My left shoulder ached, along with the opposite hip and knee, but worst of all was the ache in my heart. I glanced at Ariana, who wasn’t looking at any of us. She was still muttering to herself, and the smell of fae magic was growing uncomfortably strong.
    “Ariana?” I asked. “It’s okay. Ben’s sorry. He won’t hurt you or anyone else.” I remembered the fae’s need for truth and clarified carefully. “He won’t hurt anyone here.”
    She didn’t respond. Samuel had lectured all of the wolves about what to do if Ariana checked out and started to get scary. The artifact she’d made, the Silver Borne, kept her power muted—but she had been the last of the powerful fae born after humans began to use iron. Even muted, she could wipe out a city block or rend all of us into painful shreds if that was the form her madness took.
    If she really freaked out, Samuel was worried that the Silver Borne might give her back everything it had taken from every fae for as long as it had existed. That would be bad.
    “Talk,” I told Jesse and Gabriel, who had stayed where they were, between Ben and Ariana. “Talk in a normal voice, it doesn’t matter about what. She’s not listening to what we’re saying right now, just the tone of our voices. If we can keep it calm, she might be able to recover. She doesn’t want to hurt us. Ben, stay quiet, stay still. We can’t help anyone, can’t do anything if we get wiped out by one of our friends.”
    “Should we leave?” Gabriel absently wiped the blood off his arm. It wasn’t anything deep, and he’d been my right hand in the garage for long enough to ignore the minor wounds: old cars are full of sharp edges.
    “You don’t run from predators,” Jesse said. “Not until she calms down a little.”
    “Right,” I agreed. “But if I tell you to run, I want you to go and don’t look back. That means all of you—especially you, Ben.”
    Ben glanced at me. He knew what I meant. If I didn’t make it out of here, it would be up to him to keep Jesse and Gabriel safe, to let Bran know what had happened.
    “Did you get in contact with Dad?” Jesse asked at the same time Gabriel said, “Something set Ben off. But it wasn’t anything in the room, I don’t think.”
    “Calm topics,” I told them. “Happy thoughts.” But it was too late for that now. “I talked to your dad, Jesse. Adam is okay.”
    “Ben?” asked Jesse. “What set Ben off?”
    “Peter’s dead,” I told them, keeping an eye on Ariana. Jesse went white.
    “Who is Peter?” Gabriel knew some of the pack, but he hadn’t met Peter.
    “Peter is special,” Jesse said. “Dad calls him the Heart of the Pack, with capital letters, like it’s a title.”
    “That’s right,” I told them. “He kept everyone centered because he didn’t have to be on top. He could say things that no one else could. And it was his right to be protected by the rest of the pack.”
    Ben moaned, a sad, very wolfish sound.
    Ariana looked up, her gaze focused on me. I had to fight to keep my eyes on hers because her pupils and irises had vanished, and her eyes swallowed the light.
    “I liked Peter,” she said, and my heart started beating again. If she was tracking that well, we might be okay. “Samuel asked him to help us with my fear of werewolves. Peter was . . . kind.”
    She wasn’t all back—the smell of magic wasn’t fading, and her voice sounded wrong. And her eyes were really freaky.
    I didn’t know what else to do, so I kept talking. “Adam and the pack, all the pack except Ben, are being held by a group of human radicals—some of whom appeared military trained. They’re trying to blackmail Adam into killing Senator Campbell of Minnesota. They’re still claiming government ties, but they are lying.”
    “Republican,” supplied Gabriel, trying not to stare at Ariana’s eyes and mostly failing. It was a good thing for him that the fae don’t see it as an act of aggression the way the wolves do. A lot of the fae liked being stared at. When she met his gaze, he gamely kept talking. “Campbell is anti-fae, anti-werewolf, and—oddly for a Republican—anti-gun. Good speaker and a likely presidential candidate in the next election.”
    “Gabriel’s taking a class in current events,” Jesse told me. She looked away from Ariana and took a step closer to me. She didn’t see the fae start forward as if to pounce, then catch herself—but Gabriel and I