He started up the mountainside again, leaving her scrambling behind him. Who was she that she could touch this man? Why her? Was it just that she was an Omega? Somehow she didn't think so. Not with that wry admission hanging in the air.
He was hers.
Just to be certain, she counted on her gloved fingers. This time last week she'd been waiting tables at Scorci's, had never heard of Charles or walked a mile in snowshoes. Would never have dreamed of enjoying kissing a man ever again. Now she was tramping through the snow in below-zero weather with a silly smile on her face, hunting a werewolf. Or at least following Charles, who was hunting a werewolf.
Weird. And kinda nice. And there were fringe benefits to following Charles around-the view for one.
"Are you giggling?" Charles said in his Mr. Spock voice.
He looked back at her, then executed one of those complicated turns that snowshoes required in order to reverse directions. He pulled off a glove and touched her nose, right where she knew freckles gathered. His fingers drifted down to trace the dimple in her left cheek.
"I like seeing you happy," he said intently.
His perusal stopped her laughter, but not the warm fuzzy feeling in her stomach.
"Yeah?" she said archly. "Then tell me that was really the last climb, and that this big flat spot we're standing on is where we're going to camp, and that I don't have to walk anymore today."
* * * *
She stood there looking like a cat in the cream, and he had not the foggiest notion why. He wasn't used to this. He was good at reading people, damn it. He had lots of practice, and Brother Wolf was all but empathic sometimes. And he still had no clue why she stood there looking at him with secret laughter still dancing in her eyes.
He bent until he could press his forehead against her wool hat and closed his eyes, breathing her in and letting the warmth of her spread over his heart. Her scent broke free of the bindings he'd set upon it and rushed over him like the smoke of a hookah.
No more human scent for them, but, absorbed in her, he couldn't make himself mind.
He still should have heard it. Smelled it. Something.
One moment he was standing next to Anna, the next he was facedown in the snow with something-werewolf, his tardy nose informed him-on his back and Anna underneath.
Teeth dug into the tough fabric of his jacket and ripped at his pack. He ignored the werewolf for Anna's sake and pushed himself (and the other werewolf) up to give her room to get out from under him, knowing it was probably a fatal decision.
Anna wriggled out from underneath him as fast as any sleight-of-hand magician's assistant could have. But she didn't listen to his order to run.
The attacking wolf didn't seem to notice her. It was so busy ripping up Charles's backpack it wasn't paying attention to anything else. Rogue, Charles thought-out of control if it was so far gone not to release its first hold for something more immediately fatal. Not that he was complaining.
Charles's human form was a little more fragile than the wolf, but it was almost as strong. Without Anna beneath him, it took him a bare instant to rip the bindings on his snowshoes apart to free his feet.
Silver foil packets dropped on both sides of him like confetti thrown at a wedding: freeze-dried meals. Doubtless Samuel would have come up with something funny about that-Let's just see who ends up a frozen dinner.
Grunting with the effort, Charles straightened his legs with as much speed and power as he could gather-and the move, combined with the werewolf's weight, ripped the fabric of Charles's coat and backpack. Holding on to the fabric and nothing else, the wolf was thrown off his back; a kick, and the wolf was ten feet away. Not far enough, and yet too far. He was between Charles and Anna-and he was closer to Anna.
Even as Charles frantically freed himself of the remnants of the pack-ruthlessly shredding anything that tried to stick-he realized how weird the attack was. Even an out-of-control rogue wouldn't have been entirely foiled by the pack. He'd have gotten a fang or claw in somewhere, but Charles was entirely unharmed.
The wolf had rolled to his feet but made no further move to attack. He was scared, that wolf. The scent of his fear flooded the air as he met Charles's eyes defiantly.
But he stayed where he was, between Charles and Anna. As if he were protecting her.
Charles narrowed his eyes and tried to place this wolf-he'd met so many. Gray on gray was not an uncommon coloring, though he was even thinner than Anna's wolf form, cadaverously thin. He didn't smell familiar-nor did he smell of a pack. He smelled as if he denned in Douglas fir, cedar, and granite-as if he'd never been touched by shampoo or soap or any of the accouterments of modern life.
"Who are you?" Charles asked.
"Who are you?" repeated Anna, and the wolf looked at her. Hell afire, so did Charles. When she used it, she could pull in any wolf she wanted almost as effectively as Bran, though he'd have done it by sheer force of personality. Anna made you want to curl up at her feet and bask in her peace.
Charles saw the moment when the wolf realized that there were no humans here to protect at all. He smelled the other wolf's anger and hatred as it flared, then vanished as it came up against his Anna. Leaving...bewilderment behind.
The wolf ran.
"Are you all right?" asked Charles, ridding himself of his clothes as rapidly as possible. He could have used magic to strip as he usually did, but he didn't want to risk using it here when he might need it for something more important later. The damned bandage around his ribs was tough, and it hurt when he shredded it with his fingernails as they lengthened. A bit of his snowshoe binding had tangled with a bootlace, so he broke the lace.
"I'm fine."
"Stay here," he ordered as he let Brother Wolf flow over him and rob him of speech. He shuddered as the shape brought with it the call of the hunt-and every minute the change took let the other get farther away.
"I'll be here," she told him-and, as his wolf shape settled over him and solidified, more words flowed over him. "Don't hurt him."
He nodded before he disappeared into the woods. He wasn't going to have to kill anyone this trip. With Anna's help, he was going to bring that rogue in to safety.
As soon as he left, Anna found herself shivering as if someone had just removed her coat and left her bare to the ice and snow. She glanced around nervously, wondering why the shadows of the trees seemed suddenly deeper. The firs, which only moments ago had been just trees, now seemed to loom over her in silent menace.
"I'm a monster, damn it," she said aloud.
As if in answer, the wind died and silence descended; a heavy, blanketing silence that seemed somehow alive, though nothing moved or made a noise. Even the little birds, chickadees and nuthatches, were quiet.