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“Mom?”
I hadn’t noticed Kale at my shoulder, but now I was absurdly grateful for his presence. Because my pack couldn’t see me browbeaten and there would definitely be browbeating involved once Natalie wrenched her baby away from Rune.
Especially after I told my friend the Kale-kidnapping truth.
Plus, I needed to be certain Natalie wasn’t fae-affected before I gave her back possession of her children. Time to implement my secret weapon.
“Kale,” I whispered, knowing every shifter within twenty feet would still hear me. “I have fifty bucks with your name on it if you can get your mother to jump across that fire then head for her car.”
“She’s not going to leave without Hazel.”
“Butch and I will be going in the same direction.”
“And if I get her moving, you won’t send me away the next time there’s danger? You’ll treat me like a man?”
The kid drove a hard bargain, but I nodded. “I swear to treat you like a man.”
I held my breath, wishing we had come up with some sort of secret handshake to prove my earnestness. Kale wasn’t a pack mate. I couldn’t order his obedience.
Still, our moment seemed to have cleared the air between us. Kale took off at child speed—which is to say far faster than an adult’s walk—and managed to grab Natalie’s hand before she immolated. “Mom! This is important!”
“What is?” Her gaze didn’t leave Rune, who was already circling around the bonfire to meet me. Well, that’s not true. My friend wasn’t looking at Rune. She was fixated on the baby in his arms.
I should have had no way of communicating with a non-pack-mate from a distance. But it was almost as if Rune heard my desperation. Because he angled away from his original trajectory, placing himself in a location that Natalie could only reach by pushing her way through dozens of shifters...or by leaping across the blaze.
“Mom,” Kale repeated. “Come on.”
The bonfire had burnt down enough by this point so it would be easy to traverse even for a human. Still, Natalie was a scientist. She required explanations and itineraries.
Or she usually did. When her firstborn son grabbed her hand, though, and started running in the direction of her daughter, she followed. I held my breath.
And Natalie leapt. Up and over, her lips unwillingly curving upward with pleasure. There was no strange sparkle off either her or Kale either. No change in their appearance. Assuming Erskine had been right about the force fire, both mother and son were currently unaffected.
By fae that is. When Natalie touched down in the ten feet of space that now separated me and Rune, her eyes blazed with fury.
“Your child,” Rune murmured, handing over the infant.
Which was a pretty smart move since it prevented Natalie from starting a fist fight.
***
“I knew something wasn’t right,” Natalie spat out rather than greeting us.
Every shifter in my clan was watching, head cocked to ensure they caught the entirety of our conversation. I grabbed my friend’s free elbow and Kale placed both hands on her shoulders to push her forward. Between us, we barely managed to get her moving back toward her car.
“My mother told me I might as well go home,” Natalie continued, words moving faster than her feet were. “She said I was wearing a hole in her carpet. Which was literally untrue but metaphorically correct.”
Despite the dimness as we moved further away from the fire, I could see Rune’s mouth quirk. He thought Natalie was funny. I usually thought so too...when I wasn’t about to admit to doing far worse than dropping her baby on its head.
So I waited until we were out of wolf earshot, then I admitted. “I messed up. Your instincts were good. But I promise you, your family is safe now.”
“What happened to Hazel?” Natalie started undressing the baby right there in the chilly forest. She appeared to be looking for injuries while reciting the scientific names of bones under her breath.
Whatever. At least it kept her from hitting me. Now, if we could just move a little further away from the bonfire....
Because, along the pack bonds, I could feel the clan’s curiosity building. Before long, one or more would creep along our trail. They’d end up hearing me growled at...something a new Alpha could ill afford.
But a friend couldn’t afford to stifle well-deserved growling either. I’d take my lumps...as long as Natalie moved a little further away from my pack first.
I widened my eyes at Kale and he tried to help me. “Hazel’s fine,” Kale said from behind his mom’s back. “And Tara didn’t mess up. I did.”
The trouble is, Kale hadn’t taken the laws of maternal motion into account. Natalie turned so quickly Kale ran into her. Her voice was just as heated as previously, but the anger wasn’t aimed at her son. “You aren’t an adult,” she informed him. “Whatever happened, your job wasn’t to prevent.”
“Exactly,” Rune murmured at the same time I said:
“Listen to your mother.”
Now Natalie was running her hands over Kale’s face as best she could while still clutching the baby. “Mom, cut it out,” he complained after a second. “It was weird but I’m fine.”
I didn’t smell or hear any wolves creeping closer, but I couldn’t ignore Caitlyn pinging me down the pack bond. “Alpha. The party’s breaking up. Do you have further instructions?”
“Has everyone leapt over the bonfire?”
“No. Five haven’t yet.”
My silence as I considered the force-fire issue was filled by Rune. “Your son was charmed,” he murmured when it became clear I wasn’t going to offer an explanation. “Fae are able to use their magic to tie objects to them then use those objects to influence others’ behavior. We believe the glitter had been sullied and Kale was impacted by that.”
“Don’t force anyone to jump across the fire,” I told Caitlyn after a moment of consideration. “But make a game of it with those who haven’t done so as the focus. If they don’t want to play, let the matter be then let me know who held out.”
“Yes, Alpha. I’ll report in the morning, Alpha.”
Caitlyn’s repetition of my title was cute in a way Willa’s adamant use of the term wasn’t. But I probably shouldn’t have let my amusement show on my face because—
“You’re smiling at my son being taken over by faeries?” Natalie’s voice was now loud enough that my clan mates could probably hear her back at the bonfire. I grabbed her arm and drew her forward yet again.
“Natalie,” I whispered, “I swear to you that I took Kale’s charming very seriously. The bonfire wiped away the issue. Cleansed the glitter also.”
A moment of silence. Then—“I hope you kept a sample.”
“A sample?”
My best friend rolled her eyes, looking impossibly like her son as she did so. “For analysis. You’re saying my glitter was the problem. I want to study it.”
She wanted to study the charmed glitter. Giddiness of relief made a laugh bubble up inside me, but I squashed it. Natalie was sensitive to not being taken seriously. I couldn’t mess this up.
“Am I forgiven?”
“Not yet.” She glared at me the same way she glared at Kale when he chose to dabble in botany rather than finish up his homework. “You’re taking me to brunch tomorrow. 11 am. Cafe in town. You’re buying as much of the most expensive items on the menu as I can stuff in my stomach. And you’re telling me every little thing that happened to my children.” She paused, then added. “Oh, and you’ll bring me a sample of glitter to test.”
I kept my spine, but I wanted to crumple from sheer relief. “It’s a date,” I promised.
“It had better be.”
She stopped walking. We’d reached her car. And, to my relief, the air between us felt warm again rather than tense with motherly rage.
Still, I was surprised when my friend let Rune pluck the baby out of her arms and install it in the car seat. Natalie’s eyes were a bit distant, actually, as if she was already considering ways to determine fae effects on glitter.
Kale, in contrast, sidled up to me with palm extended. I was grateful Lupe had the foresight to return Rune’s and my clothing because it meant I had my wallet on hand.
I removed a fifty. Then, thinking about Kale’s day, I pulled out another. Folding them both in half, I counted on the darkness to shield the motion as I slipped the paper between Kale’s waiting fingers.
Natalie noticed, though. Of course she noticed. “Do I want to know?”
Kale giggled. The baby chirruped and Rune clucked something that seemed to soothe it.
“No,” I told Natalie. “You really don’t.”
***
“YOUR FRIEND IS DELIGHTFUL,” Rune murmured as we stood there together, watching taillights slide away down the pack driveway.
“Natalie?” I raised my eyebrows. Willa had often growled at me spending so much time with a human. Plus—“Most people consider her an acquired taste.”
Rune’s response was simple. “The best tastes take time to be acquired.”
As he spoke, his fingers found mine in the darkness. He hadn’t looked. Hadn’t fumbled. As if the same electricity that sparked at our touch had guided him unerringly to me.
I tried and failed to ignore the sensation. Finally, I cleared my throat. “You requested information about the role of the Consort.”
“That isn’t exactly what I asked for.” He was so close that his persimmon curled warm around me. It stroked the skin atop my cheekbones, my neck, my collarbone. “But it will do.”
Somewhere behind us, a shifter laughed and I jolted. She wasn’t laughing at us. Every pack mate was too far away to see us. But if the party was breaking up, I didn’t want to hold an intimate conversation out in the open.
Not intimate. I shook my head at the slip. Intense.
Still, word choice aside, motion was necessary. “Come with me,” I told Rune, tugging lightly on his fingers. Unlike Natalie, he didn’t require any coaxing. Instead, he stalked in my wake like a persimmon-scented shadow as I led him into the mansion and up three flights of stairs.
The Alpha’s quarters were a tower that loomed above the rest of the edifice. Isolated by distance and top-notch insulation, even wolf ears couldn’t hear conversations held here. Usually, the silence felt lonely. Now, the open space was strangely close and warm.
Warm because a pack mate had started a fire in my wood stove. When I wasn’t present, the tower was usually unlocked—I had nothing to hide from my pack mates, after all, and little time to clean. So I wasn’t surprised by the glow reddening the floor in front of the glass viewing pane. I wasn’t surprised...but wasn’t quite ready for the firelit mood either.
Still, my finger hovered over the light switch without flicking it. “I’d rather the pack not know you’re here,” I told Rune by way of explanation.
The fingers twining through mine tensed very slightly, but he didn’t say anything. Or, at least, not with words. Instead, his free hand cupped my neck, tilting my chin upward. Persimmon licked closer. The barest millimeter of air lay between us.
He was arranging our faces for a kiss.
Yes! my wolf crowed. My human instincts were similarly jubilant.
Swallowing down all need, both human and lupine, I pushed off his chest and took one long step backward. I was Alpha. I couldn’t forget that.
“No,” I told Rune. “Keep back.”