Archive of Our Own

Bran was standing in the kitchen, eating a sandwich over the sink, when one of his Alphas died. He paused, mid-bite, the texture in his mouth turning to ash.

The bonds between him and the Alphas in Northern America and, through them, their packs, was a more muted connection than he one had with his own pack. Less of a dawn chorus, more of a gentle hum. This was by his own design; he didn’t need that much going on in his head.  

Still, the death of an Alpha would never pass him by, would send a dull note of discord through the bonds, and was something that required a moment of contemplation.

The moment passed. He finished his sandwich – not tasting it, now - and padded into his office, licking mustard from his thumb. The bond had disappeared with the Alpha and he didn’t immediately recognize who it was that he’d lost. An older Alpha from a smaller, less troublesome pack, he thought. He did have a few of them.

Lighting the fire in his office centered him and he sat, crossed-legged, watching the flames. Piecing it together. An Older Alpha. A small pack, fewer than ten wolves. No. Perhaps a few more than that. Some young, fresh minds were difficult to discern. Older wolves made for more distinctive bonds, as if their very life experiences added flavor. He closed his eyes, felt the geographical directional edges of where the bond had died. Colorado, he thought. Damian Ryall. White River pack.

He picked up the handset on his desk, scrolled through the address book that Anna had laboriously plugged in, and dialed, listened to the phone ring, without much expectation of someone answering. The death of an Alpha didn’t usually mean someone would be manning the phone.

He let it ring for a few minutes and then hung up - there was no voicemail, not that he had intended to leave one.  

Bran called Charles.

“Da? Everything all right?”

“Damian Ryall just died.”

“Ryall? Really? Are you okay?”

At this, Bran frowned. “Me?” Bran could hear Anna in the background. The clinking of plates. “I’ve interrupted a meal,” he realized. He looked at the clock, surprised to see it was after 10PM. “It’s later than I thought.” He honestly had thought the sandwich was lunch. He had barely noticed how dark it was.

“We’ve just finished. It’s fine, Da. I take it no one picked up when you called?”

“You are correct.”

“I’m not sure if I have the details of anyone else in that pack; they’ve been quiet for decades. I can try one of the other Colorado packs – unless you want me to go out there?”

Bran raised his eyebrows. Truthfully, he had called Charles more because he wanted to tell someone than he wanted action. “I can do that. And it’s late. I’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

“Was it violent?” Charles asked. In the background, his wife snorted, softly. “I mean – more than usual.”

“It was quick,” Bran said, which was the best that could be said for the end of any werewolf’s life.

They said their goodbyes and Bran sat watching the fire a little more. Then he went upstairs, pausing by her door like he always did, before he went to bed.

*

In the morning, having rung the landline again and found it disconnected, Bran realized he was out of all the essentials that were needed for even a passable breakfast. He’d eaten the last of the bread the previous evening. No eggs, milk. No bacon. There were a few strands of a disgusting fiber-based cereal that he wouldn’t touch if someone paid him and some ancient, shriveled mushrooms that he threw away.

“Grocery shopping it is,” Bran told the empty refrigerator.

He called Maxim from the car. “Ryall’s dead,” he said, because Maxim was a man of few words.

“Hmph.”

“I would like to check on his people and no one is answering the landline. I was hoping you might have an additional contact for me.”

Another noise. “Not since Vincent in ’64. Letter?”

Bran rolled his eyes, recalling the vociferous complaints from his sons when he delayed adopting modern communications. Compared to some of his Alphas, he was a technological wizard. “It would be quicker to just go there.”

“Wouldn’t do that. Still think they have outdoor toilets.”

“Thank you for your assistance,” Bran said, mildly.

Since it was a weekday, and early, the grocery store was light in humans and therefore a more enjoyable experience all round. He perused the aisles at his leisure, more or less adding everything he wanted, along with some DVDs, a couple of books, some new T-shirts and sweatpants to top up the waning stack in his closet. He ate half a packet of cookies as he walked to his truck. The miracle of modern living.

His next call was to Kristoff who also didn’t have a phone number for anyone else in Ryall’s pack.

“My mate said she saw his girls a few years ago. Said they looked hungry,” Kristoff added, off-hand.  

“Did she,” Bran repeated.

There was a small pause, whilst Kristoff tried to interpret Bran’s comment as either negative or positive, and failed. “I didn’t think it was worth mentioning. Clara thinks everyone looks hungry.”

Whole books could be written on ‘things people didn’t think were worth mentioning but turned out to be crucial’, Bran thought. A hungry werewolf was no good for anyone. But he smiled because people could hear smiles down the phone, even when he didn’t mean them. “I’m sure you’re right.”

Since he was driving, since it was efficient, Bran called Charles but it was Anna who picked up. He talked to her instead, knowing they had the kind of marriage that involved sharing everything so it made no difference. He had become used to it. “No one has any details of anyone in Ryall’s pack.”

“Charles hasn’t had any luck yet, either,” Anna said sympathetically. She listened for a moment. “Where are you?”

“Driving back from the grocery store.” He put an entire cookie in his mouth with one bite.

She giggled. “You went to the grocery store?”

“I like it. You forget, oh-child-of-the-Twenty-First-Century, we used to have to hunt down our food and cover it in salt so we had something to eat in the winter. I just bought a pineapple!”

Anna laughed. “Putting it that way, Walmart is an improvement. But you know they deliver?”

“Where’s the fun in that? I want to see what I’m buying.” Anna made him smile, for real this time. “Can you ask Charles to call me?”

“I’ll do that. Are you still coming over for lunch tomorrow?”

“I’m looking forward to it,” he told her, truthfully. He was maybe a touch more excited about someone else cooking him a meal than he was the company, though.

*

“She liquidated all her assets,” Charles told him, as they washed the dishes.

Bran didn’t need to ask who ‘she’ was. “Well, they are her assets.”

“It’s a lot of money,” was Charles’s point.

“I realize that.” He didn’t allow himself the luxury to wonder what it was she was doing, just as he generally didn’t allow himself to wonder about her at all. It was easier on the wolf – and Bran himself - that way.

His son stacked the dried plates, went to put them away. “I hope she’s all right, that’s all.”

The sentiment was kind but a little too late, Bran thought. His family had disliked Leah and when they couldn’t avoid her, they ignored her or they slighted her. She had made it clear to him when he let her go that he had been little better.

Bran changed the topic. “I’ve found no one who knows Ryall’s pack, which is deeply suspicious. No one is that insular any more.”

Charles’s brow furrowed thoughtfully. “I haven’t heard any rumors about them.”

“Clara apparently saw his daughters a few years ago and said they looked hungry.”

“Clara hasn’t met a werewolf she doesn’t want to feed,” Charles pointed out, unknowingly echoing Kristoff’s sentiment.

Bran wasn’t sure. Something didn’t fit right. “I think I’ll go out there.”

Charles sighed. “No, I’ll go. I’ll take my plane.”

Bran knew he was being managed but he let it go. He nodded his agreement.  

Anna came in with the last of the pineapple upside-down-cake that Bran had brought with him. It had been his first attempt at baking and it had been tasty, just a little burnt in parts. “Do you want to take this back with you?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. He could have it for breakfast. It would be one less meal to make.

*

In the end, there was no immediate need for either of them to go. Kristoff rang Bran the following morning. “My Clara made me go out there,” he sighed, as if his mate hadn’t been running his life, and his pack, for nearly eight decades. “She said those girls really had looked hungry.”

Bran rolled his eyes and shook salt over his eggs. He’d woken up in the middle of the night, restless, and finished off the cake, which meant he’d had to make breakfast anyway. “And?”

“Place is a worse than a shack. I poked around a bit, then a kid came out of the trees with quaking knees and told me the new Alpha would be getting in touch with the Marrok in due time and then they’d be accepting visitors.” Kristoff, who was one of his better humored Alphas, chuckled. “He wasn’t lying so I thanked the young man and said I’d let you know.”

“Curious,” Bran said, picking at his eggs. They were overcooked – again. There was something missing. Pepper, maybe? There was a drawer with about one-hundred different spices. Perhaps he should have used one of them. Nothing tasted right any more. “So there is a new Alpha.”

“Presumably. Will you go out there?”

“If they don’t ‘get in touch’,” he grunted, giving up on the eggs and reaching for the toast, buttering it heavily. “What did the kid look like?”

“Hungry,” Kristoff said with a grunt.  

*

Precisely one week to the day of Ryall’s death, Bran received a letter. The contents had been typed on a typewriter, the kind with a ribbon and keys that you had to punch, and the envelope and paper smelled predominantly of a stranger, neither particularly male or female.

Dear Sir,

I have assumed control of the White River territory, by the usual means.

Ryall was not a well man and I have no doubt you would have done the same as I.

I anticipate both my people and I will be ready to re-join you in good time. Until then, please be patient. Visitors are not currently welcome.

Kind regards

White River  

As the Marrok, Bran was annoyed at being dictated to by – presumably – a nobody. As the man, he was intrigued.

He showed Charles the letter. Charles grunted. “I was concerned when you said that it had come through the mail but they worded it carefully.” He looked at the envelope, which he had sniffed in the same way. “It’s not even postmarked near the territory. They must have had the forethought to drive out to ensure it couldn’t be traced. Good.”

“What do you think?”

“I think you’re the Marrok and you can do what you believe is best,” was Charles’s simple answer. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. I can’t leave it indefinitely. There are no lone packs in my territory.”

“What do you think is a reasonable timeframe?”

Bran leaned back in his chair. “If I want to set a precedent, I’ll give them six weeks from the day of Ryall’s death.” He pulled open a drawer, looked at his stationary. He had various options, appropriate for different occasions. He selected a piece of heavy, white, woven writing paper, with a dark blue trim. He thought, as he always did when he used it, how much he liked it. It had been a Christmas present from her. She had always been capable of giving him thoughtful gifts.

His note was brief, written large across the paper.

White River

I will come to you in six weeks. Be ready.

Marrok  

*

When the next letter arrived, Bran tore it open without waiting to scent it.

Dear Marrok

We will not be in any condition to receive you until late Spring, early Summer.

Sincerely

White River  

Irate, Bran stormed into his office, yanked open the drawer and selected another piece of paper. Without much thought, he scrawled off another message, pen digging into the paper.

Six weeks or six days.

Your choice.

Then he drove down to the post office so he could catch the last post.

*

Another letter arrived two days later.

Marrok -

The White River property is currently without electricity, running hot or cold water, indoor plumbing or working kitchen facilities.

Six days or six weeks makes no difference to us but it will make a significant difference to your comfort and our ability to host you appropriately.

Please consider late Spring or early summer as a more hospitable time to visit and allow us the time to rebuild.

White River

The problem with letters, Bran thought, as he lifted the typed paper to his nose once more, was that he had no idea if the words were truthful. Kristoff had referred to the property as a ‘shack’. Maxim had made a disparaging comment about the bathroom facilities. He didn’t think he had ever visited the current White River pack territory, as Ryall had relocated in the 50s and he’d had no need to visit since.    

“I may have overreacted,” he admitted to Anna.

She looked at the letter, then its predecessor. “Maybe,” she acknowledged, tilting her head to the side. “But they weren’t very clear in the first place.”

Anna had come to talk to him about organizing some entertainment for the pack. She had been very annoyed with him, the first time she had approached him for his feedback and he had told her to do whatever she felt was best and not to bother him with it. Pointing out to her that Leah had rarely involved him had done him no favors either. Now he sat patiently whilst she made suggestions and asked his opinion.

“I… don’t mind,” he said, having waited for the appropriate moment to convey his feelings. ‘Don’t mind’ was better than ‘don’t care’, which was more accurate but again would get him that pinched-face response.

“Bran.”

“I really don’t.” He threw up his hands. “No, fine, do the movie in the pole barn. It’s less likely to end in a fight. Nothing X-rated,” he suggested.

“Well, of course not,” Anna said, rolling her eyes. “Do you think I want to watch gratuitous sex scenes with people older than my grandpa?”

“I was thinking more about the violence, myself, but certainly, no sex scenes with Grandpa,” Bran told her, which made her blush and mutter ‘honestly’.

Truth be told, Bran didn’t want to watch gratuitous sex scenes with his pack, either. Particularly not now he wasn’t actually having any, gratuitous or otherwise.

*

Dear White River

I have always enjoyed Colorado in the Spring.

I look forward to seeing what you have built. I shall await your invitation.

Regards

Marrok

*

Two human females from the extended pack cleaned for Bran every week. It took four hours and they arrived at 8AM which meant every Wednesday Bran went for a walk, regardless of the weather, using the time for contemplation. If it was clement, he did this on two feet. Anything more than a light drizzle, four feet. In Montana, that mostly meant there were around three months of the year when he did the walk as a human.  

In late March, Bran nodded at Lucy and her mother as he let them in, already dressed for his first two-feet hike of the year, and then set off in the direction of Fan Mountain.

He was about to issue the order to make more of his werewolves public. He and Charles had whittled down the list to ten and were working with them on the ‘how’. They wouldn’t be lucky enough to have a David Christiansen moment again but there were plenty of unsung ‘All-American Heroes’ in Bran’s back pocket. Men and women who risked their lives for humans on a day to day basis – in large and small ways. They even had an environmental lawyer. What could be more heroic than that?

His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Annoyed at himself, as he hadn’t intended to bring his cell with him and must have left it in his coat the day before, he fished it out and looked at the screen. “Maxim,” he said.

“Marrok.”

There was a long pause. “You called me, Maxim,” Bran reminded the old wolf.

“I know. I’m thinking.”

Bran stood still, patiently. The forest around him was dead quiet. Though the snow of the last few weeks had mostly melted, helped by a solid week of chill rain, there were still a few clumps clinging to tree trunks, in the shaded places behind rocks and in the dips and hollows of the land. The air smelled clean. He leaned against a tree. Spring was coming.  

Maxim cleared his throat, eventually. “Spoke to Kristoff. Drove out to White River.”

“Oh really?”

“Work going on. Wrong time of year for it.” Maxim grunted. “Needed doing.”

“Yes, I understand the place was in a state of disrepair.” Bran had looked it up on Google maps. He had been none the wiser. Much like Aspen Creek, the satellite showed nothing but mountainous forest and the property had a long, private drive so there were no nearby roads that the invasive people at Google had mapped with their little cars. He suspected the property was near to a small lake he had seen but that was merely guesswork.

“Here’s the thing.”

After another pause, Bran realized the ‘thing’ was going to take some time. He thought about sitting down.

“I saw your woman.”

“My woman,” Bran repeated, a faint buzzing in his ears.

“Your mate.”

It was Bran’s turn to pause. “I have to call you back. Give me ten minutes,” he told Maxim, not waiting for an agreement.

He hung up the phone and started taking off his layers of clothes, pulling on the pack bonds as he did so, so that when he Changed it took half the time it usually did.

Then, with his claws, he furiously shredded the bark from four or five trees in the nearest vicinity. It would have been better if there had been something to kill but he was on a deadline and hunting down actual prey would have taken time, no matter how much he wanted to sink his teeth into a living, breathing animal and rend it to death.

He Changed back, feeling the acid burn in his stomach as he burned too many calories, and dressed.

“Marrok,” Maxim greeted, sounding hesitant.

Bran was calm. Interested. “What was she doing?”

“Talking, mostly. Contractors.”

Bran thought about the assets Leah had liquidated. He thought about the letters, the carefully typed letters that hadn’t smelled familiar. Had she joined a new pack? Had she – Bran muted the phone so he could retch unexpectly into a patch of snow – mated with the new Alpha?  

He wiped a hand over the back of his mouth. “Anything else?” he asked, unmuting.

Maxim gave this due consideration. “Looked good,” he said.

Bran hung up quickly so he could retch once more, appreciative that no one could see him vomiting like an amateur. He should have eaten before he came out, he thought, but he’d run out of food again.

*

Charles brought lunch, though Bran hadn’t mentioned his empty refrigerator. They ate together, Bran taking more time than his son, his stomach still feeling raw. He sipped a can of ginger ale he’d found in the cupboard and made a mental note to buy more.

“I think I should go out there. Just… find out what’s going on. Before you go,” Charles said carefully, dark eyes lowered.

Bran ate a potato chip. “I think that would be wise.”

“She wouldn’t—” Charles cleared his throat and leaned his elbows on the table, rubbing his hands together. “Da, she wouldn’t have started a new relationship. Not like this.”

He took another sip of his ginger ale. “I agree.” Rationally, he did agree. His earlier thoughts aside, Leah was an honest person. She would have told him if she had met someone because it was the honorable thing to do. And maybe she would have liked to rub his face in it.

“Most likely she joined the pack.” Charles’s brow flickered in consternation. Like Bran, Charles had obviously thought Leah would steer clear of packs for a few more years. She’d had enough of theirs, after all.

Glad that Charles had also confirmed it was unlikely that Leah was fucking – he couldn’t think of it any other way – someone else, Bran ate the rest of his lunch with more enthusiasm. They agreed that Charles would go early the next morning and take his own plane. “Anna and I could be there and back in a day,” Charles thought.

“You’ll take Anna?”

“Would that bother you?”

“I don’t mind. She doesn’t need to be close to me all the time,” Bran said, sighing. He felt like he said this over-frequently, reassuring his family over and over and over again. Anna had her own life to live.

His son tapped his fingers on the table. “She might have plans, anyway,” he said, vaguely.

Bran finished his lunch. His son was very kind, Bran thought. Took after his mother.

*

Bran’s wolf was finally dormant.

Since Anna had moved to Aspen Creek, and after the incident with Asil’s Mariposa, he had spent time with her every week, honing her Omega skills. More particularly, honing her skills on him, on his wolf, both of them learning how to quieten the Berserker’s rage. To not build him a cage but to create an environment, a safe space in Bran’s mind that the wolf would stay in.

It had been so successful that one-day Bran had felt truly at peace for the first time in centuries. That one day turned into a week. Into months.

It wasn’t a cure – he made sure he continued his meditations with Anna, on a less frequent basis – but he was more confident than ever that the Berserker would never be able to take control regardless of the situation.

Unless he wanted him to.

*

To occupy himself, Bran drove to Missoula just to have lunch with Kara and her eclectic group of college friends. They always went to the same place, a diner filled with other college kids, and he always paid.

He’d overheard, occasionally, Kara trying to explain to friends how a guy who looked their age seemed to have endless funds. The story had always been that he was a wealthy cousin, orphaned young, which Kara said gave him an air of ‘mystery’ and apparently explained when many of the young women gave him soulful looks.

“I’m sorry about Helen,” she said, as he walked her to her afternoon class.

“Helen?” He frowned and thought back. Which one had she been? The haughty-looking Jamaican girl? Or the frenetic dark-blonde who had spilt her drink? They were human so he hadn’t put too much thought into remembering them.

Kara took her backpack from him, slung it over her shoulder. “If you don’t know, then I’m not sorry,” she said, laughing. She kissed his cheek, quickly. “Thanks for visiting, Cousin Bran.”

He took out his wallet, handed her a couple of hundred dollar bills. “Cousin Bran has no one to spend it on,” he told her, when she protested like she always did. “The red-haired boy is witch-born.” Maybe a grandparent, he thought.

“Cory. I know,” she said. “I’m keeping an eye out.”

“Good girl.”

On the way home, he stopped off at the grocery store. This time he had a list in his wallet and had a few meal ideas in place, things she had made him before and he liked. He bought several cartons of eggs, however. He had learnt that eggs – regardless of how wrong they tasted - made a quick and filling meal, whatever time of day.

*

Charles called as he was driving back from the private airport in Ennis where he kept his plane. “Do you want to talk now or should it wait until morning?” he asked.

Increasingly, Bran was finding the time of day to be irrelevant. “Come over.”

“I’ll pick up Anna and be right there.”

Bran went around the living area, desultorily picking up after the members of the pack who had been having some kind of video game marathon whilst he’d been out. One shoe particularly mystified him. Did they leave with only one on? He dropped it in the hall entrance, along with multiple other pairs of shoes that didn’t belong to him, all tossed about in a disorderly fashion. It was getting out of control, he thought. Leah would have—

He stopped the thought and opened the door, just as Charles’s truck pulled up.

Anna bounced out wearing clothes that appeared to be mostly pajama. She waved at him and yawned. “Coffee,” she said, as she passed, kissing his cheek in much the same way as Kara had done.

“Has no effect on us,” Bran finished for her, smiling faintly.

“I like the taste.”

In the kitchen, Bran watched Anna prepare something that seemed mostly to be milk and sugar flavored with coffee, asking questions about Kara as she did so. He made himself and Charles tea and answered them as best he could. No, he didn’t think Kara was seeing anyone. No, not even the witchborn. Because she didn’t smell like any of them. She has plenty of friends. No, he didn’t know how her classes were going. She had a burger and fries and a caramel milkshake.  

As he answered her questions, he mused over the fact that Charles had not felt the news could either be imparted to Bran over the phone or without Anna in person. This did not fill Bran with confidence.

He decided they’d had enough small talk. He took a seat at the island and leaned over his cup. “Was she there? Did you speak to her?”

Charles nodded. Bran was surprised at the sour ripple of negative feeling that coursed through him. Negative towards Charles, who had seen and spoken to Leah, which Bran had not done for nearly twenty months. He pushed this aside; it had been his choice that Charles went. It had been the right and rational choice.

“She was there. She’s fine. She is not involved with anyone in the pack.”

Bran sipped his tea. “But she is part of the pack?”

Charles leaned on the counter. “She killed Ryall. She is, by our rules, therefore the Alpha of the pack.”

Anna ‘whooped’, there really was no other description for it. “You’re kidding? Leah?” she laughed, slapping her hands on the counter.

“Explain,” Bran said, ignoring his daughter-in-law’s excitement.

“She joined the pack two months ago. Fought her way up to Second which she claims was embarrassingly easy, then she killed Ryall.” His son’s brown eyes flickered to Anna and then back to Bran. “She says he was abusing his pack.”

This dropped the smile from Anna’s face.

“If that was the case, she should have come to me. Why didn’t she come to me?” Bran asked, straightening.

“She said you would have killed him. Or I would have. And she was perfectly capable.” Charles winced.

“She is not the Marrok’s mate anymore,” Bran said quietly, “she doesn’t get to make those decisions.”

“I conveyed that to her. She said if you wanted to punish her for his death, you were more than welcome, but his entire pack would testify it was necessary. Her way was more expedient.”

He raised his eyebrows. It was odd hearing Leah’s words come from Charles’s mouth. “Did you speak to any of them?”

“Only a couple who were on site – the man who said he’s her Second and his mate. The rest of the pack, she’s put up in a motel. The house isn’t actually in a habitable state yet, though she has an army of contractors.” Charles reached in his pocket and pulled out a card. “This is for you.”

Bran glanced at it and, because they were his family, he didn’t hesitate to lift it to his nose. It smelled of her. He had a strong urge to lick it which he naturally didn’t do because he wasn’t, currently, an animal.

It was an invitation. You are cordially invited… “She wrote me an invitation?” He almost laughed. So proper.  

“She believes the main house will be finished by the first week of June.”

Bran stared at her familiar handwriting. He still had the last note she had written to him in one of his desk drawers, a prosaic instruction for how to reheat pasta bake. “Well, this is certainly an unprecedented situation,” he mused.

His son rubbed his hands over his face. It had been a long day for Charles. “Which part? The part where she’s the first female Alpha we’ve ever had? The part where she effectively joined a pack to take it over and kill the Alpha? Or the part where it’s Leah, your ex-wife?”

Bran turned the card over. She had bought herself a matching set to his so this card had a pale blue trim. Her initials were on the back in silver. LC. He went to put it on the refrigerator, using one of the souvenir magnets Kara had given them after her trip to Asia the previous summer.

“Da?”

Bran sighed. “I’m not personally concerned by the female Alpha part.” In some senses, that had been on the cards for years. The structure of various packs had shifted somewhat in the last few decades, with more mated women taking up their roles in the pack according to their own dominance, rather than their partners.   

“Yay, feminism,” Anna muttered into her coffee, waving her hand as if it held a tiny flag.

He looked at his daughter-in-law, sharply. “It’s not simply feminism. Most female werewolves would not be capable, just as many men aren’t. Leah however is more than qualified to be the Alpha of a small pack like Ryall’s. But I’m not sure the reaction from the other Alphas will be as progressive.”

“But only because she’s a woman?”

“Yes,” he said, at the same time as Charles. Anna gave her husband some side-eye. “There will be questions as to her strength, physical and mental.”

“Leah’s one of the strongest werewolves I know,” Anna said, as if Bran needed to be told.

“Not everyone knows that,” Bran reminded her. And his mate had always been old-fashioned. She had been born, and married, under the legal doctrine of coverture. She had never been one to challenge a male werewolf. That’s what you’re for, she used to tell him, entirely seriously. “I’m surprised she challenged Ryall.”

“From the sounds of things, he wasn’t all there.”

That made more sense. Her emotional intelligence may never have been acute, but Leah had always been able to recognize physical weakness and manipulate it. “That she ‘took over’ the pack the way she did is… old fashioned. But not, technically, illegal.”

“Splitting hairs, Da. If another werewolf waltzed into someone else’s territory and tore out his throat, there would be retribution. You would be furious,” he said.

“But she didn’t. She joined the pack, you said? She took his flesh?”

Charles nodded.

He shrugged. “Then she became his Second and challenged him.”

“Ye-es. But it was pre-meditated. She made that clear.”

Bran rolled his eyes. “Because it’s Leah. She wouldn’t lie to you. But rest assured that piece of news won’t be travelling anywhere.” He tapped his fingers on the counter. “How did she know? About the abuse?”

“She said something about Kristoff’s wife telling her something.”

Bran threw up his hands. “For the love of – oh, never mind,” he said, at their startled looks. “Did you at least get a phone number that works?”

Charles shook his head. “Refused to give it to me. Said you’d just use it to yell at her.”

This was insane. “I can yell at her anyway!” He tapped his head and then decided he’d had enough. He was tired, he was hungry and he didn’t like the way his daughter-in-law was looking at him. Considering everything, he thought he had dealt with this situation very well. “All right. Let’s speak on this tomorrow. Both of you go home.”

*

Bran saw her about a minute sooner than he was prepared to. She was leaning on a double gate that marked the entrance to the property, wearing faded jeans, a loose, printed blouse and a dark-blue padded vest. Her fair hair was in a high ponytail.

It was an outfit she had worn frequently at home. It wasn’t unfamiliar to him. She looked exactly the same.

But Bran was big enough to accept that the sight of her took his breath away. A woman with whom he had shared a bed for more than two centuries – it was to be expected, particularly when he hadn’t seen her in two years, when before that they had never been apart for more than two weeks.

In a very real sense, he had missed her. She had been part of his life for a very long time.

Leah opened the gate as he approached and he crawled through, stopping to wind down his window to speak to her. “Pull over here,” she suggested, nodding her head to an area to the side that looked like it had been designed to take four or five cars. “We’ll walk up to the house.”

He found himself staring at her mouth. He hoped the sunglasses covered it. “Sure,” he said. A buzzing sound started in his ears and he rolled the window back up.

The buzzing noise continued as he parked, as he pulled his duffel from the passenger seat of the rented car. It had been a short flight and less than three hours before, he’d been in his kitchen, eating overcooked eggs and now he was here, with her.

He tried to shake off the feeling of unreality.

It got worse as Bran stood in front of her. He wanted to touch her. He, not the wolf, Bran thought. A habit, he decided. A muscle memory. He’d had permission to touch her freely for most of her life and now that permission was no longer. She had taken it away and he had let her.

“You look well,” he said, which was the sort of thing one was expected to say. She did look well. She looked like a model for some country living clothing company. Her skin was smooth and clear and there was pink in her cheeks. Her eyes were clear pools of blue.

Leah frowned at him, her hands in her back pockets. “You look tired.”

“Thanks,” Bran said drily. Honest as ever. “Shall we?”

The dirt drive cut through a stretch of forest, wide enough to serve as a fire break, and was lined with evergreen trees. They didn’t talk, as they walked. It wasn’t precisely uncomfortable but it wasn’t normal either.

What a modern experience this was, Bran mused. Collaborating with his ex-wife.

“So, we have the main lodge, which is where you’ll be staying,” Leah began. “There are also three other cabins that are now finished. Jacob and his wife, Ada, have one. Eli has another, which he shares with his brother, Marcus. Jose the third. The rest of the pack are in the lodge until the other cabins have been refurbished.”

“How many are in the pack?”

“Thirteen, including me.”

That tallied. He asked after their ages, their backgrounds, and wasn’t surprised that Leah had all their details, memorized well enough to be an easy conversation. She’d always had a head for personal details, could be relied upon to remember birthdays, anniversaries, deaths. He did all that electronically now – laboriously plugging references into a calendar.

“Young,” he summarized, when she had finished. No one was older than fifty years. Ryall had Changed the oldest himself, as well as his daughters.

“Very. Part of the problem.”

The ‘lodge’ as she called it was bigger than their house. His house. It was a gabled wooden structure, built in an L-shape, mostly one story except for the main part of the house where there was a first floor with six windows. There was a covered decking all around, with steps down to a small lake.  The roof was covered with greenery, to hide it from spying eyes from above. “I tried to keep the bones of the place,” she said, as they surveyed it.

“It’s beautiful,” he said.

They approached to a side entrance, the door unlocked. To Bran this was already recognizably a pack house – neat pairs of shoes stocked in a rack, shelves with sweats of different sizes, all labelled, he saw. A coat closet.

Leah took off her boots and he did the same. She took his coat, too, and hung it up.

The entrance led straight into a large kitchen that turned into an open plan living area, overlooking the water. A big U-shaped couch was set around a fireplace and a TV, not dissimilar to the layout in Aspen Creek. Three young werewolves stood awkwardly in the middle, the TV paused.

Leah made introductions and it was clear these were the lowest rung of the pack. He was ‘the Marrok’, not Bran, and they all nodded, eyes lowered and murmured ‘sir’. Leah didn’t correct them and Bran hesitated to do so. He didn’t normally stand on such formal terms but he usually took the lead from the Alpha. Two of them were Ryall’s daughters – Alice and Corina. The third was a submissive, Niall.

“I’ll show you your room,” Leah murmured.

She walked him through the house, through a second, smaller living area and past a series of closed doors to the small leg of the ‘L’, to a bedroom suite that was right at the end. Furthest away from the main part of the house and, Bran suspected, her room. Still, his suite had a large bed and an en-suite, and French doors that opened onto his own decking. It was comfortable and very much in his wife’s aesthetic – simple, clean-lines. White linen, white towels, a faint smell of jasmine.  

“It really is beautiful,” Bran told her again, dropping his bag onto a chair and going to look through the windows.

She stood in the door, arms crossed over her stomach. She was uncomfortable, now. “This is where I grew up.”

He nodded. “I remembered your people were from around here.” It had been where he met her. He couldn’t have forgotten that, if he tried.

“If you want to freshen-up, we’ll be in the living area. I’ll try to get them to chill-out,” she said, smiling a little. She tilted her head to the side. “Though perhaps you should have a nap.”

Bran raised an eyebrow. “That bad?” No one had mentioned it, not even Anna, who was blunt to the point of rudeness with Bran, the only one left who could be.

“Yes, actually. Burning the candle at both ends?”

“Something like that.”

“Well. Up to you. We have nothing planned until dinner, anyway, so you have plenty of time.” She shrugged, and leaned over to grab the door, closing it behind her.

Bran went back to staring out at the window, at the water. Now that she had repeatedly mentioned it, he did feel tired. He had perhaps just got used to it. Away from Aspen Creek, he felt the weight on his shoulders, the grittiness of his eyes. Even before this, he hadn’t been sleeping well, usually a sign he was worrying about something that had yet to come to pass.

He gave the bed a glance. It looked inviting. And smelled like Leah; she had probably made it up for him. It was a welcome thought, which he admitted probably wasn’t very healthy.

He gave in, anyway.

*

“Better,” she said to him, when he emerged three hours later.   

Leah had changed into a loose-knitted cream sweater that had fallen off one shoulder. Sleep was still clinging to him and allowed a rogue thought to slip to the front of his consciousness – he wanted to bite her right there, on the soft curve of her shoulder, wanted to mouth his way across her collarbone, up her neck, knowing exactly what noise she would make when he did so. He sighed internally; he thought he had been doing very well, all things considered  

“Less of a ‘nap’,” he admitted. He didn’t remember closing his eyes, let alone his head touching the pillow. He felt vaguely irritable, as if she had seen something that he hadn’t, and had been right about it.

She had met him in the second, smaller living room, which he suspected was more of her personal space. She handed him a beer, condensation beading on the outside. “Come on.”

Eleven curious faces looked up at him from the couch, then they all scrambled to standing. Bran assumed they had been told who Leah had been to him. Unless she thought it didn’t matter.  

Leah made introductions in hierarchical order. Her Second, the dark-haired Jacob, and his mate, Ada, who was similarly dark-haired and also Hispanic. Eli and Marcus – non-fraternal twins, red-haired and blue-eyed. Jose, pronounced with a ‘hard’ J, not ‘H’, who had unusual amber eyes and was mixed race, West-African, Bran thought, along with something from Central Asia. Then there were a trio of blonde men who looked similar enough to be related, weren’t, but were competitively close – Woody, Eldridge and Pascale – and the three Bran had met earlier.

“Are you missing one?” Bran asked.

“Danny,” Leah said, rolling her eyes. “He’s running late, I’m afraid. Some kind of trail violations. He sends his apologies.”

“He’s a Forest Ranger,” one of Ryall’s daughters, Alice, Bran thought, said. There was a little sigh in her voice. Bran suspected Danny was a favorite.

“Let's go into dinner,” Leah suggested.

Over the meal, Bran observed the interactions of Leah’s new pack. They’d had several months to get used to the new dynamic and seemed to be gelling well. He had been most interested in the Second, Jacob, and how he behaved with a female Alpha – if there was any tension there. Leah was definitely more dominant, which alone could have made him more deferential, but Bran could see there was real respect there. Leah, unusually for her, wasn’t forcing her dominance down his throat but listened to what he had to say, whether it was a banal comment or a question he hoped to have answered.   

Perhaps because he was so much younger than her. Perhaps she didn’t feel she needed to. Bran thought of their pack – with the exception of Anna, Kara and Peggy, most of the werewolves had been older than Leah. If he put aside Anna, whom Leah had clashed with on more than just dominance, she had got on reasonably well with Kara and Peggy. It was a shame there had been no men whom Bran could have tested the theory with.

Jacob’s mate, Ada, had prepared most of the food, assisted by Ryall’s daughters. Leah was very complimentary, which pleased Ada and in turn pleased her mate. Bran then watched as this cascade of happiness spread down the table. Such a small thing, he thought. He admitted with a sinking feeling that he had probably not complimented any meal Leah had prepared for a very long time.

As the Alpha, Leah wouldn’t be expected to prepare meals. That she had taken that role in their household was because she had been his wife. That he thought she had enjoyed it was irrelevant. It had been a service, part of her responsibilities. In a pack with no females, Bran knew either the lowest ranking male werewolf would prepare the food or they would hire a housekeeper.

Though, Bran wondered if comparing this pack’s dynamics to traditional male-female roles of other packs was doing a disservice to what Leah was trying to achieve here.

Mid-way through dessert – raspberry pavlova, one of his favorites which suggested Leah had a hand in planning the meal, at least – a man walked into the kitchen who put Adam Hauptman to shame. Tall, broad shouldered and narrow hipped, he had dark-blonde hair and brown eyes.

“I’m sorry, Leah, we had an elk emergency,” he said, going straight to the stove where his meal was covered in foil, keeping warm. He gave a warm smile to Bran, his eyes dipped to somewhere near Bran’s chin. Bran felt a wave of dominance, carefully constrained. “Mr Cornick, it’s a pleasure to meet you, sir. My apologies for not being here to meet you with everyone.”

On the other bench, the pack shuffled until a seat opened up between Ada and Eli. That would make Danny Leah’s Third, Bran surmised, though he thought Danny was more dominant than Jacob, which was curious but not unusual. Bran had got the impression Danny's career was involving - if he had been Second, the pack would always have to come first. Like Jacob, he was one of the older werewolves in the pack, Changed by Ryall. He didn’t have a cabin, which meant he was living the main house.

Bran noted Leah kept placidly eating her dessert, whereas the younger women were all fussing over Danny, pouring him a drink, passing him salt and pepper, asking after him.

“An elk emergency?” Leah asked.

“It’s calving season,” Danny explained to all but more probably for Leah's benefit. He folded up the aluminium foil from his plate and tucked into the meal with obvious relish. “We found out one of the trail closure signs had been removed and people were just tramping through, right by all the new mothers. Unbelievable. Who do I have to thank for this meal?”

After the second round of compliments, Danny elaborated on some interesting stories about the local fauna and flora which, judging from the way the others contributed, was much discussed. Even Leah asked a question or two, showing a willing to learn. Again, in Aspen Creek, if anyone had expressed any superior knowledge on a subject, Leah would have ignored them or made a derogatory comment.

Bran supposed it was possible she was simply trying hard to make this work and he hadn’t missed a fundamental part of her personality.

After dinner, Leah invited Bran to outline the ceremony whereby the pack would be sworn in to Bran’s responsibility. Leah would take his flesh and blood, much as they had taken hers, and swear her fealty to him. The words were entirely made up by Bran, who knew people liked that kind of ceremony, but he didn't tell them that. Leah knew, of course, but she kept quiet. Once that was done, Bran would accept the new Alpha bond.

“Will it feel any different?” Corina asked.

“You’ll get a sense of it, yes. But it will feel like it will go away. It’s not intrusive,” Leah said. At Bran’s raised eyebrows, she shrugged. “I’ve observed enough of them in my time to know that.”

By ten, a number of the working members of the pack excused themselves with yawns, the rest going into the living area. Danny was on ‘dish duty’ for being late but Leah also stayed behind to help. Bran found himself lingering in the kitchen with his glass of wine, watching the dynamic between Leah and her Third.

In her time as his mate, Bran had observed Leah flirting with various men. Without question, it had been to get a rise from him, usually after he had done something to hurt her. To her eternal frustration, she had limited ways to ‘hurt’ him, as it were. And he could admit it had worked to a degree. No man, however emotionally disconnected, enjoyed watching his partner angling her body at another’s in invitation.   

Leah wasn’t precisely flirting now, with her handsome Third. But she wasn’t precisely not doing it either.

*

If he thought he would have difficulty sleeping after his extensive ‘nap’ that afternoon, Bran was wrong. He slid into sheets that smelled like his wife and was unconscious in moments, waking only as dawn was peeking through the curtains.

It would be exaggerating to say he felt like a new man but he did feel like he was ten pounds lighter.

The house was quiet so Bran dressed into a set of sweats and some running shoes, intending to get some exercise. He slid out of the doors onto his decking and silently padded around the house. It was pleasantly cool, a lingering Spring chill in the air. He wasn’t unduly surprised to find Leah, in her normal running gear, stretching by the side porch. She, like him, had always been an early riser.

“May I join you?” he asked, keeping his eyes above her shoulders. They had occasionally run together but Bran usually preferred four feet to two. Leah had run in her human form every day. That was obviously still true.

“Certainly,” she said, not giving him the same courtesy and instead scrutinizing him from head to toe. He waited for an acerbic comment on his levels of tiredness but it never came. He thought perhaps she looked pleased.  

Leah took him along a path that was well worn enough that suggested other members of the pack used it. “You can go at your usual pace,” he told her drily, when he noticed that she was holding back.  

She glanced at him, once, and then sped up. And sped up more. He laughed and he raced after her. She was fast, his wife, the fastest runner in their pack, and he might have been out of practice but he was an apex predator and the Alpha of all the packs of Northern America. He was a Power in the world and if she thought she could out run him she had another think coming.

He realized after a few miles that instead of running with her, he was chasing her – chasing her properly, with intent – and he realized this mere seconds after she did. She stopped, jumping to the side like a gazelle, and lowered herself into a crouch, head bent and eyes on the dirt. Bran skidded to a halt a few yards away. With extreme willpower, he managed not to grab her, pull her to him. He gave himself a moment, staring up at the trees, as Leah made herself small and quiet.

“Sorry,” he said.

“It’s fine.”

When they had been mated, the chase instinct had been muted. It had still been there but since he had her, caught her permanently, so to speak, there had been no need to repeatedly demonstrate the fact. Bran closed his eyes, the flickering thought of what he would have done if he had ‘caught’ her now crossing his mind as the blood pumped through his body. He was rock hard and he doubted she would have had much pleasure, that much he knew. “I know better,” he murmured.

“And I forgot,” she said, shrugging.

Forgot that they weren’t mated or forgot that the instinct to chase down prey existed? he wondered.

He held out his hand to her and pulled her up. When he let go he found himself flicking his fingers to get rid of the sensation. It did nothing for his painful hard-on. “Walk for a bit?” he suggested, ignoring it.

Like him she was breathing heavily, though perhaps her breathing was from fear, too. She still avoided his eyes – sensible – and nodded. “I think I’ve had a good enough work out.” They walked back but on the way Leah took him off-track to take him to one of the cabins being refurbished.

“Oh, wow,” he said, when she showed him. He laughed. “It looks like—" He didn't finish, unwilling to bring the memory up.

She smiled, however. “I know.”

They had lived in a cabin very much like it for most of their married life before they'd built the bigger house he currently lived in. She climbed up the steps to the decking and pulled a key from the wrist band around her wrist. “Here, I’ll show you what the inside’s going to be like.”

He smiled, because she was obviously proud of what she was doing, and he liked that, and followed her in. It was effectively two rooms plus bathroom. An open plan kitchen-living-dining-area, a bedroom big enough for a large double and an en-suite. In this property, the kitchen was mostly done, just waiting on the stove and refrigerator, whereas Bran could see the bathroom still needed some work. “It’s nearly done,” she said, turning on the faucet in the kitchen to check the water. “Another week, maybe.”

“Who will get this one? Danny?”

“No, he wants to stay up the main house. Probably so he doesn’t have to buy groceries.” Bran thought for other reasons, too. “Marcus will have this one. He can’t live with his brother forever. They’re becoming each other’s crutches.” She pursed her lips, as if this was a challenge for her.

Bran went to admire the stone fireplace. Much as the main house, the decoration felt authentic but modern. She’d always had a creative eye, could make a space comfortable and attractive, which perhaps he hadn’t appreciated as a skillset as much as he should have. “How many cabins are there?”

“Six in total, though three of them are bigger than this – with two bedrooms – so some of them will be sharing. The girls, for instance. The lodge has six bedrooms. Two upstairs in the main house, then three downstairs. It used to be a hotel, if you hadn’t already guessed.”

He had. “You must be pretty squeezed in at the main house.” Particularly with Bran taking up a room. He wanted to ask where her room was – he imagined upstairs but now he knew there was another bedroom he also wanted to ask who else was upstairs with her.

“Well, the Terrible Threesome is still in the motel, so it’s okay.”

He absorbed that. “What will you do if the pack grows?”

Leah raised her neat eyebrows. “Be grateful?” she suggested.

He laughed. “Fair.”

In the quiet moment that followed, a degree of awareness formed. It was only natural. Since he’d let her go, since she’d left him, he’d sought no other woman, had wanted no other woman, and here she was, wearing tight, revealing clothes, and – as her eyes met his – broadcasting desire. His own arousal, barely dampened from the chase earlier, rushed back twicefold.

“Bad idea,” she said, looking up at him through her eyelashes, color high on her cheeks.

He prowled towards her, suddenly wanting nothing more. “Very bad.”

She smiled, that particular, small, toothy smile that he had only seen her use in the bedroom. He kissed her, almost groaned into her mouth at the relief of it, lapping into her and gripping the back of her neck.

There was very little in the way of finesse, Bran could admit. As he lowered her to the floor, he peeled off her running pants and she pushed his sweats and underwear down just far enough to release him. After the barest stroke with his thumb to check she was ready, she guided him impatiently inside her and then she was writhing underneath him. It was a mindless rutting, no question, their lips meeting as frantically as their hips. He squeezed a hand between them, curled his thumb against her clit and she bit down hard on his bottom lip as she came. A nanosecond passed before Bran had his first orgasm inside of a woman for two years. The pleasure was near-blinding in its purity, his blood roaring in his ears. He was almost certain he said something, too. He hoped with a vague, passing thought, that it hadn’t been something sentimental.

Leah licked his blood off her mouth, staring up at him with eyes dilated. Her chest was rising and falling with short, sharp breaths. “Fuck,” she said.

His cock, still half-hard, twitched inside of her. He lowered his face, drawn by the blissed-out state of her expression, and she sucked his bottom lip, pulling on the mark she had made. Fuck, Bran thought.

*

Bran was unsettled by the White River pack bond. He hadn’t expected it to feel so distinctly similar to the one he’d once had with Leah– to feel so Leah-ish in itself. When they had mated, Bran had molded that bond into something that worked for him, something that didn’t allow her access to his mind. Had it, in essence, been more ‘pack’ bond than mating bond?

It was very loud, too. He was struggling to mute it. It had been a few years since he’d introduced a new pack. Actually a few decades, come to think of it. Maybe it was just that it was new.

“Can you feel each of us through Leah?” Ada asked him, smiling broadly, unaware that he was puzzling something through.

As her husband was Leah’s Second, Ada felt she had a better footing with Bran and didn’t hold back her questions. She was confident, more confident than the other females – both of whom jumped at loud noises. He wondered if her husband had protected her from Ryall. Jacob was a quiet, considered man with watchful eyes. When he gave orders, he was obeyed immediately. Bran didn’t recall Ryall in enough detail to know if Jacob was the kind of man that Ryall would respect enough not to cross.  

“In essence, yes. Not as strongly as Leah can,” he amended, though it was possible for him to boost the power of the bond so that he could. It was usually unnecessary, however, and he didn’t tend to let people know it was something he could do.  

He looked across at Leah, who was talking with the Terrible Threesome, as she referred to them. They had not spoken of what had occurred in the cabin more than once, nor how they had snuck back into the house, nor what they had done in the shower together until the water ran cold.

Bran knew he was supposed to forget about it. The bite mark on his lip had healed on the walk back to the house, though he found himself touching his fingers to his mouth. He’d bitten the meat of Leah’s shoulder at one point and he could see her occasionally moving the joint experimentally.

He didn’t want her to forget about it, he thought. He didn’t want her to forget that they had been good together in some ways. That there were things she had given up in her search for ‘more’ and that she might have cause to regret it.

Bran could see that this trip was really raising some issues he had believed he had moved past. He was disappointed in himself. He reminded himself that he wanted her to be happy. She had, to use her so-charming words to him, ‘done her time’.   

Just before lunch, Alice and Corina took Bran on a full tour of the lodge. As he had suspected, Danny’s room was upstairs but the other bedroom had two singles. “This is ours,” the girls told him, looking pleased. For women who had to be in their fifties, they were childishly happy with their living accommodations which made him wonder about what it had been like before.

Bran looked around blankly. “Where’s Leah’s room?” he asked.

“Oh, you’re staying in it,” Corina said, brightly, smoothing the comforter on her bed. “She thought you’d be more comfortable.”

Leah hadn’t mentioned it. She probably thought it would have sounded strange, as if they were effectively sharing a room again. Or maybe she thought he would have worked it out. The room had smelled strongly of her.

It did beg the question of where Leah was sleeping, Bran thought, having been given detailed instructions on which room was whose. With a flash of what was unquestionably jealousy, again disappointing, he wondered if she was sharing Danny’s bed. He shook this thought off, and the irrational feelings, quickly. He would have known from watching them together the previous night. The body language of a couple in a sexual relationship was unmistakable. And she knew better, too, than to start a relationship with someone lower in the hierarchy than herself so soon into her role. Surely?

After lunch, Bran packed his bag and for the first time investigated the room he was staying in, opening drawers and the built in wardrobes. His mate’s clothes stared at him, organized neatly by color. No wonder the room smelled like her, he thought, fingering a soft grey cashmere sweater. He wasn’t sure what possessed him, then, because he snatched a pair of her sweats from the neat pile in the corner and shoved them into his bag.

Leah walked him up the drive to his truck. There were other cars parked there now, as it was a Saturday and only the Ranger, Danny, was working.

“I want to give you some advice,” he said, slowly. The timing was not ideal for this conversation. Not after what had happened between them that morning.

“All right.”

“Don’t fuck him,” Bran said, ripping the band aid off fast, so to speak.

Leah’s eyes flashed. “I beg your pardon,” she said icily.

As he had suspected, she didn’t ask ‘who’. She knew precisely who he was talking about which told him he had been right to say something. “Don’t fuck members of your pack. Don’t flirt with them. Just… don’t fuck them.”

The woman he had shared a bed with for a fifth of his lifespan, a woman he had been inside of just hours before, clenched her hands. “Would you be saying this to me if I was a man?” she spat.

“No,” Bran said, truthfully. “I wouldn’t be saying this to you if you weren’t my ex-wife, either. I am saying this to you because I want you to be successful. But unless you want to marry him, don’t fuck him.” He opened the door of the truck and tossed his bag in. He didn’t have to have a bond with her anymore to know she was boiling-ly angry with him. It couldn’t be helped.

“It’s good advice, Leah.” She said nothing because he had made her so angry she couldn’t speak. He regretted that and half-wondered if he had deliberately done this to sabotage what – unplanned sex aside – had been a reasonably nice interaction with her. Or had it been the right thing to do?

He would have to think about that.

“I’ll see you,” he said. “Call me if you have any problems. You know my number.”

It was the last he heard from her for several months.

*

It might have been the last he’d heard from her but it was not the last he heard about her. In between his more normal, pressing business – werewolf, fae, human, vampire, in that order – he heard from various Alphas who surely had better things to do with their time than bitch about a female Alpha disrupting their happy patriarchy.

The first two he listened to, patiently, silently, until they ran out of steam and then talked themselves out of what they correctly suspected was his abject displeasure. By the time he’d heard from the fifth, he’d given up and told them he didn’t have time for this level of whining and had more important things to do than placate their apparently quite fragile male egos. After that, he understood Charles fielded the complaints which frequently meant Anna did.

After a few months, the complaints trailed off. Bran had tentatively begun to think they had weathered the worst of it.   

“Maybe they’ve realized it has no impact on them whatsoever,” Anna suggested during one of their sessions. They often had meandering conversations about the pack, music, sometimes movies she’d watched that she thought he’d like and, of course, general werewolf behaviors. Their new female Alpha werewolf was one of those topics Anna enjoyed digging into and not specifically because it was Leah.

It was early Autumn and the heat was easing so they were sitting outside, facing each other. “Mmm,” Bran said, pleasantly light-headed.

“This has been much easier, recently,” she commented, speaking of the settled Beast inside of him. He was too calm to really ask her what she meant.

He usually slept after one of his meditations with her but a phone call killed his buzz very effectively. He knew it was her before he picked it up.

“What do I do about him?” Leah whispered urgently down the phone.

At the sound of her voice, Bran could suddenly taste her in his mouth and the Alpha bond that had quietened between them was humming loud enough that his bones were vibrating. Disconcerting. “Who?” He reached for the stale glass of water on his desk, took a gulp.

“Maxim. He keeps sending his people into my territory, fucking around with the cabins, cutting off the power and phone lines.”

Bran blinked. “He’s what?”

“I declined his proposal of marriage.”

“His what?”

“Are you seriously telling me you didn’t know this? He didn’t call to, I don’t know, give you a head’s up?”

Bran’s mouth suddenly felt too small for his teeth. “Let me get this straight, Maxim proposed to you, my—” He stopped himself from saying ‘wife’, though he doubted he had fooled her, “—and when you declined he started pranking you?”

“Hardly pranking, Bran, yesterday one of his boys shot at Marcus after he chased them off the property. I had to pull a bullet out of his shoulder. This being Marcus, he now wants to wear it around his neck like a damned trophy, my god, save me from werewolf men. Maxim says I need a man to protect my territory.” This last was said as if she was spitting the words from her mouth.

Bran’s opinion of Maxim lowered dramatically. “Does he.”

Leah drew a deep breath and let it out. “I’ve tried talking to him which usually ends up with me yelling at him. What do I do?”

He tapped his fingers on his desk. As usual, he started by thinking of what he would suggest if she were a man. “You could challenge him,” he said.

Leah grunted. She’d already thought of this. “I’d kill him. Do you want me to kill him?”

He found himself smiling. “How confident of you.”

“I’ve seen him fight. He relies too much on brute strength,” his wife said, dismissively, albeit truthfully. “I can beat that. You don’t want me to kill him. This lapse in judgment aside, he’s been a stable Alpha.”

She was right. Another Alpha wouldn’t have thought of the bigger picture, wouldn’t have thought of Bran’s needs in this way. He couldn’t decide if that put her at a disadvantage or if she was proving herself to be a better Alpha than most, already. “You could always just challenge him to first blood,” he amended.

“I wouldn’t be able to stop myself,” Leah sighed. “He’s ticked me off too much.”

This was also true. Given a choice between violence and more violence, she always erred towards the latter. Leah loved to fight.

“I can’t speak to him for you, that would make you look weak.”

“Agreed.”

“The only thing I can suggest is that you attack in a similar manner. Make yourself more of a nuisance.”

There was a pause. “This is ridiculous.”

He agreed. “He is just testing you, Leah.” That, at least, would be true even if she had been a man.

“Unbelievable.”

*

Charles looked revolted when Bran regaled his son with the conversation. He raised his eyebrows and Charles explained. “It’s behavior I thought we’d all moved beyond.”

“As did I,” Bran admitted.

“I suppose, if you remove certain elements, Leah is an extremely wealthy and attractive divorcee. To any man, regardless of species, that would be very appealing.”

Not needing convincing on the subject of Leah being ‘attractive’, the money aspect had also occurred to Bran. The financial settlement of their separation had been generous but, he’d thought, private. Until of course she had liquidated her assets and spent significant sums making Ryall’s territory habitable. He supposed anyone could have put those two details together. The Marrok was hardly going to leave his wife penniless. She had more than deserved everything he had given her.

“She can’t have spent all the money, either,” Bran mused.

“She hasn’t. She’s hired me to manage the rest of it.”

Bran was surprised. “You didn’t mention.”

“Well, it’s technically confidential. She said she hadn’t really known what she was doing, liquidating the assets, and had panicked. You know what she’s like with money. Anyway, you didn’t seem unduly concerned when I first mentioned it to you.” Charles shrugged.  

“She should update her will,” Bran thought. Maxim was playing games with her but sometimes werewolf games went wrong.

“She has.”

He was glad she had been so practical. “Oh - am I still in it?”

His son ignored this comment and changed the subject.

*

Bran spent two weeks with Mercedes and her husband, playing games himself with Underhill. He had endeavored to keep out of Underhill’s reach as much as possible – Power like his was a little too much for a fae of her ilk. A little too fascinating. He kept himself as muted as possible whilst he was with the Columbia Basin pack, which left him feeling uncomfortable and, there was no other word for it, itchy.

Mercy smiled at him as he packed up the car and they said their goodbyes. “You look like you could do with a good run. Sure you don’t want to stay for Full Moon?”

She was a pretty woman, his Mercy. He didn’t often think of it. Indeed, most of her teenage years he had really tried very hard not to think of it. She was safely married now and she and her interesting magic was out of his reach. “I don’t think that would be wise,” he said. He wanted to go home and run by himself, shake off this feeling.

“How are you doing?”

He smiled. “I thought this trip was very successful.”

“That’s not what I meant. How are you doing? Since, well, the divorce?”

He clenched and released his teeth and still managed to keep his smile. “Hard to divorce when you were married in the 1800s. No paperwork for that.”

She rolled her eyes. “Again, that’s not what I meant, Bran.”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you seeing anyone?” was her next preposterous question. So preposterous that she fully laughed at his expression. She bent over, clutching her stomach, howling. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, your face!”

He slammed the car door closed. “Are you done?” He was not amused.

Mercy waved her hand, her face scrunched up as she tried to control it. “Yes, yes, I am. Whoo-boy,” she said.  

“Did my daughter-in-law put you up to this?” It was a very similar vein of questioning to one Anna had started on a few weeks ago. He was as irritated with her as he was now as irritated with Mercy.

“I supposed she did,” Mercy admitted, biting her lip. Her humor had passed and now she looked concerned. He opened the driver side door, keen to be gone from the conversation. “She’s just worried about you.”

“She – and you – don’t need to be.”

Anna was very young and her whole world revolved around Charles, though he imagined she didn’t think of it that way. She still thought of a ‘lifetime’ as eighty years, as if they wouldn’t potentially have centuries together. As an Omega, she wanted to fix people, but she did this based on her understanding of what was the current acceptable social model. Bran, having been married for a long time, was now ‘alone’ and therefore after a period of healing – more than two and a half years was apparently her limit – he now needed to not be alone any longer.

“Please convey to my daughter-in-law that my private life shall remain my private life unless I explicitly invite either of you into it. Perhaps if the message also comes from you, she will finally hear it.”

Mercy’s face cleared of all expression. She knew when she was being chastised. Her eyes lowered, though he knew she only did it for effect, not because she found looking at a dominant werewolf disconcerting. “I’ll do that. I’m sorry, Bran, that was insensitive of me. It’s none of my business.”

He said no more. “I’ll see you soon,” he said, unable to keep the chill from his voice.

A flash of hurt crossed her face, which he regretted but truly wanted to do nothing about.

*

Bran wasn’t sleeping, again. On the plus side, he thought he’d nearly nailed the all forms of egg-based meals. The scrambled kind were still proving a challenge but he thought that was simply a matter of time and further experimentation.  

He was replying to emails at 3am when he got to the one from Kristoff. It was only a few hours old.

Bran,

Thought you should be made aware that the White River pack and I have formed an alliance of mutual aid. First order of business was to send our friend Maxim packing from your wife’s territory.

Regards

Kristoff

Bran paused, a mouthful of eggs halfway to his mouth. Interesting. For Alphas to form an alliance of that sort, there had to be something in it for the both of them. Leah obviously got the additional strength of Kristoff’s older, larger pack. He put his fork down and typed out a response.

Kristoff,

What do you get in exchange?

Bran

Given the time, he wasn’t expecting a reply, so Bran moved on, alternating between deleting and replying. At 3.36am, a new email arrived from Kristoff.

Bran,

Assume you’re in a different time zone, unless you’re babysitting a grandchild as well?

She’s sending me one of her people – her Ranger, Daniel. I could do with some young blood. By all accounts, a handsome boy. The women are a little too happy about it for my liking.

Kristoff

Bran swallowed down the taste of acid in his mouth and firmly pushed the plate of eggs away. Was it a coincidence that he had told her not to sleep with someone in her pack and within a handful of months she had sent Danny elsewhere? Had she already started a relationship with him? Or – by outsourcing her problem - was now planning to?

Or was this all just his imagination?

He started to take his clothes off. A nice, hard run would do him some good, get rid of the sour taste in his mouth. Allow him to work his way through this. Who knew, maybe he’d come back tired enough to get some sleep.

*

Bran actually did start ordering groceries to be delivered, mostly because he kept forgetting he needed them until he was out of everything and that was deeply boring. By having a weekly order arrive first thing Monday morning, he was never without the basics.

“This is so modern,” Anna commented as he unpacked the bags. Since she had stopped commenting on his sex life, they were on reasonably good terms again. She peered at his order. “That’s a lot of ginger ale.”

Bran shoved it into the cupboard, without comment. “Why are you here?”

“Charles and I were thinking of taking a vacation and I wanted to run the dates past you.”

“A vacation.”

“Yes, it’s when you take time off from work or daily activities,” Anna explained with a barest hint of a smile. “Perhaps you’ve heard of it from your extensive reading?”

“Ha ha,” he said. “Where are you thinking of going?”

“We are still debating this very topic.”

He went and got the calendar from his desk and she read out her dates to him. Then he realized anything of importance he now put in the online calendar so he invited her into his office. They both stood over his screen whilst he clicked through the weeks.

“Oh, Leah’s birthday,” Anna said, looking at the dates laid out across the following month. One box was bright pink, with ‘Leah’ and a small balloon emoji next to it.

Bran stared at it. “I have no idea why that’s there,” he said.

“I think I must have put it in. Way back. Because of that time we forgot it.”

Bran winced and it really was a full-body wince. “There are three people in this pack who still remember and celebrate their birthdays. You, Kara and Leah,” he mused. “And I managed to forget hers.”

Anna said nothing. Then, “It was pretty bad.”

It had been. He had a series of excuses – the main one being it had been the year the first round of werewolves had gone public and he and Charles had been killing their people left, right and center. But, still, Leah had been very hurt and, worse, shocked. He had apologized and she had said she had forgiven him but even he knew that had been a truly low point in their marriage. Subsequent years he had made sure to make a big fuss but each time he did it, he felt as if she remembered that one year a little more.

“Maybe you should send her something,” she suggested. “Flowers are nice.”

Bran nodded. Maybe he would.

*

Leah rang him the night before her birthday. Once again, he knew it was her before he touched the phone.

“It’s my birthday tomorrow,” she told him. She sounded odd – as if she had practiced the sentence before she had called. He only knew that because it was something she had occasionally done in front of him. She used to find phone calls difficult, particularly if the person at the other end wasn’t a werewolf.

“I know.”

“Oh.” There was a small pause, as if his answer had thrown her. Then, suspiciously, “Are you sending me something?”

“I am. I have, in fact,” he amended.

“Flowers?”

“Yes, but also something else.” Flowers, he had decided, were the easiest option. Anyone could send flowers. Bran had also brought her some bespoke stationary, illustrated on the back with a silhouette of fir trees that reminded him of the White River Forest, and a Mont Blanc fountain pen. He had wrapped this gift himself and was having it couriered to arrive on the day.

“That’s, well, that’s very nice,” she said, sounding as if it was more than just ‘nice’. Bran was pleased with himself. “No one here knows. I don’t want them to make a fuss.”

“The flowers might be a clue,” he suggested. He knew Anna was also sending flowers so she would be doubly surprised.

“Yes, I didn’t know you were going to do that.” She continued to sound delighted. “Thank you in advance.”

As this phone call was going extremely well, Bran could only assume her real reason for calling was going to be something that would make him apoplectic. So thinking, he walked into the kitchen and opened a can of ginger ale.

“I was calling to ask you something. And you are more than welcome to tell me it’s a bad idea, even though it didn’t seem to go so badly last time.”

Bran paused, ginger ale at his mouth. “Go on.”

“I’d like to have sex.”

He put the can down. “With…?”

Leah made an exasperated noise. “You, of course.”

Bran crunched the can and ginger ale went everywhere. He jumped backwards as a cascade of bubbling liquid poured down the side of the counter.

“Well?” she said, the single word sounding embarrassed and cross.

“I genuinely can’t think of anything I’d like more,” he said truthfully, getting a cloth. It was obviously a terrible idea. He tried to make light of it. “There’s a name for this, isn’t there? A booty call.”

His ex-wife snorted. “That sounds deeply unappealing.”

“You’re right,” Bran agreed. Now all he had to was work out how to get away from home without anyone knowing why. 

*

“Do you remember the first time we ever had sex?”

Bran lifted his head. He might have been dozing a little, lulled by post-coital relaxation and the strangely comforting hum of the bond between them. “Yes. Of course.” Just after they had married, on a bedroll under the stars. He had bit her shoulder, she had scratched her nails down his back, and just like that they had been mated. It had been half-fight, half-sex. It had taken years before they had learnt to sometimes be gentle with each other.  

“You do?”

“Well.” He cleared his throat. “Not all of it.”

Surprising him, Leah smiled. Then she laughed. “Do you remember speaking Welsh?”

“I do not, no.” He propped his head up on his hand, fascinated by the direction of this conversation.  

“I didn’t realize, at the time, obviously. I think I thought you were talking gibberish.”

He nodded. She had learnt Welsh as most of his pack did, through receptive learning. She couldn’t speak it but she could understand it. In the early years of their marriage, it was the language most often spoken between him, Sam and Charles. Her ability to pick it up without him actively teaching her was the first sign that she wasn’t as ‘stupid’ as he had first thought.

“Do you know what I said?” he asked, curious as to what his mind had conjured up the first time he had been with her. It had been only a handful of years since his first mate had died. He had been angry, almost all the time. Pained that he had been forced by necessity to take a mate again when he hadn’t felt ready to. It was an old pain, one he had all but forgotten.

“I don’t. I imagine, based on later experience, it was mostly filth.”

He laughed and pressed his face into the thin hotel pillow. He could feel her laughing as well. “Did I do it again today?” He glanced at her and she was still smiling. She looked truly stunning, he thought. Happy. “What do I say?” he asked, genuinely curious.  

She flushed, embarrassed but delighted. “Well. It changes. Sometimes it’s just creative expletives. But mostly things about being inside of me forever, how amazing I feel, some biologically impossible suggestions.”

Bran groaned and pressed his face back into the pillow. “I can’t believe you’ve never told me. I can’t believe I don’t know I’m doing it.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this embarrassed. This is very satisfying for me,” she said teasingly, rolling onto her side. “A real birthday treat.”

His phone alarm went off and Leah’s smile dropped from her face, as he suspected did his. “That went fast,” she said quietly.

“It did, didn’t it?” he said, turning off the phone and then leaning over to kiss her. There was time for one more go.

*

He slept like the dead for three weeks after that and then Anna once again told him his beast was very settled. Belatedly, Bran was beginning to notice a pattern. A pattern he should have been paying attention to.

Seated in front of his fire, he prodded the Alpha bond that linked him to Leah. She prodded it back. He opened his eyes and wasn’t surprised when the phone rang.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I—“ Bran didn’t know what to say so decided to go for the truth. “There’s something odd about the bond and I’m looking at it.”

“My pack bond?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of odd?”

“What does it feel like to you?”

Leah was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “I was a little surprised how similar it felt to the mating bond.”

“It’s not supposed to,” Bran grunted, rubbing a hand over his face. “I’m wondering if, because we once had a mating bond, the pack magic didn’t work the same way. It’s not a typical situation. Not one I would ever have come across before.” Not having many female Alphas he had once been married to.

“Is there a problem with it? Does it not serve?”

Bran closed his eyes, feeling his way through the singing threads of the bond network. His connection to Leah stood out above all others – louder, clearer, more harmoniously. He had been ignoring this detail, attributing it to its newness. Through it he could feel the faintest hum of her pack. “It does,” he said slowly. “But it’s definitely different.”

He heard Leah move around, a door closing. “Is it because we had sex,” she whispered.

He grunted. “Maybe. Sex does have magic.”

“It does?”

“Mmm,” he said, thinking it through. They’d had sex before the ceremony. Maybe it had completed some kind of a circuit. Boosted it somehow. It might fade, he reflected.

“What kind of magic?” Leah asked, just generally curious. He had rarely talked to her about magic, he thought. He usually only spoke to Charles. Or Mercy. Two people who had magic that was similar but different from his.

“Oh, ritual magic, mostly. It’s a particular form of energy. Power. And, actually, depending on whether it’s good sex or bad sex can be used for different things.” This last he added because it was interesting. He ran a hand through his hair. “I felt you push back at me through the pack bond. That’s not typical. It’s normally one way.”

“I didn’t think of touching it before. You never liked that with the mating bond.”

“The restrictions I placed on it meant it was uncomfortable when you did it,” he muttered. Like she was buzzing in his brain. He had felt it in his teeth.

“Oh. Why?”

“Because it didn’t like that I had placed the restrictions on it.”

“The mating bond was punishing you?” His wife sounded amused.

“Yes, in effect.”

She made a noise. “I think this is the most we’ve ever talked about it.”

Bran agreed. Initially he had deliberately taken advantage of Leah’s ignorance of pack magic – it wasn’t a topic that was understood well, being mostly instinct - and then he supposed time had passed and Leah had accepted it for what it was. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to explain it, either, not when she didn’t ask questions.

“Can I talk to you through it?” she asked, suddenly, brightly.

*

She could. And she did.

What’s the name of the Bow-Route Alpha? she asked him, one morning.

Zane Teke, Bran replied, without really thinking about it. Why?

He just pulled up outside the lodge.

Then there was silence.

Bran continued working for a while, answered a few phone calls, forwarded an interesting email from their Cantrip spy to Charles, then had a phone call with Charles about said email.

On the phone, he said, “Strange question – Zane Teke? Any news from him?” He knew Zane. He liked Zane. Zane was not troublesome but then neither had Ryall been.

“Nothing since his mate died, when was that, oh, ten years ago?”

Bran tilted his head back. Of course. “I have to go,” he said.

He called her, using the telephone. Then he tried her cell. Then, when that didn’t work, he spoke to her.

What does he want?

Nothing.

Leah?

Again, nothing.

Acid burned up his throat and he rubbed his palm against his chest as he rifled through his drawers for one of the pink tablets he’d seen advertised for this very problem and bought from the garage. He found the packet and chewed two. He tried to continue working.

Finally, she spoke to him, after he’d gone through nearly a full packet of the pink chalk. Sorry, I find it hard to have real conversations out loud and also do this. He dropped by for a chat and then asked if he could court me.

Bran retched into the bin under his desk, spitting up pink foam. He rested his forehead on his arm. Did he now.

I said I’d think about it, she said, sounding unsure.

He retched again. This was getting out of control, it really was.

*

He didn’t sleep for four days – knowing exactly why this time – and then called her. “Can we meet?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Same place?”

The same place was a hotel in Riverton, Wyoming, a location that was equidistant for both of them to drive.

Neither of them were under any illusions as to why they were meeting. She was barely in the room before he had her pressed up against the door, her shoes, coat and bag dropping to the floor. “Hi,” she said against his mouth.

“Hi,” he replied, coaxing her backwards, towards the bed. If she’d asked, he wouldn’t have been able to tell her what she was wearing, so quickly did he remove her clothes and she his. Then she was, finally, naked, and he could touch and kiss and lick every part of her body that he had thought about in the weeks they had been apart.

He’d spent a lot of time awake, in the dark, thinking about her body and what he would do with her if she was in his arms.

“I want to be on top,” she told him, writhing under his mouth as he rubbed his face in her. She gasped, thrusting up. “Oh, oh, if you keep doing that, I’ll come.”

“That’s the general idea,” he told her, using his thumbs to spread her further and the point of his tongue to flick her clit the way she liked. Her thighs trembled.

“I want to come with you in me,” she complained, pulling at his hair. “Bran.”

He complied – such a hardship – and she sank down on him with a groan. As if from far away, he heard himself say something explosively and she laughed, her hands pressed against his abdomen. “Welsh!” she said, even as she rose and fell above him.

He would have laughed, too, if he hadn’t been trying to keep himself together. Just the sight of her above him, her hair a messy cascade over her shoulders, over her breasts, was almost too much. He circled her slick clit and felt her go over, clenching around him. He rolled them so he could finish himself since she was about as useful to him as a limp ragdoll now. He folded her legs up and thrust mindlessly into her, wringing tiny, plaintive noises from her that grew in frequency and volume. “Will you come again?” he asked, relatively sure he knew the answer. He nipped her chin.

“Yes, yes, yes, keep going there,” she told him, digging her heels into his back, eyes clenched tight.

He lowered his head to her neck, sucked on it. Being inside her was like nothing else he had ever–– “Welsh,” she cried on a triumphant gasp. Her body bucked. “Oh – oh - Bran!”

He came just soon as he knew she did, felt his face slacken with relief, utterly falling to pieces as he pulsed inside her, like his entire being was leaving his body. Once the tremors of pleasure that followed were more manageable, he lowered himself down. “What did I say,” he muttered into the mattress over her shoulder.

“You apparently have a favorite noise that I make,” she said. He could feel her smiling. “What’s a ffwrch though?”

Bran groaned. “Oh dear.”

“Is it bad?”

“No, it’s just a very, ah, agricultural way to describe part of your body,” he laughed, sliding his hand down touch where they were still joined.

“Oh, then the ploughing makes more sense now,” she said, truly shaking with laughter now. He joined her, helplessly.

*

Later, arm around her, he asked her about Teke. And she looked at him, corner of her mouth pressed in so that a dimple appeared in her cheek. “I think I should, don’t you?”

Bran touched his nose to her shoulder. “Do you want to?”

“Well. It’s been—not a long time, actually. It’s been never since I was ‘courted’ by someone.” No one would have ever described what Bran had done with her as ‘courting’, not even he. “And he was respectful.”

Respectful. He couldn’t say he had been respectful towards her, either. He closed his eyes, willing the acidic sensation that rose up in him to go back downwards. They had agreed this. This was at the heart of her leaving him – her desire to be loved the way that Charles loved Anna, the way that Sam loved Ariana. How Bran had loved Blue-Jay Woman. That meant she had to find someone.

The fact that Bran hadn’t adequately imagined how it would feel to know that Leah was being courted by another man was his own problem, not hers.

“I want you to be happy,” he said, by rote. That she had not been happy with him had been obvious for the last thirty years and probably longer if he had but cared to pay attention. If anything, he had continued to make her unhappier with each passing year.

Leah nervously played with the end of her hair, staring up at the ceiling. “I can’t imagine doing this with another man.”

He flinched. “Me either,” he said, speaking not just of her but of himself. Before Blue-Jay Woman he had been with many women – almost exclusively casually, just to relieve a passing desire, a basic instinct. But his time with his beloved first mate had been short, a few years compared to the lifetime he had been with Leah. When he imagined himself in bed with another woman, he couldn’t picture anyone but her, now.

He’d never really thought of that before.  

“This is why this is a terrible idea,” she sighed, rolling towards him and draping herself across his body.

He agreed. It didn’t mean he intended to stop, however.

*

He flew to France to meet with the European Alphas on the subject of the ongoing migrations – in that, they wanted them to stop because they were bleeding werewolves and Bran wanted something in return.

Bran had been forced to take Anna with him but not Charles, as he couldn’t leave the Aspen Creek pack unattended. No one, not even Bran, was happy about the situation – he didn’t want his young Omega daughter-in-law anywhere near the troubled European wolves, either. There was a power vacuum left from Chastel's death that had left the region very unsteady and an Omega was always going to be very much desired.

There were several female werewolves in attendance – both from Chastel’s old pack and from the other European packs. Anna spent her time with the ones from Chastel’s pack, trying to discover more about him - to see how bad it had been before his timely death. Bran, on the other hand, found himself the object of great interest to the few other single females. Word had reached them that the Marrok was unmated and unmarried now and Leah’s unquestionably violent retribution to any woman who breathed in his direction would no longer be a problem.

Werewolf women liked powerful males, even if he did his best to never appear powerful, even if he personally thought his physical appeal was limited. It was easy to forget that.

The second time the vivacious Marianne de Bois put her hand on his knee, however, Bran lifted it, kissed the back of it kindly, and put it back on her own knee. She flushed. “I think the expression is,” he said, thoughtfully, “it’s not you, it’s me?”    

She smiled and he saw her smooth her thumb over the spot he had kissed. “I understand. You were married a long time.”

“Just so.” And, he was coming to realize, the process of unravelling a relationship like theirs was a long one. Longer even that he had expected.  

He thought a great deal about it on the flight home, Anna leaving him in peaceful contemplation. She hadn’t missed the interaction between him and Marianne. He suspected she had been pleased by it. However, she had learnt her lesson and if she was going to talk about Bran’s private life, it would only be speculation with her husband.

He drove Anna home, dropped her off and when he walked through the doors of his dark, empty home, called his ex-wife.

“I think we need to talk,” he said.

Leah sighed and her bed rustled around her. “I think so too.”

*

This time they met at a diner so there was no chance of falling into bed together. With a practical mindset that had often characterized their marriage, they agreed to another two year cooling off period where they would have limited, if not zero, face to face interaction. She agreed to call Charles if she had any problems on the proviso that if she felt they needed escalating, Charles would do it at her request. They also agreed that they wouldn’t use the strange pack bond to speak to each other.  

It was amicable enough until the moment they reached their cars.

“Did you fuck Marianne?” she asked him.

He was unpleasantly reminded of the way he had accused her of sleeping with her Third. It was unsubtle enough to be entirely intentional. “I did not.”

“So she isn’t the reason for.” She gestured between them and the diner.

“She is, but not in the way you’re thinking.”

His wife’s eyes flashed. She had restrained her jealousy very well, he thought. He wondered, also, who she knew in Europe who was so happy to repeat gossip back to her. Someone equally malicious. Perhaps Marianne herself.

“It’s not reasonable for me to accept your involvement with other men, if you can’t do the same for me,” Bran said, he thought fairly. Then, because he couldn’t help it, “You were the one who left.”

Leah’s face twisted. “I know I was the one who left. I will never like the idea of it,” she said. “I can’t picture being happy for you.”

He knew that. Unhappily, he wanted to dig the knife in further. “You wanted to find someone who would love you like you want to be loved.”

“To love me at all, Bran,” she corrected.

Bran let that stand. “I won’t–“ can’t “– always be alone, either.”

She looked away, at the cars passing on the road. “Not Marianne, please.”

He raised an eyebrow, not loving being given instruction on whom he could be with. “I’m tempted to ask if you have a list but I suspect you would.”

“No. Just not her.” Her eyes dropped to the ground.

Baffled, Bran shrugged. “Fine. Not her.”

It seemed fitting that their marriage ended with a bargain, just like it had started.  

*

It was better.

It was better because it was the right thing to do. And, indeed, they had done it before. More than two years had gone before he had seen her again. He had been working his way through the process of not being with her and the ‘blip’ of their interaction had destroyed that. But he could start it again.

He just needed to keep his mind busy.

If Anna was surprised by Bran’s sudden enthusiasm for pack gatherings, she didn’t say so, just looked gratified that he was suddenly engaged. If Charles was surprised that Bran was happier than ever before to travel to their packs at the drop of the hat, he also didn’t say so.

“I’m concerned about the quiet ones,” Bran said, feet up on the coffee table one evening. He thought about Ryall, which meant he thought about Leah, which meant he stopped that thought quickly. “Who would you consider to be ‘quiet’?”

Charles listed a few, one of which included Zane Teke’s pack in Wyoming.

“Let’s plan some surprise visits,” Bran said, immediately knowing that he would instruct Charles to take Teke’s pack because if anything was going to unravel him it would be meeting Leah’s new lover. “Just turn up.”

“No one will like that,” Charles snorted.

“That’s the point. If we plan, they can be prepared, cover up anything they don’t want us to see.”

“This isn’t your usual style of leadership.”

“No, but there have been some lapses in the last few years. Your mate’s pack being one of them,” Bran pointed out. “Maybe I need to adjust my style of leadership. We rely too much on email and phone calls because it’s easy. It wasn’t always the way.”

Charles agreed. He ended on a more domestic comment. “Something smells good. What are you making?”

“Beef bourguignon,” Bran said with a smile. “I found a recipe online. You’re welcome to take some home with you.”

*

No one liked the surprise visits but they were very effective, even Charles admitted that, after the second time he found a pack where the Alpha was indiscriminately sleeping with every female – werewolf or human - believing it was his ‘right’. Consent was, apparently, a topic he was going to need to revisit with his people.   

Bran also moved a few packs around. One was being deftly picked off by vampires and didn’t think this was something he needed to raise with the Marrok. Bran had a similar problem in Portland a few years back but this pack was on the east coast and apparently no one talked to each other. Another pack had grown too big for its territory and wolves were being regularly ‘sighted’ which Bran found out from a poster in the window of the local post office. The Alpha in question had bought a series of large dogs which hadn’t really helped matters because it just drew more attention to the problem.

“Teke’s pack is solid,” Charles told him, calling from the car. “Though I think he knew he was next as he had a bedroom set up for us and a meal ready.” Bran heard Anna chuckle in the background.

Bran had been expecting this conversation. He’d had half a packet of antacids and had been sitting on his decking, taking deep breaths for an hour. “Good news, I suppose.”

“Da, there’s something I think you should know.”

“I know he’s courting Leah,” Bran said quickly, not sure how well he could take being told the information, even if it was for the second time.

Charles blew out a relieved breath. “So she told you.”

“She did.” His traitorous brain supplied a visual of Leah as she had been, in bed with him. Happy.

In the background, he heard Anna say, I told you she would have.  

“And you’re okay with it?”

Bran had planned this, too. “It was what she wanted and Teke is a good man. Respectful,” he added, because that was the word she had used.

Charles, who knew him, sighed. “I didn’t ask what Leah wanted. I asked if you were okay with it.”

Bran was silent. It was annoying that his sons were so wise to his ways. “I will be,” he said. Then he changed the subject.

*

Bran blinked and Anna was there. The next moment she wasn’t.

He was still sitting in his chair, facing where she had been. The light had changed and a glance at the clock confirmed that hours had passed. Their meditations didn’t usually take so long and didn’t usually end with him not noticing she had taken her leave. Had he fallen asleep? Sitting upright?

He looked down at himself and wondered why his T-shirt was inside out.

Bran got up and walked into the living area. And alarm flared through him.

Someone had torn the couch to shreds. Cushions and stuffing was everywhere. Claw marks had ripped apart the seams, down to the wooden and foam frame. One of the corner pieces had been upended, the legs broken.

The rest of the living area was strangely untouched.

Since his senses told him there was no one else in the house, he walked around the destruction carefully. Then leaned forward unnecessarily to scent it.

‘Someone’ was him. He had done this. And he had no memory of doing it.

The recollection that Anna had been here sent another spike of alarm through him. There was no sign of blood but didn’t mean he hadn’t done her harm. He picked up the second handset from the side table and dialed Charles.

“Hey,” Charles said, in an easy tone.

Bran’s shoulders sunk. If his mate had been harmed, Charles would have known. “Is Anna there?”

“Yes, do you need her?”

“No,” Bran said.

“Okay,” his son replied, a tinge of humor in his voice. “What’s up?”

“Nothing. Don’t come over,” he added, then he hung up. Bile rose into his mouth. Fuck, he thought. He was losing his mind.

*

Charles, of course, ignored his instruction and walked through the door a mere ten minutes later. He surveyed the couch and the trash bags of stuffing and fabric that Bran was filling. “You did this,” he said.

“I don’t remember doing it.” Bran explained what had happened to the best of his knowledge. He had been all over the house, including her room, and found no further damage. All the doors and windows were locked. Sometimes, in his wolf form, he was dexterous enough to open them but only if the human was in control.

Charles was scrutinizing him. “Anna came back a couple of hours ago. She said you’d had a difficult session.”

Bran had been lax. The sessions with Anna had been going on for so long – and were demonstrably working - that he hadn’t asked after what she felt about it. “What does she mean by difficult?”

“She says it’s sometimes harder to get your wolf to ‘go down’. She thinks it might be because you’re stressed about other things. Sometimes it’s easier.”

Bran didn’t think it was about stress. He sat down on the only part of the couch that hadn’t been completely destroyed.

“Leah left me because we agreed that the mating bond was unnecessary, thanks to Anna,” Bran said. He had truly believed that. When he had worked out how to break the mating bond at Leah’s request, he had only done so knowing he would be safe. It had not been a decision he made lightly. And he had made the decision knowing what it would mean for Anna, too, and through her, Charles. They had all discussed it.

Charles nodded. “Yes, though it’s the first time you’ve ever said she left you.”

Bran gave his son a dark look. “That is not the conversation we’re having.”

“No, of course not,” Charles said drily. “You think this has something to do with the mating bond? Is the wolf not contained?”

“I don’t think this is the wolf.”

Charles fingered a very obvious claw mark in the back of the couch. “This would suggest otherwise.”

“I am the wolf, Charles. He is me. The most dangerous part of him is contained.” Bran pinched the bridge of his nose and thought of the trees he had destroyed, willingly, on his territory. “But I am still free.”

This Charles had obviously not considered before. He and Brother Wolf were built differently. Entwined but not. Separate identities. “The mating bond was not just a cage for the beast,” Charles said slowly.

It was a theory. “Something like that.”

Charles closed his eyes. “I don’t think I’m ready for this conversation.”

“I don’t think I am either,” Bran agreed. “Can you help me get this outside? I don’t want to see it anymore.”

*

Bran couldn’t discourage the pack from visiting, as they frequently did. But equally he couldn’t not put safeguards in place in case it happened again. Charles temporarily moved to the dining room to work and Bran took Asil into his confidence for when Charles was not available.

Asil appeared to not be surprised. “I knew you were pining for her,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “But I thought it had improved.”

“Pining for—“ Oh, of course. The poor sleep. The bad eating habits. He almost rolled his eyes at himself.

Asil snorted. “Bran, really.”

“Give me some credit, she didn’t die, why would I think I was pining for her?” Because of course he had. He had pined for her as Sam had pined for Mercy. Cornick men were apparently sentimental fools.  

Asil leaned back in his chair, crossing his leg at his knee. “In your lifetime, how many mating bonds have you seen broken?”

“Willingly? None. No one would be capable of it.” He said this without pride. A mating bond was for life. It should not be broken the way he had broken theirs. It hadn’t been easy, either – it had, in fact, been agony - but he had done it because she had asked him for it.

“I’m not sure either of you were willing. Resigned, perhaps,” Asil mused.

Bran wasn’t going to debate this. “It was what she wanted.”

“I never thought you were the perfect couple, of course. You know what I think of her,” the Moor said, damningly.

Bran bristled. Asil had never exactly kept his opinion on Leah to himself – though Bran had certainly not tolerated it and did not tolerate Asil’s sharing of that opinion within the pack. They had – physically – come to blows on this topic before. “I’m aware. You continue to be wrong.”

The other man at least had the grace to incline his head at this. “But you worked, in your own way. You should have fought for her.” Asil bared his white teeth.

“This is very helpful, Asil, thank you,” Bran said scathingly. The smug bastard. Should have killed him when he first asked to be. “Do you have any more pearls of wisdom to share with me today or are you done?”

“Perhaps you should get that Seattle witch to take a look at you.”

Annoyingly, that was a pearl of wisdom. Moira, being mated to a werewolf, had a unique insight. He had consulted with the witch before, though it galled him to do so. “We’re not there, yet.”

*

There were no more incidents for a few months. Perhaps Anna was right, Bran thought, and talking about it was useful. Asil joined him on his Wednesday walks and sometimes they took another at the weekend. When Charles and Anna went to Washington to Cantrip's headquarters, Asil stayed in the guest room and they stayed up late playing chess together.

It was tolerable.

In October, he successfully Changed more werewolves than ever before and for the first time Thanksgiving was a time of celebration, not mourning. Sam and Ariana came home and stayed until the New Year. Bran chose not to let them into his little problem; he didn’t need their additional worry settling on his shoulders. If they wondered at Asil’s presence, they didn’t comment on it, though Bran knew Ariana found the Moor quite disconcerting.

Unfortunately, Bran knew this period of quiet would shortly end. The New Year brought with it the North American Alphas Assembly, which he held every four years. It was a simple affair, nothing more than a few meetings held in the pole barn. Charles circulated an agenda beforehand, outlining the topics Bran intended to discuss and if anyone wanted to raise anything, there was a forum for that on the last afternoon.

He knew, without question, Leah’s presence was going to be a royal pain in the ass.

“Maybe she could just not come,” Charles suggested.

This was met with glares from both Anna and Bran, for different reasons.

“Should I offer to let her stay with us?” Anna asked. Normally, the Alphas would stay in nearby motels. Some brought their wives and mates. Bran knew Adam was intending to bring Mercy, since he had brought the Columbia Basin pack back under his aegis the previous year. That was another potential complication, he realized. Leah and Mercy in the same location. He had avoided that for a long time, too. So had Mercy.

“Offer it,” Bran said. “See if she takes you up on it.” He doubted it. There hadn’t been much love lost between Charles, Anna and Leah, either, though it had thawed somewhat in recent years.

Anna offered it. Leah politely declined. Thanks to how things were organized, Bran discovered that she and Teke were staying in the same motel. That they had booked separate rooms did not console him. He went to find a tree to destroy and Asil watched him do it.

“I didn’t think you were such a jealous man,” the Moor commented, sipping from his thermos of coffee.

I’m not, Bran told him, claws deep in a tree trunk, ripping.

Asil looked at the denuded trees surrounding Bran’s property. “Clearly.”

The trunk wasn’t doing it for him. He kept thinking of Teke on top of his wife, moving inside her. It was a violation. I’m going to go and kill something. Do you want to come?

Asil put down his thermos and started to undress. 

*

Leah was being good.

He had imagined she might do many things to disrupt the assembly – all of which would have been in character. Perhaps she would be aggressively difficult. Maybe even flaunt her relationship with Bran, in the technical past as it was. Perhaps she would wear something provocative, something that would distract the room full of testosterone-filled men and infuriate their mates.

The fact that she did none of these things was oddly out of character.

She arrived on time, talking quietly with Kristoff. She said her hellos to a few of the Alphas, a few of their mates, that she knew socially and liked – quite a few more than Bran was expecting. She gave him a nod, a small smile to Anna and Charles. She wore jeans and a white shirt under a grey sweater. Her boots were flat and practical. Her hair was braided. She had no make-up on.

It was a testament to Bran’s state that for the first time in many, many years he noticed that Leah was by far the most beautiful woman in the room. He had known, in much the same way as you might acknowledge the technical perfection of a piece of art, that she was beautiful. But to look at her and be truly overwhelmed by it was another matter entirely. It was as if someone had punched him in the face.

Bran smiled obliquely at everyone. “Take your seats,” he said.

His werewolves promptly sat on hay bales. A few, like Leah, had printed off the agenda and had notebooks. Quite a few were looking at Leah herself, seated between Kristoff and the Alpha from Niagara Falls. Teke, Bran noted, was across the room and had not given Leah more than anything but a cursory look.

Maybe this was going to work, he thought.

*

The ridiculous middle-of-winter BBQ was part and parcel of the Assembly, even if it was snowing. They were lucky with the weather this year and everyone stood outside in padded coats, with beers and burgers, talking in groups. Bran mingled, lightly, but knew his role as their Marrok wasn’t a playful one.

Asil, Charles and Anna had their eyes on him when he had any interaction with Leah, who continued to be good. “How are things?” he asked her, much as he had asked any other Alpha.

“Things are fine. I’ve even made up with Maxim,” she said.

Bran had seen that. He was glad she hadn’t killed him. “How is Danny getting on with Kristoff’s pack?”

“Swimmingly.” She rolled her eyes. “The girls miss him dreadfully, though. I wish I’d split up the Terrible Threesome, instead.”

“Why are they so Terrible?”

Her eyebrows shot up. “You missed that they’re in a poly-amorous relationship? And constantly argue?”

Bran’s mouth dropped open. “I entirely missed that.” Not the arguing, part. He’d mistaken that for competitiveness. “How… modern?” he said.

She laughed. He found himself leaning towards her and had to physically pull himself back. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Anna weaving her way towards him. “If it makes you feel any better, I had no idea until after I was their Alpha.” She took a pull from her beer.

Bran watched her throat, absently. “Would it have made a difference?”

“Not really.”

Another thought occurred to him, as Anna sidled up to him and leaned against him affectionately. Bran put his arm about her shoulders and Leah watched him do it in much the same way as he had watched her drink. “Where do they all sleep?”

“With Danny gone, I’ve given them the entire top floor,” she said, waving a hand about, bracelets on her wrist jangling. “To do whatever they wish.”

“What’s this?” Anna asked.

He and Leah shared a conspiratorial smile. Bran explained and, together, they both enjoyed the admiring expression that crossed his daughter-in-law’s face. "Wow. Poly-amorous." This expression grew even more wide-eyed when Leah showed Anna some pictures of them. "Double-wow."

Later that night, Bran and Asil Changed and went for a run so that Bran didn’t think about Zane and Leah, only a few miles away, entwined together on a motel bed. Neither of them slept that night.

*

The final day of the Assembly passed much as could be expected. The last few hours were dedicated to the forum where questions and issues could be raised. Anna fielded this – she was a good facilitator and the Alphas listened to her – and for the most part they weren’t difficult topics.

He intervened only once on the topic of the migrations – there was some anger that he had put a halt to them, as many of the packs had benefited from ‘new blood’. He didn’t like explaining himself but he did so, outlining the new agreement with Europe. Free movement through Europe, which included any businesses his people had. Bran had agreed with the European Alphas that any wolf who was part of North America would be untouchable on the continent.

“That’s not to say you can go over there and do what you want. Any violations would be dealt with on your home territory. By me,” he added, in case that wasn’t clear.   

There were murmurs of interest. The topic closed and Anna indicated that the next issue could be raised.

With almost inevitable finality, Zane Teke stood and he turned to look at Leah.

Bran blinked and between that blink and the next, the scene changed and suddenly Leah was kneeling at his feet, panting, bodies of his Alphas flung far and wide like a bomb had gone off. He could smell blood. His son was crouched to one side, head lowered, his mate behind him. Mercy had tears streaming down her face as Adam held her back. He could hear the echo of someone’s scream.

Apparently he had been the bomb and everyone in this room had decided they were going to die.

His chest rising and falling, he looked down at his wife’s fair head, reached down to touch it, reassured himself. “Everyone out,” he said and his voice croaked.  

Some made to leave immediately. Kristoff hauled Zane to his feet. Blood was dripping from his deep brown face. “I’m not leaving her here,” Zane said, struggling. One eye was swollen shut but the other was bright and furious.

“He won’t hurt her, boy,” Kristoff said gruffly. They were disproportionate; it should have looked ridiculous. The shorter, squarer Kristoff manhandling the handsome, stately Zane.

“No,” Zane said. This time he pulled himself forward, escaping Kristoff. Bran felt the edges of his vision blur, felt for the first time that he was being taken over by something else. Sharp pain in his fingers told him claws were forming where nails should be. His mouth felt suddenly, wrongly, full.

Leah lifted herself, wrapped her arms around his legs, distracting him. “Bran,” she said, pressing her face against his hip. “Please.”

He gripped her hair with his fingers, long nails scraping against her scalp. “The Moor will stay,” Bran said, with difficulty, looking to his immediate right. Asil was still, his eyes shining wolf-bright. He nodded.

“Come away,” Kristoff said again, pulling at Zane, Charles helping him.

Finally, everyone left.

*

Asil turned his back on them, which must have taken extraordinary willpower to put a more dominant wolf at his back, just to give them some semblance of privacy.

Bran dropped to his knees. Blood was on his hands, under his nails. He watched the claws recede. A partial-change. How extraordinary. He touched her face, her shoulders. “Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head, her hands going to clasp his wrists, holding his hands against her as if moments ago they hadn’t been monstrous. Her eyes were red-tinged. There was a streak of blood going from her top lip across her cheek. “What happened? Not now - I saw what happened now,” she clarified. "What's happening to you?"

Bran stared at the blood until he gave in and licked it. She let him, her eyes fluttering closed. It wasn’t hers but Zane’s. He rubbed it from her face with his sleeve. “I have developed a new anger control issue.”

Her eyes told him she knew this was a massive understatement. “This has happened before?”

“We have a very nice new couch. You’d like it,” he said, trying to laugh.

She shook her head, as if this didn’t make sense. “Bran, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well, we agreed limited contact.”

Leah made a disgusted noise. She shuffled forward, an insane woman, getting closer to the monster. Her hands went to cradle his face. “What is it really? What’s causing it?”

“It’s rather unfortunate,” he said slowly. Asil snorted, breaking the illusion of privacy somewhat. He held up a hand in apology and then covered his ears, unnecessarily dramatically. Bran lowered his voice. “It appears I have a problem with your so-respectful paramour.”

“Oh, Bran,” she said, closing her eyes. “Of course now is the time you develop a jealous streak.”

“I’ll have you know, I had one before.” He lifted her hand from his face, kissed it, and then gave in and pulled her to him. She came willingly and if he had known how much better he would feel holding her, he would have done the moment her car had pulled up in his drive the day before.

For a few minutes, they sat quietly. Her heartbeat slowed to normal. Bran no longer felt like he was a hair’s breadth from a killing spree.

“What happened to the trees?” she asked, conversationally. “Bears? They don’t normally come this close to the house.”

He grunted. Of course she would have seen that. “That would be me, as well.”

“You?” She shook her head. “Is there anything else?”

“I haven’t been sleeping well.”   

“I did know that.” She sighed. She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I don’t, either.”

“You look," spectacular, "fine.”

“There is literally make-up designed specifically for the blue color under your eyes, you know. I’ve mastered it. I just thought it was stress.” She rubbed the palm of her hand against her chest. She turned her head so she could whisper in his ear. “But it hurts here when I see you.”

It was a terrible idea – everything about this situation continued to be a terrible idea - but he tilted his head so he could kiss her. She opened her mouth eagerly under him, wrapping an arm around his neck. He heard Asil move further away. She drew back, her thumb stroking his jaw. “I hope you have a good plan,” she told him.

*

Moira studied them. “Let me get this straight.”

Behind her, her husband winced. Bran braced himself.

“You have been mated for two centuries.”

“Correct,” he said.

“Because you found the mating bond an effective coping mechanism for your wolf’s temper.”

A simplistic interpretation, Bran thought as his son and Angus shifted nervously behind him. He was beginning to regret not pushing to dismiss everyone from the room. But Tom had stayed because of Moira and, after yesterday, Angus wouldn’t leave any of his pack in Bran’s tender care. Charles had to stay because of Anna and Anna had to stay because of Bran.

Bran gave the white witch a small nod.

Moira held up a finger whilst she thought about this. Then she continued, the finger swiveling to Leah. “You asked him for a magical divorce on the grounds of emotional incompatibility.”

Bran dropped his hand from the back of the couch and clamped it down firmly on Leah’s waist, digging his fingers into her side. Her teeth were grinding together audibly.

Moira’s finger returned to Bran, apparently not expecting Leah to reply. “Surprisingly amenable to this, you found a way to break the unbreakable-except-by-death-bond, and then did it to yourself,” Moira said, in tones of rising disbelief.

“Moira,” Angus growled. “Your tone is not appreciated.”

“I am just astonished you’re not a gibbering wreck.” Moira put a hand to her cheek. “Honestly astonished. That you’re having rage black-outs doesn’t surprise me in the least. What about you? Any symptoms you’d like to share?”

Leah couldn’t speak. If her eyes could shoot bullets, Moira would have been dead minutes ago. His wife’s head swiveled to him. “The rage blackouts would be preferable,” she hissed at him, sotto voce.

Bran smiled, for real. She really was spectacular when she was angry. “Just standard rage, here, Moira.”

“Yes, I can certainly tell how emotionally incompatible you two are,” Moira said drily. “Well, it didn’t work, whatever you did. You did it wrong. Have you looked at it?”

“There’s nothing to look at,” Bran said, attempting to think of calming, happy thoughts. None of which involved killing white witches who thought they knew better than him. He had allowed Charles to invite her here, he told himself, so he only had himself to blame. He was even paying her for this ‘emergency consultation’.

He amused himself by thinking perhaps Leah was right. Maybe the rage black-outs were better than exposing their dirty laundry to others. Maybe Leah and he could live the rest of their lives meeting up in a hotel every other week. A sort of sexual custody arrangement. That was a pleasant thought. Leah had spent the night with him, in his bed, and the lingering effects were probably the only thing that was getting him through this experience.

“What about you? Have you looked at it?” Moira’s head turned to Leah.

Leah blinked, as if this was an unladylike question to be asked. “Why would I look at it?”

“Because it was yours? For two-hundred-years? An integral part of your marriage?”

His wife thought about this. “I’m not sure I would know how. I don’t know much about it.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand,” Moira said brightly, much as if Leah had spoken to her in a foreign language.

“Maybe we should take a break?” Charles suggested, quickly, perhaps seeing that Bran’s other hand was clenched into a white-knuckled fist and yesterday he had started to rip into his Alphas without seeing them.

“No, it’s fine,” Leah said, surprising everyone. She folded her hands on her lap and fixed the witch with her most brittle of smiles. “Let’s get this over with. Moira, my ex-husband is a magical dictator. When we were mated, I was told under no circumstances to engage with the mating bond. So I didn’t. I knew what it felt like. I knew it enabled me to draw power from the pack, through him. But that, in truth, was it.”

“Magical dictator,” Bran repeated, nodding. “I like it.” They would have to find a better hotel for their sexual custody arrangement. Even a Holiday Inn would be an improvement. He wondered if he could buy a hotel in the right location.

Moira ignored him. “What did you feel when Bran severed the bond, Leah?”

Leah thought about it. “Um. It went quiet, I guess? I couldn’t feel him anymore.”

Moira leaned forward. “Are you sure about that?”

“Pretty sure.” Leah looked at Bran, as if to confirm. He nodded. “Bran said—“

“No, no, my dear. Are you sure that’s all you felt?”

Leah hesitated. She touched her fingers to where his hand was still around her waist. “Well. The thing is, it obviously hurt Bran. Didn’t it?”

Bran, who had been cataloguing his hotels as a calming mental exercise, focused. “Are you saying it didn’t hurt you?”

She shook her head, puzzled by his question. “I had a bit of a headache, perhaps. But nothing as bad as what you experienced. I just thought that was because you were the one doing something.”

Bran turned sharply to look at Charles and Anna. “You were there. Is what she’s saying true?” Bran had passed out from the pain. When he had woken, he was lying on the couch and so was Leah. She had looked pale. He had assumed that was because it had been as bad for her as it had been for him.

Both Charles and Anna were looking at each other, then him. “I’m afraid, Da, that we thought much the same as Leah. That it was excruciating for you because you were the one severing the bond.”

Bran turned back to Moira. “Moira, I have hugely underestimated you,” he said, abruptly, pulling Leah up. “Excuse us.”

*

He took her up to his bedroom and closed the door. They had not made the bed, having been interrupted that morning by Moira’s arrival. The room smelled distractingly of sex, so he went to open the window to let in some cold air. He leaned against the window, sucking in great lungsful of it, the pieces of a puzzle he had been pondering over falling into place.

Leah stood next to him, propped her head up on her hand. “Tell me what that patronizing blind witch said.”

“The pack bond is our mating bond,” he told her, cutting to the quick.

She was silent. “How, Bran?”

“I didn’t sever it properly. She’s right.” Bran shook his head. “Just because I thought I knew how to do it, doesn’t mean it was something I should have done myself. It was like vaccinating myself with the first untested batch.” He paused. “I was overconfident.”

“You? Never.” She meant it entirely seriously because her faith in his ‘magical dictatorship’ was so great.

He nudged her in lieu of kissing her and being distracted. “I was arrogantly overconfident. The bond isn't a single strand, it's two. I severed the part that travels from me to you, thinking I would take out both. It went quiet for you because you weren’t receiving anything from me. I, meanwhile, was still receiving from you but only in the manner which I had previously controlled. As in, nothing. So I mistook that for success. But my wolf knew better, still thought I was mated to you because in effect the bond was still there. Part of me still thought I was mated to you. But you weren’t here any more.”

So he had pined for her. And the pining had got worse the longer they had been apart.

Leah’s brow was still furrowed. “So when you carried out the ceremony for the Alpha pack bond… it, what, cancelled it out? Replaced it?”

He shook his head. “So when we had sex, again, you accepted me again, and the other half reformed. And then we immediately carried out the Alpha bonding ceremony. It probably isn’t possible to have both a mating bond and the kind of bond I share with my Alphas,” he mused. “But because you are an Alpha, now, it felt different. Feels different because you are, magically, different. You have the power of a dozen wolves behind you now, whose minds are strange to me.”

She stared at him. “Then, if everything is as it was before, why the rage blackouts?”

The corner of Bran’s mouth lifted. “Because I thought you were cheating on me, Leah. Because you are cheating on me.”

Her face dropped. She went to sit on the bed. Then she kicked off her shoes and lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.

“Fuck,” she said.

*

They didn’t talk. They didn’t do anything else either. Leah lay on the bed for a while, then he joined her, then they had both taken separate showers. Without comment, he handed her the pair of sweats he had stolen from her room and without comment she dressed in them.  

When they came downstairs, everyone was milling about. Charles and Tom were in the kitchen making lunch. Bran suspected the look on their faces was enough to ensure no one addressed the elephant in the room. The conversation over the meal was excruciatingly polite.

The Seattle pack took their leave after lunch, Bran thanking Moira with a large check, which she tried to decline. “No, you truly deserve it,” Bran sighed.

When it was just their family, Bran relaxed a little.

“I need to call… home,” Leah said, hesitating slightly, looking around the living area as if she was wondering if this was supposed to be her home again. She did not look happy about the prospect, which was lowering.

“Use my office,” Bran suggested.

She got up to do so.

Charles and Anna stared at him. “Well?” Anna said, once Leah was out of earshot. “I am literally on tenterhooks.”

Bran folded his hands across his stomach. “I have not been very honest with you both.”

“There’s a surprise,” she said. “I’m just guessing it hasn’t exactly been platonic between you?”

“No,” Bran said, ignoring the triumphant look Anna gave her husband. “Not since the first time I went out there. And Moira was correct, I didn’t correctly sever the mating bond. I cut it one way. My side. Not hers. Then we, let’s say, re-consummated the union and therefore the mating bond. I just thought, because of the circumstances, the new Alpha bond was different.” He grew tired of talking and dropped his head back onto the couch. “I didn’t know. I knew it was wrong but never occurred to me that I had failed her in such a significant way.”

The guilt was almost overwhelming. Guilt was not an emotion he typically allowed himself to feel. It was a waste of time. With the guilt came a heavy dose of relief, too. Relief that he knew what was wrong.

“So you’ve been mated all this time and didn’t know it.” Charles sounded outraged. Horrified.

“Apparently. Naturally, Zeke’s courtship of Leah tormented me. I just thought it was jealousy. It wasn’t just that. I was being emotionally tortured through the mating bond.” He knew of mated couples who had gone insane because one had cheated without the other's consent. Even those whom he had had known who had 'open' relationships had never struck him as particularly stable. Isabelle and Leo being a prime example of that. He would never have cheated on Leah and knew she would never do the same - knowingly - to him.

“Hence the rage black outs and your sudden desire for antacids.”

Bran lifted his head at a thought. “Is Zeke all right?”

His son nodded brusquely. “Yes. We saved his eye.”

They always had a healer on hand for the Assembly. Bran gave Charles a thumbs up.

“What are you going to do?” Anna whispered, glancing towards the office where they could just about hear Leah on the phone.

“I don’t know.”

*

Leah came out of his office and she looked better for having spoken to her people. “Everything’s good,” she said to the room. She smiled coolly down at Bran. “Let’s go for a run.”

She could have suggested tango lessons in front of Zombie Chastel and the Gray Lords and Bran would have agreed. “Two or four?”

“Two.”

He went upstairs to change and when he returned, Charles and Anna had gone and Leah was rearranging the cushions on the couch.

“Do you like it?” he asked, strangely hoping that she did.

She nodded, vaguely. “Did you really destroy the old one?”

“Completely.”

She shook her head. “Amazing.”

They used the road, as it was the most accessible in the current weather. Bran suspected it was going to snow later. Unlike last time, he felt no urge to chase her, though he tested this out, absent-mindedly, by running behind her, before pulling on the pack bonds to get him up to her pace. She really was fast, he thought, not without pride.  

After several miles, she slowed, her breathing barely changed. “I’ve got a plan,” she told him.

Bran waited.

“I take it you do want me?”

“Yes,” he said, without hesitation. “Very much so.”

She nodded. “Then I want you to court me.” Her blue eyes were piercing, as if daring him to say no. “I want you to court me properly, like Zane was. I want to feel like you want me. Not because we’re stuck with each other—“

“Leah—“

“No, we are stuck with each other, I know that.” Her voice was miserably harsh. “I think I knew that before.” She waved a hand in the air, as if dismissing this. “I want you to court me and I want to feel like, like, like you actually like me.”

She really had this wrong, Bran thought, alarmed. “Leah, I—“

“Don’t interrupt.” And for the first time she turned her Alpha voice on him, from her own pack, not from drawing upon him.

Bran growled and crossed his arms over his chest.

She continued, staring at his left shoulder. “I will go home, to my pack, and you will court me. You will work out whatever form that will take that you feel comfortable with and you will be convincing and when that happens we will talk about what comes next. Can you do that?”

“I can,” he said, tightly, clamping down the need to tell her how he felt. This was not the time. And words wouldn’t make a difference. She wouldn’t believe them. He was going to have to show her.

Leah swallowed. “Will you do that?” she said.  

“I can and I will. And I will certainly do a better job than Zane,” he added, furiously.

His mate nodded. “Let’s hope so,” she said, sounding less than confident, which was deflating. She nodded, back the way they had come. “Shall we go back now?”

Bran invited her to lead the way. Then he followed her home, planning his next ten moves, fully intending this to be a courtship that would be talked about for centuries to come. She was going to be blown away by romance, he thought, picking up the pace. Absolutely blown away.

Then, and only then, would she believe him.