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Asil clambered up into the backseat with a groan. There were a pile of old towels in a basket on the floor and he tossed a couple onto the front bench for Charles and Bran to use before applying one vigorously to his face. “Remind me next time to refuse to accompany you on these little adventures.”

It did not need saying – but ‘refusing’ Bran had never been an option.

Grimacing, Bran rubbed the towel over his unpleasantly slick hair and then over his face. He, too, wanted to groan like an old man.

They had been on this ‘little adventure’ for nearly three days – and none of them had slept, though they all categorically needed to. Today alone Bran had Changed six times, which was pushing it, even for him.

The towel, a well-washed grey color, came away with a slightly pink cast. He considered this with some dismay. “Come now. Parts of it were fun,” he said, unconvincingly.

“I do not like being secreted upon.” Asil began to comb his fingers through his hair fussily. It didn’t appear to be helping much, instead it was sticking up in clumps.   

Charles sighed and turned on the engine, having only used the towel to sit on, his long hair being something that required more work. “I am very much looking forward to a hot shower. In disinfectant. Anyone else?”

“Seconded,” Asil harrumphed. He gave up on his hair with a frustrated noise. “And my own bed.”

There was a general air of agreement all round as Charles pulled out of the parking lot, then they settled into a silence. A silence that would normally be filled with, if not contentment from a job finally completed, then at least relief.

Only Bran had a strange, niggling sensation. Like he’d forgotten something.

He pondered it as the headlights lit up the empty, open road before them, as they glinted off the dark cars and the windows of the sleeping houses.

He pondered it as they joined the highway, heading west, as an unusual pressure built within his chest.

“I,” Bran said slowly, words dripping like molasses from his mouth, “am indeed looking forward to a shower. And then I would like to make love to my wife and sleep by her side for a solid twelve hours.”

In the grand scheme of things, none of these statements were particularly outlandish. For certain, Charles was equally looking forward to a reunion with his mate. They just weren’t statements Bran was used to saying out loud – to anyone.

He frowned at the darkness in front of him. The niggling sensation had gone, he noted.

“Well, thank you for that detail, Bran,” Asil said after a moment, sounding tickled. He leaned forward between the seats, smiling with very white teeth. Even Charles huffed out a noise of amusement. “Anything else you’d like to share with the class?”

Though he wanted to say something tart, something dismissive in response to his unlikely revelation, Bran found himself saying instead, “I’m going to use the expensive shower gel that Leah hides from me in the guest bath. And convince her to wash my back for me with that good scrubby brush of hers. And then, later, I’ll coax her to be on top so I can hold on to her hair.”

This time the words were less treacly. They were more a freefall of enthusiasm, enthusiasm that drained away into nothing but cold dread when the last utterly intimate sentence left his mouth.  

Asil had no snarky response to that. Indeed, he was quite silenced. Stunned.

Without a word, Charles indicated and pulled over, though there was no one around to indicate to. He looked over at Bran, eyes heavy with tiredness and now dread.

Bran stared fixedly at the road, ever-so-slightly horrified with himself and the dawning suspicion of what was happening. Oh no, he thought. Please no.

After a moment, Asil said thoughtfully, quietly, and indeed hopefully, “Perhaps it’s just Bran.”

“What’s your favorite color, Asil?” Charles asked, glancing in the rear view mirror.

Bran turned to look at the Moor.

“Gold because it suits me best,” Asil said promptly, then the corner of his mouth flickered in consternation. “Hmm. I intended to lie.”

With a sense of inevitability, Bran climbed out, his sticky jeans tearing from the faux leather seat, and went to pop the trunk to look at their much-fought-for treasure.

Fae artefacts. They’d stored the artefacts in three separate lead-lined chests, specifically made for the purpose of transporting dangerous magical goods.

He had been vaguely familiar with two of the three artefacts – the kind of vagueness that suggested he’d come across them more than a millennia ago, on another continent, and the answer would come in time. They were both weapons – in form and in deed. But the third, a squat little bowl with two handles, was a mystery to him.

It was this third artefact he turned his attention to. “We all handled it,” he murmured thoughtfully. They hadn’t had much choice, given the literal booby-traps they had individually faced.

Unlike the other two, the bowl hadn’t smelled like a threat, at the time. It still didn’t.

Asil joined him. He too had a recollection of the same two artefacts but had shrugged over the third. “A useful tool, for the fae,” the Moor acknowledged, with begrudging appreciation for their craft.

“Indeed. To speak the whole truth in response to a question, rather than obfuscation.”

“I wonder what the parameters are.”

It was a good thought. “From our responses, it seems to be a broader ‘truth’ than simply answering the question with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’.”

“As much as I am enjoying this exposition,” said Charles from the front of the vehicle, “I believe we should return home, as quickly as possible, and deal with the repercussions when we aren’t quite so exposed.”

He sounded testy. Charles did not often get testy. Bran and Asil exchanged a look, silent in their agreement that sometimes – as old as they were – the wonder of a threat was almost as equal to its dangers.

Smiling grimly, Bran slammed the trunk closed nevertheless. “You’re right, of course.”

*

They tested the ‘parameters’ on the four hour drive home and by midnight had worked out that if the question was very specific – favorite color, favorite season, favorite ice-cream – then the answer was specific. The vaguer the question the more dangerously long-winded the answer could be.

And it was dangerous. They were men with long-held secrets. Precious secrets. It was hair-raisingly alarming to think of the potential damage the artefact could have should they be asked a well-crafted question. Even in this car, with two men he trusted, Bran could feel the potential for danger lingering in the air. There were questions he did not want the Moor to know the answers to. There were questions he would rather not answer for Charles.

The compulsion to speak the truth did not appear to be wearing off, either.

“Which might simply be a question of proximity,” Charles suggested, maintaining a veneer of positivity. Bran wanted to ask how Brother Wolf was faring – but his son would not appreciate discussing his more unusual wolf in front of Asil.

“Let’s pray that is the case,” Asil murmured, not needing to speak of the possibility that it wasn’t. That they would be plagued by truthfulness for days.

Weeks.

Forever.

Bran took a quiet, meditative breath. He picked up his cell phone once more, recommencing typing the message he was sending to both Leah and Anna. An explanation without explanation; Bran didn’t want anything specific to be aired over a medium he didn’t trust.

Home in an hour. There has been a situation. Under no circumstances are you to ask any questions. Will explain in person. Remember: no questions.

Then, to soften the blow, he selected – at random – one of the yellow emojis from the menu.

He pressed send and closed his eyes, intending to rest, to pick and prod at his mental and magical landscape and see if there was any interference, when his cell phone pinged with a response.

Leah: I don’t know about you, Anna, but I particularly liked his deft use of the face-with-tongue emoji.

Another ping.

Anna: Better than those few months when he’d just use the clown face.

Bran grunted.

Charles glanced at him. “What is it?”

“Your wife and mine making fun of my emoji choice, apparently.”

Ping.

Leah: Ah, yes, those were dark times.

Anna responded with a skull face, which he had been told, many times, was a laughing skull face, and then a monkey face with its hands over its eyes. Clearly, she was very amused indeed.

He had no doubt their women would be less amused when they saw them however.

*

Charles dropped Asil off first, which eased something in Bran’s chest and he noted the slight relaxation of Charles’s shoulders, too.

“Wouldn’t put it past him to take advantage,” Charles muttered as he reversed back up the track.

“I believe his honor would prevent him.” And the reciprocal possibilities, of course.

Though Charles said nothing, it was not-said with a great deal of doubt about Asil’s honor. Despite the Moor’s newly rejuvenated mental stability, he and Bran’s son were never destined to be firm friends. And perhaps Charles was right not to trust him. Old wolves were not trustworthy. Bran was a fine example of that.

No matter. If worst came to worst, Bran could simply order Asil not to ask him any questions – he had no such qualms about forcing his will on his people if it were necessary.

Charles turned into Bran’s drive. As requested in a private, follow-up message to Leah, minus emojis, the detached external garage had been left open, the lights were on, and Leah’s car had been removed. They had a secondary secure room built into the foundations that they used for overflow and it was here Bran had decided it would be safest to store the latest artefacts until they worked out what they were.

Bran and Charles unloaded the three treasure chests into this space and then Bran tapped into the code that slid the hatch across it. The locks clunked satisfyingly into place.

Then, they made their way across the back yard and faced each other.

Charles eyed his father speculatively and for a moment Bran thought he might deviate from the agreed questions. But Charles, whose honor was paramount, did not. “What’s your favorite pizza topping?” he asked, this innocuous question loaded with unbearable seriousness.

A sensation of intense pressure settled on Bran’s chest and he held back the answer. And resolutely kept holding until—

“Da!” Charles cried out in alarm, stepping forward to catch Bran by the arm as he staggered to the side.

“Pepperoni,” was Bran’s prosaic response, a response that seemed to burst unpleasantly, acidly, from his bones. Blood rushed back to his limbs, air to his lungs. He heaved in a breath and leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees, for the moment not caring how this appeared to Charles.

Charles squeezed Bran’s arm and let go. He looked grimly resigned. “I will check in tomorrow morning.”

Bran nodded. They had agreed to separate for three days to see if the effects wore off. There was a benefit, too, that they all lived different distances. If Asil recovered first, then Charles, they would know it was proximity. Bran was reasonably certain it had been he who had touched the artefact first – so if he recovered first, they would have the answer to that.

How long that took would be anyone’s guess.

*

There were four compendiums Bran relied upon for information on fae artefacts.

Two were books of fairy tales, one a plain, factual recounting, the other elaborately decorated and annotated and should probably be kept in a museum behind glass. Both were written in French, though the more factual recounting was a translation from Russian.

The third was a handwritten journal, a capturing of some of the oral tales told before the written word was common. It was in Old High German and, to Bran’s ears, was written in a way that suggested the author – their name lost from the inside cover – was over-fond of the more gory aspects, going into great detail whenever blood or beheading was mentioned.

The fourth was his own scribblings and this leather-bound journal had travelled with him from the British Isles, indeed across most of Europe. It was battered, rain-damaged, wine-damaged and mice had got at the rear cover. It had always been Bran’s intention to translate it, perhaps type up the contents, but, as with all of his best of intentions, he had been waylaid by more important matters.

It was this last journal that he plucked from his shelves and he dropped into his chair just as Leah lightly tapped on his office door. She pushed it open, not waiting for his permission to enter.

“No questions,” he reminded her quickly before she could speak.

He could see this irritated Leah, whose eyes flashed with temper. “Yes, you had already mentioned.” She crossed her arms and waited, expectantly. “I would love to hear why.”

“An unfortunate side-effect. I’ll be up shortly to explain.” Bran gestured at her with the journal. “I need to do some research first.”

Leah stared at him for a moment then she pushed herself away from the door frame. “Fine.”

He winced at her retreating tread, aware that she might have been expecting him to come to her first. And he intended to, of course he did, but he needed to have done what he could to gather more information before he did so.

Bran reached over to click on the light before the usual second-guessing occurred. His fingers held onto the light-switch. One of the many – many – conversations he had with his mate in the last few months was over his tendency to under-share with her. She felt most particularly that he did this on purpose, going so far as to accuse him of deliberately isolating her, often preferring to talk to his sons instead.

Bran did not think he did that. Not on purpose, at least. If he prioritized talking to Sam or Charles, it was because he felt they had insights into any given situation. He could well see that was not an argument his wife would take with any degree of complacence, however, so he did not use it. Some things were best left unsaid.

Sighing, he flicked off the light and stood, taking the journal with him. He did not need to be in his office to read his journal. He could be in bed with his mate as he did so and do what he could to assuage her.

*

Leah was in her bedroom, though there was evidence that she had recently vacated his. Not a great sign, Bran decided, as he came out of his rather-shorter-than-desired shower. He picked up his book and made his way into her room. The lights were out and she was a grumpy lump under a sheet, as far across the mattress as it was humanly possible to be.

His mouth twitched into a smile. He crawled onto the bed and peered over her. “Will it bother you if I turn the light back on?”

“No,” she said shortly, after the smallest of pauses where she clearly considered whether she could convincingly pretend to be asleep so she could ignore him.

Bran rolled to turn the light on, then kicked the covers down on his side with his feet. “One of the artefacts we, ah, liberated left us with the unfortunate propensity to respond to all questions with the truth. Resisting seems to be fatal.”

Again, there was a small pause. She eventually half rolled towards him. “Unfortunate,” she agreed, in tones that suggested she had immediately appreciated the wider implications. She eyed him with concern, no doubt wondering how to ask a question without asking one.

“Obviously, I am hoping it is short-lived.”

“Presumably this is not something you have come across before,” she said, carefully neutral.

Bran paused to see if this question-without-a-question gave him that forgetful feeling that preceded his being forced to answer. When it didn’t, he mentally added another ‘parameter’ to the list. “It is not. Unless I’ve forgotten it.” He lifted the book. “Hence the journal.”

“I don’t recall reading about anything like that,” Leah said, rolling back to face away from him.

“You have read this?”

She scoffed. “Of course. Once upon a time, it was only one of a handful of books we had in the house.”

That may have been the case but it was written in Welsh. He stared at the first page, unseeing for a moment. “You can read Welsh?” He knew she could speak it. All his family could speak Welsh. But reading it was quite a different matter.

“Your son taught me. Well. He taught Charles and by extension me.” From the sound of things, it had not been a happy process.  

Bran laid the book down on his stomach, staring up at the crown molding of the ceiling. Samuel taught his wife to read Welsh. This felt strongly like something he should have known. As indeed he had no notion that it had been Samuel who had taught Charles to read Welsh. He closed his eyes, trying to remember.

Guilt, a companion he was well familiar with, worried at him, on both paternal and marital fronts.

“You seem bothered by this.”

Bran exhaled. “I shouldn’t be. It was good of Samuel to do so. I’m a terrible teacher.”

“That’s very true.” She fell silent, then.

Bran began to leaf through the pages. His handwriting was dense and cramped, for once upon a time blank journals like this had been expensive and paper a limited source. The only relief for his tired eyes were the occasional sketch, some better than others. Orbs and swords and lances, manacles and jewelry graced the pages, annotated with his spiky writing.

The birds were singing their morning chorus by the time Bran concluded that Leah had been right. There was nothing about the fae artefact they had found and no mention of anything that might force the bearer to speak the truth.

He carefully laid the book down on the floor by his bed and rolled on his side to face his sleeping wife. She truly was sleeping now and had wriggled around until she was lying on her front, her preferred sleeping position. Her hair, surely the longest it had ever been, had escaped her braid and was half covering her face, wisps moving with every breath she exhaled.

As was typical with any moment Bran studied his mate unawares, tenderness swelled at the sweet picture she presented. His prickly wife who only allowed him to see her vulnerable. It was a privilege to lie beside her, and he had missed her these last few days, having quite grown accustomed to her regular presence in his bed.

Something he should have perhaps conveyed to her instead of irritating her last night.

Leah opened her eyes, woken by his staring.

“Sorry,” he murmured, looking away. “Go back to sleep.”

“Too late.” Leah stretched, yawning, long, bare limbs emerging from the bedsheets. He watched with the age-old fascination of a man who found his woman almost prohibitively appealing. Though she was still mostly covered by the sheet, he gathered she had gone to bed in the nude. With her longer hair, she sometimes resembled a Pre-Raphaelite model and he loved the way it tickled him when they were entwined together, the way it framed her face when she moved above him.

By his own actions, Bran had missed out on any reunion with his wife and, tired as he was, he was very much feeling the loss now. “I am sorry about last night.”

“Which part?”

The fae magic clicked into place. “That I didn’t tell you I missed you, for I did. That I didn’t come to bed, straight away, when I wanted to,” he replied promptly, and by force. “That I read that journal, which proved pointless, when I could have been making love to you. That I annoyed you by doing all these things, instead of taking your comfort.”

Leah’s expression was a comical frozen wince. “It hasn’t worn off, then.”

He sighed, the pressure in his chest easing with his confessions. “Apparently not.”

She pushed herself up to sitting – yes, she was enjoyably naked – and rubbed her hands over her face. “You did annoy me. But not for those things. I don’t care if you want to stay up all night reading. I prefer that you keep your work to your office, rather than bringing it into the bedroom. I did not like being on the receiving end of a mass text message,” she said crisply.

“Hardly—” She shot him a deadly look and he shut up.

“I did not like it,” Leah repeated, “because it was no emergency situation that required such efficiency and it was the first message you had sent in more than forty-eight hours, despite my repeated messages and phone calls.”

It was Bran’s turn to wince. It was true, she had called him. She had sent several messages, growing more concerned. He had left his cell phone in his bag and for the most part it had been turned off. As she said, unpleasant though the circumstances had been, it had not been an emergency situation so he had not been attending to his cell phone.

“And then when you did deign to send me a direct message, it was a brusque instruction to do something for you, with no further details. I am not asking for sonnets, here, Bran,” she added tartly, “just a little courtesy as your wife and partner.”

This sounded, unfortunately, very reasonable in hindsight. Bran touched her arm, rubbed the ends of her hair between his fingers. “I apologize. I didn’t consider these things in that context. I only wanted— yes, to be efficient.” To inform and plan. He had been tired, that was his excuse.

Leah looked down at him, disappointment etched on her face. “It would not have killed you to text me that you missed me, if that was how you were feeling.”  

“Writing is even harder than saying,” Bran murmured, for he had only really recently begun to acknowledge to himself those sentiments. He could not imagine the circumstance in which he would have sent that kind of a message to his mate. He would have had to have been feeling very sentimental. And been alone.

“Then you should practice. From experience, I can say it gets easier the more you do.” She climbed out of bed and, head held high, marched into the bathroom.

Though he was partly amused at his wife’s words of wisdom – their delivery, more than anything – Bran couldn’t help but acknowledge she was right. And he was learning that it was the smaller demonstrations that became the most important, at least to Leah. It had surprised him how little value she placed on his very first I love you. She was a woman who wanted actions. Which should not have surprised him at all.

He climbed out of bed himself and followed her into the bathroom. There were some actions he was better at than others. Practice, as she had so neatly pointed out.

*

It was not in Bran’s nature to ignore the worst case scenario. He needed not only a plan to tackle fixing his truthful problem but also a plan for what he would do if he couldn’t. And it wasn’t just him, either. It was Charles. It was Asil.

Three of the most powerful werewolves in the world, now on a precipice of great change.

After three days, when there was no change in his truth-speaking, he put in a much debated call to Ariana.

They had heard from Sam, about four months after he had left his bundle of joy with Charles and Anna. Nothing more than a post-card, sent from an obscure coastal resort in Italy which from the post-mark and from a light Google search, Bran gathered was not falsified. Two weeks after that, they received another, this time from Sardinia. Then one from Cannes. Barcelona. His son and daughter-in-law appeared to be making their way down the coast.

The contents of the postcards was so generic there was nothing that could be read into them. He and his son had developed a few codes over the years but Bran applied all of them, to no avail.

Thinking perhaps that he might be able to pinpoint his son’s location, Bran checked in a few of the more talkative Alphas in the areas that Sam appeared to be visiting but none of them volunteered any information. The situation in Europe was such that Bran did not want to rock the boat by notifying anyone that a Cornick was in their territory, so he left it at that. At the time it had not been urgent.  

“Perhaps they’re on vacation,” Leah had suggested, wordlessly implying she very much thought otherwise.

The call to Ariana’s cell phone went unanswered, which Bran took as a positive sign that it rang at all. Sometimes they were completely incommunicado.

He tried again the next day and the next and then alternated with calling Sam. Attempts to contact his son by mental means failed but there were a handful of wolves who could block him, and Sam was one of them.

Leah was, typically, quite critical. “You would think, given the circumstances, that repeated calls from Emma’s grandfather would give them cause for concern.”

“One can only assume they are otherwise occupied.” Perhaps in continued efforts to keep Emma safe.

“Mmm,” Leah said, doubtfully.

Since Bran was not without other resources, he also warded himself – and Asil and Charles, though Brother Wolf did not like it. Without much hope, he ran through an old cleansing ritual which left him feeling marginally refreshed but still inclined to confess his darkest truths. With Leah’s assistance, he continued to plumb the depths of the fae magic, pushing himself to the limits of how long he could withstand holding back answering any questions – confirming that it would, indeed, be fatal to do so.

He researched, endlessly. Leah would often come downstairs at one or two in the morning and find him, working in the dark, having forgotten to put the light on.

One such night, she leaned over him to flick the switch on his reading lamp. She left a plate of cheese and crackers by his elbow. “A reminder that tomorrow I am taking Kara to stay with Ingrid for her college experience thing.”

“Ah, God,” Bran said, sitting back, his bones protesting from being in one position for so long. Ingrid, who was in some senses Kara’s foster-sister, being the daughter of the couple Kara lived with, had offered to host Kara at her college in Portland for a couple of nights, so she could get a flavor of college life. “I had forgotten.”

“I know. I’ll stay both nights, to make sure there aren’t any problems, though Ingrid knows her way around a werewolf so hopefully she can manage keeping Kara out of trouble for two days. I have done my best to dissuade our people from dropping by to visit in the meantime.”

The consequence of Bran’s truthfulness was that Leah had been far more pack-facing in the last few weeks than usual. They’d put it about that Bran was working on a tricky problem and was not to be bothered. Asil was fairly isolationist and Charles was not precisely the go-to for day-to-day problems so that the burden fell on Leah alone was not too comment-worthy. But she had picked up the slack and bore the additional responsibilities without complaint.

He ate a cracker and, suddenly inspired by her proximity and the smell of her, pushed back his chair so that he could pull Leah down onto his lap. “You have been amazing,” he told her.

If she was surprised either by this compliment or her unexpected new seating arrangement, she did not appear it. Instead, Leah wriggled until she was comfortable, hooking an arm about his neck and leaning on his shoulder. “I have been, it’s true.”

Bran ate another cracker. She’d put a blob of a homemade pickle between the cracker and the cheese. It was delicious. He hadn’t known how hungry he was. He ate another.

“Anna will come by, when she can. She will take on anything that isn’t urgent. With Charles away, you may have to look after your granddaughter.”

Charles was not without his resources either. He had left – somewhat reluctantly – a few days before on a mysterious fact-finding mission that Bran sensed he would disapprove of. Bran had been babysitting to take the pressure off Anna, though there had been some unexpected developments – namely Emma’s new favorite word ‘Why?’

At least with Emma, his in-depth explanation of combustion, or the mating habits of rabbits, or the reason why civilized little girls didn’t eat from the floor, didn’t lead to any strange looks. Nor was she likely to ask him anything he didn’t truly want to share, not that she would understand it if she somehow managed it.

“Come to bed,” Leah said, as she made an attempt to detach herself from him, her firm bottom wriggling delightfully on his lap.

He clamped on to her, sneaking a hand under her silky pajama top to touch equally silky skin. She’d already applied body lotion so smelled a little like honeysuckle. “Stay here, whilst I finish my snack. Though, you may feel free to keep on moving like that.”

She gave him a somewhat shocked look. “Really, Bran, aren’t you above such things?”

“Not in the slightest,” he replied, happy enough to dissuade her of this particular misconception, “any time you want to bounce on my—”

“Thank you, that is quite enough,” she said tartly, slapping a hand over his mouth, muffling the end of his somewhat ribald sentence. Her eyes widened, as if she’d never heard him say ‘cock’ out loud before. “Honestly.”

“You brought that on yourself,” Bran pointed out, strangely enjoying himself. Leah wasn’t a prude but she did have fairly firm notions about the time and place for smutty talk. And that time and place was in the bedroom, with the door closed and significantly fewer clothes.

“I suppose I did.” She slumped back against him obediently, whilst he tackled the rest of his cheese and crackers and thought about nibbling her ear. “Tell me about your plan.”

“My plan. My plan— I’ll admit my plan is being slightly thwarted by your step-son’s and daughter-in-law’s inability to pick up the phone. Not only do I need Ariana to review the artefact in question but if it is looking like this is a permanent condition—” His heart fluttered, “—then I will need Samuel to take on the responsibilities of the Marrok.”

Leah twitched on his lap like she’d been given an electric shock. “My God.”

“I can assure you, he will like that less than you do. He, in turn, will have to bring Adam back into the fold. With Charles out of the picture, Sam will need a strong Second. Useful, that Sam is mated, now, and will be no thorn in Adam’s side because of his former relationship with Mercy. I think they will work well together.”

Speechless, Leah stared at him. “Samuel… and Adam Hauptman,” she said faintly. “And you would be…”

Bran interrupted the anticipated question. “I’ll have to take a step back. Indeed, it will be the only option – not just because of my newfound desire to speak only the truth, but to side-step the inevitable problem with the fae. ‘New leadership’ always leads to new strategic decisions on matters of political affairs. Sam, mated to a fae, would certainly have a different view than his isolationist father. He will use the reunification with Adam as an example of his differences.”

“And doom us all,” was Leah’s staunch opinion. She’d never held Sam in very high esteem. Too emotional, was her view. “I’m sure as hell not getting behind this future.”

Bran squeezed her. “So where would you like to go?”

“Go? Why do I have to go anywhere—oh for,” she spluttered, realizing she’d asked yet another question and doomed Bran to respond, whether he wanted to or not.

“Because I am a security risk and so by extension are you. We will need to protect the future Samuel will be building and get the hell out of the way.”

Leah began to fight him in earnest, trying to escape. He let her go and she scrambled from him to stand, furiously adjusting her nightclothes and generally looking quite flustered. “This is an unspeakable future.”

“I’m flattered you have such a strong belief in my ability to problem-solve that you had not imagined this yourself.”

“I imagined you would find more creative ways to lead without simply giving up. You could order all your wolves not to ask questions of you. You could— communicate through the written word alone, God knows that’s how it used to be. No one can force you to answer questions through email.”

This was true. They had tested this. No doubt the artefact had been made before such things were possible.

But Leah could no doubt see that this would not be a long-term solution. “Our people need a single and visible authority figure – which will become more and more important in the future, as the humans push their noses into our business and force me to out myself. If I cannot face them, I cannot be seen to be the one in the background pulling the puppet strings. I have too much respect for Samuel in that scenario, much as it will pain me to let go.”

Leah scoffed but did not refute this.

Bran watched his wife pace. She was an enjoyable creature to observe when she was caught up in strong emotions. She became very loose-limbed and unconsidered. In day to day life, Leah was quite reserved and cautious with her body. She knew her strength. Now he was vaguely concerned for the piles of books currently littering his sideboard. “What is it that bothers you?” A note of inspiration struck. “Alarmed at the prospect of no longer being Madam Marrok?” His mate enjoyed the trappings of power.

Leah cast him a very dismissive glare. One arm flailed about before she pulled it to herself, clutching it against her chest. “You forget, I remember what it was like before you were Marrok. People are drawn to you, whether you have formal responsibility or not. Half this pack simply migrated across the world to be with you, without your say-so, and I have no doubt that wherever we end up, the same would be true. But this is my home, Bran. The only one I have ever known.”

He grimaced in sympathy. “I know, Leah. I know it is not an inconsiderable step to take.”

“Not inconsiderable… it’s— unimaginable. What would I do? Where would we live? How would we live?”

Bran started to answer but she threw her hands up in the air, covered her ears and marched from his office leaving him spewing out a series of suggestions of occupations she was qualified for if she did indeed need an occupation, rather than to live off their investments. He had a variety of properties, some very remote indeed, in this continent and on others so where would they live was something they could discuss. Australia, he told her, in her absence, might well be an option, with summers spent in the northern hemisphere. “Queensland or New South Wales,” he suggested, looking towards the map of the world on the wall. There was some symmetry in that. “And then Alaska, perhaps. Russia would be interesting.”

He could hear her, slamming things around upstairs, whilst he continued to throw out answers until the drive to respond dwindled to nothing. Then Bran sat there, listening to his mate’s unhappiness.

Leah would come around. She would have to.

*

Stubbornness was a Cornick family trait, though in Leah’s case perhaps that was a nurture rather than nature trait, and she resisted his attempts to reconcile and was very standoffish over her messages. Messages that she responded to promptly and regularly, which from the outside might appear diligent but tonally felt very much like she was sticking her thumb in his eye.

Charles relieved him of babysitting on the second day of her absence, arriving late morning to pick Emma up. “You don’t look worse for wear,” Charles judged as he hoisted his ecstatic daughter into the air.

“I’m not sure if you’re referring to our shared condition or the fatigue of babysitting.”

“Bit of both but mostly the latter. Anna said you had her last night.”

“Thought I’d give her a break. She was good company. We played with Leah’s shoes.”

Charles appeared alarmed, well aware of his step-mother’s fondness for her footwear. “Rather you than me.”

“Oh, no, it’s a game Leah introduced. So it’s pre-approved.” Life would not be worth living if that had not been the case. Bran had taken several photos which he would share with his wife when she returned and was in a better mood with him. “Update me on your activities.”

Since there was no real way to politely request in their circumstances, most of Bran’s ‘questions’ came out as unnecessary-sounding orders. Brother Wolf was more tolerant than most, these days, but even so a muscle twitched in Charles’s jaw.

Charles propped Emma up in the vicinity of his hip and smoothed a gentle hand over her cap of dark curls. “Unsuccessful.”

Bran exhaled. “I suppose I shall get no more details.”

“My contact would not be grateful to have your eyes on them at this time.”

“Mmm,” said Bran, annoyed and warring with the desire to ask questions that he knew Charles would be forced to answer.

Father and son looked at each other, waiting, a terrible sense of inevitability building between them.

“Dada,” Emma said, breaking the tension by hitting Charles with the remote control that after Leah’s shoes had been very much a favorite toy of hers, sometimes switched out with a set of keys she had unearthed from underneath the couch. Keys Bran had never seen before, no less. “Dadadadada.”

“There’s my good girl.” Charles patted her diapered bottom and turned his back on Bran, adopting that jiggling walk of the parent.

Bran rubbed the bridge of his nose, wondering how much longer he could be the better man. “You should know,” he began, feeling very old, “of my succession planning.”

As anticipated, Charles reacted more placidly to Bran’s outline than Leah had done, his dark eyes thoughtful as he absorbed the implications.

Unlike Leah, Charles had never been ambitious. He was a dominant werewolf but he had never hankered for a pack the way other Alpha werewolves longed for one. What was more, he was recently mated after a lifetime of what Bran had belatedly realized was loneliness, and recently a father. His perspective of life had changed a great deal in the last few years and there was more for him to live for that obeying his father’s commands.

They migrated quite naturally into the kitchen and Bran prepared them both a sandwich and gave Emma a few of the puffs that were a staple snack for the weaning baby.

They ate at the table in a mostly contemplative silence. Emma chewed on a piece of stolen bread like she had been starved of nourishment and then Charles tore up a banana which she proceeded to throw onto the floor, piece by piece.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Bran said, after a while.

Charles wiped his fingers on a napkin. “I’m thinking about the guest ranch in Saskatchewan.”

He felt his eyebrows rise, though he could not say he was surprised. “There would be a place for you here, with Sam. He would make sure of it.”

Charles shook his head. “I would be a liability. I couldn’t be Third, not to Sam, not to Hauptman.” His long-fingered hand grazed his chest. “He would not accept that.”

Bran wondered whether Anna would be happy on a guest ranch. She was a people person and, as a werewolf, she was hardly hard-work-avoidant but it was a very different lifestyle to the one she had been living. Oddly, it was easier to picture Leah  than it was Anna. Perhaps he should put that on the list.

“And,” Charles said sadly, “Sam may consider me no longer a safe pair of hands for Emma.”

Bran had given this some thought as well. “Sam would not ask you to give her up.” Though there was no way around it, Charles was right. He would be a liability. One well-placed question and the fragile identity that had been built to protect Emma would fall apart.

“And I would not give her up,” Charles rumbled, “nor would Anna let me. She is our daughter.”

In her highchair, Emma growled her agreement.

*

They brainstormed a few more magical theories until Anna joined them and then, after what sounded as if it was a suggestion she had made more than once before, they eventually made a call to Moira. Much of the talking was purposefully left to Anna but a few questions slipped through, leading to repeated use of the mute button. 

It proved to be a fairly exhausting phone call, as both of Charles and Bran were hit by the fae compulsion over and over again, more than they had been tested before, and it was the first time Bran felt the first hint that his wolf would not suffer prolonged exposure to the fae magic. Even with their Omega in the room with him, he could feel the wolf pressing against his mental barrier, claws out.

He took himself to bed early, disappointed to have not progressed with any routes of enquiry. As he climbed into his empty bed, not for the first time did he think how much he missed Leah. It was a physical ache, one that tugged at him as he walked through the empty rooms of the house. He’d volunteered to have Emma for the night because he thought the sound of her baby snuffles would make him miss Leah less.

It was not the case. If anything, it made it worse because he kept thinking how much Leah would enjoy it.  

Sighing, he found his phone and called her, rolling onto his back and feeling fairly unmanned.

“It’s very late,” Leah said coolly when she answered.

“I miss you,” he replied quickly, before he allowed their somewhat inevitable practicalities to overtake the conversation.

“Oh.” She could not have sounded more baffled. “How nice.”

He reached for a pillow to smother himself. “How nice.”

“More than nice. Unexpected. Quite… lovely, really. I miss you too,” she said, warming up quickly, then laughing. “You’re regretting saying anything now, aren’t you?”

“Yes, with every fiber of my being, but it doesn’t change the fact that I do miss you,” he acknowledged begrudgingly with the burst of truthfulness. “And I called you to tell you, which was your explicit wish, and you laughed at me.”

“I did not laugh at you.” Though she was, indeed, still laughing. “I was just surprised. This is surprised laughter.”

Discovering a playful side of himself not seen for some time, Bran continued to affect a sulky tone because the more he did, the louder she laughed, and the better he felt. He took her through his day, ending with the disappointing call with Moira. Her laughter gradually drained away until she was, like him, simply disappointed.

“The guest ranch? I thought we sold that a few years ago.”

“Charles saved it. Last minute.”

“Because apparently he has long-hidden dreams to take tourists on horseback rides.”

“So he says. He’s always liked working with horses.”

“That’s a working ranch, too,” she reminded him drily. “Part of the appeal for the guests. Makes them feel like they’re having more of a realistic experience.”

They mused around the topic for a while. Leah hypothesized that actually, the combination of Anna and Charles would work well in this unlikely future. The charming wife, the near-mute husband who would occasionally speak uncomfortable truths. “He’s handsome, too. I’m sure the ladies would love him to feature in their Instagram posts.”

Well-aware that his lastborn was very good looking – a point of pride, too, though God knew his own genetics had little to do with it – Bran was nonetheless faintly discomforted for Leah to be so blunt about it. Not jealously, for truly, he was too old for that sort of thing. More the acknowledgement of that unspoken truth that his wife did indeed see other men and did indeed see their appeal.

“You’ve gone quiet.”

Bran changed the subject. “I cannot believe we are in this position. That Charles is considering a career in hospitality and I’m—” He waved a hand in the air above him, as if she could see him flailing around inadequately.

“Considering retirement.”

“Yes. That.” He groaned as the doom that he had been battling since that first unwilling answer in the car squeezed his heart. He had so much to do. So much he wanted to do. Centuries of effort had been put into his planning. Effort and sacrifices.

“Think about Asil. He’s only just started dating that ghost hunter of his. It’s far, far too early for him to be telling her the truth about himself.”

Bran chuckled weakly, appreciating her attempt. He rolled onto his hands and knees and began to rearrange his pillows so that he could sit up to talk to her. “Believe me, I have thought about Asil a great deal.”

“No dude ranch for him.”

“No. No dude ranch.” Since this topic was depressing him, he asked after her day. “How is Kara doing?”

“I’ve heard nothing from Kara today but Ingrid has been giving me updates because she was raised very properly.”

“You mean, she’s afraid of you.”

“I do indeed mean that.” He could hear she was smiling. “They’ve attended a couple of lectures. Had some greasy student food. They’re at a party tonight. I’ve reminded them both that whilst alcohol will have no effect on her, Kara is still underage.”

“I’m sure they’ll both behave.”

“I’m sure they won’t.”

“And what about you? What have you been doing?”

“Well I… I spent the day at a spa.”

He laughed, out loud. It made sense, now, why Leah had been so remarkably enthusiastic about accompanying Kara. It was a fifteen hour drive to Portland and the way she had initially phrased it, she would be doing nothing but twiddling her thumbs. “A much better use of your time, Mrs. Cornick. Tell me about your spa treatments.”

“If you must know, I had a divine facial, then a scalp, neck and shoulder massage and the girl had very strong hands and took me very seriously when I said she could press harder. Then I had a mani-pedi.” She paused and he imagined her admiring her nails. “It’s very pretty.”

“I’m glad you had a good day.” And he was. She did not often take time for herself and it was soothing to hear the contented timbre of her voice from such small pleasures.

“I’m sorry your day was not so good.”

“It got better,” he murmured wistfully, “towards the end.”

*

The next morning, Bran jerked awake to the high-pitched enthusiasm of Tag on bagpipes beneath his bedroom window. Far o'er the Sea, if, in his sleep addled state, he was not very much mistaken.

He lay on his back on what was Leah’s side, faintly admiring Tag’s technique and tapping out the drum-beat rhythm that would have accompanied him had he not been a lone piper. He had seen Tag briefly before the last full moon. Apparently, his packmate had decided to ignore Leah’s suggestions and that the Marrok could not be too busy to see him.

Like many in this pack, theirs was a relationship that had spanned centuries. Bran had first met Tag just before Culloden, though he had heard of him before then, of course, as had many who roamed the British Isles and beyond. For a while, romantics amongst their kind referred to him as the Last of the Picts but Tag had never fought the Romans, he was not as old as Bran for all that.

Like Bran, Tag and Arthur had never dealt well together and though for a time Tag had led a pack in the Outer Hebrides and Arthur – not being seafaring, which anyone who made their home in the Hebrides back then had to be – had left him well alone until Arthur’s paranoia got the better of him. Eventually Arthur had taken those isles by force but the man had been sentimental, in his own way. It would not have pleased him to kill the myth that was Tag, so he exiled him instead. As he had exiled Devon. Jericho. The Vikings. A whole host of other madmen and a handful of madwomen.

Which was how Tag ended up in the Americas, bringing with him a few of his people, the offspring of his descendants. His ‘nieces’ and ‘nephews’ who had been settled in Aspen Creek after Charles had extracted Tag from a berserker rage in the 60s.

The 1860s? No, surely it wasn’t so long ago. Had it been the 1960s?

Bran couldn’t remember.

He rolled out of bed and went to open the window. “Thank you, I am awake,” he called down, before Tag could wrap up and start making demands that would inevitably form questions. Bran had learnt early on that in his condition he was not able to answer ‘How are you?’ in less than thirty minutes. No one, absolutely no one, needed a rundown of his mental wellbeing. It had taken Leah hours to recover.

Tag, cheeks puffed pink, pulled away from the mouthpiece. The pipes sagged with a sad sound. “But I haven’t finished.”

“You have. Meet me in the kitchen. No questions, Tag. I mean it.”

A perplexed expression settled on Tag’s freckled visage. “No que—”

“I said no questions,” he roared, slamming the window back down. He waited to see if what had clearly about to be a question settled on him but, thankfully, it did not. Irritated, he showered and did all the necessary hygiene things before he joined his packmate in the kitchen.

Tag’s perplexed expression remained – blue eyes narrowed – but he had started cooking, which assuaged Bran somewhat, or at least his demanding stomach.

Bran began to fill the silence to assure Tag that he was not angry, though not for the first time he found the first subject was his mate, which had never used to be the way. “Leah will be bringing Kara back from her adventures at college today.”

There was a small pause as Tag adjusted conversation to suit a non-questioning mindset. “That’s good. I hope she had a good time.”

“By all accounts, she did. Perhaps it will set her on a course to mind her education.” Kara was something of a lacklustre student. Leah, who had frequently demonstrated an ability to put herself in a teenage werewolf’s shoes far more than he, believed the natural instincts of a werewolf would be more difficult to manage with teenage hormones. All Kara wanted to do was run and hunt and be with her pack. Not unlike a wildling. Except without the lust for violence.

Since Tag was busy with bacon and eggs, Bran collected the condiments he required for breakfast – which was nearly all of them, including a variety of hotsauces – and gathered plates and cutlery. He opened the refrigerator. “Do you want orange juice? Or—” He inspected a carton. “Cranberry-Apple? Or coffee, I suppose.”

Tag looked at him blankly, spatula raised. “Ah…”

Correctly understanding Tag’s hesitation, Bran explained, “I’m allowed to ask questions. You cannot.”

“That’s. Yes. Orange juice.” Tag’s face twisted with the desire to ask.

“I’m under a compulsion,” Bran explained, putting the Cranberry-Apple away, “and if knowing this leads you to ask me questions, we are not the friends I thought we were.”

“I’ll not ask any,” Tag said staunchly. He seemed to brighten. “Asil, too, then. He threw me out of the house the other day, after giving me his entire romantic history.”

“Good God.” Bran was appalled.

“It took forty-five minutes. I thought— I have no idea what I thought. That he needed to get it off his chest. He was like a man possessed.” He turned considering and poked the pan. “Things seem to be going well with Ruby though.”

Bran was not interested in Asil’s love-life. Except… “Did he and Sage… no, don’t answer that. It’s none of my business.”

“And I would not be a friend to him if I repeated what he told me.” Tag grumbled unhappily. “Not now I know he had no choice.”

Huffing his amusement as Bran took this to mean that Tag would happily have repeated the information were it not for the fae compulsion, Bran poured out tankards of orange juice for them both and laid the table.

“I wonder how long my romantic history would take to tell,” Tag said, an internal thought made out loud as he divvied up eggs and bacon onto plates.

“Surely no more than ten minutes,” Bran retorted, in that age-old way that men did when they wished to divert topics from the serious.

“Aye, you’ll be right there,” Tag accepted, chuckling to himself, safe in the knowledge that there could be great tales written of his escapades with women. He’d wooed a daughter of the House of Bruce once, famously. Then Hester, alone, had led him a merry dance once-upon-a-time. And then there was the Sasquatch. Bran had long suspected that the Sasquatch woman had burned Tag badly – perhaps been the trigger for his berserker rage. There was also rumor of a child.

But he would be no friend to bring that up now.

As they turned silent, eating their eggs and bacon, Bran’s thoughts naturally turned to his own past. Whilst he had been no monk in his lifetime, and there had been many women, Bran counted three great loves of his life. As a bard he had indeed written sonnets of his first wife. Sonnets for public consumption and sonnets for private, for whispers between man and wife in the dark. He had loved Sam’s mother unreservedly and made sure she knew it.

With Blue Jay Woman, there had been no sonnets. Not that Bran hadn’t felt them but Bran had left the bard he had once been on another continent. Their love language had instead been very physical. It had been passionate. And it had crossed a line, more than once or twice, from passion into something much closer to anger. He had fought with Blue Jay Woman a great deal. Not all of it romantic, the way he knew her family would later tell Charles. A clash of cultures – both those of a white settler and Native, and werewolf and Shaman.

He shivered, struck by sudden, shameful memory of how things had once been. Truthfully, he did not dwell too much on Charles’s mother. He had taught himself not to, in the immediate years after her death, when just the dusty scent of her shaken from a blanket would send the wolf into a rage that would take months for Bran to overcome.

Then after Leah, it was painful, for a long time. Mating with Leah had let the wolf secede and then there had been nothing but human grief left behind. Grief that had barely been outed, thanks to Bran’s battle for control with his personal demon. Thinking of Blue Jay Woman had hurt and Bran had been tired of hurting. Tired of many things. Of being gentle with women. Of the language of love.

He sighed and put his fork down so he could rub his face. He didn’t, honestly, need more evidence to demonstrate he was lacking as a husband but comparisons to Leah’s predecessors certainly did it. Perhaps it was yet another reason why he tried not to think of them.

“Sherwood called me the other day.”

The surprise was enough to drag Bran out of the doldrums. “Did he, by God. And what did he have to say for himself?”

Tag chewed and swallowed a mouthful of eggs. “The long and the short of it was that he was asking after you.”

Bran grunted. “Interfering bag of old bones.” It would not surprise Bran that some sixth sense of Sherwood’s had warned him that something was amiss. Of all his siblings – and he had once had many, both on his mother’s side and his father’s – Sherwood was the one who was struck by prescience the most.

“He said you were none too pleased with him.”

An understatement. They had argued – very violently – over a variety of matters after Sherwood had finally remembered his brother might well be interested to know that his memories had returned and picked up the phone to tell him. The first argument started with Bran’s decision to let Bonorata remain on the continent. It evolved into a spirited discussion over Sherwood’s decision to remain in Adam’s pack, instead of returning to Aspen Creek, which Bran would have preferred now that they were housing a fae maker.

Then, a coup de grâce, Sherwood’s sudden indictment of Bran’s mating.

Now, the truth of the matter was that Sherwood was decidedly behind the times when it came to Bran’s mating. What he had observed in his time in Aspen Creek no longer reflected the current reality of Bran’s relationship with his wife. But it was a stab in the guts to have his brother take him to task, as no one had done before. No one had quite the insight that Sherwood did.  

I didn’t save her for you to punish her for your own crimes.

This sentence had sent Bran into an absolute apoplexy. Firstly because Sherwood didn’t save Leah. Bran had. After Sherwood had nearly killed her and himself. Secondly because he had not punished Leah. He was not vindictive. He had been well aware that Leah was a victim of circumstance. He had kept her safe. He had treated her with respect. He had done what he had thought was right.

He had hung up on Sherwood, refusing to be baited further which was for certain what his brother had been doing. Baiting Bran had delivered Sherwood’s preferred outcome – that Bran would not speak to him and would not summon him back to Aspen Creek.

Very few could successfully play Bran the way his brother could. Sam had his moments but Sherwood was the master and whilst Bran could sometimes rise above it, it turned out speaking of his mate was one sure fire way to succeed.

And now Sherwood knew it.

“I need to call him.” Not to summon him back; it wasn’t worth the pain. “He might have… insight into my situation. He mixed with the fae far more than I did, back in the day.” Bran’s lip curled in unpleasant recollection.  

“Knowing Sherwood, that was the reason for his calling me.” Tag stood up to make more eggs. “He passed on his commiserations over Devon, though.”

“I wonder how he heard about that.” It would suggest someone else in the pack was talking to him. For the life of him, he couldn’t work out who that was. There was no one left who knew him.

*

Obviously, it was Leah.

“How frequently do you talk?” he asked, feeling particularly stupid. Almost blind-sided, in fact.

“Once a week. Not always on the phone. The occasional text message,” Leah replied from her walk-in as she hung up her clothes. She appeared to have done a little shopping, if the Nordstrom bags were anything to go by.

Bran, who had been comfortably lying naked and exposed on her bed, body and spirit relishing the return of his mate, now sought for his pants and underwear which he found in the hallway. “I see.”

“You have that tone.” She leaned her head out to look at him as he scooped up his T-shirt. Her eyebrows rose. “Am I not allowed to talk to your brother?”

“No, I don’t want you to talk to him.” The truth. Bran closed his eyes. “Dammit, Leah.”

“It was an accident.” Despite the apologetic tone, she did not apologize and disappeared back into her closet. “Though I’m now interested, of course, in what you would have said had you not been forced to tell the truth. As well as being fascinated,” she began to sound cool, “to find out your rationale for not wanting me to talk to him.”

Bran picked up his belt to thread it back onto his jeans. She had a thing for him removing his belt which he’d learnt only from her reaction through the mating bond. He took care to do it frequently, now, rather than leaving it looped through his jeans. “Of course you can talk to him. It’s— an emotional, irrational reaction. Sherwood can be troublesome. I don’t want him influencing you.”

“Because I’m so easily influenced.”

He sighed. This reunion was going poorly. As with all such conversations, Bran reflected on the approaches he could have taken that might not have pissed his wife off so quickly. Perhaps if they hadn’t made love beforehand? Sex did leave him a few IQ points lower. She had barely been through the front door before he had pounced on her. “That was patronizing of me.”

“It was indeed.”

“I mean to say—” He stumbled and because he stumbled, he stopped himself, trying to find the right words. To be careful.

“You mean to say,” Leah interrupted him, stepping out of her closet and picking up the Nordstrum bags. She began to fold them, crisply, managing to make each fold look like she might wish it was a body part of his. “That you don’t like what he might tell me, about you, about your past. You don’t like that he is not yours to control any more. You don’t like that he doesn’t fear you or your reactions. You don’t like that he and I have a history that you have no part in.”

“Yes. All those things are very accurate. Particularly that last part,” he grumbled, which he had not acknowledged so succinctly to himself yet. He did not like it. There was a wrongness to Sherwood knowing Leah before he. Again, it was irrational. “You know me very well.”

“I do. And thus it is very unlikely Sherwood would say anything about you that I do not know already, or would find in any way surprising.” She dropped the bags into the trash and faced him, eyes blazing.

Her use of ‘thus’ made him smile, a little. Leah had some quaint ways that he enjoyed. “If he does say anything to you, anything you didn’t know before, will you talk to me?”

“If I feel I need to. I’m not going to repeat our conversations. That should not be necessary.”

Bran’s teeth ached. He pushed a finger against his jaw, to release the tension. “All right,” he said, unwillingly.

Leah gifted him with a big, rewarding smile that, combined with the veritable bonfire of her gaze, managed to look faintly homicidal. “Good boy.”

“Oh good grief,” Bran muttered, leaving the room before he could say or do anything inopportune.

*

Three days later, Ariana finally returned his many, many phone calls, only Bran was not there to pick up. Asil had recalled with rather murky detail a ritual that his herbalist mate used to perform and they had cobbled together the ingredients and set off at sunrise, none particularly hopeful but at that stage where any idea sounded like a good one.

Bran had felt a pang through the mating bond mid-morning but since it was neither fearful or angry, and he was supposed to be in a deep meditative state, he put it aside to address when he returned. Naturally, he regretted that decision when he came home and found his household in something of an uproar. Emma was wailing. Anna was furious. Leah was nowhere to be seen. The place smelled like upset.

“Sam made Leah cry,” Anna announced, flushed and restlessly rocking Emma from side to side in the entranceway. Once Charles had removed his jacket and deposited the bag of burnt herbs, she handed a distraught Emma to him. There were toys all over the living area, some kind of colorful dancing fruits on the television, all of which was usually a sign that Emma had been very unsettled. “And I can’t get Emma to calm down. I think she’s reacting to Leah but I didn’t want to take her home and leave her.”

Bran looked up the stairs. “Sam made her cry?”

“Ariana called. Leah answered. I’d stepped out for a moment and when I came back she and Sam were arguing on the phone. He was shocked that we’d left Emma with Leah. I think he said some— unpleasant things.” Anna’s eyes slanted away as her bottom lip wobbled.

It appeared it wasn’t only Emma who was reacting to Leah’s upset.

Bran ignored this, since Anna was not his priority. Instead, he headed upstairs directly to Leah’s room. Her door was closed and he just about managed not to walk straight in. He held a palm against the door for a moment and took a deep breath. “Leah, may I come in?”

“Yes. I’m fine now,” she said morosely.

He pushed through. “Ah,” he said, when he saw the state of her bedroom. There were piles of clothes and shoes about the room. Sitting cross-legged on the floor was his mate. There were three already filled trash bags and she was addressing the fourth.

Leah only decluttered when she was very unhappy.

“I’m fine now,” she repeated, unconvincingly. Though she was not crying, as Anna had reported, Leah was pale and moving slowly, folding sweaters and putting them into trash bags. “He had every right to say what he said.”

It did not take a great leap of intuition to guess at what Sam – unaware of Leah’s particular circumstances – had said to Leah. She had never warmed to children, not Charles, not Sam’s, not anyone’s. She had been outright difficult with Mercy.

Leah looked up at him, eyes wide and wounded, a creature who had been preyed upon. “But I wouldn’t hurt Emma.”

The urge to cause violent harm to his son was unexpectedly potent. He swallowed it down. He would be gentle now.  

Bran moved carefully between the clothes and sat down next to her. Tentatively, he touched the small of her back and began to rub circles when she did not immediately flinch away. She did not take comfort easily. “I know that, my love. And so do Charles and Anna.”

“I’m afraid I said some very hurtful things to him, though.” Leah’s eyes kindled. She thrust a Luis Vuitton sweater into a bag with a little more force. “And I meant every one of them.”

Of this, Bran had no doubt. She had a calculating tongue when she needed to and plenty of material to work with. She and Sam had never worked well together.

“I suspect Ariana was quite irritated to be called a broodmare. That wasn’t fair of me. I’m sure she was complicit. He could always twist women around his little finger.”

Bran bit his tongue. “Mmm-hmm.”

She thrust another sweater – cashmere, a lovely shade of forget-me-not, one of his favorites – into the bag. “So she probably won’t call back. And if she knows anything about what’s wrong with you and how to fix it, we’ll probably never know.” Leah’s face crumpled. “I’m sorry for that.”

Bran put his arms about her and she hid her face in his neck. She did not relax into his hold, nor did she actually cry. Instead, she remained rigid, clearly trying to get control of her emotions. “You can be sad,” he said quietly, stroking her hair. “It’s all right to be sad.”

“You don’t know what I said to him.”

Since Leah had never held back to him about her opinions on Sam and his desire for children, he did not need to ask. He thought it highly likely she’d brought up Mercy, too, which given her own history as a teenage mother, Bran could imagine she now viewed Sam with extra vitriol. “I can imagine.” He squeezed her. “It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not. He’ll never be Marrok now.” She exhaled heavily into his neck. “I’ve ruined your plans.”

He thought this unlikely. “You didn’t like them anyway.”

“I was coming around to them.” Leah leaned back to look at him. Her mascara had run a little. “Even the guest ranch.”

“Really?”

“I’m not having anything to do with the cows, though.” She bared her teeth. “I cannot bear the stupid beasts.”

Pleased that Leah was rallying so quickly, Bran smiled and used his thumbs to wipe away her smudged make-up. “I would like your permission to tell my son the circumstances of our mating. He needs to understand.”

“Why? So he can feel sorry for me?” Leah pushed him away and clambered up. She swiped up two of the trash bags and then froze. “Oh, dammit, I’m sorry.”

The compulsion drove Bran, though for once he was not unwilling. In some senses, it was almost pleasant, having the truth run through him like a freight train. “He needs to know because it is right that the truth is shared between our family. He needs to know that my past actions were not honorable and I have allowed a lie to live on, well past any perceived usefulness it might have once had to me personally, however mistaken I was.” He drew in a deep breath. “And he should feel sorry for what happened to you. You were wronged. By a monster. By your father. By Sherwood and by me. If my son had deigned to be in contact properly, I would have asked your permission to tell him all this before, so that we would not be in this situation, where he can hurt you. I do not like when people hurt you.”

Leah put down the trash bags with a sigh, her shoulders slumping. “It’s… all so ugly, Bran. It— makes me feel like I am ugly. Inside,” she whispered, looking down at him.

Bran rose until he was kneeling before her and took her hands between his. “I know. That feeling will go away. It is just a feeling. It is not a truth.” Bran’s mouth quirked, inappropriately, with a sudden thought and he lifted her hands to his lips to cover it. “Ask me the question. Ask me if I think you are ugly inside.”

Color spread up her cheeks, down her neck. Her fingers flexed between his. For a moment, he thought she wouldn’t do it, then her head tilted just slightly to one side. “Do you think I am ugly inside, Bran?” she whispered, her voice wavering.

He smiled and kissed her knuckles. “No, Leah, I do not. You are beautiful to me, inside and out, and I love every inch of you.”

The ghost of a smile twitched her lips even as she exhaled in relief. “How nice,” she said, ever-so-faintly.

“How nice,” Bran scoffed, “how nice—”

Any intentions he had for teasingly lambasting his wife’s lackluster response to what he considered to be a fairly romantic moment were put to a halt by an enormous pop, akin to the inner-ear sensation experienced when dropping from high altitudes. It was so loud that Bran hunched his shoulders, expecting pain to follow.

“What is it? What happened?” Leah’s hands fluttered to his head, his face.

Bran relaxed himself. “Not sure.” He tilted his head from shoulder to shoulder. “Odd sound, in my head.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“No. It felt like my ears popped.”

“How peculiar. Are you in any pain?”

He shook his head and wiggled a finger in each of his ears. Nothing.

Leah snorted. She poked his shoulder. “Are you in any pain?” she repeated.

“No,” he said impatiently, then, “Stop it, woman,” when she continued to poke him, repeating the question over and over again.

His wife snorted again. She scooped up the bags. “Thank God that’s over. Honestly, even if I wasn’t here to personally witness it, knowing that Samuel was the Marrok would torment me, every day.”

“What are you talking about?” Bran blew out his cheeks, trying to force his ears to pop of his own accord. Nothing happened.

Leah tossed the bags out onto their hallway. “How would you feel if I cut my hair off? All the way, above my ears?”

“Er,” Bran said, alarmed at this sudden change in subject. And the subject itself, actually. He was very fond of her hair. “Are you going to do that? I mean, it’s just hair, and your hair, no less, so I have— oh, I’ve stopped.”

“Well done,” she said drily.

He choked off the hope. “Ask me another question.”

Leah folded her arms. “Will you reply to all my future questions with the truth?”

“Within reason,” he replied promptly and then rolled his eyes as she threw up her hands in exasperation. “Oh, come on, Leah, you knew that would be the answer.”

She grabbed another bag and then reached for the last. He intervened quickly. “Hold on, I want you to keep this one,” Bran said, grabbing the sleeve of the blue cashmere sweater he could see. “This one is pretty. Ask me another question. No, wait, are you serious about your hair…”

“Aren’t you curious about whether this compulsion has broken for Charles?”

“Not as curious as I am about your hair,” he decided, utterly truthfully.

Despite herself, Leah gurgled with laughter. She let him have the sweater and backed into the hallway. “You’re ridiculous. Charles? Is your spell broken? Charles?”

-end