“Just wait until they get the bill for the bridge,” murmured Charles’s voice—earning an irritated look Bran sent over his shoulder.
Charles was trying to calm Bran down, I realized. I shook my head. Hard to be dignified when you’re sprawled across someone’s lap, but I tried. “They will send the bill to the fae.”
“If they can find the fae to give it to them,” Charles said.
“Werewolves fighting the fae,” said Bran.
Silence fell.
“I’ve been trying for six months to keep that from happening.” Bran’s voice had a rare growl in it. “To keep this from happening.”
“Neutral doesn’t work,” Charles said. “When you watch your allies commit atrocities and do nothing, who is more reprehensible? Those who rape and plunder or those who could have stopped it but do nothing?”
“You are misquoting your grandfather,” said Bran. “And you have caused me enough trouble. At least we could argue that the fae struck the first blow against us when you hunted down that fae lord in Arizona. Here, we are clearly the aggressor.”
He took a deep breath, raised his chin, and stared at Adam—who stared right back, though I could feel the pulse of his effort not to drop his gaze.
“Very well, then,” Bran said—and he was looking at me, not Adam. “Defend your territory.”
“You heard that part,” I said, fighting not to squirm. In retrospect, I regretted that my speech would have been at home on the set of Cleopatra, The Ten Commandments, or one of the other epic films from the middle of the last century before Hollywood decided to tone down the overacting. I could have done something more Dirty Harry and been just as effective—and less embarrassing.
“It’s been playing in various cuts on the news stations all afternoon,” said Charles. “CNN has a special show scheduled for tomorrow to discuss the fae and the werewolf pack that, and I quote, ‘protected the people who live in their territory.’ Unquote.”
Bran tapped the top of his desk. “So you two, you see if you can back up Mercy’s words. Your territory to hold when the fae come calling. There is a slim chance I can still keep this from being an all-out war between werewolves and the fae. There is a case to be made that we always have protected our territory from the fae—a fiction that stands only because they have not moved against the humans in five hundred years.” He took a breath through his teeth. “If you succeed, I’ll have to convince the other Alphas who live near the fae reservations to do the same—there are only two of them.” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, thinking. When he opened his eyes again, the anger was gone, though there was a grimness to his expression that I didn’t trust. “Adam, be aware that if you let that boy go after twenty-four hours and something happens to him, all of the good publicity could easily turn against you.”
Adam nodded, his body stiff. There was something going on that I wasn’t reading, something hard and tense between Adam and Bran. I was getting a bad feeling about this conversation.
“Your pack has made enemies among my Alphas,” said Bran. “Change is not easy on the old wolves. Your wholehearted embrace of it has created a lot of conflict, and they know, the old ones, exactly where to aim their ire. You should expect some challenges to your leadership from outside the pack, Adam, from other Alphas.”
That was so unusual as to be almost unheard-of. Outside challenges usually came from lone wolves too dominant to be welcomed into a pack on their own. One of the secrets of Bran’s successful rule was that he tried to keep track of the lone wolves and found places for them to be useful—even building new packs—to accommodate their needs. It didn’t save them all, or even most of them, but it helped.
One Alpha only challenged another when two packs were too close together—or if an Alpha had a personal vendetta against another. Such battles were supposed to be one-on-one, but, historically speaking, unless an Alpha was utterly useless, his pack would fight for him, too. Quite often both Alphas and most of both packs would die in the fight.
“I am aware,” Adam said.
One of the things Bran had done was virtually eliminate fighting between packs. He’d send Charles out at the first hint of real conflict—and none of the werewolves wanted to have Charles land in the middle of their business. If he thought an Alpha was taking liberties without provocation, he was likely to take out that Alpha. He’d done it a couple of times I knew of, and I expected that the werewolves, who had longer memories, would know of other times.
So why was Bran issuing a warning now?
“Make her declaration real,” Bran said in a low voice. “Give us grounds to make some places safe. Let us be heroes as well as monsters.” He looked at me then. “And do not make this into a full-scale war.”
“Unless you can’t help it,” murmured Charles.
“You know what this means,” said Bran.
“I do,” agreed Adam.
The two of them stared at each other for a moment, then Bran said, “I repudiate you and your pack. You are sundered from me and mine.”
Something happened to the pack bonds, a shivery pain slid through them into my head and was gone a moment later. It hit Adam harder; he took a deep breath, and his whole body broke out in a light sweat.
Bran’s eyes caught mine. He started to say something, then shook his head.
The monitor went blank for a moment, then the familiar Skype screen reappeared.
“He had to do that,” Adam said. “Or else there would have been a war between werewolves and the fae. By cutting us off, by making us a rogue pack, he made sure that this stayed a local matter. We should expect that he will get word to the other packs and to the fae immediately, or else there would be no point.”