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Jared tackled Hamid and the two of them plunged into the snow.
“Go!” Hamid shouted again, and he swung at Jared. Jared roared and crack!
“Hamid!” Leaving him here wasn’t going to happen, and he was too stubborn to book it after Terry and make for the plane.
Faris swept over me. He grabbed my arm and spun me around into a sick embrace.
“Come, Luna.” He clasped me against him like a lover. “Let’s go have that chat.”
The Princess & The Guard
Hamid glanced at his watch. Then he glanced at me.
I fiddled with a piece of paper I’d torn into a rough square and tried to remember how to fold an origami crane.
Twenty miles overland had left both of us slightly frozen, but at the other side FrostFur had shoved us into a small, snug cabin. Wood stove, no running water, but there was electricity thanks to solar panels. Nobody said ferals were primitive, after all.
I was now quite warm, but with the warmth came the ache of my battered body. Getting tossed around like a haybale was not how I liked to be handled. Hamid had done his best to pick the splinters out of my hair and back. Nothing was broken except my hand hurt—I might have made the cracks in the bone worse.
Hamid had gotten a fat lip and a black eye on my account, but he’d given Jared a bloody mouth in return.
“So this has gone badly,” Hamid observed.
His gift of understatement was superb, and he didn’t even know it. I’d held out some hope that Alan would pack us right back off to the airstrip, but Alan was going to stand by Faris’ stupidity.
Werewolves didn’t deal in prisoners, and I’d read enough blood-freezing archive entries to know I’d probably get sent back to New York one little piece at a time.
“It did get a bit complicated.” I focused on the piece of paper. So Sterling’s paternity hadn’t even leaked as far as FrostFur. Unexpected, but not outrageous. Sterling’s paternity issue had been about twenty years ago. Alan was in his mid-thirties and had ruled as Alpha for about six years. Most of the current FrostFur leadership wasn’t much older or younger, so they’d have all been juveniles or at least no-regard young adults when all that was happening.
And FrostFur had been rebuilding their prestige for decades. They might not have known. Werewolves guarded information so carefully you could never assume who knew what, and when.
I prodded my nail bed with a sharp point of the folded paper.
“You’re very calm.” Hamid had an edge to his voice. “Been held prisoner before?”
“Can’t say I have, but it’s not my first bad encounter.” Truth was, I was so scared I’d circled right around back to calm.
He still looked at me, so I shrugged as I fiddled with the paper. “This is my family. I’m not a stranger to how things work.”
The cabin had four high, narrow horizontal windows of thick glass. The ones on the left side afforded us a clear view of an open clearing that served as FrostFur’s central hub. “There are a fair number of them. Nice bonfire. Are they going to burn us?”
I chuckled grimly. “No, that’s so they can hold an outdoor meeting and not freeze to death.”
“Are we going to be invited to that meeting?”
“Let’s hope not.”
The cabin door opened. Alpha Alan with his Luna Mercedes and two other large wolves stepped into the space. Alan was about thirty, tanned, wind-torn, dark eyes, dark hair, handsome. Mercedes was also tall, silky dark hair, and refined, beautiful features with eyes the color of amber. Her temper was notoriously bad. Alan was known to be a little more civil, but not by much.
And Sterling called me feral. Compared to the FrostFur, I was as charming and genteel as everyone at those art galas thought I was.
“Mrs Mortcombe.” Alan crossed his arms and stood over me.
“Alan.” I dropped his title. Hamid ducked his head and watched out of the corner of one eye.
“Stupid move, Winter,” he said, but the thick scent of human flesh—bathing was at a premium around these parts—conveyed that he wasn’t happy, and it wasn’t angry unhappy, it was frustrated. Alan was too smart to think Faris had done him a favor.
I waited for the evil villain monologue. We both knew Faris had royally fucked up, but Alan wasn’t going to undercut his Beta and pack me back off to Sterling with his compliments.
