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Its open jaws were less than a foot from my face.

For several seconds, neither of us moved. I kept my hands low and open where the animal could see them, then began humming softly under my breath.

Its breathing was still fast, but the panic in its eyes gradually eased. Its jaw loosened, and the rigid tension in its body began to fade until it was no longer straining toward me.

That was all the time Silas needed.

He turned, reached down, and closed one enormous hand around the back of the animal's neck. With controlled pressure, he forced it down against the concrete without slamming it or striking it.

The wolverine stayed there, blinking up at us.

Only then did I understand what I had just done.

Silas had known me before he shifted, so some part of him had already recognized me when I calmed him. This man hadn't. He had never met me, had no reason to trust me, and yet I had hummed to the beast inside a Council shifter and it had listened.

A scream tore through the garage before I could process that thought any further.

It came from the top of the ramp, human and terrified.

I spun around and saw Daniel standing halfway between the stairwell and his car, his keys clenched in one hand. His mouth hung open as he stared directly at Kaelen, whose fingers were still tipped with black claws. Rainwater ran down his hands, mixed with someone else's blood.

Daniel didn't say a word.

He simply turned and ran.

I had never seen him move that fast. His jacket snapped behind him as he sprinted down the ramp, shouting something I couldn't make out before he disappeared into the rain.

"Oh dear," Jax said breathlessly from where he was kneeling on the chest of the man who had carried the dart gun.

"Oda's people will find him before dark," Silas said, sounding completely unconcerned. "They have a drug they use on witnesses. He'll wake up tomorrow convinced he was mugged in a parking garage by three very large men." He glanced toward the ramp where Daniel had disappeared. "He'll keep the part about the three men, though."

Of course there was a drug.

Apparently, the Council had developed a pharmaceutical solution for inconvenient human witnesses, and naturally Oda's people had access to it. I couldn't decide whether the existence of the drug bothered me more than how casually everyone spoke about using it.

By then, the fight was already over.

Four men in gray suits were scattered across the wet concrete. A couple of them were groaning, one was unconscious, and the wolverine had shifted far enough back toward human form to look recognizably like a man again. He lay very still, wearing the unmistakable expression of someone who knew he had just lost control in front of strangers.

Kaelen still had the tall escort pinned against a concrete pillar by the throat. One clawed hand was spread over the man's chest, holding him in place. Blood ran from a long cut across the escort's forehead, but somehow he was still smiling.

"You think we're what you need to worry about, Vance?" he said thickly. He laughed, then broke into a cough. "The Council wants her breathing. And we're the nice ones. You know that." His eyes slid past Kaelen and settled on me. "The Quiet are coming for you, girl. You should be afraid."

Something in Kaelen's face changed.

"The what?" I asked.

The man only laughed again.

Kaelen drew back one clawed hand and struck him once on the side of the head with precise, controlled force. The man's eyes rolled shut. Kaelen released him and let him slide down the pillar onto the floor.

My thoughts had gone back to the long black car outside number fourteen, the one I had seen come and go for years. I remembered its engine running at odd hours and the vague shape of someone always sitting inside. I thought about Ronan standing beneath the streetlamp and insisting that the Council had never needed to watch anyone beforehand.

Whoever the Quiet were, perhaps they were connected to that car.

Kaelen turned toward me.

I was standing between Jax and Silas in the gray light of the garage while rain blew in through the open side and ran down my face. My hands were still held low in front of me, exactly where they had been when I stopped the wolverine.