“Your pack naturally looks to you for leadership,” Willa said. “It’s the way things work with your kind. The werewolves of Norwich will be drawn to you. Even the humans won’t be able to resist your charisma if you let Darius teach you what he’s learned.”
“Then I’d have to live here for the rest of my life. What if I want to go somewhere else?”
“By then, there will be others to take your place,” Mosavi said. “We are only just getting started, and we’ll needyouas that starting point. We have other towns to make into sanctuaries, and those towns will also need werewolf leaders. This is my purpose. I want all our kind to live freely with the same opportunities humans have. I don’t care what I have to do”—the cigar crumbled as he gripped it in a balled-up fist—“or who I have to break to make my vision a reality.”
“I hope you’re not planning on trying to break me.”
“If only I could,” he muttered. “You’re a stubborn little shit with a potent vironoct. Even Willa’s enchanted trinkets did next to nothing.” The brown werewolf snarled again. “So, with that admission out of the way, I need you as an equal to me. Obviously in your half-turned state, you’re not suitable, but you can be molded when you reach your apex. After that, failure or success is in your—hopefully—capable hands.”
“This has to be your choice, though,” Willa said. “Once I see what you become, we may be able to work together on dealing with the witches around Norwich, but I make no promises on the outcome.”
“And if anything happens to her because of your stupidity, I will destroy you,” Mosavi added. “Understand?”
“You would never do such a thing,” Willa said, smacking Mosavi across the maw. “Stop with this posturing. Why must you keep putting on this act?”
The elder looked at the floor.
“I don’t want anything to happen to anyone,” I said. “If we decide it’s too dangerous, I’ll call the whole thing off but not doing anything is a contradiction to what you want.”
Mosave wrinkled his nose.
“You said you wanted all our kind to live freely, but there are werewolves out there that are literally slaves. You can’t say that and then ignore hundreds or thousands of captured werewolves.”
“A point well made,” Willa said. “Even your old pack is still out there. Have you really abandoned them?”
“This is for you! All of it! I do this for us. They would have wanted a safe place to live had we had one in those days. Instead, we ended up outthere. I’ll not let that happen to anyone else.”
“But werewolves are able to live out there—”
“The Whasha are fools who willingly give themselves to the wild when there is safety in our town!” Mosavi shouted. “Mybrother—” He took several deep, shaky breaths as he regained control of his temper.
“Is your brother,” I finished, standing. “But it’s not really my place to say anything. I’ll let you fight it out with him on the solstice. If that’s it, I need to get home before Roscoe wakes up.”
“What a shamefully lazy beast,” Mosavi muttered, following me into the foyer. “Just looking at him sends me into a rage. That is not a werewolf.”
“Maybe if you got to know him better, he’d grow on you, too.” I passed a room with a black grand piano, stopping to look inside. “Do you play the piano?”
“No,” Mosavi said, his face showing a bit of excitement. “But I do collect rare and antique musical instruments. Would you like to see them?”
I really wanted to leave the unpleasantness from earlier, but at that moment, Mosavi was showing a slightly softer side. If this was going to work out in any way, and if I wanted both him and Willa to be closer to our pack, I had to figure him out. Willa wasn’t always going to be there to stop him from going for my neck each time I pissed him off, which I was bound to keep doing.
“Sure,” I said, allowing the mayor space to step into the room before me. As I followed, I gazed at the impossibly tall walls containing holders of different instruments. There were guitars, violins, an assortment of odd-looking woodwinds, and brass. “This is a strange collection for someone who doesn’t play music.”
“I never at any point said I didn’t,” he said, looking back at me.
“But you—”
“I said I don’t play the piano.” He brushed his padded fingers over the polished cover of the huge instrument. “This Bösendorfer is around one hundred and fifty years old and is probably worth half as much as this house.”
“Holy shit,” I whispered, closely examining the scarred, glossy wood. “How do you know it’s that old?”
“I had it appraised five times to get the approximate date it was made before I bought it.” He pointed to a beautifully polished violin in a glass case on the other side of the room. “Thatis the instrument I play.”
I approached the glass, looking down at the curvy wood. Though the instrument was incredibly well taken care of, it looked ancient. “It’s beautiful.”
“You should hear it sing. Nothing less would be suited for something crafted by Antonio Stradivarius himself.”
“Who’s that?” I asked, looking back in time to see Mosavi’s eyes glow a furious silver.
