He stepped out onto the porch and shut the door. Malachi stood halfway down the driveway, on the steepest dip of the hill. Aaron joined him. He parted his lips and drew a long breath, tasting and smelling dozens of flavors on the air. He listened, and the rustling depths of his forest and the bubbling of his creek seeped into him until the strange fire within was cooled.
Malachi let him, no doubt well aware of the upheaval in Aaron. For his own part he was entirely composed. Of course.
At last he said, “Your scent shifted when she fell.”
Of all the things he could have led with… Aaron shook his head. “Uh, what?”
Malachi shot him a long look. “What I said.”
“Nah. It was a reflex. I didn’t even decide to—to catch her.” He shrugged. “Just did it.”
Malachi crossed his arms and stared out over Aaron’s land. Again a pause settled over them, unsurprising. Malachi had always been one to mull. Then he said, “By rights she should be removed.”
Aaron tilted his head, and Malachi nodded. A request to speak as his beta, his sounding board and occasional devil’s advocate, though never in the presence of other wolves. “Based on what the vampire told us, if we kick her out now, she’ll just follow through on her original threat. And she knows where we are now, Mal—who we are. Before it was about the generic wolf community. Now it’s about our pack. Our town, our homesteads.”
“Hmm.”
Malachi dropped to a crouch in the grass and draped his arms over his knees. Aaron did the same.
“A vanilla with the upper hand,” Malachi said. “That tastes rotten.”
“Pretty sure you just made her forget she has any leverage here, at least for the next few minutes.”
His teeth flashed, and it wasn’t a smile. For a while they were silent. Then he said, “She meant what she told you. She wants to do the right thing for Quinn. Maybe also for us.”
“If we prove to her we’re worth the respect we’re asking for.”
Malachi growled, though not at Aaron. “We shouldn’t have to prove it.”
Nothing new under the sun. The different and the unknown were to be feared, not respected. When he was honest with himself, Aaron could admit he thought of vampires more harshly than some of them probably deserved. Because they scared the crap out of him. That Ember had approached a wolf pack despite the descriptions of them constantly peddled by every media outlet in the country—well, it said a lot for her.
“Mal,” he said and waited for the alpha’s eye contact. “I think she could learn. And I know she loves the pup. She’d never do anything to hurt him.”
“And?”
Aaron pressed a hand to his gut where Ember’s cry of fear had pained him, where the need to keep her whole had burned. “And that’s it.”
“That’s it, but you’re willing to house her for the next ten days.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll revoke the decision the minute she crosses another line.”
“Of course.”
“And she acclimates immediately.”
The thing he’d hoped not to hear. “She won’t be here that long. Why put her through it?”
“You’d prefer the effort of shielding her for ten days? Of forcing the pup to shield her?”
No. Yes. Aaron shook his head. He didn’t want to terrify her, even for a minute. That had somehow risen to the top of his priority list. Malachi’s scent held a flavor of impatience, which wasn’t unfair. The pack didn’t host human visitors. Ever, in Aaron’s remembrance. If Ember was about to become a glaring exception, acclimating her only made sense.
He scrubbed his palms down his face. “Okay, Quinn first and then me.”
Malachi stood. “Now.”
Comprehension dripped into him as he followed his friend back up the hill. “You too?”
