Fools of us all

by josephides

Summary:

Asil knew it was Leah Cornick before he answered the door. He had the ability to track all of his packmates and there was a particular flavor to the Marrok’s mate that was quite distinct. A combination of teeth and vanilla bean, if he were to put an overly romantic descriptor to it.

Asil knew it was Leah Cornick before he answered the door. He had the ability to track all of his packmates and there was a particular flavor to the Marrok’s mate that was quite distinct. A combination of teeth and vanilla bean, if he were to put a descriptor to it.

So when he pulled the door open, Asil had an expression appropriate for her well-prepared on his face.

Leah Cornick fixed her blue eyes on his left temple. “I need your help,” she said through her teeth.

Asil thought perhaps he’d never heard sweeter words. The smile that split his face was unholy and an echo of his long-lost mate ‘tsked’ in disapproval. “Do you now.”

A low rumble made itself known. Without her mate, Leah was not in Asil’s league when it came to dominance, and she was significantly younger than he. It was rather like being growled at by a puppy.

He waited. Smiling.

After a moment, Leah got herself under control. She knew when she was beat, even if she hated it. She wanted something from him after all. “I have an issue that I—” She closed her eyes, briefly, and when she opened them her wolf flashed for a moment. “I think I need some male advice.”

Abruptly, his smile faltered. This was unexpected. He took a step back to allow her entrance. “Not from your mate?”

She brushed past him, visibly prickling. “About my mate.”

Now Asil definitely wasn’t smiling. “Something wrong?” He had known – they all knew – that there had been changes afoot in the Marrok’s mating these last few months. Seismic ones. Beyond the ridiculous tale of Cthulhu, Charles, Anna and Tag had kept shtum about whatever it had been that had led to the Marrok hightailing it out to California to join them. All Asil knew is that three months beforehand, the man had believed Leah to be capable of betrayal and now he was openly besotted.

Leah’s discomfort was almost palpable. “Yes. No. Oh— this was a terrible idea.” She spun on her heel and made to leave the way she had come. 

Ah well. “Leah. Come. Let me make you some tea. I,” he swallowed, “promise not to tease you.”

She hesitated and turned so he could not see her face. Interesting, he thought, that she would willingly have her back to him. That was new. As was her need for ‘male advice’. He wondered that she did not go to Juste. Or even Charles. They seemed on better terms recently.

He decided to give her some space and padded past her into his little kitchen. The tea things were out, because they were a regular part of his day. He boiled water. Selected a new black tea, smoky and fragrant. He plucked some grapes from the fruit bowl.

The Marrok’s mate slunk into his kitchen, looking around it with curiosity. “You painted,” she said faintly.

“Yes. A few weeks back.” The pale yellow was cheery. He sometimes found the winter months in Montana quite hard to bear.

“It’s lovely.” Leah was genuine. She seemed surprised, too, at her own genuineness.

He carried the china to the table and pushed aside the newspaper. “So. Tell me,” he said, nodding to the chair opposite.

The blush on her cheeks could be attributed to many things – the warmth of the kitchen compared to the chill winter outside, perhaps. The awkwardness of coming to him, of all people, for help.

“Bran has— Bran has decided that I—” She paused and took a moment to exhale through pursed lips. She swallowed. “No. I’ll go back.” Her startling eyes met his, briefly, before she looked down into her tea. “I did not choose Bran. I’ll not tell you more than that. But I did not choose him, though the circumstances were such that the alternative was not an option.”

Asil felt any remnants of entertainment about the circumstances cool. “You mean, you did not agree to be his mate,” he surmised, slowly. He carefully maintained a straight face, when he might otherwise have let the flare of anger show. He didn’t know such a thing was possible. It was sickening.

She took a sip of the hot liquid, quickly, and then put the cup down with a careful clink. “Correct. This matter has… bothered him. For some time. Not that he chose to share that feeling with me. In any case, he feels that since I have never had the opportunity to—” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know. Sow my oats. That I should, now, go out, and do that.”

Asil took a moment to understand her. And then a moment more to take it all in before he felt he could respond with his view. “I have never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life.”

Leah lit up, as if she had been anticipating the opposite reaction from him. She slumped back in her chair. “Oh, thank goodness, you agree. I honestly thought I was going insane. Sometimes he can be so convincing it sounds almost reasonable. I started to wonder if I was the one overreacting.”

This tumble of careless words was unusual from her and gave Asil a brief insight into the kind of creature Leah Cornick might be without the assumed airs and graces of the Marrok’s mate. She would certainly be more likeable.

“Putting aside what I assume are your feelings on the matter, how does he imagine he would manage this ‘sowing’?” Asil used his fingers to emphasize the quotation marks. “You would effectively be having an affair.” Not something most mated couples could tolerate.

Her eyes widened. Her fingers touched her chest lightly. “I don’t know! I’ve asked that. He seems to think provided I come home to him at the end of what I can only assume is some kind of… of… Spring Break excess, his wolf will be perfectly happy. That he will be perfectly happy.” Her mouth opened and closed, as if she wanted to say more but couldn’t. She was speechless.

Asil had never had cause to have much common ground with Leah Cornick but in this moment they were on precisely the same page. “That’s… I’ll say it again. Ridiculous.”

She waved a hand in the air, triumphant. “Exactly.”

“Has he lost his mind?”

She leaned forward and lowered her voice, as if imparting a great secret, blue eyes wide with appeal. “He is adamant, Asil. Absolutely adamant. It doesn’t matter what I say. He…he… thinks that since I’ve never had any choice in the matter, that I couldn’t make an informed one now unless…” Her words faded. She didn’t need to elaborate further.

Asil held up a finger to ask a question. She inclined her head to give him leave to do so. “Why would you need to make a choice now? You’re already mated.”

Leah flushed. “Oh. It’s just part of a long-running series of… conversations we’re having. About.” She waved a hand around again, her wedding band glinting in the light pouring in from the windows. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her wear one before. “Us. Things that have happened. But he’s become fixed on this particular one and won’t let it go.”

He snorted. “What will be the repercussion if you refuse?”

“I don’t think he’ll believe that I’ve chosen him. Despite two centuries of proof,” she added through her teeth.

Though the Marrok and his mate had been subject to a great deal of gossip in these last few months, never in his wildest dreams would he have concocted this story. Never. He tapped his fingers on the table. “Extraordinary. I’d not have thought it of him. This is quite irrational.”

“It is, isn’t it?” She pinched the bridge of her nose, a gesture Asil had noted all those close to the Marrok picked up. “I have been racking my brains to try to come up with any argument beyond ‘I don’t want to’ or ‘have you lost your goddamn mind’.”

Asil raised his eyebrows. “I presume you’ve expressed your levels of devotion.”

“Enough to make up for not doing so for two centuries, yes,” she said drily. “He’s apparently unmoved. At one point, he suggested I might have Stockholm Syndrome. I ask you, Asil, what was I to say to that? It’s insulting in the extreme.”

Asil winced sympathetically.

She dropped her hand and picked up her tea. She blew on it, unnecessarily, and took a slow, deliberate sip. She was clearly building up to something. “I don’t suppose—” Leah hesitated. Her original embarrassed color hadn’t really faded completely but it seemed to deepen now.

Alarm bells rang. “What?”

“…you’d speak to him?”

Their history being what it was, that had not been what he’d thought she was going to suggest. Hubris, he supposed. The thought that she might suggest he would be the answer. Very much hubris, his long-gone mate mocked.

Leah narrowed her eyes at him. “What did you think I was going to suggest?”

“Nothing,” Asil said airily, masking his own embarrassment. “But I have a better idea.”

*

Leah took some convincing. Whilst she agreed – in principle – that Bran’s mind was extremely hard to change when it was set and that Asil’s view on it would not be received well, if at all, she still held out hope that logic would prevail and a male perspective would help.

“In my experience,” Asil said and he cleared his throat, “sometimes a short, sharp dose of reality is needed.”

“You’re not seriously—”

“No, I am not suggesting you go out and…” He waved a hand around, encapsulating all the sorts of things a free woman might do. Whatever those might be. He certainly wasn’t thinking about them. “What I am suggesting is that you may be able to convince him that I, a recent ah, convert, to the world of dating, would be a suitable companion to escort you and then after time could say you’ve explored and found nothing to your taste. I could corroborate.”

She blinked at him. Then she dissolved into laughter.

If he were counting, this would be the first time he had ever made the Marrok’s mate laugh.

And laugh certainly she did. Uproariously, tears leaking from her eyes. He waited patiently for this mirth to ebb.

“Ooh, I needed that,” Leah wheezed sincerely, pulling a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbing at the corners of her eyes. He noted it was embroidered with her initials. His wife – the mother of his children, rather than his Sarai – had used to do that. He felt a pang then for a women who had faded and left him.

She continued to smile at him, genuinely, and he had known many beautiful women in his life but it had never occurred to him that Leah Cornick might be one of them. Happiness, he supposed, was transformative.

So rather than take offense at her hysteria at his idea, Asil nodded and gave her his own smile. “We will make it work. I will help you. Bran will see he is in error.”

*

Friday night, Asil picked Leah up from the pack mansion. She was waiting outside the door, wearing an overcoat belted tight about her waist and a palpably nervous expression.

He frowned at her, as she climbed in. “I would have come inside.”

“It was— I was too uncomfortable. Bran was—” She pressed her lips together and looked away, out of the window.

Asil sighed. “Whatever he was doing, he’s being a fool.”

He had to admit, when he had put his suggestion forward to the Marrok, he’d half expected Leah’s story to unweave, for Bran’s mouth to part in shock, for him to laugh. No, Asil, of all the ridiculous—she told you this? And you believed her?

That hadn’t happened. Initially Bran had appeared embarrassed. Surprised, yes, that Leah had confided in him of all people, but predominantly embarrassed that his personal business had left the confines of marital intimacy. But when Asil had blandly told him if it would set his mind at ease, he could understand and he saw it as his duty – Bran had thanked him, sincerely. Then he’d cracked a joke about Asil’s own dating experiences and they’d moved on.

He meant it, about Bran being a fool. A Bran in his right mind would see straight through Asil’s ruse. And would see that it was only desperation that would lead Leah to Asil’s door.

So here he was. An escort for the Marrok’s mate for the evening.

Their first stop was a bar, one Asil had scouted earlier in the week. He pulled up outside, his Porsche sticking out like a sore thumb from the rows of trucks. Should have considered that, he thought. Next time he would bring the Subaru. 

Leah doubtfully looked at the building, at the two men in plaid smoking outside, and began to twist her belt tie between her fingers. He noted she had removed her wedding ring.

“We go in. Get a drink.” He doubted the wine would be good so he was planning on a soda. “Stay for thirty minutes. Then we’ll go get a proper meal somewhere more pleasant.”

She nodded, fervently. “Understood. This way we can say that there were slim pickings.” A black looked crossed Leah’s face. “My husband seriously thinks this is where I’m going to meet the love of my life?”

“No, he is seriously hoping you don’t.” Asil sighed. Once again, he reflected on the truly ridiculous situation he found himself in. Escorting Leah Cornick to bars to satisfy the Marrok’s ego. May Allah give him give him strength.

They went inside. It was immediately apparent that Leah Cornick did not belong in this bar and neither did Asil. She, like his Porsche, stuck out like a sore thumb, though she had dressed appropriately casually in jeans and a sweater and had forgone the Cartier watch and designer heels. Asil himself stuck out because he was a descendant of African Berbers and people of the Arabian Peninsula and in these parts that made him unusual. And he was significantly better looking than all of the men here.

They chose a high table away from the loudest of the TVs screening sports and she accepted the beer he bought for her. He sipped his lemonade.

Asil did not fear awkward silences and in the past perhaps he would have relished an uncomfortable one with Leah, watching as her face grew more annoyed with him as he refused to give in to social mores. With false casualness, her eyes darted around the room, at the decorations, at the patrons, at the staff behind the bar. He did the same, noting that the two smokers had returned inside. Both were large men with days old stubble. He brushed his fingers against his jaw thoughtfully. He’d liked having a beard.

“Kara tells me you’re taking her to see some colleges,” he said, eventually, locating perhaps the only subject they would be able to find any common ground on. Leah had always been kind to Kara and the girl had formed an inexplicable affection for her.

Leah focused on him warily. “Yes. She’s—not sure about it. We thought it would be nice if we saw a couple of places. There are some open days. There’s no pressure, obviously. She has time.”

“Did you ever attend?”

“College? No.” Leah took a sip of her beer. “You?”

“A few times. al-Qarawiyyin. Salamanca. Oxford.” Asil shrugged. There were probably others. He couldn’t recall them all.

“Oh.” She picked at the label of her beer with a polished nail, her mouth moving into its traditional pout. “Perhaps you should be the one taking her to colleges.”

Asil frowned at her. “A modern American college? I think not. I wouldn’t know where to start. Besides, she wants your company, not mine.”

The pout disappeared, replaced by a small smile. This faded, after a moment. “Her parents should be doing this,” Leah said, a dark glint in her eye. “I will never understand it.”

“On that we are certainly agreed.” The father had initially been quite proactive in seeking help for his daughter but as time had worn on, he visited less and less. Called more infrequently. The mother, Asil understood, had long distanced herself from the situation. From her daughter. Despite the fact that Kara had her wolf under complete control.

No matter. Kara had a family now – a big one. She would not suffer from lack of love.

They drifted into silence once more. Asil studied two men at the bar, the ones who had returned from smoking their little sticks of tobacco. They had clearly had a few too many drinks so were verging on rowdy. The young woman behind the bar was eyeing them askance.

“I think we’ve done our time,” Asil decided, picking up Leah’s coat. She looked up in surprise. “Let’s go get something to eat.”

*

He drove them to Great Falls and to a diner overlooking the river that served Korean food. He saw Leah’s eyebrows go up at the unprepossessing exterior. “Been here before?” he asked. A malicious part of him would be entertained if she balked at this hurdle. She liked to think herself the lady of the manor, after all. A grubby bar followed by what she perceived as a tacky meal might send her over the edge.

She shook her head. “Not since the 50s.”

Leah didn’t balk and the waitress, Jordan, seated them and gave them menus, along with the specials. Leah shrugged out of her coat, looking around with what he could tell were nostalgic eyes. She half-smiled. “I remember when this place was a soda shop.”

“It must have been very different when you first came to Montana.”

Asil had been born in what was now Morocco and his family had emigrated to Spain when he was a teenager. Whilst certainly Europe had changed significantly in his lifetime, towns and cities that had existed when he had been young were predominantly still present. There were buildings as old, older even, than he. 

“Empty. It was empty,” Leah murmured faintly. “Everywhere you looked. But you didn’t know that. It would have been inconceivable to imagine it like this.” She met his eyes, a question on her lips that she seemed to change her mind about. She visibly chose a different path. “How did you find this place?”

“It was recommended to me by Kim.”

“George’s wife?” Her eyebrows rose again. “Yes, of course. That makes sense.”

At his suggestion – which he positioned as mild, almost off-hand, so that she might not take it on herself to be contrary and do the opposite – Leah ordered the bimimbap and some pork dumplings. He ordered the beef yuk gae jang which came with a side of rice and cucumber kimchi.

“I remember the desserts being particularly good. Unless they’re all Korean now? I don’t know much about Korean desserts either,” Leah asked in an undertone as their waitress left. She picked up her Coke and sipped.

“No, I think they have some staple American diner fare.”

The food arrived after they had enjoyed some desultory conversation. It was fresh, hot and delicious. They ate silently in appreciation. Asil urged Leah to try the cucumber kimchi and she nodded, a hand held over her mouth as she chewed. “It’s very good.”

Asil was pleased. The fare was different here than many of the other diners and restaurants in the area. “There’s a reasonably good East Indian and East African restaurant, in the Columbus Center. But they’re not open that frequently. She posts a different menu each week on Facebook.”

Leah paused, a dumpling speared at the end of a pair of awkwardly-held chopsticks. “You’re on Facebook?”

“Of course. Aren’t you?”

She shook her head. “I asked a few years ago. Bran forbade it.”

He wondered why, then decided he would lose nothing by asking. “What was his rationale? Many of the pack use social media.”

“Too close to him. I suggested I use a false identity but apparently that could be traced back if I wasn’t careful.” Leah pulled a face.

“Perhaps you could ask again. Now.”

Her eyebrows rose again. She’d lined her eyes with kohl which made her blue eyes even bluer, eerily so under the strip-lights of the diner. They could almost be the eyes of her wolf. “And what? Tell him it’s a way to meet men?”

Asil huffed out an unexpected laugh. “That was an angle I hadn’t considered. But it is a way to connect with people. An increasingly common way,” he added, thinking of the growing number of old and new acquaintances whom he could tap into on a daily basis remotely. Which was his ideal way of connecting, to be frank. Then, because he’d heard some things, “And, as I understand it, your name has already been connected with his. Publicly.”

Leah had learned not to be indiscrete. She picked up her Coke once more and disarmed him with a genuine smile. “This has been really very delicious, Asil. Thank you for introducing me.”

*

“Good Lord, Asil, do you have a list of awful bars?” Leah whispered to him on their next trip as she slid onto a what he could tell from her wince was a slightly sticky bar stool. The tip of her index finger brushed the surface of the table hesitantly and then she recoiled. 

“Yes,” he replied, shortly. It wasn’t as if he spent his days seeking out unpleasant venues to escort his Alpha’s wife to but when he did happen to pass an appropriately dingy looking location, he did make a note of it.

It was all part of the ruse, of course. The likelihood of Leah even striking up an amicable conversation was slim to none. When she returned to home and expectant husband, she could say with absolute truth that she liked the look of no one.

“I think it’s helping,” Leah announced, when he returned to their two-seater table with their drinks. She’d branched out into a whiskey, which he’d noted she preferred. He’d gone for an alcohol-free beer which had given the barman something of a twitch.

“Oh?”

Her cheeks pinked and her eyes lowered. “He’s—well, I notice a difference.”

Though he had observed nothing himself, Asil would give her credit to an insight into Bran that few would have. Even before all this, she probably knew him best, save Samuel. There was little more intimate than marriage.  

It was a Thursday night and the bar itself wasn’t particularly busy. There were several pool tables lying empty. The few patrons that were there had their eyes glued to the screens.

“Do you play?” Thinking it unlikely, he jerked his head towards the tables in invitation.

Leah surprised him by nodding. She jumped off her stool, passing a hand over her backside as if checking for residue from the seat. “Of course. We used to have a pool table.”

“In the games room?” Asil supposed it was a large enough space for one, though there were simply small tables for the variety of board games and puzzles now. There was a gaming room in the sub-level.

“Yes. In the 70s? 80s? I forget. It was before your time,” she murmured airily. He followed her to the table and she picked up a pool cue and inspected the end, grabbed the piece of chalk from the shelf on the wall. “A fight broke out one year and a pool cue went through someone heart.” She said this with some relish.

Asil blinked. “Oh dear.” He tilted his head to the side. “In the Marrok’s house?”

“If you think that’s unlikely, let me tell you about the Christmas of 1968,” Leah said drily.

Over a neat game of pool, almost unprompted, Leah Cornick entertained him with story after story of Aspen Creek disasters – ranging from wild to the wildly unlikely – all delivered in a paper-dry tone. He had not known she was witty. This was a revelation.

“No, I don’t believe it.” Smiling despite himself, Asil shook his head even though he could hear the truth in her words. “Not even Tag.”

“Afterwards, he blamed it on the poitín.” Leah’s voice was bland, as if she didn’t want to color his disbelief with her own. “But we had to replace the entire living room suite, the rug and the drapes. Bran was furious. Tag was banned from full moon pack runs for six months.”

Asil could not – absolutely could not – wait to bring this up with Tag. He was almost tempted to send him a message now.

As he plotted the finer details of this, he watched as Leah bent over and neatly potted the 8 ball. She had won. Again. “Another game?” she asked, not holding back a self-satisfied smile.

Asil shrugged. He was more dominant than she to such a degree that it did not bother him if she won a measly game of pool or two. Not much, anyway. “Why not.”

“May we get some chicken wings?” Her nose wrinkled and she looked towards the kitchens. “They smell tolerable.”

*

Asil did happen to see Bran the next day, whilst he was out on his morning constitutional. Bran slowed his truck to a halt and rolled his window down so they could strike up conversation. “Nice day for it,” the Marrok said wryly, referencing the drizzle.

Asil grunted. One of the sacrifices he’d made for his sanity was remaining in a state that had winters that lasted what felt like most of the year. But it wasn’t so much the cold, it was the grey that bothered him. Endless days of snowfall or rain that kept an active person indoors, with the few crisp bright sunny days dropping the temperature down past acceptable levels. Summers were short and often accompanied by wildfires and a haze of smoke.

Bran smiled. “Good evening? Leah said she played pool.”

“She did. She certainly impressed some of the locals.” Asil was reminded, then, of the story she’d told him about Tag, one that he’d yet to torment his friend with. He felt a moment of quiet joy, the anticipation of a delight yet to come. He had learnt to appreciate those moments.

“Perhaps with Anna here we could get another pool table,” Bran mused. “I had forgotten how much Leah enjoyed it.”

She had certainly shown she had a talent for it, more than the simple hand-eye-coordination. To the pleasure of their growing audience last night, she had demonstrated various trick-shots that she had been only too happy to impart on the few brave souls who approached.

Asil had observed over the years that Leah felt her perceived ‘inadequacies’ keenly – stemming, of course, from the Marrok’s apparently fictional dislike of her. Her comment about her lack of education had also tallied with this view. Thrashing a few humans at pool had given her a bit of a glow, the same glow she got from a good fight. When they had left the bar late last night, she had plenty of fodder to give the Marrok on the subject of men she engaged with socially but he was keenly aware she had also actually enjoyed herself.

That venue would likely be put on their rotation, for however long they kept this fiction up.

“Out of interest,” Bran asked, a furrow appearing in the middle of his forehead, “what do you do when you’re there?”

“I have a book.” This was true. He carried it in his pocket. That it never came out of his pocket was neither here nor there.

“Oh? Anything I’d be interested in?”

He said promptly, “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.”

Bran stared at him. “Extraordinary as it sounds, I think I’ve heard of it.”

“It topped the New York Times Bestseller list for several weeks in 2009.” Asil exhaled, ready to fall onto his sword for the whole exercise and knowing precisely what would do it: “Peggy lent it to me.”

The Marrok’s eyes lit up with sheer joy and, no doubt, sheer triumph. “You are in her bookclub!”

“I am not,” he growled. “I am merely a casual observer.”

Bran cackled, there was no better way to describe it. His hands beat the wheel of his truck. “I knew it was only a matter of time. Well, lend it to me when you’re done. I’ve probably read it but long enough ago that I’ve forgotten.”

“I think it’s from your library,” Asil said, shaking his head at the way of things in Aspen Creek. The circulation of literature from the Marrok himself via Peggy’s Marrok-approved book club. All pre-approved ‘good books’ that he wished his people to read. It was almost cult-like. Nothing was more disappointing than opening a cover and seeing the stamp of Property of Bran Cornick on the inside and knowing in advance that he had sanctioned the work.

“Is it?” Bran was blandly curious. “Remind me?”

“It’s about the occupation of Guernsey during World War II. It’s charming, in a very British way.” He sniffed. There was no chance he would mention that he was on his second read and that he had shed a tear on the first.

“It does ring a bell. Well. I should get on. When is your next outing with my—with Leah?”

Asil noted the hesitation. “Your wife and I,” he said with heavy emphasis not lost on the Marrok, whose jaw muscle twitched, “will be visiting a bowling alley next Wednesday, which was the only night she had available.”

“A bowling alley. Leah?” Bran’s mouth tightened as he held back a smile. “Does she know you have to wear their shoes?”

“She is aware. She believes she can negotiate.”

Bran laughed. “I am sorry I will miss the repercussions. I’ll be away. Have a good time.” Waving, he drove off. Asil watched him disappear down the track and then looked to the grey skies in search of answers. Ridiculous. The whole thing was ridiculous.

*

Leah sulked about the bowling shoes. “I want to leave,” she said.

This outing was not going as well as the previous ones. It was both disappointing and annoying. “Don’t be pathetic. It’s beneath you.”

She looked up at him, apparently so overwhelmed by the awfulness of wearing previously worn sneakers that she had utterly missed the kind of criticism that would usually have her eyes sparking. “They smell.”

“Everything smells here. Go get a bowling ball.” He pointed to the pinspotter. “The sooner we finish the sooner we can leave.”

Scowling, Leah did so for she could see the logic and she was a very logical person. Almost bullishly so. She picked up her first ball – a pink one – and immediately put it down, searching for an appropriately weighted one. She then stood, cradling the ball in her arms, watching the other players.

Belatedly, it occurred to Asil that Leah probably had no idea what she was doing. He stood and came to join her. “Do you know what to do?”

“I know,” she said haughtily, something like her old self. “I watched it on YouTube. I throw this ball down there and hit all the pins.”

“Then I suggest you get on with it.”

“I will. In a moment.” Leah’s tone took on that of the Marrok and Asil felt his wolf respond. He lowered his eyes, covering the submissive move with a bit of a flourish with his shirt placket, as if she hadn’t bothered him at all.

Leah continued to watch their neighbors, to study. From his seat trying to look uninvolved, the book resting on the padded bench next to him, Asil observed her, wondering what she was thinking. It was a simple enough game. Or was she looking at the patrons themselves? Memorizing them in case Bran asked her questions? It was a younger crowd, which had been Asil’s intention. Teens and twenty-somethings, an age Leah could visually easily pass as. He, too, he supposed, though looking at the fresh faces around him made him feel very old indeed.

Eventually, Leah moved and took up position. Then, with one sweeping gesture, pulled her arm back and swung it forward, released the ball close to the ground, bowling it smoothly straight down the middle of the alley.

Ten pins fell like dominoes.

Leah rose to standing, nodded and turned. “I got it, I think,” she announced, as if she had been sitting an exam and she was satisfied with the outcome in an entirely clinical way. “Your turn.”

Asil took his turn. Eight pins fell. He was too distracted by his thoughts to be disappointed. “You learn very quickly,” he said to her.

She nodded. Again, it wasn’t smug. “Bran,” was what she said, with something of a sneer.

“You learn quickly because of Bran?”

“He was my teacher in all things.”

Asil’s wolf didn’t like that. Neither did Asil, come to that. The more he thought on it, the more it became an unsettling statement. He rubbed his thumb down his cheek. “How old were you, when you met?”

Leah lifted her eyebrows. “Does it matter?”

“I find it does, actually.”

She shrugged and rose to get her ball. She hadn’t chosen the heaviest one, Asil noted, which was what most werewolves would do. “Twenty, thereabouts. It was hard to tell. Time passed—strangely, for a while,” she said mysteriously, turning her back on him.

Another perfect strike and Leah was beginning to look pleased. She returned to her seat and looked at the scoreboard, bright-eyed. “Are there tricks, too?”

*

Leah declined to eat the bowling alley with her characteristic sneer. “No, thank you, I imagine their pizza will taste like feet, too.”

They’d driven into Helena for this particular escapade so there were plenty of places to choose from however when he proposed some options, she touched his arm very lightly and shook his head. The brightness from her win had dimmed from her eyes. “Can we just go home?”

“Giving up?”

“No, it’s just been a busy week and I would quite like an early night.”

He was surprised but acquiesced, of course. Bran was elsewhere so perhaps it wasn’t necessary to keep the ruse going any more than necessary.

It wasn’t until they were on the highway that the tone of her voice triggered a question for him. “Something on your mind? More than busyness?”

“No.”

A lie. Which, with her, did not necessarily mean Asil could question it. In some senses he was already stepping over the line of the personal boundaries set between them. She asked him no questions, after all.

Asil pondered the highway before him. Usually, he kept conversations with Leah to the brief and functional. Not unexpectedly, this situation – of Bran’s making – had changed all that. He wouldn’t put it past Bran to have considered this aspect, when he agreed to Asil being Leah’s escort for this farce. The man never did anything without reviewing all possible outcomes.

He cleared his throat. He was going to do it. “How did you and Bran meet?”

There was a weighty pause whilst Leah decided whether or not she would answer. “He saved me,” she said, tentatively.

“Saved you.” Asil narrowed his eyes. When she was twenty or ‘thereabouts’.

She shifted. “Yes. I was dying. He Changed me.”

There were many werewolves on this continent that Bran had Changed. It was no surprise that Leah was one of them. And, if he had his stories right, Bran had also Changed his previous mate, Charles’s mother. The man seemed to make a habit of that.

This was not a comment Asil could make without losing his head, however.

“You were born in America, then,” Asil surmised. After a certain age, asking a werewolf how old they were was strictly taboo but there were ways around it. He suspected she was older than Charles purely because she sometimes took a tone with him that sounded maternal. Not that he imagined either of them would consider her in that role.

“Yes.”

“Where were your people from?”

“In America? I’m not certain. A small town, somewhere in the Mid-West.” She shrugged delicately. “My paternal family were Dutch. My mother’s were British.”

“Do you speak it?”

“A little Dutch. When Johannes was part of the pack, some of it came back to me. It goes, without practice.”

Asil nodded his agreement. He had found the same with his Spanish. More so because what Spanish was spoken on this continent was not the Spanish spoken in mainland Spain. And of course his Arabic had lapsed appallingly. He made an effort, now, to speak to his son once a month and only in Arabic, in an attempt to revitalize his native tongue and to keep his son in line.

Which reminded him – Hussan had been dodging his calls most assiduously these last few weeks. He should send him a demanding email.

Leah leaned forward to check her cell phone and made a small, irritated noise at the blank screen. She dropped it back into her purse and folded her arms.

“Where did you say Bran was?”

“I didn’t.” She raised her eyebrows at him, to say she was not fooled. “He’s in the Tri-Cities.”

“Ah, with Hauptman?” Asil had met the man a time or two. For a young wolf, he was acceptable. He often found those who had spent time in the military as humans produced more reliable werewolves. His mate was an interesting character. Bran’s foster-daughter, the coyote Walker. She had left Aspen Creek by the time Asil had arrived but the waves of her presence had still been felt.

“Yes, with Adam,” Leah murmured.

“Trouble with the fae?”

“He didn’t see fit to share the reason.”

He practically heard Leah’s teeth grinding and this was a small, enclosed vehicle and she was his Alpha’s mate. He would not prick her further.

Leah surprised him, however. “I suspect it is to do with Bonarata, who has decided Mercedes is an entertaining target in her own right, rather than as a stick with which to beat Bran.”

Asil was well aware of Bonarata’s new base in Seattle, of course. And Bran’s express, if unlikely, hope that it was vampire business alone that had him visiting the continent. “She thwarted him.”

“Yes. Honestly, sometimes that generation of creature is unbearable in its arrogance,” Leah said bitterly.

Asil’s mouth twitched. He had a feeling that Leah was lumping more than just Bonarata into that comment. Bran, for certain. Perhaps himself. “There is more to Mercy than simply her will to survive, however,” he reflected. Coyote kept his paws on this continent but Asil had experienced his own share of European deities, willed into belief by prayers of the defenseless and vengeful. “She has a god on her side.”

Leah retched then with a suddenness that had Asil swerving in his lane. A series of cars honked their offense at this but he ignored them, one hand reached out to grab hold of her. “What is it?”

She had her hand over her mouth, hunched in her seat. Her other stabbed at the control of the window and she turned to face the rushing air. It was not quick enough to hide the fact that it was not illness that Asil could smell. It was a physical response to the emotion caused by his words. It was fear.

She kept the window down for the rest of the journey home and she did not speak when he pulled up in front of her home. Usually they exchanged a few polite sentences at the end of an evening. Her formal thanks for the continuation of his support, that sort of thing. This time she clambered out of the car on trembling legs, face pale under her make-up. She hurried inside, slamming the front door behind her.

Asil’s car beeped its alarm at the passenger-side door being left open in her rush and he leaned over to close it. He saw she had left her purse in the footwell. He sighed and picked this expensive article up. He was no good with this and wished he had someone to call upon, someone whom Leah confided in.

But there was no one. Not anymore. The Marroks’ mate was in no position to look weak in front of others and sharing her upset would only humiliate her. And Asil found he did not want to do that. He did not, as he had promised her so many weeks ago, want to tease her any more.  

He crept through the quiet house and laid her purse at the base of the stairs up to the family wing, ears pricked. He heard nothing but the settling of a large, old building battling against the weather.

“Leah, I have left your bag on the stairs,” he called.

“I appreciate it,” came her strident response, followed by a slightly less strident, “I shall lock-up when you leave.”

Raising his eyebrows at this deft disinvitation, Asil nevertheless did as she bid.

*

Word got around, as word tended to do in a town where everybody’s business was passed around like currency. And, like many old men, Asil liked to pretend he was above such gossip when really he relished it. He particularly relished it when he held all the cards.

“What are you doing with Leah Cornick?” Peggy whispered to him the next time there was a gathering at the Marrok’s house.

Anna sidled into the conversation, baby on her hip. Her golden-brown eyes were sparkling with eagerness. “Yes, what are you doing?”

“My, hasn’t she grown,” Asil said drily, offering the baby a finger to hold. This was duly clasped. Asil liked babies. His wolf rarely wanted to eat them and this one belonged to their favorite, Anna, so held a special place in his heart.

“Charles, take her,” Anna instructed of her husband as he passed, “Asil is using her as a distraction.”

Charles snorted and mutely removed his offspring from the conversation. He headed off down the hallway towards the Marrok’s office, where he was holding court. There was the sound of laughter.

Outside, Leah was similarly holding court, this time with the collection of new Changes and Kara. They had set up an archery range both as a method of teaching hand to eye co-ordination but also to test tolerance to competition. Leah’s critical gaze had fallen on two brothers, who were singularly failing on this task and were very close to coming to blows.

To one side, Juste and Tag had moved slightly closer to the proceedings but the rest of the pack were observers, only really in attendance for the food. Later, there would probably be an impromptu pack run. It was predictable and comfortable. It was home.

“Asil,” Peggy laughed, drawing his attention back to her, “you can’t deny something is going on. You drive off with her nearly every week. No one,” she lowered her voice, “spends that much time with Leah.”

Anna’s mouth flickered into a tense little shape. She did not like Peggy’s comment but she held her tongue. “Is it a mission for Bran? He’s been utterly tight-lipped about the whole thing.”

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Asil agreed readily. He tapped the side of his nose because a farce deserved some theatrics. “All will be revealed.”

All would very much not be revealed, of course, and thankfully a new distraction arrived in time for the conversation to change. As expected, the two brothers suddenly went for each other and, as with all such situations, the other young Changes were fueled and confused by the sudden leap in violence and soon found themselves joining in. Asil, Tag and Juste stepped in to help Leah in separating the individuals, with Anna standing to one side pumping out her particular Omega kind of magic.

When the melee finally died down, Susannah - previously the most sensible of the new Changes - was clutching her bleeding head, confused. “What just happened? What just happened? Oh, God, Cora, I hit you. I’m so sorry.”

“I think you broke my arm, actually,” Cora said, looking down at this limp limb with an equal degree of confusion. She poked it and winced. “Ow.”

Leah acknowledged the break with calm resignation. “Kara, take her to the medical room. I’ll be along shortly and you can practice setting it.” She turned icy eyes to the two brothers, each being held by an amusedlooking Juste and Tag, and both brothers stopped struggling at her penetrating look. “You two are in isolation for twenty-four hours. Take them downstairs.”

The three other Changes stood with various superficial wounds, wide-eyed with the fear of some kind of punishment themselves but Leah simply swept over their injuries with an expert eye. “You’ll all be fine. Go wash and get something to eat. Asil, would you—?” She jerked her head towards them and he interpreted this as an instruction to watch them.

He inclined his head. “Of course.” He picked Grady up from the grass. He had a broken nose. “I’ll show you how to set that.”

Anna gave him a sharp-eyed look as he escorted Grady to the nearest washroom. He resolved to avoid her for the rest of the night.

*

In the following few weeks, Asil’s duties took him to a couple more dubious bars, the multiplex cinema in Helena and an ice-skating rink where he sat on the side whilst Leah practiced a series of what were, to his eyes, professional-level figure skating exercises.

She skidded to a halt next to where he was sitting and leaned on the barrier. “You sure you don’t want to join?”

“My people were not designed for ice,” he said.

Leah thought this funny. “They don’t have ice rinks in Spain?”

“A modern construction rather than necessity.” Asil put aside his book. For the purposes of verisimilitude, he was now reading a biography on Genghis Khan. The inside of the cover was unblemished by Property of Bran Cornick which gave Asil great satisfaction every time he opened it. “This location isn’t conducive to conversation.”

“No, I suppose it’s not.” She looked over her shoulder to where a group of teenagers were shrieking and clinging to each other. “Not without effort, at least.”

Leah had suggested tonight’s excursion, which made a change from it usually being his. Once he had seen her on the ice, Asil suspected Leah just liked to skate and was using this as an opportunity to do so. He was beginning to feel she did not take much time to herself which rather went against the grain of what he knew about her. Or what he had been told.

Asil’s stomach rumbled, reminding him that his lunch had been interrupted by some Marrok-related business. “I thought we could get pizza for dinner. Carlos’.”

She frowned. “We’d need to book.”

“I have taken the liberty of doing so. For seven.”

She checked her watch. It was nearly half past six. “So I can take ten more minutes?”

He blinked in surprise. Leah Cornick didn’t ask. As his Alpha’s mate, she rarely couched her commands with any semblance of pleasantries, let alone request for permission. Particularly his permission. “Of course. Ten, fifteen minutes. It’s not far from here.”

Leah pushed off from the barrier with a wide smile and set off, gaining speed. She proceeded to go through a series of motions – spins and things that looked fairly lethal, involving as they did bladed footwear. Asil noted a number of the teenagers currently using the rink stopped to watch her. And one or two adult men. It would perhaps not take much effort on her behalf to strike up conversation, if she wanted to.

But she didn’t.

Asil returned to his book and fifteen minutes later, Leah’s own boots in her personalized bag swinging at her side, they walked through the slushy parking lot to his Subaru. Leah’s cell phone rang as they climbed into the car and seeing it was Kara she put her on speakerphone. “Problem?” she asked.

“Why are you ice skating with Asil?”

They exchanged a look. “How did you know that?”

“Jessica O’Connell is doing a Live. I saw you!”

“I would like to point out that I wasn’t ice skating,” Asil interrupted. He pulled out of the parking lot. He didn’t want to be late for their table. Being a few minutes late for a table booking might be acceptable in Spain but he had found it was far less so in the US.

“What’s a live?” Leah wondered.

“It’s a video being filmed and published on the internet at the same time,” Kara explained quickly. “Are there bad guys at the ice rink? Jessica’s a real bitch but I don’t want her to die.”

Leah grumbled. “I know you think I’m more lenient than Bran with cursing but please don’t use that word in reference to another girl again.”

“Sorry.”

“There are no bad guys. I wanted to skate and Asil—” She stopped. Clearly there was no plausible reason that Leah could come up with for why they were spending time together, which was remiss of her. This was bound to happen sooner or later.

Asil verbally stepped in. “Bran wants us to be on better terms.”

“Yes,” Leah corroborated quickly, “he does.”

They both exchanged another look, Leah perhaps realizing for the first time that this was likely true. She rolled her eyes over-dramatically. Yes, that was certainly the expression of someone who realized they had been manipulated by the Marrok. He knew the feeling well.  

“Oh. That’s… nice I guess.” Despite her earlier profession as to the safety of her frenemy, Kara sounded disappointed. “Sawyer thinks you’re hot.”

“Who me?” Leah preened a little.

Kara giggled. “No, Asil. Sawyer’s gay.”

It was Asil’s turn to preen. “What excellent taste your young friend has.”

“He’s not my friend. He’s a bitch too.” Kara hung up.

After the silence that followed this extraordinarily pithy statement, Leah sighed voluptuously. “I’ll miss her when she goes to college.”

*

Word of Bran’s nefarious plan to bring Asil and Leah together as ‘friends’ rushed around Aspen Creek so quickly that it was barely mid-morning before he’d had a near-hysterical visit from Tag, who howled with laughter at the thought of Asil accompanying Leah to an ice-rink.

“Did she try to skate over your face?” Tag asked, wiping his eyes with the backs of his hand.

“She didn’t. I read my book.”

“Whoo boy,” his friend wheezed, gusting out enough air to rustle the leaves of his Baccara tea rose, “what an image. Is she pissed?”

“No, indeed, she’s been very sanguine about the matter. And why should she be pissed? Spending time with me is surely a great blessing that few on earth have truly had the luck to experience.” Asil gestured at Tag with his shears – snip, snip – to indicate he was not being serious.

“I know, I know, but Bran also ordered her to make friends with Sage.” The humor dropped rapidly from Tag’s face. “And look how well that turned out.”

“I didn’t know that.” Sage had been part of the pack before Asil had joined. They’d had many a conversation about Leah, all of which he now looked back on with some serious doubt. Sage had been trying to get close to Bran through whatever means necessary but Asil had never questioned her dubious friendship with Leah, not even when she discussed her negatively behind her back.

To this day he was still not sure if her interest in him had been truthful – or if he had simply been another play. No matter. She was dead now and he had been the one to end her.

“Yeah. They had an almighty row about it. I overheard. But she did it.” Tag placed one buttock on the stool Asil kept around for guests who haunted his hothouse, though it was not a space many werewolves lingered for long. Already, the short hairs around Tag’s face were curling in the humidity.

Tag seemed to drift off into his own thoughts for a while, as he often did. Despite his appearance, and his tendency towards tempers, he was otherwise quite a restful companion. Asil got on back to tending to his beloved flowers.

“So how does it work? Being friends with Leah Cornick?”

“Much as it works with anyone I suppose.”

“Aye, but you and I have never gone ice skating.”

“If you wanted to go ice skating with me, Tag, all you had to do was ask.” He smiled toothily at him and found Tag creased with laughter once more.

“Well,” he said, slapping his hands on his tree-trunk-like thighs before sliding off the stool, “if anyone can manage Leah Cornick it’s you. And maybe she could do with some fun. She’s had a tough time. We all have. These last few months. Years even.”

There was something strangely hurried about the way Tag tacked on his last comments. Almost as if he was covering something, though for certain he was right. Tag had nearly died. Asil had been haunted by his lost mate and vile foster-daughter.

He followed Tag halfway through the house and watched him slide his Birkenstocks back on. “Was it bad? What happened to her in California?”

Tag harrumphed. “I nearly died.”

“I know that.” Asil kept his tone low. “Bran jumped from a helicopter brandishing a sword forged by the Dark Smith of Drontheim. Anna was kidnapped by the son of a god. And Charles brought lightening down to kill Cthulhu. It’s odd, isn’t it, that no one mentions Leah in this battle.”

“She fought hard.”

Asil could well imagine. He had seen Leah fight. She was a stone-cold killer. But what had possessed her – to run from Bran across two states to join her step-son and daughter-in-law? She had never behaved so before. The more he reflected on it, the more curious it became and each time he put it aside, it returned to him, that curiosity.

Tag pulled open the door with a sigh. “It’s not for anyone to share but her, Asil.”

“So something did happen.”

The berserker gave Asil a dark look. “She fought hard.”

Asil sneered, irritated despite the obvious sense that Tag was right not to break the trust of his Alpha and his Alpha’s mate. “I’ll find out some other way.”

“You’ll try. You’ll fail.” He flashed a quick grin that was very wolfy given he was in his human body and lumbered off.

*

Asil was not the only one on the receiving end of gossip. When he picked Leah up for their next outing, she practically dove into the car. “Drive, drive, drive,” she chanted, like he was the getaway driver.

His tires squealed as they shot down the long driveway away from the mansion, Leah half-turned in her seat to see if they were being followed.

“Who is tailing us?” Asil asked, checking the rear view mirror.

“Anna wanted the link to the group hike we booked. She said she was thinking of coming along. I sent her it but I deleted a few of the letters off at the end.”

Asil winced. They had booked tickets to a group hike, that was true, but purely as a cover for what they were actually doing – which was a solo hike. Well, solo with the two of them. He’d never actually been to Yellowstone before, which Leah had discovered – and seemed to be appalled by – when they’d gone for dinner the other week.

Pointing out to her that for most of his sojourn in Montana he had been on the verge of a mental breakdown had done little to dim her enthusiasm for the idea. It had just taken them a couple of weeks of a way to come up with a way to make it sound like an activity where Leah might meet the love of her life.

Or not.

“Does Bran even ask about these excursions?”

“Yes. Every time.” Leah sat back in her seat, reassured that Anna wasn’t hightailing it after them.

“And?”

“And what?”

“What does he ask?”

“He wants to know where I’m going.” She shrugged. “That’s it.”

Still vaguely mindful that they might have a tail, Asil turned onto the main road through Aspen Creek and checked for any familiar-looking cars. “You don’t think he’s really doing this so we’ll be on better terms, do you?”

Leah laughed, bitterly. “No. That is a side benefit. Last night he—” She stopped herself and, God help him, Asil was suddenly desperate to know more about her personal life than he had ever considered himself wanting to know before.

He refused to give in. It was a point of honor. “Perhaps we should put you on a dating app.”

“Oh I did that.”

“You have not.”

She nodded blithely. “Hinge, it’s called. Bran suggested it, since I haven’t met anyone yet. I haven’t used it. It was bad enough filling out the profile whilst he watched.”

“Whilst he watched?” For some reason, Asil found himself appalled. Even more appalled. Angry even. “Maybe you should do it. In fact, open it up right now and swipe left or right. Have Bran drive you to meet one of these men. That will put an end to this,” he growled. Whatever insanity Bran was suffering under would surely shatter if he actually saw his mate with another man.

“You think?”

“I do think. A hard dose of reality is what our dear Marrok needs.” He glanced at her. “Clearly, we have not done enough to shock him. Do it.”

She was clearly intrigued. “Sincerely?”

“Yes.”

Slowly, Leah unzipped her crossbody bag. Within a few taps she had opened up the app and her finger moved cautiously over the screen. In his peripheral vision he could see photos of men and had to admit to some curiosity about the process. All his dates had been arranged for him, relying on the dubious capabilities of his ‘friends’.

“I had to set the radius quite large,” she told him, “because we live in the middle of nowhere.”

Still in quite a bad mood, Asil kept his response to the minimum. “Mmm-hmm.”

“And I had to change my age. At first I put down twenty-two because that’s what my current social security says but you then have to say what age range you’re interested in and I felt like a pervert.” She delivered this to him with a wide smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes. This, Asil was learning, was Leah’s real smile.

In the hour-long drive to Yellowstone, Leah begrudgingly swiped or clicked or ticked a handful of men that she described as ‘not completely unredeemable’. Then she put her cell phone away with a sniff. “They have to respond now. Or swipe up. Or something. Maybe no one will.”

Asil thought this unlikely but he didn’t want to add fuel to her already considerable vanity – and he meant no disrespect by that. He, too, had considerable vanity. Indeed, by the time they had pulled up in the designated parking lot, her phone had vibrated with confirmations of matches and messages from her prospective beaus.

She read some of these with a curled lip. “This one has just directly asked me if I’d like to meet up.”

“A fast mover.”

“He’s a landscape designer.”

“Outdoorsy.”

“I don’t like the hat in his profile picture.”

“There is a limit to how much I want to engage with this.”

Leah seemed to accept this as reasonable. They got out of the car. She was already wearing hiking boots but Asil’s were in the trunk. As he changed, she rocked on the balls of her feet reading the other messages with a furrowed brow. She shook her head and tucked her cell phone away. “So, I mapped out the route the hiking group takes. We should meet them around the halfway point, unless they’re particularly slow, then we can take a few photos with them.”

“Impressive deception.”

“Thank you.”

It was a pleasant hike, spent mostly in thoughtful silence with the occasional bland comment on the scenery or pause for Leah to take a photo on her cell phone. They did meet up with the hiking group and Asil charmed them into taking his and Leah’s photo before they carried on ahead of them.

“There were only two men in that group and were clearly spouses,” Asil pointed out.

“I know,” Leah said enthusiastically, already thinking of what she would truthfully tell her mate, “isn’t that helpful?”

They walked briskly, until they couldn’t hear the hikers anymore.

She stuck her hands into the pockets of her waterproof. “The more I think about it, the more I think you’re right. I think I actually have to go through with actual dating.”

Asil nodded vaguely. He was beginning to regret suggesting this and pushing her into it. He had an inkling this was going to go badly.

“I’ll say yes to the landscape designer,” she said confidently.

*

Leah said yes to the landscape designer but unfortunately her first date with him was timed for when Bran was away, which rather defeated the point. She met him for a coffee and called Asil on from her car afterwards. “It was an absolutely bizarre experience.”

Asil contemplated the bright-pink petals of the Zephirine Drouhin shrub roses he was growing. This was going to be a gift for Peggy’s birthday. They were good climbers and she had an arch at the end of her yard that would be perfect to train them to grow over. “How so?”

“He wore the hat, for one. Not quite properly. Sort of resting on his head. Very odd.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“I barely remember what we talked about. Certainly nothing interesting.”

Asil thought this was a shame. He was beginning to feel it might do Bran good if Leah actually did begin to enjoy herself. It would certainly do Leah some good.

She sighed heavily. “He wanted to meet again tonight, which seems alarmingly keen. So I suggested Saturday instead and now I have to find something to wear to a meal out with a man. I don’t go for dinner with men,” she muttered.

“You’ve been for dinner with me.”

“You obviously do not count. My God, I hope he doesn’t wear the hat. Oh, Bran’s calling me. Excuse me.” She hung up.

Asil missed her next few calls because he did have a life to lead that didn’t involve the curious mating rituals of his Alpha and his wife – in that Tag arrived to invite him for a run, which he accepted with alacrity. He missed the second set of calls later because he was finally on the phone to his son, who had just informed him he was to be a grandfather. Again.

“But you’re not married,” Asil found himself saying, dumbstruck. Hussan’s one and only wife had died in the early 20^th Century. A good woman, she had blessed him with three grandchildren and had never let Hussan walk all over her.

“That’s not really how it works any more, Dad,” Hussan said.

Asil had a few choice words to say on that subject, in both Arabic and Spanish. “You’ll bring the mother of my grandchild to meet me,” he instructed him, since it was impossible for him to return to Europe. “The Marrok will give you permission.”

“Baba…” Hussan groaned. “She doesn’t know what I am.”

“What! You got a child on a woman who doesn’t know you’re a monster?” Infuriated, Asil hung up the landline so hard the plastic material cracked. He growled. Hassan was a grown man. Far too old to be behaving with such dishonesty. He picked up the phone to call him back only to see the tail end of another missed call, flashing on his cell phone.

Leah’s name disappeared and was replaced by a series of missed call notifications and text messages. He was sincerely not in the mood for additional drama so he turned his cell phone off. He would deal with whatever that was after he had dealt with his son.

*

The conversation with his son took longer than expected. He got the whole sorry story from him in dribs and drabs. The woman was a D'Sousa, which was a very common Portuguese name unless you were a werewolf in which case the first question was always going to be “Not one of Francisco D’Sousa’s daughters?”

D’Sousa being the Alpha of the one of the packs that bordered between Portugal and Spain. He and Asil had long had a rivalry, in that D’Sousa would have been all too happy to let Chastel into the Iberian Peninsula and would have shown him his belly whilst he did it.

“You got a child on a D’Sousa,” Asil kept repeating, one hand pressed against his face like a maiden on the verge of a faint.

“I did not know she was a D’Sousa. They are estranged. She used her mother’s name.” Hussan was rapidly losing patience and his voice was nothing but a low growl. “It has been very difficult, Baba.”

“Very difficult. Very difficult,” Asil repeated, his voice raising, “I’m certain. There are many forms of birth control.”

“And I can assure you, we were using all of them,” Hussan shouted back. This time it was Hussan who hung up.

Eventually, cooler heads prevailed.

“It is surely God’s will,” Asil decided, for a werewolf accidentally conceiving was not the most likely of all scenarios. All his children had taken at least a year to conceive, with many lost opportunities along the way. “You will tell her what you are and you will marry her, of course.”

Hussan grumbled. “She is resisting my efforts in that direction.”

“She doesn’t want to marry you?”

“She is very independent. She says we can co-parent.”

Asil was speechless once more. “What does that mean?”

“I am not sure. I think I will have visitation rights.”

If Asil hadn’t already been sitting down, he would have had to do so again. Visitation rights? For the first time he noticed the tone of his son’s voice which, yes, had taken on the obstreperous notes of his teenage years of many decades before but was otherwise fairly soulful. “Ah, my boy, you love her.”

“Desperately. I do not think she feels the same way about me and she certainly will not when she discovers I am the Alpha of a pack of werewolves, like her damned father.” His son swallowed. “I have not felt like this since Aliyah and I… do not know what to do.”

Asil did not know either. But perhaps that was because of the mental blocker he appeared to have where his son would marry a woman before he impregnated her. He sighed. Sometimes these modern social mores hit him at the most inopportune moment. “I think,” he said slowly, “you be there for her, in whatever way she lets you, and you show her that you are a good partner, an excellent partner, and that is all you can do.”

Hussan was quiet for a long, fulsome moment. “It is not easy. I wish, strongly, to cart her away somewhere and surround her with wolves to keep her safe.”

“That is the wolf. Do not listen to the wolf. The wolf is not of the Twenty-First Century.”

His son laughed. “It is funny to hear you say that.”

In some ways, it was one of the best conversations he’d ever had with his son, at least in this century. It was rare to be given the opportunity to offer adult children adult advice – and for them to take it. For a long time, Asil had been very angry with Hussan, for not being able to kill him when he asked him to. And Hussan had been angry with Asil, for wanting him to. You are not mad, Baba. You are just grieving. Which had made Hussan even angrier. Hussan had loved his mother and Asil had, too, in a way – just the feeling had always paled when it came to thoughts of his mate. His Sarai.

He made himself tea on autopilot and whilst the teakettle was boiling he recalled the many missed calls from Leah. Feeling now like Leah’s situation was somewhat easier to bear than his son’s, he turned his cell phone back on and called her. It went straight to voicemail.

“This is Leah. Leave a message if you must. Better yet send a text.” 

Asil hung up. He poured hot water into the teapot and tapped his way to the messages he had seen.

“Oh dear,” he said, faintly.

*

There was a trio of nattering humans standing outside the small, red-brick apartment block, contained in the safety of a pool of light cast from a streetlight. All three had the look of the hunted about them which Asil’s wolf enjoyed, to a degree. The front entrance to the apartment block had been taped up and there was a very nervous police officer in place, his hand touching the weapon on his hip. Across the street there was an animal control vehicle. Asil could smell blood.

Using the gift of his additional werewolf senses, Asil kept walking, bag swinging at his side. He headed down the quiet street, with only the occasional car passing to keep him company. He paused at the window of a good, second-hand bookshop he had frequented before to see what they had on display and then he crossed over to where an oddly arranged residential area had left a small copse of straggling trees and bushes for public consumption. There was a strong smell of urine – human and canine.

Casually, Asil swung the bag into the denser area of greenery.

“Thank you,” said Bran.

With nothing to do but stand and look casual – as casual as a black man could, alone on a street after eleven p.m. in a city where the population was more than ninety-percent white – Asil rolled back and forth on his heels, his hands in his pockets.

Bran emerged in the set of clothes Asil had brought with him, the rucksack on his shoulder. He’d obviously used the wipes Leah had suggested Asil pack because his face had a glossy sheen. There was a spot of blood on his neck that he had missed.

“My car is up there,” Asil said, gesturing in the direction he’d come.

“Lead on,” said Bran.

Neither of them looked at the apartment block as they passed, indeed Asil had chosen to walk on the other side of the road. The nattering humans had disappeared, in any case, and so had the animal control vehicle. The scent of blood still lingered, however.

Asil had brought the Subaru. He paused at the driver-side door to ask the obvious question. “Do you want to drive?”

Bran’s face, usually fairly carefully controlled, went through a serious of forms before settling on resigned. “I think I do,” he decided.

Asil did not sigh. He simply handed his keys to the more dominant werewolf and they swapped sides.

Bran fussed with the seat, which was annoying because Asil would have to move it closer later, and then he fussed with the rear view mirror. And then it was obvious he was stalling. “Did I kill him?” he asked, eventually, almost academically.

“No.”

Bran’s eyelids fluttered, almost closed. “That’s something, I suppose.”

Since it would be actual insanity for Asil to address the situation whilst in a small moving vehicle with the most powerful werewolf in the world, one who was on the edge of some very powerful feelings, he did not. It was only when Asil realized they were not heading home that he did venture to ask a question. “Where are we going?”

“I presume she’s at the hospital. With him.” Bran’s eyes flashed with his wolf.

She was. She had, in her words, felt ‘obligated’ and intended to pay for his care and had sounded very irritated about feeling that way. Asil had no idea what Bran thought he was going to do there, however. “She has arranged transportation,” Asil said carefully. Heather was on stand-by.

The wheel of Asil’s car made an unpleasant noise and he wasn’t as fond of this car as he was his Porsche but it was still a useful vehicle. He cleared his throat and eyed the white-knuckled grip Bran had on the wheel. “But we can go if you want.”

Bran’s hands relaxed. “I want.”

So they drove to St. James’s and parked facing the hospital. It wasn’t very busy so there was little to look at except for the occasional figure passing a window. An hour passed. Then two. Asil could tell that Leah was still in the building and he supposed that Bran had that facility as well through the mating bond. He supposed too that Leah knew that Bran was near.

At three fifty a.m., Leah walked out of the doors and Bran’s entire being relaxed in such a palpable way that Asil felt it too. His wolf began to descend in increments with every step she made towards them.

“I’ll sit in the back,” he announced.

“No. I will,” Bran muttered, getting out.

Asil rolled his eyes so hard they practically touched the back of his head. Given it couldn’t be expected that Leah would drive, he got out as well and he and Bran passed each other as Asil went to take the driver’s seat.

Leah slid into the front passenger seat without a word or even a look in either of their direction.

With Leah’s demonstrably furious wolf now back in the fray, the journey home was one of the tensest of Asil’s life – and even as he recognized that, part of him wanted to howl with laughter at the ridiculousness of it all.

He pulled up in front of the pack house, excited to be rid of both of them and return to his home, to his quiet house and his comfortable bed.

Bran slammed his way out of the car but then Leah looked at him. “Come inside,” she said.

“I will do no such thing.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You will come inside,” she ordered. “I need you to tell him he’s being a lunatic.”

The sound he made wasn’t a whimper. It wasn’t. “This is between you and he, Leah Cornick.” And Bran would not appreciate his interference.  

Leah said nothing, she simply got out of the car, leaving the order hanging and his wolf wanting to obey. He could ignore it, of course. She had not used Bran’s power to imbue her instruction with his superior strength. It would niggle at him, his disobedience, that was all. He could live with a niggle.

Sighing, he turned off the engine, and followed her indoors where the argument had already begun.

*

Asil took refuge in the kitchen. Whilst it did little to dampen the sound of the argument, it at least removed him from the line of fire and he was able to piece together the full scope of how Leah’s coffee date had denigrated into a trip to the Emergency Room.

To start with, it seemed that Bran had not known Leah was meeting a man yesterday. Not for coffee. Not for anything. Asil had not been aware of this. Leah had decided since Bran would be away it wasn't worth telling him and in any case she did not consider coffee a momentous occasion in the farce of her dating exploits.

This, Asil reflected, as he made himself a cup of Earl Grey, was a mistake.

To Bran, it had appeared Leah had been hiding a man from him, when before she had been very open about every foray. Asil had not quite appreciated this nuance himself – that it had been vital that Bran knew all the details, about where Leah was, what she was doing, who she was seeing. It was obvious now that he thought about it. Bran was a control freak.

And Asil had to remember that Bran didn’t want Leah to meet anyone she liked. Quite the opposite. Not that Bran said that now. Now his argument focused very much on Leah being secretive and telling her with absolute seriousness, for this to work, we need to be honest with each other.

He sorted through the fruit bowl, looking for a lemon, and mouthed ‘psychopath’ to himself.

The phone call that Leah had taken from Bran that afternoon had led to a series of unfortunate falling dominoes. Bran, shocked that Leah had secretly met up with a landscape designer – this career choice oddly came up a lot, for no reason Asil could understand – had retreated into courteous coldness and questioned why Leah had pushed out a second meeting to later. Why not go now, he had masochistically suggested, or words to that effect. He seems taken with you.

Naturally, Leah had responded with logic and calmness, seeing straight through her husband’s hurt feelings to the truth.

Or not.

Why not indeed. I’ll do just that. I’ll go home and put fewer clothes on and come back out.

At least, that was how Asil imagined she had put it. She had not been wearing a sensible pair of jeans and a sweater when she had emerged from the hospital. Indeed, it had been a vengefully small black dress and she’d been carrying a pair of high heels, which he assumed had not been her clothing choice for their casual coffee that afternoon.

Subsequent to this passive aggressive conversation with her husband, Leah had promptly contacted the landscape designer, arranged a date for that evening – at his apartment, no less, and Asil really wished he’d picked up the phone, he would have told her that was a terrible idea – and returned home to change.

Bran meanwhile had lost his mind utterly and caught the first flight back, leaving what sounded like several fairly bemused werewolves in Denver alone with their lawyers. He had then paid a stranger to drive him to Butte and stalked Leah and her date from a bar near his apartment, around the Safeway where they had apparently picked up a frozen pizza, chips, dip and wine, and then back to his apartment.

All of which sounded like a particularly lame sort of arrangement to Asil, certainly not the sophisticated wooing a woman like Leah Cornick would require, and surely Bran would have seen that. May well have seen that - except the Landscape Designer had nipped back into the Safeway, leaving Leah with the frozen pizza outside, and Bran had watched him buy condoms.

At the point in the argument where this detail was revealed, Asil inhaled his tea and had to muffle his choking in his elbow.

In the living room, there was a pause as both combatants acknowledged his presence.

Leah lowered her voice. “I didn’t know that. I certainly wasn’t going to have sex with him, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“You went to his apartment.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Bran, too, was trying hard not to raise his voice but Asil could all but imagine the glittering eyes. “It sets an expectation, Leah.”

Leah was baffled by this. “Well, I’m sorry if it did, because I had no intention of sleeping with a man I’d met only a handful of hours before. Which he would have learnt pretty swiftly had you not decided to break in and try to tear off his arm.”

The real issue, Asil decided as he topped up his tea, was that he had no one to tell this story to. He could think of plenty of people who would enjoy the tale of the Marrok’s backwards seduction of his mate but there was simply no way he could repeat it without any of the participants looking like fools. Including himself, Asil acknowledged, because he had been part of this farce from the beginning. He had taken an unlikely pity on Leah and humored the Marrok. He had not truly expected it would go on much longer, nor reach the stage where Bran was tearing apart humans.

“I just need you to be more upfront with me.”

“Fine,” Leah said and there was something arch in her voice now. “But out of interest, Bran, should there come a time when I am interested in pursuing that, how exactly would you like me to be up front with you?”

“Naturally, there would be several stages before that—”

“No,” Leah interrupted. “There won’t. There are expectations, it seems. Expectations that men and women sleep with each other within a few hours of meeting. What if I meet someone – the lawyer perhaps who is interested in seeing me next week when he’s back from New York. And he takes me for a nice meal at Carlos’ – we’ve already exchanged one or two messages about our favorite restaurants – and he kisses me goodbye and I—”

“Stop it.”

“And he kisses me goodbye and I get that feeling, right here, that I always get when you kiss me—”

“Stop it.”

At the escalating sound of Bran’s wolf’s unhappiness, and the tone of a woman who knew exactly how to bring her man to his knees, Asil put down his cup. It was definitely time to leave.

*

Bran brought a box of expensive tea with him when he visited.

“Thank you,” Asil said graciously, accepting what was demonstrably an apology gift. He had found a tin of cookies and a tin of caramels on his doorstep early that morning – gifts from Leah, too mortified to face him. Tag had decimated the cookies during lunch but he’d managed to hide the caramels successfully. They were made with fresh pressed apple cider and were one of the most delicious things he had ever tasted.

Smiling, Asil ambled down to his kitchen. “Will you join me?” He waved the tin around.

“Please.” Bran shrugged off his jacket and draped it over the back of a chair before sitting down. He perused the front page of this morning’s newspaper. “How disappointing. They are knocking down that recreation center. I remember when it was built.”

Asil did not give a damn about the recreation center. He spooned loose tea into the metal strainer of his glass teapot. “Apparently it’s going to be a Walmart.”

“Another one?”

They fell into easy conversation, the kind old wolves always had. Buildings that had been knocked down to make way for the new. Debate over the value of clinging to the past.

It was clear Bran was dancing around the topic he wished to address and Asil had some hope that he would continue dancing and possibly dance out of the door before he got to it. To facilitate this, Asil introduced the topic of his son and the daughter of D’Souza and Bran reacted much the way Asil had, with a look of wide-eyed shock followed by a how?

“The usual way, I imagine,” Asil said drily. He unearthed the last of Leah’s cookies and placed the tin on the table. He dropped down heavily onto the seat opposite Bran. “She has agreed to Facetime with me by way of introduction.”

“And she doesn’t know you’re a werewolf.”

“She does not.”

Shaking his head, Bran puffed out his cheeks and blew out an astonished breath. “That is a situation that can only get worse before it gets better.”

“You’re telling me.”

Bran selected a cookie. “My wife made these,” he said, before taking a bite of one. “Did she also bring you the caramels?”

“Yes, but I’m saving those for a special occasion.” Asil decided it was time to rip the band-aid off. “Did you come here for a particular reason?”

The Marrok grimaced. “To apologize. And to thank you, for your help yesterday.”

“How were you planning on getting home?”

“I wasn’t planning much of anything.” Bran was rueful. “From the moment I hung up on her, I only thought of stopping what I had started.”

This sounded encouraging. “So the game really is off.”

“Game? Is that what she thought of it?” Bran’s voice took on a dangerous edge. He crumbled the last of his cookie onto the table into little crumbs.

“No,” Asil sighed, for he truly did not want to make things worse, “she did not think of it as a game. It was by no means fun or entertaining for her. She was mostly insulted.”

The danger sat there, all-but-written on Bran’s face whilst he tried to get a hold on himself. “Upon reflection, I might have made one or two missteps,” he acknowledged.

It took enormous self-control for Asil not to laugh in Bran’s face. He took a sip of tea. “I suppose you meant well.”

“I’m not sure about that.” Bran’s barely-there laugh was by no means humorous and led to an outpouring of the kind of emotive language Asil had rarely seen from his Alpha. “I have spent most of my marriage pretending she was something other than she was. One year, ten years, fifty. A hundred. I would think to myself that I would change things, when I could. And I never did. After a while it just became this background noise, this… guilt that I had wronged her on a monumental scale and would continue to do so.”

Looking back, Asil had regrets regarding his own mating, of course he did. Arguments that he would take back. Harsh words. Leaving Sarai, sometimes weeks at a time to deal with pack business. Not rejecting the witch child wholly, from the beginning.

But those were regrets of a marriage that was, by and large, a good one, no matter how it had ended. He had loved Sarai and she had known it.

“The difference now is that you see her. You see her for who she is, what she means to you,” Asil said quietly, piecing together all the puzzle pieces Leah had left him. “Something happened, in California, perhaps even before, that changed you both.”

Bran said nothing, just looked down at the worn table, his thumb moving against a mark.

“Perhaps Leah is mad herself for staying. For wanting you. But she made her choice a long time ago. Now she simply wants you to respect her for it. This is your chance, Bran, to put aside your guilt and self-hatred.”

For that, at the heart of this, was what it was. Self-hatred. That gut-wrenching rot that poisoned everything.

“Asil,” Bran pinched the bridge of his nose, “you don’t know, truly—”

“I know enough.” Asil was surprised to say it and surprised, too, that he did not want to know more. It was Leah’s business. It was Bran’s. But it was the past. “I don’t mean to say that I don’t entirely sympathize with you. We are both old men, who have harmed our loved ones time and time again.” He thought of Hussan and winced. For his son had told him he was to be a father and his first response had been to criticize him. “But we cannot erase our histories. You cannot—force forgiveness, if that is even what you want, by coming up with creative ways to right past wrongs.”

He tapped his fingers on the table to get Bran to look at him. “In fact, it strikes me that it is not Leah who should be proving her love for you – but the other way around. It should have been you at the bowling alley. You at the ice rink. Not me.”

Bran narrowed his eyes. “Don’t think it didn’t escape my notice that most of the last few weeks, the only man my wife has been dating has been you.”

“Ha!” Triumphant – if slightly suicidal – Asil hit the table with his hand. “I wondered when you would realize.”

“I think I was pretending otherwise.” Bran smiled faintly. “It was easier, when she was with you. She was safe.”

“You’re a lunatic.” Asil stood up, shaking his head. Ridiculous. It was all ridiculous. “You can have one caramel.”

*

The following week, Anna cornered him, the baby on her hip chewing something that looked like colorful house keys. “Leah recommended an amazing restaurant to me. Korean. It’s in this completely unlikely looking building but she and Bran went there the other night and they loved it. We were thinking of making up a big party and going next weekend. You like Korean food, don’t you?”

“Korean?” Asil smiled. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

“You do that.” Anna’s mouth twitched. “Why do you suddenly look like the cat who ate the canary?”

“Canaries are revolting. So many little bones.”

She was wise to his ways but was momentarily distracted by her daughter thrusting the keys into her hair so Asil slipped quickly away.

- end

Notes:

I don't know why I find writing from Asil's POV so satisfying.