“So why not let it free?” She hadn’t been a werewolf then. The world had been a gentler place, the monsters safely in their closets, and she had been brave in her ignorance.

His eyes were old and weary, his voice slurring a bit. “Because then everyone would see,” he told her.

“See what?”

“Me.”

To make great art, you had to expose your soul, and some things should be left safely in the dark. For a while, after she’d been forcibly Changed, Anna hadn’t made music at all-and not just because she’d had to sell her cello.

“Anna?”

She moved her grip on the steering wheel. “Just thinking about Dana and why she can’t paint as she’d like to.” She hesitated. “I wonder if it is because she has no soul-like some of the churches claim. Or if it’s because what is inside her frightens her too much to expose it.”

HE’D chosen the hotel because he wanted Anna to be comfortable. There were fancier places in downtown Seattle, glittering jewels of steel and glass.

He could afford them.

In other cities, the Marrok’s company even owned a few, and they had hefty investments in some others. But he remembered how intimidated she’d been by his house only a few weeks ago, which was not extravagant or particularly large, so he thought she’d be more comfortable in this hotel, which was his favorite anyway.

Sometimes it embarrassed him. This need to show her the things he treasured in the hope that she would love them, too. He was too old to be indulging himself this way: showing off in the plane-taking her to this hotel. He’d have to tell her about the investment portfolio he’d started for her sometime. But he was an old hunter and knew better than to startle his prey. He’d wait until she was more comfortable with him, with the pack… with everything.

Anna stopped in front of the curb and he could feel her stress when the parking attendant came to take her keys from her. She hugged herself while Charles gave his name and handed the young man a tip for not looking taken aback by the battered Toyota.

He took their luggage, and, still watching Anna, who was looking down at her feet, refused help with them. She’d feel better without anyone serving them.

Maybe he should have taken her to something more impersonal? Someplace where you parked your own car and no one asked if you needed help? Maybe she was still upset by Dana’s attempt to make her jealous. Or maybe she was worried about Brother Wolf.

Brother Wolf had never talked to anyone but him like that. Not even Da. Maybe it upset her? Or maybe it was the way Brother Wolf had opened them to her outside the fae’s house. Had she seen something that disgusted her? Frightened her? Maybe the distance she’d put between them when they left Dana’s house had nothing to do with jealousy at all.

He wasn’t used to the emotional roller coaster he’d been on since he met her. It was a good thing she was an Omega, who could soothe everyone around her-and not a dominant. Brother Wolf was on edge as it was; only when she touched him or when she was happy did he have complete control.

They needed to talk, but not in public.

The hotel was older: brick instead of steel, and eleven stories, not thirty. But it was old-world upscale, decorated with a whimsy that appealed to him, the aim to delight rather than impress in a Mediterranean-influenced Art Deco style. When they walked into the lobby, Anna-who was still quiet-stopped just inside the door. She looked up, looked at the Christmas tree decorated in huge maroon, deep purple, and silver cloth bows instead of bulbs, with an even more enormous gold and deep green bow on top.

Anna smiled at him and took his arm. And he knew he’d picked right. She loved it. Brother Wolf basked in the satisfaction of pleasing their mate.

Their room was on the seventh floor, something that Brother Wolf disapproved of. He’d rather have been able to use the windows as a convenient second exit rather than a risky escape route. But Charles preferred to have a room more difficult for unexpected visitors to enter, and the wolf had conceded the point.

The elevator opened, and in front of them was a mirror to make the hall look bigger and lighter-and a goldfish in a clear bowl on a little table.

“A goldfish?” she asked.

“Tough creatures, goldfish,” he said.

She laughed. “No argument. I knew someone who rescued a goldfish from a frat house where it had been living in a bowl of beer. But why goldfish at a hotel?”

He shrugged. “I’ve never asked anyone. Though if you come by yourself, they put a goldfish in your room for company.” He didn’t tell her that this was the only time he’d ever been here that he wouldn’t have a goldfish in his room.

He’d been alone a long time, despite the pack, despite the lovers he’d taken and who’d taken him. He’d had to be because he was, as Dana said, his father’s killing arm. He’d had to be alone: acquaintances were easier to kill than friends.

And now he wasn’t. He loved it, he reveled in it-though he was sometimes halfway convinced that the bond between them would be his death. For her sake, he would destroy the world.

Probably it wouldn’t come to that.

He opened the room and waited at the door while she explored her new territory.

She wandered through it, touching the table and the couch in the sitting room. She tugged lightly at a tassel on the tapestry drapes that separated the bedroom from the rest.

“It looks like a set from The Sheik,” Anna said. “Complete with striped wallpaper to look like tent sides and the fabric divider. Cool.”

She sat on the bed and groaned. “I could get used to this.” Then she turned her warm brown eyes to his, and said, “I think we have to talk.”

That he agreed with her didn’t stop the cold churning in his stomach. Talk was not his specialty.

She scooted back and sat with her legs crossed on the far side of the bed, patting the mattress beside her.

“I won’t bite,” she said.

“Oh?”

Anna grinned at him, and suddenly all was right with his world-yes, he had it bad.

“Or at least I’ll make sure you enjoy it if I do.”

Charles left their baggage in front of the bathroom, blocking the door to the hall, and Brother Wolf didn’t even object to the obstruction between them and escape. The warmth in her drew him like a fire in winter, and there was no escape for him or his brother in flesh. And neither of them cared.

He stripped off his leather jacket and dropped it on the floor. Then he sat down on the bed and pulled off his boots. He heard her tennis shoes hit the floor as he stretched out on the bed next to her without looking at her. Talk. She’d said “talk.” And he’d do that best looking at the wall.

He waited for her to begin. If he started asking the questions he had, Anna might not ask him what she needed to know. It was something he’d learned a long time ago with less dominant wolves.

After a while, she flopped down on the bed beside him. He closed his eyes and let her scent surround him.

“Is this bonding thing as weird for you as it is for me?” she said in a small voice. “Sometimes it’s overwhelming and I wish it would shut down, even though it hurts when it does. And when it is narrower, I miss the intimacy of knowing what you’re feeling.”

“Yes,” Charles agreed. “I’m not used to sharing with anyone but Brother Wolf.” His mate, he thought. She’d had a rough time, and she needed everything he could give her. So he used the words that he didn’t trust himself with to tell her what he could. “I don’t care what Brother Wolf thinks of me. You… I care. It’s… difficult.”

She moved until her breath touched the back of his neck. Very quietly she said, “Do you ever wish it hadn’t happened?”

At that he sat up and turned to her, examining her face for hints of just how she’d meant the question. His sudden move made her flinch, and if the bed hadn’t been so big, she’d have fallen off in her scramble to get away from him.