“Latham,” she told him, wishing she could come up with something clever.

He gave her a charming smile that, she noticed, did nothing to warm his eyes. “Welcome to the family.” He patted her on the head, mostly, she thought, to irritate Charles.

Who said merely, “Quit flirting with my mate.”

“Behave,” said Bran. “Samuel, would you take Charles back to the clinic and look at his wounds? I have a job for him, but if he isn’t going to recover soon, I’ll have to find someone else to send. I don’t think he’s healing as well as he should be.”

Samuel shrugged. “Sure. No problem.” He looked at Anna. “It might take a while, though.”

She wasn’t stupid. He wanted to talk to Charles without her there-or maybe it had been Bran, and Samuel was just helping out.

Charles picked up on it, too, because he said smoothly, “Why don’t you take the truck back to the house. Samuel or Da will give me a lift back.”

“Sure,” she told him with a quick smile-she had no reason to feel hurt, she told herself sternly. She turned and walked rapidly to the truck.

She could do with some time to herself. She had things she wanted to consider without Charles around to cloud her thinking.

Charles wanted to snarl at her relief at leaving him, implicit in her rapid retreat to the truck.

He fought down the irrational anger he felt toward Samuel, who had so charmingly sent her away, responding to the orders Bran had sent mind to mind. He could always tell when his father was talking to Samuel, something in Samuel’s face gave it away.

Samuel waited until she’d gotten in the truck and driven out of the parking lot before he said, “Did you kill the wolf who abused her?”

“He’s dead.” For some reason, Charles couldn’t keep his eyes off the truck. He hadn’t liked sending her away. He knew that there was nothing to worry about, no one here would touch what was his-and the whole town knew what she was thanks to Asil’s performance at the funeral.

Even the few people who weren’t at the funeral, such as his father’s mate-who had made quite a statement with her absence-would know of it before the hour was up. Still, he didn’t like to send Anna off on her own. Not at all.

“Charles?” His brother’s voice was quiet.

“That’s why I asked you to have Anna leave,” Bran murmured. “I wanted you to see the difference in him. He was like this yesterday, as soon as she left his sight. She’s an Omega, and I think her effect on him is masking his symptoms. I think they didn’t get all the silver out.”

“When was he shot?”

“The day before yesterday. Three times. One’s a burn across his shoulder, one is through his chest and out the back, and a third through his calf. All silver.”

Charles watched the truck edge cautiously around the turn that would take her home.

“He’s more sensitive to silver poison than-Charles!”

Hard hands grabbed his shoulders, and his father touched his face, capturing him with his gaze more effectively than his brother had captured his body.

“I have to go,” he told his Alpha, heart in his throat. He couldn’t think, couldn’t stay here. He had to protect her, battered though he was.

“Wait,” his father told him, and the command wrapped around his body like steel hawsers, freezing him where he stood when all he wanted to do was follow the truck. “Samuel still needs a look at you. I’ll send Sage to her, shall I?”

His father’s touch, his voice, and something more helped him gather his thoughts. He was out of control.

He closed his eyes and drew on his father’s touch to soothe the beast until he could think more clearly.

“I did it again, didn’t I?” he asked, though he didn’t really need Bran’s affirmative. He took a deep breath and nodded. “Sage would be good.”

He didn’t like anyone in his house: his father and brother, yes, but other people only as necessary. Still, he didn’t want Anna alone, either. Sage would do.

She wouldn’t hurt his Anna and could protect her until he was there. Keep the males away. Something restless inside settled down a little more firmly. But he watched as his father called Sage on his cell and listened to him ask her to go meet Anna. Then allowed himself to be towed off to the clinic in Samuel’s car. His father followed in his Humvee.

“Da told me you had to kill Gerry,” he told his brother. Gerry had been Doc Wallace’s son, responsible for hurting any number of people and killing several others in his quest to find a drug that could subdue Bran in a convoluted plot to force the good doctor to accept his dual nature. Gerry hadn’t been concerned about collateral damage.

Samuel nodded, his face grim. “He left me no choice.”

Even distracted by his need to protect his mate and the burn of the wounds that weren’t healing right, Charles heard what his brother wasn’t saying. So he gave it voice. “You’re wondering how many people we would kill to protect our da? How many we would torture and destroy?”

“That’s it,” his brother whispered. “We’ve killed people. Wolves and innocents for our father. How are we so different that we survive and Gerry deserved to die?”

If Bran had sent Samuel with Mercy to the Tri-Cities to cure his melancholy, it hadn’t worked very well. Charles struggled to pull his attention from his mate and come up with something to help his brother. Without Bran touching him, it was more difficult than it should have been to collect his thoughts.

“Our father has kept the packs under his mantle safe and controlled. Without his leadership, we’d be as chaotic and scattered as the European wolves-and the human death toll would be a lot higher, too. What would the results be if Gerry’s plan had succeeded?” Charles asked. Sage would take care of Anna for him. There was no reason for this unholy, driving need to be with her.

“Gerry thought his father would embrace the wolf in order to defeat the Marrok,” Samuel murmured. “Who is to say that he wasn’t right? Maybe he could have saved his father. Is it any more wrong, what he did, than when Da sends you out to kill?”

“And if Gerry was right? If all his plans had borne fruit, if all his father needed was a reason to accept his wolf, and if, with the help of Gerry’s new drug, he killed our father and took over as Marrok-then what?” Charles asked. “Doc was a good man, but how do you think he would be as the Marrok?”

Samuel thought, then sighed. “He wasn’t dominant enough to hold it. There’d have been chaos as the Alphas fought for supremacy, and Gerry tried to kill them off like a jackal in the shadows.” He parked in front of the clinic but made no move to get out. “But wouldn’t you kill for Da anyway? Even if it wasn’t important for the wolves’ survival in this country? Was Gerry so wrong?”

“He broke the laws,” Charles said. He knew that such things weren’t so black and white for his brother. Samuel had never been forced to accept things as they were, not the way Charles had. So he picked through the facts for something that might help.

“Gerry killed innocents. Not for the survival of the pack, but for a thin chance of his father’s survival.” He smiled a little as something, the right something, came to him. “If either you or I kill an innocent to protect Da, and not for the survival of us all, he’d kill us himself.”

Tension left Samuel’s shoulders. “Yes, he would, wouldn’t he?”

“Feel better being on the side of angels?” Charles asked, as their father pulled in next to them.

Samuel grinned tiredly. “I’ll tell Da you called him an angel.”

Charles got out and met his father’s amused gaze over the hood of Samuel’s car with a shrug.

Samuel turned on the lights in the clinic and led the way to one of the examination rooms.