Little Wolf (63 page)

The town. Right. Because Tim couldn’t have taken care of Luca on his own.

Tim probably couldn’t have, but hearing Silas immediately dismiss the notion sent his heart rate skyrocketing. “I didn’t expect that from you. Are you concerned for him?” That was nearly enough to make Tim pause.

“He’s in my pack. He’s my responsibility.” Silas gave the word “pack” weight.

“Your pack is bought and paid for.” Tim scowled. “As if you really cared about him.”

Silas straightened up, and the room grew darker as he shut out more of the light. “Is he alive?” The human words were dwarfed by the command in his tone, the blatant reminder of how easily he could make anyone obey him.

Tim shivered and looked away, only to bring his gaze right back. “Yes. Unless I decide I want him otherwise.” He didn’t really expect Silas to give in, although it would have been much less scary if he did. Tim was threatening a member of his pack. And Silas cared. Tim leaned away at the thought. “You’re genuinely bothered.” He blinked. “But you treat him like a servant.”

“He’s under my protection.” As an explanation from an alpha wolf, it made sense; Nathaniel might have said it too. As a statement from Uncle Silas it riled Tim the fuck up.

“And I’m not?” Tim curled his hands into pathetic little fists.

Silas tightened his jaw. “Timothy.”

“What did I just say?” Tim jerked into motion and came forward until he could get a better hint of what Silas was feeling. “I said you don’t get to do that. First rule of this conference: you don’t get to act like you used to with me.”

“That rule cannot be defined clearly, so it can’t be enforced,” Silas objected, like this was another logic exercise over a chessboard.

“Too fucking bad. It’s my rule, and if you don’t like it, you’ll find out what else my town can do.” Tim really should not be speaking for the town like this, but the words kept firing out of him. “I came up here on my own. I didn’t have to. I could have run again without ever having seen you.”

A trickle of blue, deep
loss
made him catch his breath, a hollow, faintly colored absence. Silas’s face showed nothing, but Nathaniel had been right. Silas had missed Tim, maybe even mourned him. If only he hadn’t trained Tim to bite into weak spots instead of respecting them. Tim made himself sneer. “I didn’t want to see you.”

Silas squared his shoulders to take the hit, then directed his gaze out the window. The following silence made Tim look out the window too. From where he was, he could only see mountains. He could have danced in place with anxiety but managed to hold steady.

Another were might have turned away or yelled at him. Silas, like Nathaniel, had too much control for that. They had far too much power not to keep it locked down. Tim had the freedom to be a hot mess. Nathaniel had been right again; Tim was black powder and a spark, and both of them could use an explosion. When they kept too much to themselves, this shit happened.

“Your injuries aside, you look well.” Silas could have been sincere, despite the fact that Tim was a wreck and they both knew it. He was as thin as he’d ever been and beat-up and spotted with blood.

“You thought I wouldn’t?” If Tim had been going to starve to death, he would have done it years ago.

Silas glanced at him. “I expected you would survive. You’re smarter than most and stronger than the average human.”

It didn’t smell like bullshit. But Tim considered the scent of loss that Silas had so quickly reined in and shook his head. At fifteen he had never wondered what Silas hadn’t shared with him, which, it turned out, was a lot. People hid things for a variety of reasons, but Tim had hidden things out of fear. He had a feeling he’d learned that from Silas as much as he’d memorized Voltaire and studied the role of artillery at Waterloo.

“But you worried,” Tim guessed. “You would have had less to worry about if you’d prepared me for the real world in any way. But I made it.” Tim deliberately offered him a smile. “Even a little wolf has teeth.”

Silas didn’t care for the display but didn’t react outside of turning from the window and the view of the town he’d almost bankrupted. It had survived too. He wasn’t omnipotent.

He looked over Tim, allowing a frown to show this time as he sniffed the air. Of all the unpleasant things lingering around Tim at the moment, there shouldn’t have been anything to upset Silas that he didn’t already know about, but Tim heard Silas’s heart kick against his ribs, even with the space between them. Silas paused. His gaze went to Tim’s throat, and then he met Tim’s stare.

“You came here alone.” Silas said it as though it meant something. “So I will remind you the family needs you.”

“The family? Is that why you’ve been looking for me?” Tim made a doubtful noise. He might have believed him, if not for that hint of Silas’s real feelings. “And I’m not alone. I have… well, there are people who give a shit about me. I don’t know why, but there they are. And they’re mine.”

“The elderly human and the young were you brought with you?” So the bodyguard had filled Silas in. Silas didn’t need to be a dick about who Tim had chosen.

“My pack.” Tim straightened, trying to give the word the same weight Silas had. “That young were is a Greenleaf who has already fought for me today, and the old human has challenged the sheriff of this town to protect me. He’s no disgrace.” They were both more courageous than Tim. “They know what you are, and they still came here with me. They have heart. Carl is… I’m human too, you know. You can’t keep ignoring that. Weres can all look human, but I
am
. But of course you know that.” Tim flinched from his own words and stepped away. He went to the window and looked at the darkening streets.

“You’ve been hiding it, me, my entire life. Ever since my mother died and I came to live with you.” He’d been a kid, barely old enough to remember shifting and running with her. He’d asked Uncle Silas if they would ever do that and hadn’t received an answer. He’d been too young and too dumb to press for one. “I’ve met other old wolf families here.” He wanted to claw up the glass. Or just punch Silas, which would probably break his hand. “At first I thought they were going to be like you, and Luca. I thought every alpha wolf would be like you two, and every werewolf would take one look at me and laugh. So I ran like hell to avoid them and anything else about myself. After all, I’m not good enough, right? I’m the wolf you hide away.”

Silas seemed to be measuring his words. “That isn’t—”

“Oh no, I wasn’t done.” If Tim looked at Silas, he’d do something stupid like charge at him or scream or barely be able to blink back tears. “You taught me nothing useful, Silas. I couldn’t even identify
scents
properly.” He wasted a moment sniffing the air. If he wasn’t going to find shame because the great alpha Dirus refused to feel it, then he wanted to smell
pain
. “You left me with Luca.”

He knew Silas was reading between the lines, because he responded too fast. “I kept you away from Luca.”

Tim snorted. “You kept me away from everyone. That’s not saying much.”

Silas emitted nearly as much heat as Nathaniel. But his was tinged with a red scent,
anger
, not blood. “Luca is not for you.”

“Part of your pack, but you didn’t approve of him?” That made Tim turn, although he kept his gaze on Silas’s shoulder. “He’s big and tough. Well, he was. Before Nathaniel got him by the throat.”

Silas narrowed his eyes. His scent was like water ready to boil, although he hadn’t so much as twitched. “Luca was not good enough. The family has weakened over the years, drifted apart and died out. Weres like Luca were necessary to give the appearance of strength to the public. Without us, he was a were alone, and he should have been content with that as the others are.” Silas let out a loud, furious huff that startled Tim into raising his eyes. “But Luca was never for you.”

Tim realized his mouth was open. It took him a moment to close it. By then he had more questions. “You left him with me anyway. Did you know?”

Silas looked at Tim’s bruises. “You have yet to explain what happened today.”

“Well, fuck, you have yet to tell me why you sent Luca to get me.” Tim rounded on him and charged forward. It felt right, and he wasn’t about to take the time to question these things anymore. “Luca. Do you even know how it feels to mention Luca and have other people look at you with—”
Sorrow
and
rage
,
murder
in Nathaniel’s expression. “To realize that what you thought was normal is actually extremely messed-up? I ran away because of… I ran away for a lot of reasons but mostly to get away from Luca. Did you know what he used to tell me? How I thought he was right? Fuck, he could still be right, I don’t know. Maybe you do look at me and see a weak little bitch.” Silas continued to keep his expression blank, and it was such cowardly bullshit that Tim almost laughed. “But he used to say that, and I had no defense against it because you never taught me otherwise. I never saw any other kind of were.” Tim smelled blood in the air now, and it wasn’t his, and it wasn’t Luca’s. Tim raised his voice. “Do you know what he was like? Did you?”

“Timothy.” Silas’s voice was not meant to be soft. Perhaps that was why this time Tim didn’t argue with it. “Luca might have coveted the name, but he would never have dared touch you.”

“The name.” Tim tried to will his fingernails into claws and had a betrayed moment where he couldn’t before he felt them dig into his palms. “That’s all I am, I guess. Except he touched me plenty, whether I wanted it or—” Saying these things out loud had no point. Tim swallowed and focused on shifting his hands back and then on the pain of his self-inflicted wounds. They were small. They’d heal quickly.

He steadied his voice. “If I’d known more, if someone had showed me the ways weres
really
do things, or hell, how
humans
do things, I might have said something to you. I might have known what he was. No—” Tim lifted his head. “Fuck that.
You
should have known what he was.”

“Timothy.” Silas took a step backward. Tim didn’t care anymore.

“The great Silas fucking Dirus. You’ve got everyone in this town trembling at your name. Silas Dirus, the ‘living legend’ Nathaniel called you, but you filled my head with strategy instead of history. You wouldn’t let me meet people. You wouldn’t let me learn how to listen to my instincts.”

“There was no reason to teach you.” Silas was serious. “Every were understands their instincts from birth.”

Tim shoved at him with both hands. Silas didn’t give an inch, but he didn’t rip Tim’s head off either. “So I’m a failure to you in all things, is that it?” Tim shouted. “No wonder you hid me.” Silas had yet to deny hiding Tim away. The omission was glaringly obvious. Tim screwed up his face, trying not to give in to any other stupid urges, and then groaned and turned around, putting his back to Silas. “I knew nothing, and he knew it, and you don’t give a shit. Fine. Business, then.”

“Timothy. Tim.” That quiet voice wasn’t going to work this time. Tim kept moving until there was space and clean air between them.

“No. This is about business now.” Tim cleared his throat and forced himself to look across at his uncle. “Luca’s been arrested. Nathaniel, the sheriff, could have killed him, but he left him to be arrested. Whether or not you ordered Luca to kidnap me if necessary, or looked the other way about his tendencies—” Tim stuttered at Silas’s short growl but pressed grimly on. “—his arrest will be linked to you. What are you going to do? It wasn’t the town’s fault. It was Luca’s.” Even if Silas truly hadn’t known, it would be linked to him. The Dirus name would take a hit, as would the company’s value. Killing Luca would have been neater, but Tim took a certain pleasure in thinking of Luca locked away. Weres did not do well in cages.

“Do?” Silas finally showed an emotion, and it was genuine surprise.

Tim stared at him. “Your pack member is in jail facing some serious charges—he tried to kill the sheriff in addition to all his other crimes.” The explanation seemed necessary when Silas stayed silent. “It seemed like an impulsive plan, and it clearly didn’t work. I didn’t think you were behind that one. Not really. He saw a chance to take out an obstacle and he took it. But he works for you, and people will know that. If there’s a trial”—something Tim was also currently going to ignore, like the nervous churning in his stomach—“it will tarnish the Dirus name. So what are you going to do?”

“A pack fights for each other, Timothy.” The lesson was delivered sharply, as if in disbelief. “They don’t prey on each other.”

It took a few moments for Tim to wrap his mind around that one. “Is that your way of saying Luca is no longer under your protection? He was following your orders.”

Silas opened a hand to gesture toward Tim’s stomach and the wounds that had hopefully stopped bleeding. “This was never my order.”

That was probably true. But Silas either didn’t see or didn’t want to see how he could have created a situation in which Luca had felt safe harassing Tim. “Really?” Tim mocked anyway. “You thought I would just go willingly after running from you for years? Really?”

Silas closed his hand and pulled it to his side. “You were young, spirited. You should have wanted adventure. But sooner or later you would have had to face me. That’s the way it should be.”

Tim didn’t know what was more shocking, Silas admitting to being wrong, or Silas explaining himself and revealing that he’d expected Tim to return someday to challenge him in some kind of fight for the throne. He’d
wanted
Tim to return and yet had thought Tim might try to kill him if he did.

“Oh my God,” Tim realized aloud, “you’re more fucked-up than I am.”
Toxic
, Nathaniel had called it. Right again. Tim kept going. “Well, I’m facing you now.”

“Yes.” The way Silas said it made Tim shiver. It implied things. “Yes, you are.” Silas was thoughtful. “Was Luca the only impetus for this decision?”

Luca had forced things to a head, but he hadn’t made Tim come here. Tim slid his gaze away, losing ground with every second of silence. “This town is different,” he offered before finally bringing up his eyes. “This pack isn’t like yours. I like it better. I think there’s a reason it’s stronger.”