Rather than interrupt Adam’s conversation, Sherwood started past. Adam, without taking his attention off the other two wolves, caught Sherwood’s arm, holding him where he was. Sherwood stiffened, drawing back—and Adam didn’t let him go.
Nor, despite the quick, almost worried glance Darryl gave Sherwood, did Adam allow their good-byes to be hurried. When they left, Auriele was frowning.
Adam said something to Sherwood, and Five Finger Death Punch’s “A Little Bit Off” belting through the overhead speakers made sure no one else heard what it was. The big man stared at Adam with unfriendly eyes for a moment, then took a deep breath. He made a deliberate effort to relax his posture, gave Adam a quick nod, and turned back to stride toward me.
Showtime, I thought, taking a deep breath. I needed to be calm.
Sherwood’s limp was not in evidence as he prowled toward me. I did not think that was a good sign. Wolves don’t show weakness before their enemies. Not that anyone who knew him would think that having only one leg made Sherwood vulnerable in the slightest.
I’d never heard of a werewolf missing a limb before. Werewolves either die from injuries, or they heal them. If a leg gets severed, it should regrow.
In the case of a human who was crippled or missing a limb prior to becoming a werewolf, there are ways to fix that. Those ways are horrible and involve reinjuring the damaged but healed body part. I’d heard that those methods had been tried unsuccessfully on Sherwood.
Sherwood had been found in the laboratory of a collection of black witches who had been taken down by werewolves a few years ago. No one knew how long he’d been there or what had been done to him, but I’d been confined in such a place for a bit, and I still had nightmares.
His rescuers had brought Sherwood to Bran, who had forced him to shift back to his human form. Maybe because he’d spent too long as a wolf, maybe because the witches had done something to him, Sherwood had no memory of who or what he had been.
Bran had known Sherwood’s identity, but for his own Bran-reasons hadn’t seen fit to tell Sherwood, or anyone else. Instead, Bran had thrown up his hands, given the three-legged wolf (or one-legged man) a name, and sent Sherwood Post to us.
I’d first thought the move had been for Sherwood’s sake. Bran had told me that Sherwood had complained about the horrible Montana winters and asked for assignment to a pack that lived in a warmer climate. Most places have better climates than Aspen Creek, Montana.
After the last few months, months during which Sherwood had proven to have some useful and unusual skills, I was beginning to think Bran might have had other reasons for sending Sherwood to us.
Had Bran known what was going to happen here? Had he known our pack would become the center of fae political maneuvering before we did? Because Sherwood came to us not long before I’d made our territorial claim on the national news. How had Bran known? And if so, why hadn’t he warned us that he’d be forced to leave us (leave me, some childish part of me murmured) out in the cold without the protection of the Marrok and the whole of the wolves under his aegis?
If I thought too much about Bran’s planning capacity, I usually ended up with a headache. I didn’t need more of a headache, but I couldn’t keep myself from wondering.
Had Bran, knowing that we would need every advantage we could muster, given us Sherwood Post as a secret weapon? Sherwood wasn’t just any werewolf. He was witchborn. Maybe. Or at least he could manipulate magic with skill. His power didn’t smell corrupted, nor did it smell exactly like witchcraft. And he had a lot of magic for someone who wasn’t tainted by black magic.
I didn’t know quite what he was. But I did know he was someone, a Power whose name would be known. Someone a few of the really old wolves would probably know on sight. We had only a couple of those—Honey and Zack. Age is one of those things that you just don’t ask, but you get a feel for it after a while. I knew that Honey didn’t know who Sherwood was, but I was not so sure about Zack. Zack could keep secrets.
Bran might have given us Sherwood as a weapon, but Adam thought it was about to explode in our faces.
Sherwood slid out the chair Adam had been using and sat in it. There was a significance to that, just as Ben’s not sitting in it earlier had been significant. This left Sherwood facing me, his expression as grim as I felt.
Now is the winter of our discontent, I thought. I’d taken a Shakespeare course in college that had been taught by the drama department instead of the English department. Mostly that meant we’d had to memorize a lot of the famous speeches. They bubbled up now and then. I didn’t think that Sherwood would bring glorious summer, no matter how much all concerned might wish it.
I liked Sherwood and had done so ever since the day we’d talked on the top of a very tall crane and ended up fighting back-to-back. Nothing tonight was his fault, any more than it was Adam’s. Sometimes—quite a lot of the time—being a werewolf just sucked.
I decided the best way to calm down was to have a conversation, something to distract us both. Not that Sherwood was a good conversationalist at the best of times. But there was one sure way to get his attention.
I asked, “How is Pirate?”
Some of the stress left Sherwood’s posture at the mention of his cat. But not all. If Adam was right, and Adam was always right about this kind of thing, Sherwood knew that we were in trouble, too.
“Pirate extends his greetings,” Sherwood said solemnly, “and expressed his regrets that his evil roommate would not bring him tonight. He bids me tell you that he will endeavor to teach said roommate the error of his ways—probably by coughing up a hair ball on the bed.”
He caught my surprised look, and color flushed up his cheeks. He adjusted his chair, and it gave a warning creak—he was a big man.
It was true, Sherwood did usually bring Pirate anywhere he could, and cats did tend to exert their dominance over their homes. If he could speak, Pirate might very well have given the message Sherwood related.
But this was Sherwood. I had expected a simple “Fine.” Maybe, if he was feeling unusually garrulous, he might even have said something like “Angry at being excluded.” The longer and funny story was not like the Sherwood I knew.
The silence between Sherwood and me grew awkward. More awkward. I had a million questions rising to my tongue, and I couldn’t ask any of them until Adam joined us.
“Oh, look,” I said gratefully, because awkward silences tended to make me babble, “here’s one of Uncle Mike’s minions. Do you want something to drink while we wait?”
A server had come into the room via the kitchen door, glanced around to the few remaining guests, then started toward our table, now the only one still occupied.