Dead Heat (Alpha and Omega) - Patricia Briggs Page 0,39
better?”
Kage gave him a sharp look, hesitated, and then said, “You picked an argument with me so I’d feel better?”
“Yes,” Charles said. “I also picked an argument with you so you could quit treating us like customers and talk to us about Chelsea. Your mother is pretty sure you won’t talk to Hosteen about her, and she thinks you need to talk to somebody.”
Anna couldn’t help letting her eyebrows climb up. Charles had gotten a lot of information from no more than two seconds of voiceless communication with Maggie.
Kage frowned at Charles. “She does, does she? I am very grateful to you for saving Chelsea, Mr. Cornick. But I assure you I’m fine.”
“Chelsea isn’t,” said Anna.
“Chelsea,” Kage said. The stallion butted him with his head, and he rubbed the horse’s forehead. He looked around and lowered his voice so that the people working around them wouldn’t hear what he said. “Her mother taught her that her witch blood taints her. And Hosteen never lets up about it. The idea that she’s a werewolf now and has to obey my grandfather, with whom she has been painfully feuding for eight years, hasn’t caught up with her yet. But it will. She is never going to forgive me.”
“If that’s the only problem, you’ll do okay,” Anna said. “If she honestly can’t stand him, then move. There are other packs.”
“And with your reputation you can get a job in any Arab barn in the country,” added Charles.
“Maybe so,” Kage said. “But she’s very big on being independent. I just changed her life without consulting her.”
“There was no way to bring her into it,” Charles pointed out. “I tried that first. If she really didn’t want to Change … It’s a lot easier to give up, Kage, than it is to fight for your life.”
“She’s not going to buy that as an argument,” said Kage, but at the same time, for the first time since he’d picked up his cell phone and heard his wife’s messages, he looked like he’d caught his balance. “You think that she would have made that choice herself? I didn’t force it on her?”
“If anyone forced it on her, it would be I,” corrected Charles. “But no. If I thought she really didn’t have a choice in the matter, I would not have done it even if you begged me to. She chose to die for her children, and she chose to live for all of you.”
“What about my dad, then?” Kage asked. “By that argument you couldn’t Change him unless he secretly wanted it. Which we all know he doesn’t. So why is Hosteen still after you to Change him, anyway?”
“Because he believes that he saw my father force a man through a Change. That man wasn’t unwilling, just unable, which is different. He thinks that I can do the same,” Charles said.
“Can you?”
“Chelsea needed a little help, but I did not force her,” Charles answered. “She saw a chance for survival and she wanted it.”
He wasn’t lying, Anna knew. But there was a sick feeling in her stomach. That was what Justin had said when she’d survived the Change—as if she’d wanted what was done to her and all that followed.
“Use that,” she told Kage, “to comfort yourself, because it is true that she had to fight to live. But don’t tell her that. Tell her you love her and need her. Tell her the kids need her. Tell her you tried to make the choice she might make. Tell her that you thought she’d want us to find the fae who did this to her so he couldn’t kill anyone else. But don’t tell her that her survival means that she really wanted this.” When she said “this” she motioned to herself. Werewolf, she meant, werewolf and all the things that went with it.
Kage’s voice was compassionate. “The voice of experience?”
“Yes.” Anna took in a deep breath. “Truth has many facets. Choose the ones that make her happy to be alive instead of the ones that make her want to smack you.”
“Are you happy?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said with total conviction. “But it took a while. It might take her a while, too.”
“Yes,” he said, but he didn’t sound nearly as upset about it as he had been when he’d started talking. “I expect it will.”
“It could be worse,” Charles said thoughtfully. “She could be dead.”
Kage nodded. “Yes. This may be difficult. That would have been unbearable. Difficult is better.”