knew of. Then it struck him that they meant Royce, and he gave an abrupt, barking laugh.
“Oh, hell. Alec would’ve known that you were Were-something. Even if you denied it down to your last breath, he couldn’t miss it. You reek of change.”
* * *
Jessica found Mouse hiding her face behind her hands in the bathroom. With a sigh, Jessica moved to Mouse’s side, kneeling down and putting a soothing hand on the vampire’s shoulder, whispering words of comfort.
* * *
Wes abruptly turned his head toward Mouse’s room, losing track of the conversation as he focused intently on eavesdropping on whatever Jessica was saying. Even his extended hearing wasn’t quite keen enough to pick it up, so he soon returned the full of his attention back on Analie, Christoph, and Freddy.
“So over here I’m a Were-cat?” Freddy asked.
“Were-tiger?” Analie suggested. “Were-big-ass-tiger?”
“Just how big do you get?” Christoph asked, eyeing Freddy with unease.
“Hey, look,” Freddy said quickly, turning to a random page in the album. “It’s... Were portraits.”
It was a two-page spread of nothing but the Weres in Goliath, in Were form. Most were just sitting around in what looked like scrubland or mountains. A few were inside houses, lounging on the floor or crouched in the kitchen with a sandwich.
Analie pointed at a mouse-brown Were with fur that was stuck through with dead oak leaves. “That’s me!”
Christoph pointed at a massive black-and-red Were in full wolf form, sitting on a couch and watching television through half-closed eyes. “That’s me.”
Freddy frowned and pointed at a black Were with shocks of white through its fur, snarling at the camera. “There’s Ashi.”
Wesley suppressed a shiver at the sight of so many Weres. Reconciling the gigantic, furry monsters in those pictures as the people in front of him wasn’t easy. He only knew from rumors and second-hand information that Goliaths were supposed to be the bane of his kind.
“I’ve never seen a bunch of Others document their existence like this.” Wesley shook his head, eyeing the photos speculatively. “Too likely it could fall into the wrong hands or be used against us. Well, before humans knew we existed, anyway.”
“It is being used against me,” Christoph muttered.
Freddy looked back at Wesley. “I guess we knew that—I mean, I guess the Goliaths knew that they were taking a risk, but they like documenting social events like barbeques and birthdays. I mean, no one’s going to take a camera into a real pack meeting.”
“The guy who turned me didn’t seem to have a problem with pictures,” Sebastian said, speaking up for the first time in a while. He’d been awfully quiet and nervous, particularly seeing some of those pictures. He wouldn’t approach the couch. “Then again, he also turned me without a contract, so maybe there were other rules he was willing to break, too.”
“You need a contract for that?” Analie asked Sebastian, ignoring her packmate. “Like, a legal contract?”
“Sure,” Sebastian answered Analie, looking uncertainly at Wesley. Wes’s look wasn’t particularly encouraging. “Feds passed a law that you can’t turn or feed on anybody without a contract. If you don’t sign it beforehand, the Were or vamp who turns or hurts you gets hunted down and destroyed. I thought everybody knew that, it passed a little over a year after the Twin Towers fell.”
Wesley decided to focus on something a little nearer and dearer to his heart instead. Security.
“Maybe not,” he said to Freddy, “but what if a bunch of White Hats or some other bunch of crazies got their hands on those pictures? They’d know who to look for. Not only that, but where to find you when you’re at your most vulnerable. To show to your friends, your family, your coworkers—think about it.”
“Are White Hats in California? I’d never heard of them before I came here.”
Wesley considered Analie’s question. “I’m not sure. Maybe. I know they’re all up and down the East coast, but I’ve never checked if their operations extend that far. Alec probably knows. Even if they don’t call themselves White Hats, there are probably hunters of some kind out there.”
Freddy shut the photo album, looking very disturbed. The hair on the back of Analie’s head was fluffed out. Freddy stood up, taking the album with him and muttered something about getting something else cool out of the box. He retreated to Analie’s room. She knew he wasn’t coming back out.
“Yes. If you’re human,” Sebastian added, “you’re safe until you’re contracted. You can’t even fu—err…” he shot a guilty look at Analie, then