followed you, hmm? How do you think your alpha would take it if he knew you were endangered, or worse, while under my care?”
He withdrew, folding his arms across his chest and waiting for her answer, ignoring Freddy for the time being. He certainly hadn’t forgotten him. He just wasn’t sure yet exactly what he was going to do with him. It was possible that Freddy hadn’t yet undergone the change, and didn’t know what he was. That, and his sincerity when he swore he was not Were, was the only reason Royce wasn’t going to destroy him out of hand.
Analie ducked her head slightly. Crap, he was right. She hadn’t thought about the White Hats. As for being out of line, she didn’t really care. Well, didn’t care until she was caught.
“I guess I didn’t think of that,” Analie admitted, fiddling with her crumpled cup. She had a lot to add to that.
'I’m stuck in a leech pit, surrounded by vampires 24-7, running through tunnels reeking of mildew to work off my energy, and barred from running the streets or in the park because the Weres here are all uptight about territory and are a bunch of weenies because I’m bigger than all of them. I can’t see any of you, but I live in your reek and I can’t even smell my own pack anymore, not even in Gavin’s coat.'
Okay, definitely not something to say out loud. 'Deep breaths. You’re not food. You’re not dead. You’re not locked in a cell somewhere. You have it good, girl.'
She looked up at Royce. “And we’re not lying. Seriously.”
Royce made himself relax further, letting his arms fall to his sides and taking a deep, unneeded breath. The tension in his shoulders gradually loosened, and he took a far more “normal” tone of voice.
“I understand you don’t like being cooped up. You can always ask Isabelle or Mouse to take you out. Just don’t wander around the city alone. Before you pull a stunt like this again, consider how your alpha might react if you were injured and he thought I was responsible. I don’t want to have to restrict you any more than I already do, but I will if I have to.”
Therein should lay enough of a threat to keep her from thinking about taking off without an escort again. He pulled out a chair and sat down, Analie to his left, Freddy to his right, clasping his hands before him on the table as he considered what to do with the two of them. Eventually, he looked at Freddy again, dubious and speculative, but silent. Unnervingly so.
Freddy was trying not to stare at Royce. He’d never been this close to a vampire before, other than times when Analie would grab his arm and usher him faster past some normal-looking man or woman on the street, her jaw set and her eyes downcast. This was totally different. They weren’t hurrying away from him, they were sitting with him. And this guy was just staring at Freddy.
Every culture has its boogeymen. Goliath was an old enough pack to have its own as well. Every child old enough to learn was told about how the vampire Lev had terrorized the peasants in his small, Russian town. How he’d send out one of his own to find some pretty boy or girl and bring them back, at which point they were murdered in ways that most Goliath parents didn’t describe. How what was left of the victim was hung on the house where they had once dwelled. How mothers would sweep the stoop below the disemboweled bodies of their daughters, the limbless carcasses of their sons.
Freddy was trying really hard not to think of Lev as he gawped at Royce.
“Where are you staying?” Royce finally asked. He didn’t want to have to deal with more pissed off Weres blaming him for the loss of a cub.
If the kid didn’t have anyone watching over him, which the vampire doubted, he’d take him in until Analie was returned to her pack. If Freddy was staying with somebody, Royce would see to it that he was returned to his parent or guardian with some stern admonitions. He, too, was now in danger if any White Hats had spotted him with Analie or Royce.
Either way, the kid probably wouldn’t like it. Royce couldn’t find it in himself to care.
It took Freddy a full minute to realize that Royce was talking to him and asking him a perfectly