will make their own arrangements for lodging and”—he grimaced—“security. As will the fae. Mostly you will be in charge of finding a venue that’s acceptable to everyone. And, once we have the dates, you’ll reserve the meeting place, show up on time, and give a very short speech that probably both the fae and the government will insist on editing.”
“How will this play with the fae?” I asked. “Not my bit in this. I mean, really, how will they think about the pack playing security for the government? Not just how we’re going to spin it. We are supposed to be a neutral party, right?”
“I checked with Beauclaire,” Adam said. “Not all of my meetings have been with the government. He thinks we can squeak by.”
Beauclaire was a Gray Lord, one we had a working relationship with. As close to a working relationship as you could have with someone who, I had reason to believe, could raise the sea and bring down mountains.
“Whatever the public thinks,” I said, “the fae know that the only reason our compact works is because the fae want it to work. We don’t have the horsepower to make a real stand against the whole might of the fae. Or, probably, even one of the Gray Lords. Not without the support of the Marrok.”
“Which they don’t know that we have,” said Sherwood.
“Which we don’t have,” I said gently.
“He loves you,” Sherwood said, his voice certain.
I nodded. “He does.” Bran had more than demonstrated that he thought of me as a daughter. “But he loves the werewolves more. He has fought for centuries for them.” I sought for words and found them in an unexpected place. “To give them ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ He can’t help us without risking that.”
“He would risk the werewolves for you,” Adam said.
He had risked everything for me. That knowledge had healed a wound going back to when he had driven me from his pack, from the only home I’d ever known, when I was sixteen. Bran had not abandoned me.
But that was a dangerous secret. Only a few people knew what Bran had done, and we needed to keep it that way. The fae especially couldn’t know that Bran still felt responsible for me. They were a feudal society, for the most part. If they thought that our ties with Bran were still in place, then they would look upon our treaty with them as a treaty with all of the werewolves.
Our treaty with the fae had to stay small, only our territory, only our pack. That meant that Sherwood and the rest of the pack needed to believe we were on our own, too.
“Bran won’t help us,” I said firmly, believing it. Bran wouldn’t help us because he wouldn’t need to. “And that keeps him, and us, out of a power struggle between werewolf and fae that could escalate into a war that everyone loses. If we screw up here, the fae won’t go after the rest of the werewolves on the planet for it. Our separation from the other packs in North America makes everyone safer.”
Sherwood made a noise, but then said, “Therefore we don’t have the support of the Marrok. We only have ourselves to count on.”
It didn’t smell like he thought he was lying, precisely. That “therefore” was a wiggle word. He believed that the Marrok would help us if needed, but he understood that it would be a bad thing if other people thought so, too.
“And a treaty with the fae, in which they agree to abide by our rules within the bounds of our territory,” said Adam. “Beauclaire understood that guarding the humans is the business of my security firm, which has retained most of the members of my pack. He agrees that Mercy is acceptable to act as our liaison and our ringmaster. Since any fae who harms a human here is breaking the agreement the fae have signed, we, the pack, are not being put into a position where our honor would be compromised. Instead, Beauclaire assures me, I am a good businessman and dealmaker for getting the government to pay me to do something that we are already bound, by our word to the fae, to do anyway.”
Adam sounded a little bemused. I didn’t blame him. Being coerced didn’t sound like a smart business decision to me. But the fae had a twisted view of a lot of things.
“Are you charging them more, since they are taking not just