“I’d like to speak to Adam,” Christy said, her tone making it clear she’d seen me. No help for it once she asked.
I shrugged. “Aiden, step outside with me.”
Darryl smiled. “I’ll go check the perimeter. It’ll let me keep an eye on you.”
“You could stay with Jesse,” I said because I didn’t trust that smile: it was a little too eager. “Help her with breakfast or something.”
“I can cook eggs,” said Jesse, scraping the blackened remnants into the garbage disposal, “assuming I don’t have to teach some ancient punk kid how to keep his hands to himself. Yuck.” She left it to her audience to decide where that last word was directed.
Aiden turned back and narrowed his eyes at her.
“Aiden,” I said.
He stiffened but followed me out to the backyard, where he stood, his arms wrapped around himself in hostile rejection . . . or possibly fear. Darryl trailed after us, then broke into a jog and headed for the river side of the property.
“What happened in there was all about power,” I said thoughtfully after Darryl was a sufficient distance away.
Aiden didn’t say anything.
I thought about power, about how Adam had sat in the soft hotel sofa to make Thomas Hao feel more at ease. So I sat down on the grass. The seat of my pants was immediately wet and cold—evidently the lawn had just been watered. At least my slacks wouldn’t show the water stain the way my usual jeans would have. Aiden looked at me, frowned, then took a seat on the nearest lawn chair.
“You felt it was dangerous for us to consider you a child,” I said, “because in your world, children are vulnerable, and the fae like to prey upon them.” I pushed my fingers into the soil. “Werewolves are not fae. For the pack, children are fragile, and the wolves, most of them anyway, see them as a charge, someone to be protected from all harm.”
“I would be safer, here, pretending to be the age that my body appears?” he asked warily.
I sighed and shook my head. For all that we both spoke English, we were alien, weren’t we?
“No,” I said. “Pretending is a lie—and wolves can tell if you lie. But you didn’t have to make a big deal of your real age in order to be safe. But I was talking about power, not specifically about you.” I looked up at the sky and thought about how to explain twenty-first-century manners and morals to someone who had last been human before Europeans had set foot on this continent.
“Touch,” I said, “is basic to the human condition. Mothers touch their babies to bond with them. Touch brings comfort or pain. Touch is important. The most powerful person in a room is the one who can touch anyone else—and no one can touch him back without permission.” The Romans would have substituted “sex” for “touch,” but I thought I didn’t have to go that crude. Sometimes, when dealing with very old creatures, my history degree was unexpectedly useful.
“Lady,” Aiden said sincerely, “you are strange. You are saying that I am less powerful than the girl.” He held out his hand and showed me the fire he held. “I do not think so.”
“Think about what happened in there,” I said. “Who ended up winning that encounter?”
“She hit me,” he said, “but I could have killed her—or hurt her so she never would have tried to hit me again.”
“But Darryl stopped you,” I told him. “Because he is more powerful, and his job is to take care of Jesse. To make sure no one touches her without permission.”
“I could have killed him, too,” said Aiden.
I shrugged. “Yes. But he has those who protect him, too. And you are not stronger than Zee—the Dark Smith.”
Silence.
I nodded. “So what is power for, Aiden?”
“To be safe,” Aiden said without hesitation.
A sociology professor of mine had asked that in my college class. She got answers ranging from wealth to the ability to do whatever you wanted to whomever you wanted. She said that when she’d asked that question in a village in a South American country that was on its fifth dictator in ten years, she’d gotten only one answer: safety.
“Okay,” I said, wondering what it said about Underhill that Aiden had that much in common with people who’d lived with uncertainty and terror for generations. “So what did you do when you touched Jesse without permission?”
There was a long pause. “I made her feel unsafe,” he said.
I shook my head. “Not really. She had no trouble defending herself—and she knew there was a houseful of people who would make sure she was safe. What you did do was tell her that you had no intention of letting her be safe with you.”
He said nothing.
“You are safe with us,” I told him. “We will not touch you nor allow anyone else to touch you while you are under our protection.”
“The big man with the dark brown skin touched me,” he said.
“Darryl.” I nodded. “You’re right. So unless you threaten one of our own, we will not allow you to be touched without your permission. We have the power to do that, and we extend that power to you—to our pack and to Jesse. Power comes from three places, Aiden. It comes from the power that you have as an individual. Some people have a lot of that—Zee has a lot of power just from being himself. Someone can leverage the power they have to take more power—but power taken by force only lasts as long as you can hold it. Most dictators don’t live long lives.”
He said, sounding offended, “The third way to gain power is to have others give you their power. I am not a child; nor am I stupid.”
I nodded, though I thought the jury was out on the last. “I’m pretty weak as far as creatures of magic are concerned. I have a few tricks. But I was able to grant you sanctuary from the Gray Lords—because I have friends, I have pack, and I have people who love me.” I turned my head, met his eyes, and frowned at him. “You are going to need a lot of power to stay safe from the Gray Lords. Right at this moment, that means you need to work at making people want to help you—instead of wanting to strangle you and shove your head through a refrigerator.”
He threw up his hands and cried out with honest frustration, “But how do I do that? I don’t understand you people. I don’t know your customs. I don’t know anything about this place.”
“Okay,” I told him. “Sometimes you have to start just knowing you don’t know anything. But if you assume that you are on the bottom of the pack—that means no touching anyone without invitation—you will be safe because I have promised you that, and I have the power to make that stick. But I cannot protect you from your own bad decisions; if you go around grabbing women’s butts, they might hit you with something a little sharper next time.”
Aiden stared at me. “You are very strange. I have no intention of coming anywhere near the Alpha’s daughter again.”
“That’s probably safer for you,” I agreed.
Jesse opened the back door. “Mercy,” she said, “Dad’s still in his office with Mom, and we have a visitor who wants to see you or Dad.” The subtle emphasis meant that Jesse knew who it was but didn’t think she should mention it in front of Aiden. That meant fae.
I stood up and dusted off the back of my pants, which were wet. “Okay,” I said. “In the interest of keeping our word, Aiden, you should come inside.”
“Why?” he sneered. “There are two werewolves watching the backyard. Aren’t three enough to give alarm? Or do you acknowledge that the fae can come into your territory and take me?”
Warren and Ben weren’t being obvious—I could smell them, but I couldn’t see them. Darryl had disappeared while I wasn’t watching.
“If we keep the weakest of us—that’s me—and the one most likely to be attacked—that’s you—in the same place, we keep our defense stronger than if we scatter them between us.” And there is a fae here to see us. I realized I hadn’t told him that because he looked like he was a child. I was going to have to get over that instinct. “Whoever our visitor is, he’s fae—or Jesse would have said something more. You need to come inside.”