She’d known nothing about being a werewolf when she’d come to Aspen Creek two months ago. She was learning to use her nose. She was also afraid of him, which normally he wouldn’t mind. But he didn’t like scaring children.
“Pack is different from the real world,” he told her. “No one in the pack will hurt you because the Marrok will not allow it. Other wolves you have to be wary around, but not pack.”
She raised her eyes to him.
“I can tell you are afraid,” he advised her gravely. “Otherwise, I would not have said anything. I will not hurt you. Nor will anyone in the pack.”
“You are dangerous,” she said. “I’m not the only wolf afraid of you. He warned me specifically to stay away from you.”
And so she, having been warned, had decided to hide in his greenhouse. It was not an atypical reaction for an adolescent.
He nodded gravely. “Yes, I am dangerous. The Alpha doesn’t talk just to hear himself speak. But I do not mind that the other wolves are afraid. To you I will say that there is no need to fear me or my wolf. I do not hurt women without grave cause and never children.” He could promise so much, he was almost certain. When he could not, then it would, indeed, be time to end his existence.
“Pack is safe,” she said, trying to believe it.
He sighed. “At other times and places you might have cause to worry about harm coming to you at a pack member’s hand. But in this time and place the Marrok has let it be known that you are under his protection and out of bounds for the usual snarls and dominance fights that come from being a werewolf. No one in the pack will defy him—and so you are utterly safe.”
“He is treating me different?” She sounded as if she wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not.
“You are different,” Asil told her. “And this pack is different. The Marrok has collected a bunch of misfits who are not suited to most packs, and that is combined with the newest wolves—next month is the month when the Marrok Changes those who wish to be werewolves.” Idiots, every one of them. “Some of us are very dangerous, so it is necessary for the Marrok to draw this line. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“And so it is that you do not need to be afraid of me.”
“What about Charles?”
Asil laughed. “Everyone is a little afraid of Charles except Anna.”
Her lips curled in a smile. “I got that, yeah.”
“So whom do I call to inform them you are here?” Asil asked. “This is not negotiable. Someone worries over you.”
She shrugged, unhappy again. He’d heard that her father had been sent back into the real world because his fear of her wolf was interfering with her ability to control herself. Neither she nor her father had been happy, but even the most experienced werewolf had trouble with a terrified human about. The idea that she even could control the wolf was very, very new to her, and real control was months if not years away. He didn’t know whom she was staying with now.
When she didn’t tell him, he took out his cell phone and called the Marrok.
“Asil?” said Bran.
“I have Miss Kara here in my greenhouse,” Asil said. “She is restless, and I think an afternoon of potting plants might suit her better than sitting in a desk with thirty children who are scared of her.”
She looked up at him, surprise on her face, as if she weren’t used to someone defending her.
“Of course,” said Bran. He sounded tired. “I should have thought of that. You are willing?”
Able is what he meant. It was a good question. Asil was very old, and his wolf was given to fits of rage, both of them nearing the end of their very long life. He tested his wolf, who seemed perfectly happy with an afternoon in the greenhouse with an unhappy adolescent.
“I think it shall be delightfully entertaining for both of us,” he told his Alpha.
Bran laughed. “All right. Bonne chance.”
Asil disconnected.
“Who was he wishing good luck? You or me?” She sounded wry.
“Knowing Bran, it could be either of us,” he said. “But it is probably you because he knows me. I do not need luck to deal with one young wolf.”
He put her to work deadheading roses because there wasn’t much she could do to screw it up. In his hothouse, with deadheading, he could keep roses all year long, though most of them he eventually let go dormant in the winter for the health of the plant.
It was early fall yet, so the rose section of his greenhouse was filled with flowers and heady perfume. He wished for the great gardens he’d grown in Spain, but most of his beauties would not live through a Montana winter without protection. He made do with the greenhouse and some hardy specimens planted near his house, where they were sheltered from the worst of the weather.
“Why roses?” Kara asked.
“Why not?” he said lightly as he mixed potting soil with his favorite concoction of rose food.
“Why not orchids or daisies or geraniums?” Her voice was thoughtful. “My mother has a greenhouse, and she grows all sorts of flowers.”
“I have many different flowers here,” he told her. “And I grow vegetables.”
“Most of the greenhouse—all of this room and half of the other one are all roses,” she said.
He opened his mouth to give her the easy answer, the one he used for everyone. He knew roses. It was better to be an expert in one thing than a dabbler in dozens. But he thought better of it.
“We all know about your trouble, do we not?” he said. “Your life has been spread out for total strangers—even though we are pack, we are still, right now, strangers—to look at and make judgement calls. You are not allowed secrets anymore—and we all should have things that we may keep to ourselves.”
Her mouth tightened. “It’s okay. Hard to hide that my parents are separated because my mother is scared of me, and my father is mad at her about it. Hard to hide what I am.”
“All true,” Asil said. “But here I think you need some secrets in return. So I will tell you something about me that no one else knows.”
“Okay.” She hesitated. “But what if I forget it’s a secret and tell someone?”
“It is not a harmful thing,” he said. “Only a tender thing that is hard for me to talk about. You are welcome to shout it on the streets—though I would rather you did not.”
She nodded.
“I am very old, and once I had a mate,” he told her. “She was everything to me. I would have filled her arms with jewels or gold if I could have. I would have destroyed the world for her—I was young and dramatic, you understand.”
Kara’s eyes widened. “You meant that. That you would have destroyed the world for her—it wasn’t just exaggeration. The Marrok is teaching me to smell when people lie or tell the truth.”
He gave her a formal nod. “Indeed. Being dramatic does not mean you do not have honest intentions. But destroying the world would not have saved her. She said, once, shortly before she died, that roses smelled like happiness. Whenever she smelled a rose, she thought of the day we met.” He brought a bloom up to his nose. “And after she told me that, I also think of that day when I smell roses.”
He cleared his throat and brought their conversation out of murky water. “And it is also true that with roses I am a genius, there are no others who breed roses such as mine. Why would I not choose to share my genius with others?”
“Okay,” she said. “And I won’t tell anyone the other reason. It is private.”
She was not a chatterer. The rest of the afternoon she worked quietly at whatever task he gave her. Someone, probably her mother, had taught her that, which made her more useful than he expected.
When Devon came, as he did sometimes, she didn’t look at the ragged old gaunt wolf or talk to him—though she kept a little closer to Asil than she had been. Devon settled on the ground with a sigh and didn’t look at Asil or Kara, either.