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*****

AARYN

Eventually the responsibility of the night, of her role as Alpha, and of his own jobs, pressed hard enough that they both crawled off the couch and dressed. It wasn't high moon yet, but Aaryn estimated they were only an hour away and they hadn't even started talking about the next day.

At this rate they wouldn't sleep at all.

But the moment had been good for them. As they gathered papers and books, made tea, and moved around the cave, their eyes caught more than once. They both reached out to let hands drag across sides or backs as the other passed. Elreth scooted her chair closer to his when they finally sat at the table.

But Aaryn could barely keep his mind fixed on what had happened that evening and what he would need to tell the others the next day. Smelling his mate—warm and soft, sexed, and languid from her orgasm, was like a siren to his senses. He sat with one hand on her thigh, trying to make notes about what he and Tarkyn had discussed, how the disformed would be evaluated and incorporated into any areas of the guard where their skills were suited, and most of his mind was still on the soft firmness of her inner thigh, where his fingertips rested.

He should have been ecstatic. He was, in truth. But something was making him uneasy. Something about this entire day had made him uneasy, and he couldn't quite see it. It felt like an enemy at his back—almost visible in the corner of his eye, but darting away whenever he turned, leaving him confused and self-doubting.

Elreth on the other hand, seemed to lose herself in her thoughts, scribbling notes and flipping through the books she'd pulled from the shelves of her father's old resources. Aaryn wished he could stop seeing the heated gaze the Captain had dragged down her back as they walked out. He'd enjoyed his time with Tarkyn that afternoon—and the male had clearly been working hard to give him no reason to feel threatened. They'd been of similar minds in so many ways… he'd always appreciated Tarkyn's steadiness and sense of humor.

But now… now it felt like he needed to be watching. To guard Elreth against the machinations of a male who might not outrank him, but who had age, experience, and battle on his side.

An image of Tarkyn, wrestling with Elreth when they were training, both of them laughing… of the male pressing her down into the dirt and holding her there, their eyes catching in the way hers did when Aaryn got close—

"…need to tell me, Aaryn. I can't do this without understanding why!"

Aaryn blinked. It took a moment to bring himself back into the moment—Elreth wasn't falling into the arms of another male. She still smelled satisfied and sated from their own lovemaking, he reminded himself.

He swallowed. "I'm sorry, I was distracted. What did you say?"

Elreth turned to look at him, her brows pinched in over her nose. "I said, I just don't understand why. Everyone seems to know what you're doing with the disformed except me. And I don't understand why. I need to know why you're training them. Why you've been holding that back—this whole picture. Why have the disformed been organized and skilled without anyone knowing?"

Aaryn took a deep breath. "I've told you about my role—"

"No, Aaryn. You've told me about being Alpha. You've told me that you can't abandon them. You've told me that they want their own tribe, and that you're willing to lead them to it. But this whole pictures around the traverse and the humans… it's all still so unclear to me. And it's just hitting me… I'm sitting here trying to plan how to thwart humans from coming into Anima and I don't even know why they were told in the first place! And you know that! You've know that all along and you've been keeping it from me. Why?"

Aaryn shook his head. "It's not like that. I've been… I've been keeping the confidences of others. The things I haven't told you now, they aren't my stories to tell."

"You're Alpha of a pack that is apparently skilled enough that our Captain of the Guard wants to recruit from among your ranks. This is a massive step forward, Aaryn!"

"I know! I was just trying to get my head around that myself."

"Were you? Because it seems like you had this goal in mind for a long time. You said they'd been waiting to prove themselves. But you never mentioned that to me. I thought… I thought the disformed wanted to be a tribe, to be left alone. Not to take power."

"El, I told you that we thought we had the right people to be spies and assets for you. Did you think I was making it up?"

"But why?! Why train them in this particular area? Why make that such a focus? What drove you all in that direction?"

"You'd have to ask your uncle Gahrye," Aaryn said honestly. "I didn't start this, El. I was raised into it—and I just happened to have the Alpha strength to take the hierarchy. But I didn't start the outsiders. That was Gahrye. Gahrye… and your mom."

Elreth's lips thinned and she turned away, glaring at Great Room, shaking her head. "It always comes back to that. Gar tells me to talk to her—but she won't tell. You tell me it's not on you. I'm not buying this, Aaryn. It seems like you are all just passing the buck."

"No, El, please…" he took her hand and she turned back to look at him. "I get it, okay. I know it looks like I set you up, but I promise, if I'd had any clue about the human thing I would have told you. I knew some of them were defecting—I told you that. But no one ever told me they were coming back here."

"What if this human that we're hunting now is one of your disformed mates? What then, Aaryn, have you thought about that?"

He blinked. He hadn't, actually. But she was right. It was entirely possible that a disformed had brought a human back and something had gone wrong… or the disformed was just angry enough to let their mate bring a weapon. Or they'd brought it without their mate's knowledge…

"Or, what if the disformed have gotten sloppy? What if they've told more humans than they realize? Without the oversight of the crown—I mean, seriously, Gar's been running this?!—we can't know if someone just told a person they shouldn't have. Or the Guardians slipped up. There's so much we don't know, and I'm supposed to make all these decisions…"

She growled and pushed out of her chair to walk aimlessly across the room, then stand there, staring, in the center of the space.

"Clearly I need to talk to my mother," she said finally, shaking her head. "I'm not getting any answers out of you."

"El, it's not like that. I don't know the answers to the questions you're asking right now."

"Maybe not," she said, then turned to face him. "But how am I supposed to know that? It seems like everything to do with the disformed, you think differently than I've ever known you to think. And you're so protective of them…"

"Just like you are, with the people," Aaryn pointed out through his teeth.

She shook her head and stared him down. "No, it's not the same. Because I'd never put them in front of you, Aaryn. Never."