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BRAVE woonize us, then show us so in Dana&039;s face to show that their opinion was ie
Anna didn&039;t knohat to expect, but she drew in her breath when she got her first view of the painting It was skillfully executed, exquisite in detail, color, and texture A robust young woainst a plastered wall and stared out of the painting at so or someone There was a yelloer, delicate and fine-textured, held in hands that were neither
The colors rong, brighter-but there was so familiar in the curve of the woman&039;s cheek and the shape of her shoulder
"It looks like it was painted by one of the old Dutch reed "But I&039;ve never seen this one"
The fae sighed andher brushes with quick, almost fevered movements
"No one has, not since it perished in a fire a couple of centuries ago And no one ever will because that painting isn&039;t it" She looked at Anna "Ver at?"
And it was then Anna saw it, the alien beneath the glanizable She didn&039;t hurt me too bad, the troll had said This woman was a predator, a top predator
Uncoaze, Anna shook her head "I don&039;t know"
Danaat it"
True enough Anna looked at the wo, who hter than Dana&039;s The only answer that occurred to her was stupid, but she said it anyway "Someone here in this room?"
Dana&039;s shoulders drooped and she turned to Charles "No You see? When he finished the original, he dragged a peasant in from the streets-and even that uneducated fool could see it Vermeer&039;s students, the ones ere there the day the painter finished it, called it that, what the peasant told the Master: She Looks at Love Ver prosaic, as he preferred"
Anna looked at the painting, and thecould take away froht the luscious texture of skin and hair and the cloth of the wo to one of those corams that played sheet music: perfect technical skill and no soul
"I don&039;t know a lot about paintings," Anna said to excuse herself
Dana shook her head and gave Anna a rueful smile, the alien predator nowhere to be seen "No, it&039;s all right My people are cursed with the love of beautiful things and no ability to create them" She dried her hands "Not all fae, of course But ive up creative abilities of all kinds Ah well"
"Dragons are like that," Charles said obscurely
Did he know a dragon? Anna gave him an interested look He smiled a little, but his attention was on the fae, who had stopped her scrubbing
"Dragons can&039;t create either?"
He shrugged "So s he knows to be true"
She sons is not such a bad thing I&039;ve only seen the one-out exploring, he said, I think We didn&039;t have much of a conversation, but he was like the Vermeer A work of art"
He tilted his head "Exactly"
Dana tilted her head the same way and looked at Charles, really looked at hierous"
"True, enough," Charles said
Anna found it interesting that the fae thought "rude" erous"
"I was drawn to that in you," Dana told him "I would have said that I knew you quite well But I never knew you could also be kind" She put her hands on his shoulders and, with a grin at Anna, she kissed hiic as she sent it over Charles like a mantle or net It slid off, but even Anna, who had not been the focus, could feel the fascination and lust she generated
"There," she told Anna "A sister could not have been ht so for me?"
She didn&039;t lie Or if she did, Anna couldn&039;t tell-and the fae couldn&039;t lie, could they? The ic could have been involuntary; maybe it happened every time, and the fae didn&039;t even notice anymore
Charles hadn&039;t seemed affected, but it would have been difficult to tell His face was doing its usual public thing Not even the mate bond helped her, because the connection between the But it wasn&039;t possible for a fae with , was it? Not affection, adic had been aimed at him while the merest shadow of it had brushed Anna-who had never in her life been attracted to another wohtly on the arainst her because she suddenly knew exactly what he felt toward Dana Shea-wariness Not desire or fear, but wary respect-one predator to another on neutral territory maybe And then there was Brother Wolf
She&039;d heard olves talk as if they and the wolves they shared their skins ere one So more wolfish about them, even in wolf fors that ran fro to keep her sanity in the first few ht about it much one way or the other
Charles so who shared his body: Brother Wolf
For the first tihe was-too much to be absorbed or witnessed-she could feel the wolf inside of Charles Two distinct souls And Brother Wolf felt her, too
Mate, he told her, not unkindly Get out of our head so we can deal with She-Who-Is-Not-Kin
Not-Kin wasn&039;t the only thing she got from that name Powerful, ruthless, killer Bound by rules Overcivilized Respected enemy Brother Wolf&039;s voice was clearer in her head than even the Marrok&039;s And the Marrok spoke in words-Brother Wolf wasn&039;t ha so human
Anna pulled her hand away froers Charles&039;s shoulder buesture the fae woman probably hadn&039;t noticed Or was too polite to comment on
Later, murmured Brother Wolf quietly, then she was alone in her head Alone with the remnants of jealousy and hurt at Brother Wolf&039;s rejection Knowing that she shouldn&039;t feel either didn&039;t help at all
Charles took the package he&039;d brought and handed it to Dana
Dana&039;s eyebrows rose "Butcher paper and twine?"
He shrugged "Da gave it to me that way"
The fae shook her head and opened a drawer in a bird&039;s-eyesilver scissors Setting the package on the desktop, she cut the string and opened it
And the alien thing Anna had glimpsed earlier was back in full measure Dana didn&039;t move, didn&039;t sofilled the space they were in Every muscle, every hair on Anna&039;s body warned her to run
She looked at Charles His attention was on the fae, but he wasn&039;t alarmed Did he not feel it? Or was he so confident that Dana&039;s threat was soain hers She waited to see what had caused such a strong reaction
Even before Dana had opened the package, it&039;d been obvious that a painting was inside It wasn&039;t large Ten inches by twelve, maybe, framed in oak a couple of shades darker than the desk&039;s maple, a waterscape of some sort
"Da said to tell you it hat he reotten soht not"
"I didn&039;t know the Marrok painted" Dana&039;s voice was deeper soe Her hands tre The fae&039;s power that Anna had felt so strongly just a few one as if it had never been
"He doesn&039;t" Charles shook his head "But we have an artist in our pack, and he has a gift for painting other people&039;s words-and ood ords"
"I didn&039;t know your father was ever there" The fae sounded lost
Charles shrugged "You kno Da is No one notices hioes everywhere"
Dana lifted her head, and her eyes were puffy, her nose red, though no tears fell down her cheeks She looked very human "How did he know?"
Charles lifted both of his hands "Who kno ht it would please you"
She looked at it again, and Anna couldn&039;t tell if she was pleased or not-overcoone Destroyed by o The site it occupied is a city street that bears the name of a hundred other streets in a hundred other cities I thought allthe way Anna touched Charles: lightly, cautious of pain but unable to resist the draw of it
She tipped it so they both could see it better The side of a lake, Anna thought A deep lake to catch the color of the sky and darken the blue to a near black The artas plainer than the painting Dana had been working on, and the canvas much smaller But in simple brushstrokes, the artist had captured an unworldly quality that n place A place that held no welcolimpsed in Dana&039;s eyes
"Tell your father," Dana said, returning her attention to the painting, "that I will see if I can return a gift of equal value to hiies if I don&039;t"
"WELL," said Anna, once they were safely on their way
"That was unsettling"
"You didn&039;t like her?"
She looked at him, then turned her attention back to the road When the fae&039;s spell had brushed her, Anna had wanted to like her, to fawn at her feet and wait for crumbs of kindness The rest of the ti with Charles-for having slept with him
She wanted to crawl in a dark hole so that she never bothered Brother Wolf with her presence again-which she kneas stupid He hadn&039;t been rejecting her Not really But there had been such dismissal in his admonition His attention had been on Dana
Dana as fae, a Gray Lord, confident and powerful Not a twenty-three-year-old woman with half an education who didn&039;t even know, after three years of being one, a quarter of what she should know about being a olf She was no fit match for Charles
None of which she could talk to Charles about without sounding like a stupid twit-a coh-maintenance, stupid twit Fortunately she could answer his question without betraying what really bothered her about visiting the fae
"In Chicago, at the Brookfield Zoo, they have a reptile house I took a school tour of it once, when I was a kid They have a green mamba It&039;s the most beautiful snake I&039;ve ever seen; not flashy, just this indescribable shade of green-and so poisonous that if soets bitten by it, there&039;s usually no time to administer antivenin"
"You think she&039;s beautiful?" He considered it "Interesting looking, I would say, but not beautiful Few of the fae are beautiful with their glamour on Beauty doesn&039;t blend in very well And the fae, like us, spent a long tiht"
Anna stared ahead "She&039;s beautiful Distinctive In a room of movie stars, everyone would look at her first"
He atching her intently; she could feel it even if her eyes were busy with the traffic
"That&039;s dominance," he said "Not beauty"
"No?" She passed a couple of boys in a Ferrari, and they took offense, roaring up behind her until they were so close she could tell that one of the pair should have shaved better
"Beauty isn&039;t always easy," she said "Take Paganini for instance"
"That&039;s music"
"You knohat I reeable conversation, and she liked the way he considered what she&039;d said instead of just letting her run with it
"I&039;ve seen her without her glamour," he told her finally "Maybe it blinded s When we beca" He atching her reaction
Thathim describe a former lover lih she&039;d done her best not to look No one should stand completely naked before another person But she&039;d noticed so unexpected She kneho she was-and she kneho he was It wasn&039;t that she didn&039;t value herself; she did But Charles was a force of nature
And he worried that she ht not ever be able to see who he was and love him-because he looked in the mirror and saw only the killer It was the reason he kept the bond between thehtened down He loved her beyond all reason and didn&039;t expect her to love hi for her to wise up
She felt terrified-as if she had been given a delicate and valuable glass ornah it should have been given to stronger, more capable hands so it would not be harmed Not that she hadn&039;t staked out her claih
When Anna didn&039;t say anything, he continued "She took me as her lover because, once she knew her ability to make anyone lust after her didn&039;t work onher partner"
Anna snorted "I&039; didn&039;t bother her , didn&039;t I? I owe you an apology"
She glanced at hi this down in ancient history-but I didn&039;t stop her doing so soon enough either And then words are not always s clear: there was nothing between us except o or ht," she told hiht Dry hu time to acquire former lovers I can blame you for"
A warm hand closed over her knee, and a warm, wordless voice curled around her even as Charles said, "I liked it today, when you claimed s that you were able to talk about her without being jealous"
She took her right hand off the wheel and ran her hand down his arm "You need to check your nose, Kemo Sabe" If he could be honest, so could she "I don&039;t like you talking about her I wanted to rip her face off when she kissed you And when Brother Wolf pushed me out-"
"He didn&039;t mean it that way" Charles&039;s free hand tapped on the door frae, not even to htforward"
The boys in the Ferrari were still on her tail, and she tapped her brakes once in warning
"Well," she said Straightforward "I suppose that explains it all" But it didn&039;t bother her anymore It wasn&039;t Charles&039;s explanation that soothed her, it was the way she&039;d felt Brother Wolf&039;s straightforward agreement with Charles&039;s pleasure in the way she&039;d faced up to Dana and claimed hi Not much fro to be reat dealthe sah and slid down in his seat "I suppose we do, for good or for ill, eh? He doesn&039;t like the fae, not even Dana And he we are still adjusting to having you We protect our pack, that&039;s what our job has always been Especially the submissives who are our heart"
"And he you feel a, not submissive at all But she served somewhat the same purpose in the pack The dominant wolves could relax around her because they knew that she would never challenge them-not because she couldn&039;t, but because she wouldn&039;t Oas didn&039;t care about pack position, they just cared about the pack
"You are ours," he said unequivocally, huone "Brother Wolf&039;s and s, but safe isn&039;t one of the us-and if we&039;d talked to you too long, she&039;d have sensed it and been offended It is not difficult to offend most fae, and Dana is not an exception"
"Her reaction to the painting Bran sent her was odd," Anna said
"Powerful," agreed Charles "But it would not have done to give her a gift that was less than the gifts others will bring her during this conference Staying on the right side of the fae is an interesting dance, and I&039;ll leave it to my father to know exactly how to step"