She weighed his words, but he seemed serious. “You aren’t angry? Don’t wish I’d kept my mouth shut?”

He closed the distance between them and kissed her. When he pulled back, her heart was pounding-and not from fear. She could see his pulse beat in his throat, and he smelled of the crisp snow-covered outdoors.

“No,” he murmured. “I don’t want you to keep quiet.” He ran a light finger down her jaw. “Tag will be here in a minute. Let me fix some food before he does.”

Though he was obviously still sore and claimed not to be much of a cook, he fixed the stew she’d been organizing when Bran had called. He did send her for the potatoes, which he kept hidden downstairs in a fifty-pound gunny-sack, but otherwise seemed perfectly content to do all the work himself.

She watched him cook, and the euphoria induced by his kiss faded. Here was a man used to being alone, used to depending upon himself. He didn’t need her, but she was completely dependent on him.

While they waited for the stew to simmer, he turned on the small TV in the dining room, the only TV she’d seen in his house, and a cheery woman in bright lipstick told them it was going to be colder tomorrow. He sat down, and she took a chair on the opposite side of his oak dining table.

“As local as we get,” Charles told her as they watched the forecast. “Missoula and Kalispell.”

She wasn’t sure why she didn’t just let the TV fill in the time.

“Your father told me I should ask you about contacting my family,” Anna said, while the anchor woman introduced a story on local Christmas shopping over the weekend: retail sales down from last year, Internet sales up.

“Is there some problem with them?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to them since shortly after I Changed.”

“You haven’t talked to your family for three years?” He frowned at her. Then a look of comprehension came to his face. “He didn’t let you.”

She looked at him a moment. “Leo said that any human even suspected of knowing about us would be killed. And any prolonged contact with my family would be adequate cause to eliminate them. At his suggestion, I took offense at something my sister-in-law said, and haven’t spoken to them since.”

“Idiot,” snapped Charles, then shook his head at her. “Not you. Leo. Why should…I suppose he thought your family would object to the treatment you were receiving and cause a fuss-and I hope he was right. If you’d like to call them right now, go ahead. Or when we get back from this, we can fly to your family for a visit. Some things are best explained in person.”

Her throat closed up, and she tried to blink back sudden, stupid tears. “I’m sorry,” she managed.

He leaned toward her, but before he could say anything, they both heard the unmistakable sound of a car driving up.

Without knocking, Tag blew in like a warm blizzard, a paper bag in one hand and a map in the other.

“Here you are.” He stopped and sniffed appreciatively. “Tell me there’s enough for a third. I’ve been out on your errands and haven’t gotten a bite to eat.”

“Help yourself,” said Charles dryly since Tag had dumped his burdens and was already in the kitchen.

Anna heard him rattle around for a moment, then he was striding into the dining room with three bowls of stew in his big hands. He set one in front of Anna, one in front of Charles, and one at a place next to Charles. Another visit and he had three glasses of milk and spoons. He handled the dishes with a professionalism that made Anna think that he’d spent some time as a waiter somewhere.

He kept an eye on Charles while he sat down, and Anna realized something that she’d been noticing subconsciously for a long time. Despite his casual demeanor, Tag was afraid of Charles, just as Sage had been, for all of her “Charlie’s.”

There was a reason, Anna thought, that Bran’s mate Leah had come when Charles was occupied elsewhere, why she’d been unfamiliar with the house. Anna had recognized Heather’s fear, but Heather was human. The others were all werewolves, and their reaction was in subtle body movements like Tag’s watchfulness.

Tag took a couple of slurping spoonfuls that Anna’s mother would have slapped his hand for, then told Charles, “She needs feeding up. Leo never could take care of the gifts he was given.”

“He wasn’t given Anna,” Charles said. “He hunted her down.”

Tag’s face stilled. “He Changed an Omega by force?”

Shock, Anna thought, and disbelief.

“No,” Charles said. “He hunted her, and when he found her, he set a mad-dog after her.”

“It’d take a crazy bastard to attack an Omega. You kill him?” The casualness of Tag’s voice was a little too studied to be real.

“Yes.”

“Leo, too?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Tag looked at her without meeting her eyes, then started in on his dinner again.

“I wasn’t an Omega then,” Anna said. “I was just a human. ”

Charles gave her a small smile and started eating his stew. “You were born an Omega, just as my father was dominant and dangerous from his first step, human or not. Being a werewolf just brings it out, and age puts a polish on it.”

“She doesn’t know that?” Tag asked.

“Leo did his best to keep her ignorant and under his thumb,” Charles told him.

Tag raised a fuzzy red eyebrow at her. “I never liked Leo, too damned underhanded by half. It’s hard for a dominant wolf to hurt a submissive wolf if he’s sane-our instincts tell us to protect them. Omega is one step beyond that. When you were human, you’d have been even more fragile than you are now-just ups those instincts. A human Omega is something that it takes a mad-dog-a wolf crazy with killing-to attack.”

Both men had started eating again before Anna decided to challenge his statement. “None of the wolves in Leo’s pack seemed to have trouble hurting me.”

Tag’s eyes met Charles’s, and she remembered that there was a wolf underneath the brash cheeriness.

“They should have had trouble,” said Charles harshly. “If Leo hadn’t pushed, they’d have let you be.”

“None of them stood up to him?” Tag asked.

“He’d weeded out the strong ones already,” said Charles. “The others were under his thumb. They jumped when he told them.”

“You sure you killed him?” asked Tag.

“Yes.”

Tag’s eyes skated across her again. “Good.”

As soon as everyone finished eating, Tag got the map he’d brought and spread it over the table.

Anna collected the dirty dishes and cleaned up after dinner, while Charles and Tag mumbled over the map.

“All the attacks were within a few miles of Baree Lake,” Tag was saying when she came back to peer over Charles’s shoulder. “There’s an old cabin in those woods, I’ve heard, but I’ve never seen it.”

“I know where it is. That’s a good thought.” Charles tapped a finger on the map. “It’s about there, not too far from the attacks. I haven’t been out to Baree Lake in the winter for ten or fifteen years. Is this still the best road?”

“That’s the way I went in today. You’ll want to take this little road here.” He pointed, but Anna didn’t see a road.

“That’s right,” Charles said. “Then we’ll hike over Silver Butte Pass.”

“Now the first attack was up this way.” He pointed slightly to the left of Baree Lake. “Right on the trail you’d take in the summer, a couple of miles from the lake. The dead hunter was found here, about a half mile from the lake. He probably came up Silver Butte Pass, like you’re going to. We had a lot of snow in late October; by hunting season the old forest service road would already have been impassable. Heather and Jack were attacked here, about four miles from their truck. I was able to drive another quarter of a mile closer-you’ll be able to do a little better in the Humvee.”

Charles hummed, then said, “It could be a lot worse; we could be trying to get to Vimy Ridge.”

Tag laughed shortly. “Which is where you’d hole up. I wouldn’t want to be the wolf hunting you in that place in high summer, let alone midwinter. Happily, Baree Lake is as close to a Sunday hike as you can find in the Cabinets.” He looked at Anna. “Not that it’s easy, mind you. But possible. The only way to get to Vimy Ridge in this weather is by chopper. The snowpack can get over fourteen feet deep in some of the high country-you’ll see some of that up there in the ridges above Baree. You go with this old lobo, and you listen to him, or-werewolf or not-we’ll likely be out searching for your dead body.”