Anna braced herself to intervene, but Charles put his hands on the ground and levered himself up. Whatever she’d done to him had hurt, but she couldn’t see it in his face, just in the slowness of his movement. Surely if he needed her, he’d find some way to signal?

She glanced at the werewolf beside her, but though he was alert and focused, he didn’t seem worried. Of course, he didn’t know anything more of witches than she did-and he’d only known Charles for a day.

Anna wasn’t the only one who had noticed how slowly Charles was moving. The witch put both of her hands to her face.

“I forgot,” she gasped, half-laughing, and then she pointed a finger at him and said something that didn’t sound like Spanish to Anna. Charles flinched, then clutched his chest. “I forgot. I can defend myself.”

But Anna wasn’t listening to her, she was watching Charles’s face. He wasn’t breathing. Whatever the witch had done to him would be fatal if allowed to continue. She didn’t know much about witchcraft, and doubtless most of it was wrong. But the witch had released Charles once, with sufficient distraction. Maybe it would work one more time.

Anna was through waiting for a signal.

She erupted from the shelter of the tree and reached full speed within two strides; her old track coach would have been proud of her. She ignored the nagging ache of her over-used thighs and the bite of cold in her chest, focused only on the witch, only dimly aware of the wolf running at her side.

She saw the witch drop her hands and focus on Anna. Saw her smile and heard her say, “Bran, Marrok, Alpha of the Marrok, slay me your son, Charles.”

Then she raised a finger and flicked it at Anna. Anna had no time to prepare when something hit her from the side and knocked her to the ground, out of the pathway of the spell.

It came at last, Charles thought. The witch’s command rang in his ears-which were well and truly ringing anyway with whatever she had done to him. It came at the worst possible time because he was half-blind and stumbling, and he had no idea how long it would take his father to break her command over him.

If he broke it.

But he could not burden his father with his death, so he gathered his wits and figured out from where the wolf was attacking with his nose and the sense that told him when something hostile was watching, because nothing else was working properly.

He reached out, grabbed fur as tightly as he could, and let the force of his father’s nearly silent charge push him over on his back, then used his feet to make sure Bran continued over and past him.

It wasn’t that neat of course. His father was quicker than Sarai had been. Quicker, stronger, and a damn sight better with his claws. Still, his da’s most formidable weapon-his mind-was fogged by the witch’s hold, and Charles was able to throw him without taking too much damage. The leftover momentum was sufficient for him to roll to his feet and await his father’s next attack.

Walter was a deadweight on Anna, and she rolled him aside as gently as she could. If she hurt him, he didn’t show it. His body was limp and moved without resistance, and she could only hope that she wasn’t damaging him further. He’d knocked her out of the way and taken the witch’s spell himself.

She came to her feet and scrambled toward the witch. She couldn’t afford to stop and make sure Walter was all right until she’d done something, anything, to keep the witch from doing more harm.

“You don’t want to hurt me,” the witch said, widening her chocolate eyes. “You want to stop.”

Anna’s run slowed until she stood motionless, so close to the witch that she could smell the mint of her toothpaste. For a moment she had no idea what she was doing or why.

“Stay there.” The witch unzipped her coat and reached inside, pulling out a gun.

Omega, Anna remembered, meant she didn’t have to take orders-and as easily as that she could move again. With a precision that she’d learned from a brother who’d boxed in high school, and the speed and power she owed her werewolf nature, she punched the witch in the jaw. She heard the pop as the witch’s jawbone broke and she fell face-first on the ground, unconscious.

She took a deep breath and looked at the battle raging between Charles and his father. For a moment they were moving too swiftly for her eye to follow, then Charles stood motionless, except for the rapid rise and fall of his breath, just out of reach of his father, his body both ready and relaxed. Blood oozed from slices on his shoulder and thigh. A single rip, running from under his left arm across his abdomen to his right hip, looked to be more serious. The Marrok stood to one side shaking his head very slowly, shifting his weight from side to side.

She should kill the witch and free the Marrok.

She turned back and looked down at the limp body. The girl looked so innocent, so young to have caused such harm.

Anna had killed someone before, but that had been almost an accident. Killing in cold blood was different.

Walter knew how to kill. Instinctively, she looked for him, but he hadn’t moved…except his eyes. Surely they had been closed when she’d left him. Now they were open, and a whitish film coated them.

Anna found herself kneeling beside him without really knowing how she had gotten there. No heartbeat, no breath. This man had survived a war and over thirty years of self-imposed isolation, and he’d died for her. She fisted her hands-one gloved, one not-in his fur.

Then she walked over to the unconscious witch, grabbed her chin and the top of her head and twisted with more than human strength. It was easy, just like in the movies. One crack, and the witch was as dead as Walter.

She released the witch, stood up, and took one step back, breathing far too hard. It was so quiet in the forest, as if the whole world had taken a deep breath and not let it out. As if she were the only living creature in the whole world.

Numbly, she turned on her frozen feet to see the Marrok standing over Charles’s body.

She’d been too late.

As the sun slowly set, setting the sky aflame behind the dark mountains, Asil held Sarai, still unconscious, in his arms. He buried his nose against her neck, breathing in the familiar scent he’d never thought to smell again. She was so beautiful.

They weren’t so far that he couldn’t hear the fight, but out of the witch’s sight, she’d have a harder time controlling him.

Asil waited. He’d done all he could to take them both out of the battle since they’d only be on the wrong side if they fought. It was the best he could do.

So he held Sarai on his lap and tried to forget that it was the last time.

If Mariposa succeeded, she would kill him. He’d taken Sarai away from her again, and she wouldn’t stand for it. If Charles or Bran succeeded in killing Mariposa, his Sarai would be gone for good. A witch’s creations did not survive their maker.

So he held her and breathed in her scent and pretended that this moment would never end. Pretended it was Sarai he held…almost he caught a hint of cinnamon.

As her scent faded into fir and pine, snow and dreary winter, he wondered if he had been able to see the future that long ago day when a frightened and bruised child had been brought to his home, would he have had the fortitude to kill her? He put his head down on his knee in bleak despair, holding tight to a small, battered scrap of buff fur.

He didn’t have it in him to be glad that Mariposa was dead and Sarai’s wolf freed at last.

Which would have been a premature celebration at any rate, because madness swept through him like a fire in a forest in August. He was too tired, but the rage didn’t care, just gathered him in an implacable grip and demanded that he change. A wild howl echoed down the mountainside, and Asil called out in return.