"Evelyn, indeed," he said, then sighed. "When you chose to live alone, rather than go to your mother, I agreed to that, too. You had proven your mettle to me; I thought you had earned the right to make your own choices." His eyes roved around the room. "Do you remember the last time you and I talked?"

I nodded and sat down finally. Even if he wasn't insisting on protocol tonight, it felt awkward to be standing while he was sitting in the chair.

"You were sixteen," he said. "Too young for him-and too young to know what it was that he wanted from you."

When Bran had caught Samuel kissing me in the woods, he'd sent me home, then shown up the next morning to tell me that he'd already spoken with my real mother, and she would be expecting me at the end of the week. He was sending me away, and I should pack what I wanted to take.

I'd packed all right, but not to go to Portland; I was packed to leave with Samuel. We'd get married, he'd said. It never occurred to me that at sixteen, I'd have trouble getting married without parental permission. Doubtless Samuel would have had an answer for that as well. We'd planned to move to a city and live outside of any pack.

I loved Samuel, had loved him since my foster father had died and Samuel had taken over his role as my protector. Bryan had been a dear, but Samuel was a much more effective defense. Even the women didn't bother me as much once I had Samuel at my back. He'd been funny and charming. Lightheartedness is not a gift often given to werewolves, but Samuel had it in abundance. Under his wing, I learned joy-a very seductive emotion.

"You told me that Samuel didn't love me," I told Bran, my mouth tasting like sawdust. I don't know how he'd found out what Samuel had planned. "You told me he needed a mate who could bear his children."

Human women miscarry a little over half of the children they conceive by a werewolf father. They carry to term only those babies who are wholly human. Werewolf women miscarry at the first full moon. But coyotes and wolves can interbreed with viable offspring, so why not Samuel and me? Samuel believed that some of our children would be human, maybe some would be walkers like me, and some would be born werewolves-but they all would live.

It wasn't until Bran explained it all to me that I understood the antagonism Leah had toward me, an antagonism that all the other females had adopted.

"I should not have told you that way," Bran said.

"Are you trying to apologize?" I asked. I couldn't understand what Bran was trying to say. "I was sixteen. Samuel may seem young, but he's been a full-grown adult as long as I can remember-so he's what, fifty? Sixty?"

I hadn't worried about it when I had loved him. He'd never acted any older than I. Werewolves didn't usually talk about the past, not the way humans do. Most of what I knew about Bran's history, I picked up from my human foster mother, Evelyn.

"I was stupid and young," I said. "I needed to hear what you told me. So if you're looking for forgiveness, you don't need it. Thank you."

He cocked his head. In human form his eyes were warm hazel, like a sunlit oak leaf.

"I'm not apologizing," he said. "Not to you. I'm explaining." Then he smiled, and the resemblance to Samuel, usually faint, was suddenly very apparent. "And Samuel is a wee bit older than sixty." Amusement, like anger, sometimes brought a touch of the old country-Wales-to Bran's voice. "Samuel is my firstborn."

I stared at him, caught by surprise. Samuel had none of the traits of the older wolves. He drove a car, had a stereo system and a computer. He actually liked people-even humans-and Bran used him to interface with police and government officials when it was necessary.

"Charles was born a few years after you came here with David Thompson," I told Bran, as if he didn't know. "That was what… 1812?" Driven by his association to Bran, I'd done a lot of reading about David Thompson in college. The Welsh-born mapmaker and fur trader had kept journals, but he hadn't ever mentioned Bran by name. I wondered when I read them if Bran had gone by another name, or if Thompson had known what Bran was and left him out of the journals, which were kept, for the most part, more as a record for his employers than as a personal reminiscence.

"I came with Thompson in 1809," Bran said. "Charles was born in the spring of, I think, 1813. I'd left Thompson and the Northwest Company by then, and the Salish didn't reckon time by the Christian calendar. Samuel was born to my first wife, when I was still human."

It was the most I'd ever heard him say about the past. "When was that?" I asked, emboldened by his uncustomary openness.

"A long time ago." He dismissed it with a shrug. "When I talked to you that night, I did my son a disservice. I have decided that perhaps I was overzealous with the truth and still only gave you part of it."

"Oh?"

"I told you what I knew, as much as I thought necessary at the time," he said. "But in light of subsequent events, I underestimated my son and led you to do the same."

I've always hated it when he chose to become obscure. I started to object sharply-then realized he was looking away from my face, his eyes lowered. I'd gotten used to living among humans, whose body language is less important to communication, so I'd almost missed it. Alphas-especially this Alpha-never looked away when others were watching them. It was a mark of how bad he felt that he would do it now.

So I kept my voice quiet, and said simply, "Tell me now."

"Samuel is old," he said. "Nearly as old as I am. His first wife died of cholera, his second of old age. His third wife died in childbirth. His wives miscarried eighteen children between them; a handful died in infancy, and only eight lived to their third birthday. One died of old age, four of the plague, three of failing the Change. He has no living children and only one, born before Samuel Changed, made it into adulthood."

He paused and lifted his eyes to mine. "This perhaps gives you an idea of how much it meant to him that in you he'd found a mate who could give him children less vulnerable to the whims of fate, children who could be born werewolves like Charles was. I have had a long time to think about our talk, and I came to understand that I should have told you this as well. You aren't the only one who has mistaken Samuel for a young wolf." He gave me a little smile. "In the days Samuel walked as human, it was not uncommon for a sixteen-year-old to marry a man much older than she. Sometimes the world shifts its ideas of right and wrong too fast for us to keep up with it."

Would it have changed how I felt to know the extent of Samuel's need? A passionate, love-starved teenager confronted with cold facts? Would I have seen beyond the numbers to the pain that each of those deaths had cost?

I don't think it would have changed my decision. I knew that because I still wouldn't have married someone who didn't love me; but I think I would have thought more kindly of him. I would have left him a letter or called him after I reached my mother's house. Perhaps I'd even have gathered the courage to talk to him if I hadn't been so hurt and angry.

I refused to examine how Bran's words changed my feelings about Samuel now. It wouldn't matter anyway. I was going home tomorrow.

"There were also some things I didn't know to tell you." Bran smiled, but it wasn't a happy smile. "I sometimes believe my own press, you know. I forget that I don't know everything. Two months after you left, Samuel disappeared."

"He was angry at your interference?"

Bran shook his head. "At first, maybe. But we talked that out the day you left. He would have been more angry if he hadn't felt guilty about taking advantage of a child's need." He reached out and patted my hand. "He knew what he was doing, and he knew what you would have felt about it, whatever he tells himself or you. Don't make him out to be the victim."