Hosteen made an odd noise, a half growl, half laugh that attracted Chelsea’s attention. The new wolf’s hackles rose and she let out an unhappy whine.
The Alpha left his post leaning against the sink and walked up to Chelsea. He took her muzzle in his hand, meeting her eyes and holding them. If he worried that she had insufficient control to keep her wolf from biting him, Anna couldn’t see it.
Slowly, shivering with stress, Chelsea dropped to the ground and rolled over, giving Hosteen the unprotected vulnerability of her belly. He held her there a moment, then let her up.
“Good,” he told her. “Begin as you mean to go on, Chelsea. You are in charge and the wolf must listen to you.”
“Max is waiting,” said Anna. “Do you think it’s safe, Hosteen?”
Chelsea gave a panicked yip and scrambled back into the corner.
“Chelsea,” Hosteen said. “I promise you won’t hurt him.”
She held his eyes for three heartbeats.
“It will be okay,” he said.
She dropped her eyes and took two steps away from the corner, still looking unhappy.
Max, summoned by Anna’s call, stopped in the doorway, and for a moment Anna thought it was going to be bad. But then he grinned. “Wow, Mom. Kage is going to have a heart attack, you came out so pretty. He’s going to have to carry a silver-loaded shotgun to keep off the wolves in Hosteen’s pack. You’ve gotta see this in a mirror. Come on, there’s a full-length one in the main bathroom.”
They had about an hour of light left when they got to the barn. Anna was tired and stressed. She was pretty sure that Charles was in worse shape even though he didn’t show it.
Hosteen had taken a good look around the kitchen and decided that what everyone needed to “heal the spiritual wounds of the day” was a ride out into the desert. That he could deliver phrases like that and not sound hokey was impressive, Anna decided.
Chelsea came down with them, running beside the four-wheeler with Charles, who was also in his wolf form. They’d driven around back this time, where there were tie posts outside the back of the barn. Four horses were tacked up with western saddles. A harried-looking Teri was hastily brushing out one horse’s tail with a hairbrush.
“New dogs?” she asked Hosteen as they all disembarked from the four-wheeler, looking at Chelsea. “Sure are pretty.”
Pack magic let people see what they expected to see. Otherwise werewolves could never have stayed hidden as long as they had.
“One new dog—the white female. The red one belongs to Anna, our guest,” Hosteen told the woman.
“What’s her name?”
“We haven’t decided yet. Would you go get Kage? I’ll take over here. We’ll put them away properly when we’re done.”
Teri gave him a bright smile. “Sure thing. He said to tell you he’d be right out, but I’ll let him know you’re here anyway.”
As soon as she disappeared inside the barn, Charles returned to human form, a little more slowly than was usual for him. This was his second change of the day, Anna thought. If he had to do another one, it would be slower yet. Charles stretched, trying to loosen cramped muscles.
“Chelsea,” said Hosteen. “The horses won’t care as long as you don’t stare them in the eye for very long. If you make eye contact, they recognize you as a threat.” He turned to Anna. “Let me introduce you to Portabella while we’re waiting for Kage.”
Chelsea stayed close to Hosteen as they walked over to the horses. As promised, none of the horses seemed particularly bothered by her.
“Here she is,” Hosteen said, then stood back and let Anna look.
Portabella was a big mare. Anna had to stand on tiptoes to look over her back. Her color was not dark enough to be black, but very dark just the same. Bay, Anna thought, though the characteristic black points—legs, mane, and tail—were really very close to the same color as her body. A white streak dropped from a star between her big eyes to another splash of white on her nose. She was polished and beautiful. Even Anna, amateur that she was, could see that she was spectacular.
Anna couldn’t help but put her hands out to touch and found herself stroking steel clothed in silk. She ran her hands down the horse’s legs, and the mare lifted her front hoof to Anna’s asking. She wasn’t shod and the bottom of her feet looked—like the bottom of a horse’s foot. She laughed inwardly at herself, because she didn’t know enough for the examination to tell her anything except that the mare would stand quietly while an idiot ran hands all over her.
Somewhat to her own surprise, Anna’s fingers found a bump on her neck that struck her as odd. She was more surprised by her understanding that it was out of place than she was at finding something wrong with this paragon of a horse.
She glanced at Hosteen.
“From a vaccination,” he told her. “Some horses just do that sometimes. I have a vet report on it in her file.”
“Is she a mare you bred?” she asked, after looking for a question that wouldn’t make her sound too stupid.
Charles was being very quiet, even for Charles. He must have been as exhausted as she was. Hosteen was right: it was a tiredness of spirit rather than body. Even so, she was pretty sure she should have insisted that they retire to their room.
Hosteen shook his head. “Three years ago, Joseph was out at a trainer’s barn looking for interesting horses,” Hosteen said. “And he found this mare. She’d been soured in the ring so they’d put her in the breeding barn, but she wasn’t sound for breeding. So they’d sent her back to the trainers. But sour didn’t even touch on how much she hated arena work. She put the trainer’s assistant in the hospital and he was done with her.”
Hosteen shook his head. “My son is magic on a horse, and game for any challenge. He wanted to retrain her himself. We got her for more than we should have paid for her, but a lot less than she’d be worth if he could fix her. Before he could start working with her, his health started going downhill again.”
Hosteen turned away and ran a hand down the mare’s shiny neck. The smile he gave Anna when he turned back was unhappy, but not, she was sure, because of the horse. “Anyway, since then she’s been one of our trail horse band. We keep them in shape and ready to go for buyers or clients who want to take a ride out in the desert. So she’s been ridden steadily since she came, but not in the arena.”
“Portabella,” Anna said, having thought about the name and come up with an alternate theory for it, instead of the one attached to the mare’s pedigree. “Because someone fed her BS until she turned into a mushroom.”
Hosteen laughed. “Kage tried working with her last spring and he wanted to call her Soyuz.”
Anna frowned.
“After the Russian single-stage-to-orbit rocket,” said Kage dryly as he emerged from the barn. “I’ve never been dumped so fast with such authority in my life. It was a lesson in humility, especially since my eighty-year-old father had ridden her in the arena a couple of times before…” His voice trailed off as he caught sight of the wolf standing next to Hosteen.
Chelsea regarded him warily and, well versed in dealing with skittish animals, he stopped where he was and crouched down. “Oh, honey,” he crooned. “I’d have known you if you had six legs and scales. But I had no idea what a beautiful wolf you’d be.”
She leapt toward him—and misjudged, knocking him right off his feet. Portabella jumped back and Hosteen yanked at the rope that attached the horse to the tie post. A single jerk and she was loose from the post, her lead held in Hosteen’s hand instead. She took a couple of steps away and then settled, regarding the pile of wolf and man with pricked-ear disdain.
Chelsea backed off and looked distressed. Kage laughed and leaned forward until he could rub her neck. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. You’ll get the hang of it.”
Anna thought he hesitated a little as he got to his feet, but if he was hurt he wasn’t showing any other sign. Smart man. If Chelsea thought she’d hurt him, it would unsettle her, and unsettled was a bad thing for a werewolf in her first time out.