Sherwood had been found in the laboratory of a collection of black witches who had been taken down by werewolves a few years ago. No one knew how long he’d been there or what had been done to him, but I’d been confined in such a place for a bit, and I still had nightmares.
His rescuers had brought Sherwood to Bran, who had forced him to shift back to his human form. Maybe because he’d spent too long as a wolf, maybe because the witches had done something to him, Sherwood had no memory of who or what he had been.
Bran had known Sherwood’s identity, but for his own Bran-reasons hadn’t seen fit to tell Sherwood, or anyone else. Instead, Bran had thrown up his hands, given the three-legged wolf (or one-legged man) a name, and sent Sherwood Post to us.
I’d first thought the move had been for Sherwood’s sake. Bran had told me that Sherwood had complained about the horrible Montana winters and asked for assignment to a pack that lived in a warmer climate. Most places have better climates than Aspen Creek, Montana.
After the last few months, months during which Sherwood had proven to have some useful and unusual skills, I was beginning to think Bran might have had other reasons for sending Sherwood to us.
Had Bran known what was going to happen here? Had he known our pack would become the center of fae political maneuvering before we did? Because Sherwood came to us not long before I’d made our territorial claim on the national news. How had Bran known? And if so, why hadn’t he warned us that he’d be forced to leave us (leave me, some childish part of me murmured) out in the cold without the protection of the Marrok and the whole of the wolves under his aegis?
If I thought too much about Bran’s planning capacity, I usually ended up with a headache. I didn’t need more of a headache, but I couldn’t keep myself from wondering.
Had Bran, knowing that we would need every advantage we could muster, given us Sherwood Post as a secret weapon? Sherwood wasn’t just any werewolf. He was witchborn. Maybe. Or at least he could manipulate magic with skill. His power didn’t smell corrupted, nor did it smell exactly like witchcraft. And he had a lot of magic for someone who wasn’t tainted by black magic.
I didn’t know quite what he was. But I did know he was someone, a Power whose name would be known. Someone a few of the really old wolves would probably know on sight. We had only a couple of those—Honey and Zack. Age is one of those things that you just don’t ask, but you get a feel for it after a while. I knew that Honey didn’t know who Sherwood was, but I was not so sure about Zack. Zack could keep secrets.
Bran might have given us Sherwood as a weapon, but Adam thought it was about to explode in our faces.
Sherwood slid out the chair Adam had been using and sat in it. There was a significance to that, just as Ben’s not sitting in it earlier had been significant. This left Sherwood facing me, his expression as grim as I felt.
Now is the winter of our discontent, I thought. I’d taken a Shakespeare course in college that had been taught by the drama department instead of the English department. Mostly that meant we’d had to memorize a lot of the famous speeches. They bubbled up now and then. I didn’t think that Sherwood would bring glorious summer, no matter how much all concerned might wish it.
I liked Sherwood and had done so ever since the day we’d talked on the top of a very tall crane and ended up fighting back-to-back. Nothing tonight was his fault, any more than it was Adam’s. Sometimes—quite a lot of the time—being a werewolf just sucked.
I decided the best way to calm down was to have a conversation, something to distract us both. Not that Sherwood was a good conversationalist at the best of times. But there was one sure way to get his attention.
I asked, “How is Pirate?”
Some of the stress left Sherwood’s posture at the mention of his cat. But not all. If Adam was right, and Adam was always right about this kind of thing, Sherwood knew that we were in trouble, too.
“Pirate extends his greetings,” Sherwood said solemnly, “and expressed his regrets that his evil roommate would not bring him tonight. He bids me tell you that he will endeavor to teach said roommate the error of his ways—probably by coughing up a hair ball on the bed.”
He caught my surprised look, and color flushed up his cheeks. He adjusted his chair, and it gave a warning creak—he was a big man.
It was true, Sherwood did usually bring Pirate anywhere he could, and cats did tend to exert their dominance over their homes. If he could speak, Pirate might very well have given the message Sherwood related.
But this was Sherwood. I had expected a simple “Fine.” Maybe, if he was feeling unusually garrulous, he might even have said something like “Angry at being excluded.” The longer and funny story was not like the Sherwood I knew.
The silence between Sherwood and me grew awkward. More awkward. I had a million questions rising to my tongue, and I couldn’t ask any of them until Adam joined us.
“Oh, look,” I said gratefully, because awkward silences tended to make me babble, “here’s one of Uncle Mike’s minions. Do you want something to drink while we wait?”
A server had come into the room via the kitchen door, glanced around to the few remaining guests, then started toward our table, now the only one still occupied.
Before Sherwood could answer me, I met the eyes of the wolf who quite possibly would kill my mate tonight, and babbled another question off the top of my head—one that I blamed on my earlier internal sound bite from Richard III.
“Are you Shakespeare?”
Sherwood went still. Almost carefully, he turned his head toward the approaching waiter. I was pretty sure that it was to hide his expression from me.
Because there was only one reason for me to ask him that.
Adam had told me, in the aftermath of our shower this evening, that the pack bonds had informed him Sherwood’s memory was back. Sherwood’s reaction told me that he was right. Adam had no idea why it had happened, but that wasn’t the important thing just now. We had in our pack a wolf who was suddenly very, very dominant.
I’d been told that Adam was the fourth most dominant wolf in the New World. It went Bran, his two sons, then Adam. But Adam thought the new, improved version of Sherwood was more dominant than Adam was. That was a problem, especially under our current circumstances.
“Four glasses and a pitcher of water,” I told the waiter before he could ask us anything. “And when there are only four of us left here, could you close the door and give us privacy until we leave?”
“Right you are,” he said, with a nod and a touch of his finger to his forehead and a bare glance at Sherwood. This waiter was a new one to me and he looked human. He didn’t smell like it, though.
“I wonder why Uncle Mike gets along with the goblins better than most of the fae do?” I mused when the waiter had gone, giving Sherwood the opportunity to ignore my last question.
I didn’t really think he had been Shakespeare. But the pack had a betting pool about who Sherwood had been. When he’d found out about it, he’d bet that he was—or rather had been—William Shakespeare. I was pretty sure that had been a joke. Iambic pentameter was not something anyone would expect from Sherwood, who seldom spoke five syllables when one syllable would do.
“Don’t know,” Sherwood told me shortly.
I took my cue from him and quit talking. He leaned back in the chair, head canted to watch Adam talk to the last few lingering pack members.
Adam looked relaxed, the smile on his face genuine. Adam had been in a lot of battles. Unlike me, he tended not to fret about them in advance, not if it was “only” his life on the line. Next to Adam, Zack leaned casually against a wall as if he had tried to find a place where he might not be noticed. But no wolf would overlook a submissive. I saw him smile and nod at something one of the exiting wolves said.