Tarnished by Rhiannon Held Read Free Book Online Page A

another breath. Just breathe. “I honestly can’t tell you much about my reasoning at the time. I wish I could. That would mean there was more to it than falling into blind, berserker rage and being like Were used to be, combining the worst of human and animal.”
    Frozen silence fell for several moments. Michelle was the first to speak. “The rumors say their throats—”
    “Death says he took their voices to the Lady regardless,” Silver broke in, making Michelle start. “I see no particular reason to believe otherwise.” She tugged on her hand until Andrew dropped it from his chest so she could scoot forward in her chair. She leaned in as if sharing a confidence. “Now, you’re thinking, ‘See, he’s admitted it, he did kill all those Were, he did tear out their throats so Death couldn’t take their voices to the Lady to give them their rest with Her. Why should we trust this man to be a leader?’”
    Michelle nodded with a jerk. Andrew wanted to flinch. Why had Silver laid it out so starkly? Said like that, he wondered how he ever could convince someone differently.
    Silver freed her hand and held it against her core. “You should trust him because he’s found that place inside himself, and now he knows where it is. You have that place, no matter that you may think you don’t. With the Lady’s grace you’ll never have cause to find it. But if you should stumble onto it unexpectedly, you’ll no more be able to control it than he could. None of his pack would ever need to worry he’d stumble, because he knows, and he’ll control it.”
    Andrew turned to stare at Silver. She’d never said that to him before, but she smelled of absolute sincerity and belief in him.
    Michelle put her hand out to her beer bottle, but didn’t drink. “But someone who has killed before might find it easier next time.” Her inflection trailed almost into a question at the end.
    “Someone’s who’s killed before knows the cost,” Andrew said, and hesitated, choosing his words. “The madman who injected Silver and killed her whole pack, including the children, should I have let him walk away? Locked him up to escape again someday?”
    “He deserved to die for his crimes.” John thumped his bottle on the table for emphasis.
    “And who do you want to judge that? Someone who knows the cost, or someone like Rory, who was such a pussy that he demanded I run back to Virginia to protect him instead of tracking the killer down?”
    Michelle turned her head away to hide her expression and her scent muddied. She seemed less sure than she had been at the beginning of the conversation. Less sure in what direction, Andrew didn’t know. He hoped she hadn’t revised her opinion downward.
    “At the end of the hunt, what does it matter to me who controls Roanoke? The Mississippi’s a long way from my eastern border,” Michelle said.
    “Because we help keep you safer,” Andrew said. He was on firm ground here. He’d thought this about the Western packs for years, and now he had the perfect example to back him up. “If a threat comes in through the East, we take care of it. We track lones, watch out for people, communicate. We caught a lot of problems and dealt with them before they ever got to the West because there was no way for people to slip between the cracks when they passed from one territory to another. Especially when two alphas happened to be in a snit and not talking that week.”
    Andrew eyed Seattle and Portland, and they both looked guilty. “You’ll notice it wasn’t one of the Roanoke sub-packs that madman managed to get to. Better if all the packs had more cooperation, but at least Roanoke catches threats within a reasonably large area. And without an enforcer shoring him up, Rory’s too weak to hold what his father built, so the continent will lose that safety.”
    “You’re such a philanthropist,” John said, ostensibly a joke, but Andrew could hear the edge buried in the words.
    “What, you think I