Chelsea looked down at her plate, her jaw tight. Anna had thought she had a handle on what Chelsea was going through, but she’d missed that part of it. Maybe because, as an Omega, she’d never felt that need to obey someone more dominant. Yeah, she thought, that would rankle a woman like Chelsea.

Charles continued. “The Alpha is, or should be, the one most capable of protecting his pack. Not just the safety of the pack, but the well-being of each of its members. But Anna’s first Alpha only cared about his mate. He needed Anna to keep his mate from attracting my father’s attention. He knew that my father would have her killed because Isabelle was a danger to everyone around her, human and wolf alike. He couldn’t dominate Anna as he did all the other wolves, so he brutalized her. He taught her to fear him in an effort to keep her under his thumb.” Charles and Hosteen exchanged a look.

It was Hosteen who said, “That was a betrayal of everything an Alpha is supposed to be.”

“Yes,” said Anna. “I’m telling you this story, not as a one-upmanship kind of thing.” She dropped her voice and added a little radio announcer. “You think you have it bad, you have it easy compared to me.” And then returned to her own voice. “Because that isn’t true. You have it different. But you need to know that you aren’t alone; I do understand what you’re going through.”

She set down her fork because eating was beyond her. “Yesterday you woke up and were just grateful you were alive. That your kids were okay. Tonight you are beginning to understand the price that you are going to pay for that. You aren’t entirely sure it is worth it.”

“Dying is easy,” said Hosteen. “Living is brutal.”

“There are a lot of downsides,” Anna said. “You probably know what most of those are.” She wasn’t going to enumerate them. Nothing like taking a person who feels bad already and telling them how horrible their life might be to turn mild depression into suicidal. “The people who go to Bran to be Changed know what they’re getting into and they have time to make a choice. You and I? We didn’t get time to make a choice. But the downsides are only there because you’re alive. You have people who love you. And you have what will hopefully be a very long time to come to terms with what you are.”

Under the table, Charles put his hand on her knee. She swallowed hard. “You’re going through a period of mourning what you once were because there is no going back. Just keep in mind that there are good things, too.”

“One of the good things is that you don’t have to be afraid of the dark witches anymore,” said Hosteen casually.

Chelsea stiffened and looked up at him.

“You’re not dumb. Of course you are afraid of them.” He turned his coffee cup around between his hands, watching it instead of Chelsea. “If you’re born a witch and you don’t want to kill and torture for power, then you’re ripe for being killed and tortured yourself. That’s why you worked so hard to keep what you are secret. Kage worried for you. He didn’t talk to me about it, but he told Joseph, who came to me. I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t offer my help.”

“Maybe I am a dark witch,” she said hostilely.

“No,” said Hosteen, raising his eyes. “I can smell a dark witch from a mile away. No. You were hiding. But now you belong to a pack, and our pack can and will protect you from the dark witches.”

“Why now?” she asked, her blue-gray eyes lightening to near-Arctic white, like those of Charles’s brother, Samuel. “Wasn’t I worthy of protection when I was just Kage’s wife?”

“Yes,” said Hosteen slowly. “But I was not worthy of protecting you.”

“What does that even mean?” asked Chelsea, pushing away from the table abruptly. She stood up, clenching her hands into fists.

“It means that I am a stubborn old wolf,” Hosteen said. “And maybe I am more interested in my own opinions than listening to my grandson, who is a smart man. That is my failure. Perhaps one of the things that will be a good thing about your becoming a werewolf is that it has changed me, too. And that will mean our family is more welcoming, as it should have been from the beginning.”

“I can’t think,” said Chelsea, breathing hard. “Why can’t I think?”

“Mom?”

Anna had been so distracted by Chelsea that she hadn’t heard Max until he spoke from the doorway.

Chelsea turned wild eyes to her son and fell to the ground, convulsing.

CHAPTER

12

Anna got up and put her hand on Max’s shoulder to keep him from going to Chelsea. “It will be okay,” she said. “But she wouldn’t want you to see this.”

Chelsea cried out, her voice hoarse and guttural.

“Mom,” Max whispered, resisting Anna.

She quit trying to move him, just put her shoulder between him and his mother so he couldn’t get to her without going over Anna.

“Changing hurts,” Anna told him. “It hurts every time, but the first time is the worst. Almost all werewolves awaken from their first change completely out of control. There is nothing you can do to help or stop it. And I guarantee you that with Hosteen and Charles in there, your mother will be fine.” She waited and said, “You need to be out of here before she changes. If she hurts you, it will break her.”

He stood firm for a moment more, muscles twitching with the desire to help. Then he nodded once and let Anna tug him out of the room. She took him into the big living room and led him to the far side of that before she let him stop. They listened to Chelsea’s pain from there for a few minutes, Max flinching and fisting his hands as the noises his mother made changed from human to something else.

“Would it be easier with three werewolves in there?” he asked.

“You mean me?” Anna shook her head. “Not while she’s changing. Charles will call me in when she’s done. My wolf has a calming influence on other werewolves. Right now she needs to keep her fighting edge. As soon as she’s found the wolf shape, I’ll be more useful.”

Someone knocked at the front door just as Chelsea’s voice roared out again. Before Anna could decide how to handle visitors, the door opened and Wade started in at a run.

He saw Anna and Max and paused in his dash.

“Chelsea?” he asked Anna.

She nodded. “In the kitchen.”

Wade glanced at her. “Are you coming in?”