Death-Touched by Rhiannon Held

Author:Rhiannon Held [Held, Rhiannon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, Paranormal, werewolf, silver, were, andrew dare, anthropological werewolves, roanoke pack
ISBN: 9781943545049
Google: _z5itAEACAAJ
Amazon: B078S1J16S
Publisher: Rhiannon Held
Published: 2018-03-03T13:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

That evening, just over a day since Silver had left, Andrew walked in as much private space as the others could grant him, from the cars up into the hunting lands, where everyone was gathering to give Billings’ voice its color. Smaller by far than the national park where they’d held the wedding, the hunting lands felt saturated with Were, as if someone on two feet or four crunched between every tall evergreen and over every downed log.

Andrew’s head was full of his search for something to say at the ceremony—a voice was given color by personal, emotional anecdotes, but somehow Andrew didn’t think “that time he insulted my mate” or “that time he agitated for independence at exactly the wrong moment” would fly. He glanced back down the path, away from the ceremony he dreaded, and wished he hadn’t, because it duplicated the angle from which he’d looked at Mikhail in that spot, during the last sunset he’d seen from the hunting lands.

Footsteps approached from the side, Felicia angling in to join him. Andrew welcomed the distraction, though he wished he had more comfort to offer her. She smelled strained, and she’d fastened her dark hair back into a simple tail, something she usually did only when she planned immediate exertion. He drew her into a quick sideways hug with an arm over her shoulders. She pressed against him for a beat, then withdrew to an easier walking distance with her hand tucked into his elbow.

“Are you all right?” He hadn’t talked to her properly since she’d seen Billings, he realized. There hadn’t been time, but he should have made time.

“I’ll be fine.” Felicia slowed their shared pace, scuffing her toes through the dust and pine needles of the path, eyes on that instead of him. “You, though…you’re scaring me.”

The heavy light of the sun’s last rays stabbed into their eyes through a break in the trees, disappeared as a new set of branches blocked the horizon, then stabbed again, leaving Andrew with an annoying pattern of afterimages. “And the others?” Much good he was doing, staying behind if his lack of emotional control was only putting his pack more on edge. He needed to do better.

Felicia made a frustrated noise. “This isn’t a pack thing, Papa. It’s a you thing. Everyone else is fine too. I think they see you being silently strong under the weight of the alpha’s duties, not shut down and fucking scarily intense. Can’t you talk to someone? Not to me, I know that’s…weird. But to John or something. Isn’t that something else betas are for?”

Talk to someone? Wouldn’t that be nice. How could he possibly tell John he, Andrew, had been the one who drove Silver to it? The beta’s job was to support, and listening was part of that, but what if what he heard changed his opinion of the one he was supporting?

But he couldn’t let Felicia take on a burden she didn’t deserve. “I’m worried about Silver, that’s all.”

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