Page 15 of A Brighter Yellow
“That was some grade-A poetic shit,” said Ochre. “You can’t just be likenah.”
“I’m not trying to insult you. I think the fault is mine. I was unprepared for poetry, and now I’m nervous.”
“Howabout thanks for picking up my package, nearly getting caught by warlocks, protecting my family, and also climbing up my damn tower? If you could add in an,I really appreciate it Ochre,that would probably also help.”
“What?” Anna stared at him in horror. “Warlocks? Here? I… There aren’t supposed to be any here. I’m always careful. Fuck.” Her breath came in sharp gasps. This was her worst nightmare. She had never meant to endanger her pack. “Fuck. I need to talk to Dad. I can’t…”
She dropped the package and stumbled backward into the room, trying to think coherently.
“Hey,” he said, following after her. “Breathe. Breathe.” He caught onto her and pulled her back against his chest. “It’s all right. I took care of them for now. It’s OK. It’s OK.”
She could feel his voice in his chest, a soft vibration that came through her back and tingled in her ears. It was soothing in a way she’d never felt before, and she found herself taking a deep breath and then another. She wrenched herself away from him long enough to turn around and plant her face into his chest. He made a nice rumbly noise and wrapped his arms around her.
“The three Warlocks I saw will be glued to a toilet for the next forty-eight hours, and I took so long coming back because I stopped to lay confusion cantrips on all the roads coming into here. Then I bolstered your defense spells at the front gate and added a few of my own. We’ve got time to decide what to do next, and you’ve got time to tell me what the hell is going on. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” she said but clung to him harder. “No one iseversupposed to find my pack.”
“Breathe,” he said again, and she obeyed. “We can protect your pack. We won’t let anything happen to them.”
“How did they even know?” she asked. “They couldn’t have followed us from Yellowstone. There’s no way.”
“I don’t know, but they knew about Yellowstone.”
“They shouldn’t have been able to find me there either,” she said. It was hard to think with him filling up her nose. Then she realized that there was one way the warlocks could have found her. “Oh, God. Charlie.”
She pulled away from Ochre and ran to the bed, scrambling through the pillows and covers, looking for her phone. With a shaking hand, she dialed Charlie’s number. It went to voicemail. She dialed again, and again, nothing.
She sat down on the bed, her eyes welling up with tears.
“We’re in so much trouble,” she whispered, clutching the phone.
Episode 9
Charlie Peters
Anna
“Who’s Charlie?” asked Ochre.
She looked at him and tried to decide what to do. Trusting Ochre, let alone anyone with what she was doing… That was a scary proposition. He wasn’t even a wolf. What if he thought she was crazy? Or what if he thought she was too much trouble? But he’d gone all the way to Montana for her. Didn’t that count for anything? Anna opened her mouth and then shut it again. Hadn’t she sworn not to let herself get distracted by men again for at least another twenty years? The mess with Liam had taught her that nothing was meant to be. And that also meant that all of her father’s bullshit about things working themselves out was also just that… bullshit. If she wanted something to be different, then she needed to go after it herself. And there was a lot out there in this world that she wanted to change. Starting with the fact that she shouldn’t need to pin her hopes for reproducing on an ever-dwindling population of wolves. But would Ochre even care about that?
“You want to help?” she asked, hesitantly. “Your sister… she’s doing the Pact with the Portlanders, right? They’re fighting the warlocks?”
“Yeah,” he said, half-smiling.
“You help wolves. Dad said your family has helped before.”
“I want to help,” said Ochre, firmly. Anna let out a nervous breath, wishing she felt more confident.
“My friend Charlie Peters and I….” Anna hadn’t ever actually told anyone before. She wasn’t sure where to start. “Charlie is a biologist.” She blurted it out and waited for a reaction.
“OK,” said Ochre. That was more of a non-reaction.
“That doesn’t worry you?” Anna knew what a lot of Supernaturals thought about science, and it wasn’t complimentary.
“I’m an environmental scientist,” said Ochre. “I even have a degree somewhere. I think Grandma hung it up at home.”
“Oh!” Anna felt a wave of relief. “That makes things easier.”
