“When is the last time you were a tourist?” she asked archly.He just looked at her. Charles, she had to agree, was not tourist material.“Right,” Anna told him. “Buck up. You might even enjoy it.”“You might as well have ‘hapless victim’ tattooed across your forehead,” he muttered.”

“My father would take you wherever you wanted to go," he told her softly. "I was pretty sure I could talk you into staying, but I underestimated how badly hurt I was.""Stupid," she said tartly.He looked up at her, and whatever he saw in her face made him smile, though his voice was serious when he answered her charge. "Yes. You throw my judgement off."-Charles and Anna when he thought she was leaving him and Changed when he was injured”

“Then he snarled at her. “You are not leaving me.”It was an order, and she didn’t have to follow anyone’s orders. That was part of being Omega instead of a regular werewolf – who might have had a snowball’s chance in hell of being a proper mate.“You need someone stronger,” Anna told him again. “So you wouldn’t have to hide when you’re hurt. So you could trust your mate to take care of herself and help, damn it, instead of having to protect me from whatever you are hiding.” She hated crying. Tears were weaknesses that could be exploited and they never solved a damned thing. Sobs gathered in her chest like a rushing tide and she needed to get away from him before she broke.Instead of fighting his grip, she tried to slide out of it. “I need to go,” she said to his chest. “I need–”His mouth closed over hers, hot and hungry, warming her mouth as his body warmed her body.“Me,” Charles said, his voice dark and gravelly as if it had traveled up from the bottom of the earth, his eyes a bright gold. “You need me.”

“Um. Charles thinks that his wolf has chosen me as his mate.""In less than one full day?" It did sound dumb when he said it that way."Yes." She couldn't keep the uncertainty out of her voice, though, and it bothered Charles. He rolled to his feet and growled softly."Charles also said I was an Omega wolf," she told his father. "That might have something to do with it as well."Silence lengthened and she began to think that the cell phone might have dropped the connection. Then the Marrok laughed softly. "Oh his brother is going to tease him unmercifully about this.”

“He had lived a very long time, and only since he gained Anna had he learned to fear. He’d discovered that he had never been brave before—just indifferent. She had taught him that to be brave, you have to fear losing something.”

“My grandfather would have loved to have met you," he told her huskily. "He would have called you 'She Moves Trees Out of His Path.' " She looked lost, but his da laughed. He'd known the old man, too. "He called me 'He Who Must Run into Trees,'" Charles explained, and in a spirit of honesty, a need for his mate to know who he was, he continued, "or sometimes 'Running Eagle.' " " 'Running Eagle'?" Anna puzzled it over, frowning at him. "What's wrong with that?" "Too stupid to fly," murmured his father with a little smile.”

“And that's when Anna realized that what the wolf had been asking Bran for was death.Impulsively, Anna stepped away from Charles. She put a knee on the bench she'd been sitting on and reached over the back to close her hand on Asil's wrist, which was lying across the back of the pew.He hissed in shock but didn't pull away. As she held him the scent of wilderness, of sickness, faded. He stared at her, the whites of his eyes showing brightly while his irises narrowed to small bands around his black pupil."Omega," he whispered, his breath coming harshly.”