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Pretty well. Until he’d set up a werewolf village right next door.
“You’re protecting them from you,” Alex said slowly. Could she read his face, or just his mind? “From the city of monsters you plopped down right next to them. Talk about extortion!”
“I do more for them than just ascertain none of my people…” He waved his hand in the general direction of Awanitok.
“Snack?” she supplied.
He ignored her. “They live in the way that they wish. No interference from the government.”
“How do you manage that?” she asked, but before she even finished the last word, her face lit with understanding. “Magic.”
He shrugged. “How else do you deal with the government?”
She tilted her head. “Go on.”
“My Inuit have no trouble hunting. Their crafts are the most coveted in tourist centers everywhere.”
“You bribe them.”
“An ancient method,” he agreed. “But it works.”
“And in return they give you…” He watched comprehension dawn in her eyes, quickly followed by condemnation. “Oh, you suck!”
“I’m sorry?”
“They give you a sacrifice, but this time it isn’t boinking the Indian maiden. This time it’s blood.”
“A fair exchange.”
Fury suffused her face. She pushed back from the table and stood over him, fists clenched. “I should know better.” Her jaw was tight; he could practically hear her back teeth grinding together. “You say you’re different, but you aren’t. You’re just like every other werewolf in the world; you have no respect for human life.”
“I have more respect than you do.”
“She wasn’t human.”
And they were back to that again. Julian had hoped Alex would begin to understand once she was here, once she could see. But it had only been a day and—
“Wait a second.” He grabbed one arm, and she took a swing at him with the other. He caught her wrist before it smashed into his face, then he shook her just once. “What’s human life got to do with anything?”
Her eyes widened, and the angry color drained from her cheeks. “They’re your family, yet you chase them through the woods beneath the full moon, and you tear them into pieces.”
“What?” he shouted, releasing her as he straightened to his full height.
Barlow towered over her, and for an instant Alex was reminded of the polar bear, roaring and posturing. She half expected him to shape-shift into one. She’d studied berserkers, and in the legends many could turn into both a wolf and a bear. She wouldn’t put it past Barlow to have left that part out.
But he didn’t shift, not even his paws. Instead, he closed his eyes, and his lips moved silently, as if in prayer.
“How do you pray and not burst into flames?” she wondered aloud.
He opened one eye, which was all he needed to give her a very impressive glare before he snarled, “Explain why you think I’m accepting human sacrifices.”
The rumble beneath the surface revealed just how close the beast within him had come. Oddly, Alex wasn’t scared. Considering what she’d just learned, she wasn’t sure why.
“Werewolves must kill, then consume fresh human blood on the night of the full moon,” Alex said. “I knew that even before I became one.”
“We require blood, yes.” He opened both eyes, and though the blue had hardened to the color of ice beneath a clear, summer sky, they still bored into hers with such heat she was surprised her corneas didn’t explode. “But blood and death are two very different things.”
“How would you—? Can you—?” She leaned back. “Wait. What?”
