Free Alpha & Omega by Patricia Briggs

bandages so Charles wouldn’t have to advertise his weakness to everyone who saw him. This time Anna didn’t object when he asked her to call a taxi.
    His phone rang on the way back to Anna’s apartment, but he silenced it without looking at it. It might have been his father, Bran, who had an uncanny knack for knowing when he’d been hurt. But he had no desire to talk with the Marrok while the taxi driver could hear every word. More probably it was Jaimie. George would have called his Alpha as soon as Charles was shot. In either case, they would wait until he was someplace more private.
    He made Anna wait in the taxi when they got to her apartment building until he had a chance to take a good look around. No one had followed them from the Loop, but the most likely assailants were Leo’s people—and they all knew where Anna lived. He hadn’t recognized the shooter, but then he didn’t know every werewolf in Chicago.
    Anna was patient with him. She didn’t argue about waiting but the cabdriver looked at him as though he were crazy.
    Her patience helped his control—which was shakier than it had been in a long time. He wondered how he’d be behaving if his Anna hadn’t been an Omega whose soothing effect was almost good enough to override the protective rage roused by the attempt on her life. The painful burn of his shoulders, worsening as silver-caused wounds always did for a while, didn’t help his temperament, nor did the knowledge that his ability to fight was impaired.
    Someone was trying to kill Anna. It didn’t make sense, but somewhere during the trip back to Oak Park, he’d accepted that it was so.
    Satisfied there was no immediate threat in or around the apartment building, he held out his hand to Anna to help her out of the taxi and then paid the fare, all the while letting his eyes roam, looking for anything out of place. But there was nothing.
    Just inside the front door of the lobby, a man who was getting his mail smiled and greeted Anna. They exchanged a sentence or two, but after a good look at Charles’s face, she started up the stairs.
    Charles had not been able to parse a word she’d said, which was a very bad sign. Grimly he followed her up the stairs, shoulders throbbing with the beat of his heart. He flexed his fingers as she unlocked her door. His joints ached with the need to change, but he held off—only just. If he was this bad in human form, the wolf would be in control if he shifted.
    He sat on the futon and watched her open her fridge and then her freezer. Finally she dug in the depths of a cabinet and came out with a large can. She opened it and dumped the unappealing contents into a pot, which she set on the stove.
    Then she knelt on the floor in front of him. She touched his face and said, very clearly, “Change,” and a number of other things that brushed by his ears like a flight of butter-flies.
    He closed his eyes against her.
    There was some urgent reason he shouldn’t change, but he’d forgotten it while he’d been watching her.
    â€œYou have five hours before the meeting,” she said slowly, her voice making more sense once his eyes were shut. “If you can change to the wolf and back, it will help you heal.”
    â€œI have no control,” he told her. That was it. That was the reason. “The wound’s not that bad—it’s the silver. My changing will be too dangerous for you. I can’t.”
    There was a pause and then she said, “If I am your mate, your wolf won’t harm me no matter how much control you lack, right?” She sounded more hopeful than certain, and he couldn’t think clearly enough to know if she was correct.
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    DOMINANTS were touchy about taking suggestions from lesser wolves, so she left Charles to make up his own mind while she stirred the beef stew to keep it from burning. Not that burning would make it taste any worse. She’d