A woman stood under the porch overhang in front of Warren's door. Her black, black hair was pulled back into a waist-length ponytail. She folded her sleekly muscled arms and widened her stance when she saw me. She was a chemistry teacher at Richland High and Darryl's mate.

"Auriele," I said, climbing up the stairs until I shared the porch with her.

She frowned at me. "I told him that you wouldn't do anything to hurt Adam, and he believed me. I told him you would not act against the pack. You have some explanations to give."

As Darryl's mate, Auriele ranked high in the pack. Normally I'd have discussed the matter with her politely-but I needed to get past her and into Warren's home before someone got hurt.

"Fine," I said. "But I need to explain myself to Darryl, not you, and not right now."

"Darryl is busy," she said, not buying my argument. I'd noticed before that teaching classrooms of teenagers made Auriele hard to bluff.

I opened my mouth to try again, when she said, "We keep the Silence."

Wolves have little magic, as most people think of it. Sometimes there will be one, like Charles, who has a gift, but for the most part they are limited to the change itself, and a few magics that allow them to stay hidden. One of those is Silence.

I glanced around and saw four people (doubtless there were others if I cared to look) standing unobtrusively around Warren's duplex, their eyes closed and their mouths moving in the chant that brought Silence upon all that stood within their circle.

It was to keep the battle inside from disturbing anyone. It meant that the fight had already begun; the pack would not willingly break the Silence and let me through.

"This fight is without merit," I told her urgently. "There is no need for it."

Her eyes widened. "There is every need, Mercy. Darryl is second, and Warren defies him. It cannot go without answer. You can talk after he is through disciplining that one." Her mobile brows drew together as she stared at Samuel. In a completely different voice, she asked, "Who is that? There were strange wolves dead at Adam's house."

"This is Samuel," I said impatiently starting up the stairs. "I'm going in."

She'd started forward to intercept me, then hesitated as she took in Samuel's unusual coloration. "Samuel who?" she asked.

Twice a year the Alphas met with Bran in Bran's corporate headquarters in Colorado. They sometimes brought their seconds or thirds-but never the women. Part of that was practicality. Alphas are uncomfortable outside their own territory, and they interact badly with other Alphas. With their mates beside them, all of that discomfort and territorialism had a greater tendency to turn toward violence.

That meant Auriele had never met Samuel, but she'd heard of him. White wolves named Samuel are not very common.

"This is Dr. Samuel Cornick," I told her firmly. "Let us through. I've got information about the people who attacked Adam."

I was tired and worried about Warren-and Darryl; otherwise, I wouldn't have made such an obvious misstep: I doubt she heard anything except my command.

She wasn't stupid; she knew I was not Adam's mate, no matter that he'd claimed me before the pack. I was not werewolf, not pack, not her dominant, and she could not listen to me and keep her place.

All hesitation left her manner, and she closed with me. I was a fair bit taller than she, but it didn't slow her down. She was a werewolf, and when she put her hands on my shoulders and pushed, I stumbled back three or four steps.

"You are not in charge here," she said in a voice I'm certain worked very well in her classrooms.

She tried to push me again. Her mistake. She was a lot stronger than I, but she didn't have any experience in fighting in human shape. I moved aside, letting her momentum do most of my work. I helped her fall down the stairs with only a gentle push to keep her off-balance and make her lose control of her landing. She landed hard on the sidewalk, hitting her head on a stair.

I didn't wait around to make sure she was all right. It would take a lot more than a header down the stairs to slow a werewolf down much. The wolf closest to me started to move, but had to stop because it would have ruined the spell of Silence.

The door wasn't locked, so I opened it. Samuel brushed past me. The sound of Auriele's enraged snarl sent me scrambling in after him.

Warren's living room was a mess of scattered books and bits of broken furniture, but both Warren and Darryl were in human form. It told me that Darryl was still trying to keep the fight from being a fight to the death-and so was Warren. Werewolves in human form might be very strong, but they weren't half as deadly as the wolf.

Warren took one of his dining-room chairs and broke it over Darryl's face. The sound of the blow was absorbed by the pack's spell casting, so I could only judge the force by the size of the pieces the chair broke into and by the spraying blood.

In a move so quick my eyes couldn't quite catch it, Darryl had Warren on the ground with a lock on his throat.

Samuel darted in and closed his mouth over Darryl's wrist-then danced back out of reach. The unexpectedness of it-Darryl hadn't heard us come in-loosened Darryl's hold, and Warren broke out of it, scrambling away to get some room.

That meant Samuel could take up a position between both of them. Warren, breathing hard, sagged against a wall and wiped blood out of his eyes. Darryl had taken two swift steps forward before he recognized Samuel and almost fell over backward to keep from touching him, an expression of absolute astonishment on his face.

As soon as I was certain neither Darryl nor Warren was going to continue the fight, I tapped Samuel on the shoulder to get his attention. When he looked at me, I pointed to my mouth and ears. There wasn't a chance in hell that the werewolves outside would listen to me and stop their chanting-and we all needed to talk.