Bran tapped the top of his desk. “So you two, you see if you can back up Mercy’s words. Your territory to hold when the fae come calling. There is a slim chance I can still keep this from being an all-out war between werewolves and the fae. There is a case to be made that we always have protected our territory from the fae—a fiction that stands only because they have not moved against the humans in five hundred years.” He took a breath through his teeth. “If you succeed, I’ll have to convince the other Alphas who live near the fae reservations to do the same—there are only two of them.” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, thinking. When he opened his eyes again, the anger was gone, though there was a grimness to his expression that I didn’t trust. “Adam, be aware that if you let that boy go after twenty-four hours and something happens to him, all of the good publicity could easily turn against you.”

Adam nodded, his body stiff. There was something going on that I wasn’t reading, something hard and tense between Adam and Bran. I was getting a bad feeling about this conversation.

“Your pack has made enemies among my Alphas,” said Bran. “Change is not easy on the old wolves. Your wholehearted embrace of it has created a lot of conflict, and they know, the old ones, exactly where to aim their ire. You should expect some challenges to your leadership from outside the pack, Adam, from other Alphas.”

That was so unusual as to be almost unheard-of. Outside challenges usually came from lone wolves too dominant to be welcomed into a pack on their own. One of the secrets of Bran’s successful rule was that he tried to keep track of the lone wolves and found places for them to be useful—even building new packs—to accommodate their needs. It didn’t save them all, or even most of them, but it helped.

One Alpha only challenged another when two packs were too close together—or if an Alpha had a personal vendetta against another. Such battles were supposed to be one-on-one, but, historically speaking, unless an Alpha was utterly useless, his pack would fight for him, too. Quite often both Alphas and most of both packs would die in the fight.

“I am aware,” Adam said.

One of the things Bran had done was virtually eliminate fighting between packs. He’d send Charles out at the first hint of real conflict—and none of the werewolves wanted to have Charles land in the middle of their business. If he thought an Alpha was taking liberties without provocation, he was likely to take out that Alpha. He’d done it a couple of times I knew of, and I expected that the werewolves, who had longer memories, would know of other times.