I wasn’t leaving Kyle alone in a house full of bad guys. I finally stole his phone, took it off mute, and introduced myself to the operator. I explained that I thought that these same men were responsible for launching an attack at my house—yes, I was married to the local Alpha. One of the pack had escaped and found me—and we’d figured out something was wrong. We snuck in through the upstairs window just after Kyle had managed to free himself. I told her about the blood we’d found in the backyard that belonged to Kyle’s boyfriend, a pack member, who had been taken off the premises by these bad guys, presumably to be held by whoever had taken the rest of the pack.

Kyle listened hard, since it was the first time he’d heard a lot of what I said. I didn’t give the police the whole truth. There were too many things the werewolves didn’t want getting out, and I wasn’t mentioning Stefan. But I stuck to it as closely as I could.

When I’d finished, it was not just the SWAT team who were headed our way, but a fair percentage of a number of different police departments—and, to my relief, someone was going to go check at the firehouse where Mary Jo worked as well as the houses of our married pack members who hadn’t come to our Thanksgiving dinner but had been taken just the same. They’d make sure that there were no other hostage situations.

I handed Kyle back his phone. He shook his head at me but took it in one hand, put it against his ear, and opened the gun safe in his closet with the other. The safe held two handguns and Warren’s rifle—it was a Spencer repeating rifle dating back to the Civil War. He’d let me shoot it a couple of times.

Kyle took Warren’s .357 in hand and gave me his own 1911 because that fit my hand better than Warren’s gun would have. My own gun was still in Marsilia’s car. Kyle left the rifle in the safe when he closed it.

Warren’s father had carried it during the War Between the States and at his death it had come to Warren, who was eight or nine at the time. That’s as much as I knew about Warren’s life as a human except that he considered himself a Texan and had spent a long time as a cowboy.

I agreed with Kyle’s decision: the Spencer was too important to be risked if the police decided to take the guns. If we had to shoot someone, it was probably going to be within handgun range anyway.