He was going to give Charles a bad time for not having better control of his magic. He snorted, aware that the chances of that actually happening were slight. He was more at ease with the Marrok’s son than he’d ever been. With Anna around, the bastard was darn near human. But Tag wasn’t stupid enough to tug that tail anyway.

Not unless he got in a mood.

Getting in a mood was how he’d ended up in Bran Cornick’s pack for the Disorderly and Dangerous in the first place. His last pack had annoyed him … he didn’t remember exactly what they’d done, something that had set off his inner berserker. But unusually (it was thankfully the only occasion his berserker had acted this way), it hadn’t ever ratcheted up to killing-spree level, not quite. Instead, the mood had hung around for days. Maybe weeks. Time did funny things when his berserker was out.

He remembered challenging the first wolf who annoyed him—and killing him. And another. And another. Until he was going to have to make up his mind if he wanted to be Alpha pretty damn soon—if there were any more wolves left to rule. He’d killed seven wolves. He had disliked all but one of them, and he still felt guilty about that one.

And then Charles had come and told him to stand down. Tag had tried to eat his face instead—and found himself in the battle of his life. And Charles did not let him land a blow with his (mighty) claws or close his jaws on anything but air. He just put him down and pinned him over and over. Eventually Tag had sweated out whatever had been keeping him at a fever pitch, and when that happened, he’d been so tired he hadn’t gotten up again when Charles released him.

When Tag had woken up, Bran had been there with an offer of sanctuary. Bran had even engineered the move of Tag’s family, a few of the descendants of his sister’s children’s children. The caveat was that he would have to stay in pack territory unless he had permission to be elsewhere. He’d found that acceptable. A relief even, because what if after he’d finished the nasty pack of dishonorable werewolves, he moved on to killing innocents?

That could not happen in the Marrok’s pack. Because Charles was in the pack, and Charles had been the demon who had taken on his berserker wolf and pinned him as if he were a child. No one else had ever defeated Tag when his berserker had the upper hand. He’d seen Charles fight now and again over the years—and he knew something that most people did not. In most fights, that old wolf didn’t even break a sweat.