Cry Wolf

Cry Wolf (2008) Patricia Briggs (Alpha & Omega)

Going through this series for comfort reading.

Charles and Anna’s wolves have decided they are mated, but the two humans still need to get to know one another, and Anna has a lot of damage to overcome–as does Charles after dealing with the pack that tried to break Anna.

What I like best about this book: Asil.

Asil was born just before Charles Martel, Charlemagne’s grandfather, defeated the Moors at the Battle of Tours.”

She must have looked blank.

“Eighth century A.D.”

“That would make him . . .”

“About thirteen hundred years old.”

Charles is a complex character. Asil is complicated and fascinating.

IN his hothouse, Asil trimmed dead blooms from his roses. They weren’t as glorious as the ones he’d had in Spain, but they were a vast improvement over the commercially grown flowers he’d started with. His Spanish roses had been the result of centuries of careful breeding. It hadn’t bothered him to leave them at the time, but now he regretted their loss fiercely.

He is arrogant-but justifiably so. But he also has a depth of feeling underneath that arrogance that makes me adore him.

I think what does it is his memories of his mate, Sarai, who had been murdered two hundred years earlier.

Sarai had often thumped him soundly on the head for looking at other women, though she’d known he’d never stray. Now that she was gone, he seldom even looked. Flirting didn’t make him feel disloyal to his dead mate, but he’d found he missed that thump too badly.

That is possibly one of my favorite passages ever about grief.

And I also love the character of Walter, the man who spent decades hiding in the mountains because of his PTSD.

He didn’t really understand what had happened until the morning after the first full moon when he woke up with blood in his mouth, under his nails, and on his naked body: the memory of what he’d done, what he’d become, clear as diamonds. Only then did he know he had become the enemy, and he wept at the loss of the last of his humanity.

Like Asil, he is complicated.

The dead man’s feet were the same size as Walter’s, so he took the boots as well as the gloves and parka— leaving behind the orange vest. Leaving the hunter’s gun was a more difficult decision, but ammunition was hard to come by, and he had no desire to advertise his presence with gunfire.

He bowed his head and began a prayer. It wasn’t a very good prayer because the only one he could remember was the prayer he’d said before bedtime as a kid.

This scene, where he finds the hunter’s body, is only a page long (if that) but you can clearly see the trauma and broken-ness Walter has been fighting. His desire to keep the world safe from his PTSD but his refusal to give up.

We also get a fair amount of Bran in this story, including why he chose Leah as his mate, which is a whole other thing itself.

Rating: 9/10

Publisher : Ace

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