He wasn't sure how to treat Vara, either.  He understood that when people lost their parents, they grieved.  He had come to grips with the deaths of his parents long ago and had long ago come to recognize that the witches raised him to be a tool and a weapon - not out of love or even obligation.  He was simply an investment.  But she had just suffered a great shock, and it seemed the time would soon come when she'd have to face it full on.  There wasn't much for her to do in the bolthole.<br/><br/>He was also unsure of how safe they were.  He could believe things all he wanted, but the truth was he did not understand the extent of a witch's power, or how it worked.  They weren't big on explaining anything to anyone.  Their mysteries were for themselves alone.  And werewolves could perform great feats of tracking.  It was possible that one of the others had backtracked him without his knowledge.  It wasn't like werewolves weren't nearly all of them canny outdoorsmen and hunters.  It wasn't like they weren't all possessed of supernaturally gifted senses.  It was possible that this place was known, or could become known, not only to his people but Vara's, too.  The proximity of the city would help - it was dangerous to linger, even if one didn't know about the extremely dangerous mutants that laired nearby - but nothing was totally safe.<br/><br/>"There might be others," he said.  "It isn't like werewolf packs talk that much."  Werewolves were territorial and confrontations of packs in the wild tended to be, at best, wary.  Occasionally, people would change packs, because otherwise they'd be interbred - there would be great parties under the full moon.  But no pack liked to air its dirty laundry, not in his hearing, anyway.  "There might be one like me in every pack in the whole world, but no one talks about us.  Maybe I even met one or two, but they used the same tricks as I did to hide themselves.  I might have met a dozen and not known it if they were at least as canny as I am."<br/><br/>He opened his bottle and sipped it, turning the chair at the desk towards her.  "I'm thinking about returning.  I could buy you a little more time with a good lie.  I could say, well, she betrayed me, so I shot her dead.  They'd believe that, think I'm an idiot for having trusted you as much as I did, but the story is plausible.  Then... you go your own way, I guess."