Adam was alone in the foyer, holding his plate and looking at me with a bemused expression on his face. I decided I was on a roll and pointed toward the kitchen.
“You need to go eat that right now, mister,” I said.
He laughed, and I could see again how tired he was. “Yes, Madame Alpha Coyote, I do. Would you join me? I think everyone else will keep for now.”
He meant for more than food. Only a blind woman could miss it. It was a gentle invitation, and I could pretend not to see, could escort him into the kitchen and get started on the dishes while he ate.
“This is a big house,” I said, instead. “But there is a pack of werewolves lurking somewhere as well as your daughter, her boyfriend, a police officer, a federal agent coming back shortly, and a pack of Sandoval girls. I’m not sure there’s a spare space anywhere.”
Adam smiled, and I was glad I hadn’t just taken him to the kitchen. “Leave that to me.”
We ended up sneaking out to the garage and up a rope ladder into the attic space above. Sunlight illuminated the room from a pair of skylights. The walls were finished and painted a light teal that complemented the dense cobalt carpet, but there were no lights or furniture.
“How did you know this was here?” I asked. I pulled up the rope ladder and pulled the trapdoor up until it latched. No sense giving obvious clues about where we were if we were going to sneak off alone.
Adam set his plate down on the floor.
“Warren. He said he and Kyle could keep everyone out of their bedroom, but that stealth might work better for us.”
He looked at me and his warm brown eyes had a touch of gold and his voice was a little hoarse. “Let me see your skin, Mercy. I need to know you are okay.”
I stripped, feeling a little self-conscious. I didn’t mind being naked, but a woman likes to be pretty for her mate and I was covered with bruises, cuts, and bumps. My bad knee was swollen and probably purple to boot. At least my lips weren’t silver anymore.
I didn’t cover myself up, but I turned my back to him as I slid Kyle’s sweats down my legs.
“Mercy,” he said.
“Yes?” I glanced back at him to see that he was pulling off his shirt.
“A bargain for us,” he said. “I will not hide from you if you don’t hide from me.”
The idea of Adam’s hiding from anything left my mouth open while he made short work of the rest of his clothes, so I had to hurry to catch up. He was right. I didn’t feel quite so naked when he was naked, too. He didn’t say anything, just touched my bruises with light fingers.
When he paused at my cheek, I said, “That was the car wreck.” He frowned at me. “Okay. The car wreck and then it hit the ground when the fae assassin jumped on my back.”
We went on like that. Him touching a cut, a bruise, a bump, and I’d tell him what happened.
When he was finished, he put his forehead on my shoulder and pulled me hard against him. “You’ll be the death of me,” he told me. “I could wish you less bold, less brave—less driven by right and wrong.”
“Too bad for you,” I commiserated. “I know it’s rough. My husband tried to kill himself to save the pack, you know. And earlier today, he faced down a fae he knew nothing about—and some of the fae are forces of nature.”
“My wife was going to fight him,” explained Adam. “I had to protect him from that.”
I laughed.
“You know what Jesse’s mother would have done if the feds came and took the pack while she was my wife?” he asked.
“Filed for divorce,” I hypothesized.
It was his turn to laugh. “Point to you. And then she would go to everyone she knew and tell them how awful her life was, how people expected too much of her. Do you know what my second wife did?”
“Got beaten up and ran in circles mostly while you rescued yourself,” I told him.
“She cared for the pack that was left,” he said. “She got my child to safety. She got word to Bran—who sent help. She stepped between my child and those who would harm her.”
I snorted. “Sounds like a paragon.”
“She saved my life and gave me strength to save the rest of the pack.” He heaved a sigh and pulled back so he could look at me. “And I have this urge to turn you over my knee and bruise your butt so that you do exactly what my first wife did.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You ever lay a hand on me and you better never go to sleep again.”
He laughed, sat down on the carpeted floor more as though he just couldn’t stand up anymore than as if he’d actually made the decision to sit, and laughed some more. He was very, very tired—but he had just threatened to spank me, so he got no sympathy from me. I folded my arms.
He wiped his eyes with his thumb and looked up at me. His laughter had died altogether. “You don’t know how fragile you are, Mercy. The last time we got into trouble, you spent months in a wheelchair. You fight as long and as hard as any werewolf, without any of the weapons we’ve been given. You are smart. You are careful. And you’ve been very, very lucky. And that scares me more than any spriggand carrying one of Zee’s swords or a Cantrip zealot armed with silver. Luck runs out.”
“I tell you what,” I said, sitting beside him and biting down the urge to feed him the line he’d given me: did you think I’d die of old age? I hadn’t found it funny at the time and didn’t think that he would, either. “Think of me as Coyote’s daughter, if that helps you. Coyote is lucky.”
Adam shook his head. “No, Mercy. Coyote isn’t lucky. Coyote is rash, and everyone around him dies—including him. But when the sun rises, he’s all better and he goes out to look for new friends. Because Coyote is immortal.” And you are not. He didn’t say it, but we both heard it.
I tapped on the floor and then leaned forward. Time for a distraction. “This coyote is all better right now. Are you and I going to be friends, wolf?”
He canted his head and touched my chin with his hand. “I don’t know. Are you going to keep doing your best to get yourself killed?”
It hadn’t been I who had been trying to commit suicide—I hadn’t realized I was still mad at him about that. I turned my head and nipped his finger. I’d meant it as chastisement, but he didn’t take it that way. Gold lit his eyes with fire, and he left his finger where it was.
“I guess so,” he said, sounding resigned, but his lips were soft on mine.
Both of us dozed a bit afterward, not really asleep but too content to get up. I buried my nose under his ear, where his scent could wrap around me. I licked tenderly at the warm skin of his neck.
“Peter is dead,” he told me suddenly.
I put my weight on his chest, so he wouldn’t feel so alone. “Yes.”
“It was my job to protect him.”
“The average werewolf lives ten years after he is changed,” I reminded Adam. “A human has seventy years or so upon the earth before his time is done. Peter was older than that, four times older than you are. His was not a short life, and his death was quick.” It wasn’t enough, and I knew it. But it would count for something later, when his death wasn’t so … near.
“My fault,” Adam said. Someone who didn’t know him would have thought his voice was calm. “There were not so many of them. If I had attacked them when they came to take the pack …”
“You thought they were feds,” I said. He knew all of this, but if he needed to have me say it again, then I would. “If werewolves start killing federal agents, soon there won’t be any werewolves. It was the right thing to do. I was there when Peter was killed, and it could have been any one of you. Jones had decided to kill someone, and nothing would have stopped him.”
“Jones is dead.” But his body was relaxing underneath me. Adam wasn’t stupid. This wasn’t the first time bad things happened that he couldn’t control.
“I’m not surprised.”
He huffed a laugh. “I didn’t kill him.”
I lifted my head so I could see his face. “That does
surprise me.”
“I killed the rest of them and let Honey kill Jones.” He watched my face closely. He’d hidden what he was from his first wife, who had been entirely human, and she’d still run away from what little she’d glimpsed.
“Good,” I said. “That way, I won’t have to.”
He laughed again, and his body softened as much as it ever did—there just wasn’t much soft about Adam. “I love you,” he said.
“I know,” I told him seriously. “How could you help it?”
He laughed again and rolled over until I was on the bottom, and flexed his hips against mine. “I tried,” he whispered in my ear. “But it didn’t work.”
I breathed into his ear for the pleasure of feeling him shiver against me. “Of course not.” He smelled like home, like safety, like love. “Of course not.”
“I promise I won’t spank you,” he told me, his voice rough and low as he added, “not unless you ask me to.”
I let him feel my laugh against his shoulder. “That’s because you aren’t genuinely suicidal.”
We loved again then, the short nap of the rug soft under my skin and the warmth of him surrounding me.
Afterward, he fell asleep while he was eating, between one bite and the next, like a toddler. I don’t think that he had slept since the pack was taken. He didn’t even stir when I pulled away from him to go put my clothes on.
The room might have been finished, but it was not heated. Adam was a werewolf, which meant the colder the better for him—not so for me. Fully clothed, I sat down next to him to watch over him while he slept.
The quiet time didn’t last.
The door between house and garage opened no more than twenty minutes after Adam dropped off. Warren called, “Sorry, boss. You’re needed if you don’t want Kyle to shoot the rest of the pack.”
He didn’t speak that loudly, but Adam’s eyes opened up anyway. He smiled at me, and said, “Good to know. Tell Kyle to hold up, and I’ll be right down.”
Warren steadied the rope ladder when Adam tossed it out of the trapdoor. “We’ve put the pack downstairs in the big room to create some space apart from the Sandoval girls.” The big room was the largest room in the house, and it had a pool table and a stairway leading to an outside door into the backyard. Kyle’s house was bigger than ours, but not set up for groups of people quite this large.
“They wouldn’t do anything on purpose,” Warren said, as I climbed down the rope ladder behind Adam. “But we’re all on edge.”
“Silver-sick doesn’t help,” I said. “Tad can help with the silver.”
“And then we’ll send most of them to their own homes,” said Adam. “Even if our enemy has teeth left, it will take them a while to regroup. For the short term, we should all be safe enough.”
Warren grunted, and, with my feet safely down on the cement floor, I took a good look at him. Warren was my first friend in Adam’s pack—he’d been my friend before he’d joined the pack.
“You look better than I expected you to,” I said, and, to my surprise, he flushed.
“Food,” he said with a shy smile.
Adam snorted. “Kyle.”
“Well, yes,” agreed Warren, then his eyes went cold as he tossed the rope ladder back up into the hole in the ceiling. “Mercy, next time you see our favorite bloodsucker, you tell him I owe him one.”
“I’ll tell him, but he did it for Kyle.”
Warren nodded and hopped on top of the metal shelving that lined the wall so he could close the trapdoor properly.
There were no digs, humorous comments, or even sly looks when Adam, Tad, and I joined the pack in the great room in the basement. I took that as a sign of how bad everyone was feeling.
Some of the wolves were notable by their absence.
“Darryl and Auriele went to their home,” Warren told us. He glanced at Adam. “They seemed mostly recovered from the silver, and he is supposed to participate in a conference call with some Chinese scientists on Sunday.”
“All the most dominant wolves seem to be pretty well clean of silver,” Tad said.
“He told us it’s because you used your mate bond to pull the silver out of Adam, and through Adam, the pack,” said Honey. She was sitting on the pool table with her legs crossed underneath her. She was pale, and her mouth was tight, but other than that she looked mostly like herself. “I didn’t believe him until Kyle showed us the silver on the floor.” She frowned at me. “What kind of freak are you?”
Any other time, I’d have said something cutting. I felt Adam stiffen beside me, and I put my hand on his arm to forestall whatever he wanted to say. Honey had never liked me much—and since I had forced the pack to take a new look at their hierarchy, particularly the way women’s ranks were awarded, she’d liked me even less.
Honey was as dominant as Peter had been submissive, and a female wolf is supposed to take her rank from her mate. She wanted the role she’d been assigned as his mate rather than the one that should have been rightfully hers as a dominant wolf. She didn’t want to be who she was; she wanted to be delicate and ladylike and feminine. She resented me for challenging that.
I wasn’t afraid of her. She wasn’t the type to take her dislike to the next level and try to kill me. Normally, I’d have given her as good as I got, but she’d just lost Peter. We all had just lost Peter.
“I am Adam’s freak,” I told her. “Get over it.”
“Kelly,” Adam said, ignoring Honey altogether. “Come here.”
I didn’t know Kelly well; I’m not sure anyone did. He was a big, quiet man who worked at a local yard and garden store. He usually had an air of vitality, but now half crept, half stumbled to Adam.
Warren grabbed a chair that another wolf vacated without being asked and set it down next to Tad. He pulled Kelly onto the chair and stepped behind him. He reached across the big man’s chest and grabbed Kelly’s opposite wrist and pulled it tight as he trapped Kelly’s free arm, too.
“This might hurt,” Tad said.
“Will hurt,” I told Kelly. “But I survived it.”
Kelly’s eyes went gold, and he showed me his teeth. “Coyote.”
There were still some wolves who resented having a coyote in the pack.
I smiled toothily back at him.
“Coyotes are tough,” he said. Apparently he wasn’t one of the coyote-haters. Good to know.
“So are wolves,” I told him.
“And both of you talk too much,” Tad said. “Brace yourself.”
He didn’t put his hand on Kelly’s face—which was smart. Even in human form, werewolves have strong jaw muscles. He touched his forearm, just above where Warren held it. Tad’s eyes drooped to half-mast, and his nostrils flared and power burst into being where there had been none a moment before.
The scent of fae magic seared my sinuses; Kelly roared, and his whole body arched off the chair. Adam dove to help hold him and so did Honey, who grabbed both of Kelly’s legs in her arms.
Tad jerked back—and there was a popping noise when his hand came away from Kelly’s arm.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
Kelly went limp.
“Did you get the silver out?” asked Adam, releasing his hold cautiously, but the werewolf didn’t move.
Honey dropped Kelly’s legs like they were hot and scooted away until she reached the pool table. Warren let go as well.
Tad showed him a scant handful of whitish gray powder.
Adam smiled. “Good. Kelly?”
The big man shook out his shoulders, took in a breath, and let it out. “I’m good.” He glanced at me. “Thanks for the warning.”
“No trouble,” I said. “Mine took longer.”
He leaned his head to the side without smiling. “Coyotes are tough. Good to know.”
Tad drew the silver out of the wolves who needed it—including Ben. Kelly got the worst of it, as Tad’s skill improved with practice. When Zee�
�s son was finished, Adam sent most of the werewolves back to their own homes, where they could protect their families and rest. Honey stayed because he didn’t want her too far away from him for a while. Werewolves can get volatile in extreme emotion and, as her Alpha, he could keep her from losing control. It was not uncommon for wolves who had lost their mates to have to be killed shortly thereafter. She had changed to her wolf but otherwise seemed okay.
Warren stayed, of course, because it was his home. Ben stayed because he wouldn’t go home when Adam told him to. Adam talked to him in private and then let him stay. I think it had something to do with the way Honey watched me when Adam wasn’t looking.
Once everyone left who was leaving, the house felt like it heaved a sigh of relief; I know I did. Kyle ordered pizza for all who remained, and we were in the middle of eating it when the doorbell rang and a tired-looking Agent Armstrong came in.
Jesse and Gabriel took charge of his sisters and hauled them out to the hot tub after determining that Kyle and Warren did indeed have swimming suits of all sizes. Kyle was a divorce attorney, and sometimes his clients and their children needed a safe place to go for a while. That was why his house was so big and why some of the rooms were Disney-themed and sized for people under ten years old.
Honey was given the job of making sure nothing happened to them. I asked Jesse and Gabriel to make sure that Maia didn’t try to ride Honey the way she’d done with Sam. Wide-eyed at the idea, Jesse promised sincerely to do her best. She knew Honey as well as I did, and even on the best of days, Honey wouldn’t make a good horsey. Everyone else, Adam called to a meeting in the upstairs theater room. When Armstrong protested all the civilians, looking at Tony and Sylvia, Adam said, in a voice that could have frozen a volcano, “Their presence is nonnegotiable.”
It wasn’t, I thought, so much that Tony and Sylvia’s participation was important to Adam, who knew neither one very well—it was that Armstrong had tried to take control of the meeting, and Adam, fresh from being held captive, was not in the mood for it.
Adam moved one of the two love seats around so it was in front of the TV before sitting on it—at the head of his impromptu council. He didn’t bother with his usual charade of human-only strength, having lifted the heavy piece of furniture and carried it by himself with obvious ease. I sat down next to Adam and worried over Armstrong’s pale face. We didn’t need more enemies.
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