“You don’t?”
Adam shrugged. “I guess I’m not much for following orders as written. I prefer the spirit to the letter of the law.”
I’d never thought of him that way. I should have remembered . . . the line between black and white is the one he draws.
I looked down. “So, I suppose an apology is too little, too late.”
“What are you planning on apologizing for? ‘Dear Adam, I’m so sorry I tried to keep you from knowing that Samuel lost it’? ‘I’m sorry I used the problems between us to drive you away so I could deal with it’? Or, and this one is my favorite, ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you what was going on, but I couldn’t trust you to deal with it the way I wanted it dealt with’?” He’d started out sounding amused, but by the last one his voice was sharp enough to cut leather.
I kept quiet. I do know how to do that. Sometimes. When I’m in the wrong.
He sighed. “I don’t think an apology will do, Mercy. Because an apology implies that you wouldn’t do it again. And, under the circumstances, you wouldn’t do anything differently, would you?”
“No.”
“And you shouldn’t have to apologize for being right,” he said, with a sigh. “Much as I’d like to tell you differently.”
I jerked my head up and saw that he was perfectly serious.
“If you had called me to tell me that Samuel had lost it, I’d have come over and killed him. Put him down with a bullet because I don’t know that I could take him in a fight. I’ve seen wolves who’ve lost it before, and so have you.”
I swallowed. Nodded.
“What I know, that you do not, is how the wolf longs to hunt, to feel blood in his teeth. The kill . . .” He glanced away and back. “On his own, my wolf would never have let that bounty hunter leave here alive after he held a gun on me. I doubt that he’d have put up with having babies crawl all over him.” Sorrow passed over his face. “Even with Jesse, my own daughter . . . I would not trust him. But Samuel’s wolf managed to deal. So we’ll give him a chance. A week. And after that week, we’ll let you go talk to the Marrok and tell him how his son has kept his cool for a solid week. And maybe you can buy more time for him.”
“I am sorry,” I said in a low voice. “I played on your guilt to keep you away.”
He leaned against the counter and folded his arms. “You didn’t lie, though, did you, Mercy? The pack bothers you, and so do I.”
“I just need time to get used to it.”
He looked at me—and I squirmed just as I’d seen his daughter do under that look.
“Don’t lie to me, Mercy. Not to me. No lies between us.”
I rubbed my eyes—I was not in tears. I wasn’t. It was just the adrenaline letdown after taking on a gunman with a rogue werewolf at my back.
Adam turned his back to me. I thought it was so I wouldn’t see the look on his face. Until he grabbed the counter and broke it in half—sending my cash register and a pile of receipts and book-keeping stuff boiling to the floor.
Oddly, my first reaction to the violence was the dismayed recognition that without Gabriel, it would be my job to figure out how all those papers needed to be reorganized to keep the IRS off my back.
Then Adam howled. An unearthly sound to come out of a man’s throat—I’d only heard it once before out of a wolf’s. My foster father, Bryan, when he held his wife, his mate’s body, in his hands.
I took a step toward him—and Sam was standing between us, his head lowered in readiness.
The door between my office and the garage is steel set in steel. After Sam’s entrance, it was also bent and broken, dangling from one hinge. I hadn’t heard it go; I’d only been able to hear Adam.
Who had made no sound, I realized. His cry had hit me from a different place altogether, where our bond tied me to him and him to me.
Adam didn’t turn around. “Don’t be afraid of me,” he whispered. “Don’t leave me.”
No lies between us.
I blew out a breath, took a couple steps back, and flopped in one of the battered chairs that lined the wall, trying, with my casual pose, to defuse the situation. “Adam, I don’t have the sense to be afraid of Sam in the state he’s in now. I don’t know why you think I’d be smart enough to be afraid of you.” It would be smarter to be more afraid of a werewolf so upset that he took out a counter Zee had built than of a little paperwork and the IRS.
“Ask Samuel to leave us.”
“Sam?” I asked. He’d heard Adam.
He growled, and Adam returned the favor. With interest.
“Sam,” I said, exasperated. “He’s my mate. He’s not going to hurt me. Go away.”
Sam looked at me, then returned his attention to Adam’s back. I could see that back tighten up as if Adam could feel Sam’s gaze. Maybe he could.
“Why don’t you go see what Zee is up to?” I asked. “You’re not helping here.”
Sam whined. Took a half step toward Adam.
“Sam, please.” I couldn’t stand it if they ended up fighting. Someone would die.
The big white werewolf turned reluctantly and walked stiffly, with frequent pauses to see if Adam had moved at all. Finally, he hopped over the wreckage of the door and was gone.
“Adam?” I asked.
But he didn’t answer. If he’d been human, I’d have bugged him—just to get it over with. I’d hurt him, and I waited to take my punishment. I’d been taught you make your choices and live with the consequences long before I’d first read Immanuel Kant in college.
But he wasn’t human. And just then, if I was any judge, he was fighting his wolf. Being Alpha, being dominant, didn’t make that fight any easier, maybe the opposite. Being stubborn helped—and Adam was well qualified on that front.
Getting Sam to leave helped more. The only other thing I could do to help was to sit quietly and wait while Adam stared at the wreckage he’d made of my office.
For Adam, screwed-up bonding thing or not, I’d wait forever.
“Really?” he asked in a tone I’d never heard from him before. Softer. Vulnerable. Adam didn’t do vulnerable.
“Really what?” I asked.
“Despite the way our bond scares you, despite the way someone in the pack played you, you’d still have me?”
He’d been listening to my thoughts. This time it didn’t bother me.
“Adam,” I told him, “I’d walk barefoot over hot coals for you.”
“You didn’t take advantage of this thing with Samuel as a way of putting distance between us,” he said.
I sucked in a breath. I could see how he might have interpreted it that way. “You know that section of the Bible, where Jesus tells Peter he’ll deny him three times before morning? Peter says, ‘Heck no.’ But sure enough when he’s asked by some people if he’s one of Jesus’ followers, he says he’s not. And after the third time, he hears the cock crow and realizes what he’s done. I feel like Peter right now.”
Adam started laughing. He turned around, and I saw bright gold eyes looking through me the way wolves’ eyes always seem to do. More than that, he’d actually begun to change a little—his jaw was longer, the angle of his cheekbones slightly different. “You’re comparing me to Jesus? Like this?” He used his fingers to motion toward his face. “Don’t you think you’re being a little sacrilegious?”
His voice was bitter.
“No more than I’m Saint Peter,” I told him. “But I had Peter’s ‘what have I done’ moment—only his was instantaneous, and mine took a lot longer. It started when I heard Maia scream while I was working in the garage and continued pretty much up until you talked to Bran and bought Samuel a little more time. Funny how making decisions that seem right at the time . . .”
I shook my head. “Peter probably thought that telling the guy he wasn’t one of Jesus’ followers was the smartest thing to do. Kept him alive, for one. I thought keeping Samuel alive—as he wasn’t raving or killing anyone . . . yet—was a good idea. I thought that telling yo
u I needed a little space was good. Give me some time to wrap my head around having other people rattling around in my mind without hurting you because it scared me silly.”
“What?” asked Adam incredulously.
I bowed my head, and said, “Because it scared me—scares me—silly.”
He shook his head. “Not that part—the keeping it from hurting me part.”
“You don’t like being a werewolf,” I told him. “Oh, you deal with it—but you hate it. You think that it makes you a freak. I didn’t want you to know I had problems with some of the werewolf stuff, too.” I swallowed. “Okay, more problems than just that whole ‘I must control your life because you belong to me’ that most of the werewolves I know have.”
He stared at me with his yellow eyes and elongated face. His mouth was open slightly because his upper and lower jaw no longer quite matched up. I could see the edges of teeth that were sharper and more uneven than they usually were.
“I am a freak, Mercy,” he said, and I snorted.
“Yeah, such a freak,” I agreed. “That’s why I’ve been drooling over you for years even though I’d sworn off werewolves for life after Samuel. I knew that if I told you being a member of the pack and the bonds and all that were bothering me—it would hurt you. And you are already putting up with . . .” I couldn’t wrap my mouth around the ugly word “rape,” so I softened it as I often did. “With the aftermath of Tim. I thought if I gave myself a little time, figured out how to keep the pack from turning me into your ex-wife, and bought Samuel a little extra time as well . . .”
Adam leaned against the wall just inside the door—the wall my counter used to block—and folded his arms across his chest.
“What I’m trying to say,” I told him, “is that I’m sorry. It seemed like a good idea at the time. And, no, I did not engineer this to put some distance between us.”
“You were trying to keep me from being hurt,” he said, still in that odd voice.
“Yes.”
He shook his head slowly—and I noticed that sometime while we’d been talking, he’d lost the wolfish aspect, and his face had returned to normal. Warm brown eyes caught the light from the windows as one side of his mouth quirked up.
“Do you have any idea how much I love you?” he asked.
“Enough to accept my apologies?” I suggested in a small voice.
“Heck no,” he said, and pushed off from the wall, stalking forward.
When he reached me, he put his hands up and touched the sides of my neck with the tips of his fingers—as if I were something fragile.
“No apologies from you,” he told me, his voice soft enough to melt my knees and most of my other parts. “First of all, as I already pointed out—you would make the same choices again, right? So an apology doesn’t work. Secondly, you, being who you are, could have made no other choice. Since I love you, as you are, where you are—it hardly makes sense for me to kick about it when you act like yourself. Right?”
“People don’t always see it that way,” I said, stepping into him until our hip bones bumped.
He laughed, a quiet sound that made me happy down to my toes. “Yeah, well, I don’t promise I’ll always be logical about it.” He gave a rueful glance to my broken counter and the cash register on its side. “Especially at first.” His smile dropped away. “I thought you were trying to leave me.”
“I might be dumb,” I told him, putting my nose against his silk tie, “but I’m not that dumb. I’ve gotcha now, and you aren’t getting away.”
His arms tightened almost painfully around me.
“So why didn’t you tell Bran about Samuel?” I asked him. “I was sure you’d have to tell him. Aren’t you bound by blood-sworn oaths?”
“If you’d called me last night and told me what was going on, I’d have called Bran—and shot Samuel myself. But . . . based on what happened this morning, he seems to be holding it together okay. He deserves some time.” His arms, which had loosened a little, pulled me against him even harder. “If something like that happens to me—you call Bran and you stay as far from me as you can get. My wolf is not like Samuel’s.” He gave the counter another look. “If I lose it . . . you just stay away until I’m dead.”
Chapter 6
ONCE MOST EVERYONE ELSE WAS GONE, ADAM TOSSED the fae’s rifle into the backseat of his truck.
“I’ll see if I can’t find out something from the serial numbers,” he said. “The way she just left it probably means that she doesn’t think we can trace it to her anyway, but it would be stupid not to check.”
“You will be careful,” I told him.
“Sweetheart”—he bent down and kissed me—“I am always careful.”
“What’ll you give me if I watch out for him?” It wasn’t what Ben said; it was the way he’d said it. I have no idea how he made those words sound suggestive, but he managed it.
Adam shot him a look. Ben grinned unrepentantly and ducked around the side of the truck and hopped in.
“I was on the way to a job site when I got the call that something was up,” Adam told me. “I’ve got to get back.”
“No worries,” I said. “I’ll lock up. I don’t think I’ll be doing anything more here today.”
He opened his door, and stopped with his head turned away from me. “I’m sorry about your counter.”
I took a couple of steps forward until my nose pressed against his back and wrapped my arms around him. “I’m sorry about a lot of things. But I’m glad I have you.”
He hugged my arms. “Me, too.”
“Get a room,” said Ben from inside the truck.
“Stuff it.” Adam turned around, kissed me, and hopped in the truck.
Sam and I watched him drive away.
* * *
I STOPPED AT A SANDWICH SHOP AND BOUGHT TEN subs with double meat and cheese. Then I drove the Rabbit to the park on the Kennewick side of the river to eat. There wasn’t any snow yet, but it was a cold and dreary day so, other than some distant joggers and a serious-looking biker, we had the place to ourselves. I ate half a sandwich and drank a bottle of water. Sam ate the rest.
“Well, Sam,” I asked, when we were both finished, “what do you want to do today?”
He looked at me with interest, which didn’t help much.
“We could go run,” I told him as I threw our garbage into a can next to where I’d parked the Rabbit.
He shook his head with emphasis.
“Hunting not a good idea?” I asked. “I’d think it would help you to relax.”
He lifted his lips to display his fangs, then snapped his teeth five times, each snap faster, more savage, than the one previous to it. When he stopped, he was perfectly calm—except that I could see that he was breathing harder, and there was a deep hunger in his eyes even though he’d just eaten nine and a half feet of loaded submarine sandwiches.
“Okay,” I said after a pause to make sure my voice wasn’t shaking, “hunting is a bad idea. I get it. Something peaceful.”
I opened the passenger door to let him in and saw the towel-wrapped bundle on the backseat.
“Want to help me return a book?” I asked.
* * *
THE UPTOWN WAS BUSTLING WITH SATURDAY SHOPPERS, and I had to park a good distance away from the bookstore. I opened the door for Sam. He hopped out, then froze. After a second, he dropped his nose to the ground—but whatever he was looking for he didn’t find because he stopped and drew in a deep breath of air.
My nose is better than a normal human’s, if not as good as it is in my coyote shape. I took in a deep breath, too, but there were too many people, too many cars, for me to figure out what had set Sam off.
He shook himself, gave me a look I couldn’t fathom, and hopped back into the Rabbit. He flattened himself on the seat, stretching across the gap between and lowered his muzzle to the driver’s side seat.
“You’re staying here, I take it?” I asked. It must not be anything dangerous, or he wouldn’t let me g
o on my own—Sam with his wolf ascendant had always been even more protective of me than Samuel himself had.
Maybe one of the other werewolves was nearby. It would make sense for Sam to avoid them. I took another deep breath. I still didn’t scent anyone I recognized, but Samuel’s nose was better than mine outside of coyote shape.
I moved his tail out of danger and shut his car door. I opened the back door to get the book—and reconsidered. Phin’s neighbor might have been fae and faintly creepy, but that didn’t mean there was anything wrong. But there could be, and with Sam in the car, the book was just as safe here. If Phin was at the bookstore, I’d just come back and get it. If his neighbor or someone other than Phin was around instead, I’d regroup.
“I’m going to leave the book in the backseat,” I told Sam. “I should be right back.”
In the short time since we’d left the park, the temperature had dropped, and the wind had picked up. My light jacket wasn’t quite up to the wind and the damp. I gave the gray skies a good look—if it rained tonight and the temperature dropped much from here, we might have a good, hard freezing rain. Montana may have steep, windy roads that are nasty when covered with snow and ice, but those are nothing compared to the Tri-Cities when the freezing rain turns the pavement into a polished ice-skating rink.
I trotted through the parking lot and narrowly avoided getting run over by a Subaru that was backing out without looking. I kept an eye out for other idiots, and so it wasn’t until I stepped onto the sidewalk and looked up into the window of the bookstore that I saw a gray-haired woman behind the counter. I felt a frizzle of relief: she wasn’t the creepy neighbor.
I reached for the door and saw that the closed sign was still up—with an addition. Someone had taped a piece of white paper with UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE printed in thick black Sharpie.
While I hesitated, the woman inside gave me a cheery smile and walked up to the door, turning the dead bolt so she could open it. Her movements were surprisingly brisk and sprightly for a woman of her grandmotherly roundness and wrinkles.
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