AFTER CLASS, PEOPLE WERE TOO BUSY TRYING NOT TO stare at the werewolf—all the while getting in a good look—to pay any attention to me. I changed in the bathroom and took my time, out of courtesy, so that they would all have time to change in the anteroom in front of the dojo before I came out.
Sensei was waiting for me when I emerged.
“Good job, Mercy,” he told me with an emphasis that told me he wasn’t talking about Lee. It was odd that the words he had for me were the same ones, in a different language, that the woman in the taco wagon had used, meant the same way.
“If it hadn’t been for this”—I tilted my head to indicate the dojo—“I would have died that night instead of my attacker.” I gave him a formal bow, two fists down. “Thank you for your teaching, Sensei.”
He returned my bow, and we both ignored the suspicious watering of eyes.
Adam was waiting near the front door carefully examining his fingernails. He had chosen to be amused by all the people staring at him, which was a good thing. He had a temper. Sweat darkened his Egyptian-cotton shirt, so it clung to the round lines of his shoulders and arms, announcing to anyone that he was a hard body.
I took a deep breath to cool my jets and introduced him around. Only Lee met his eyes for longer than a moment, and at first I thought Adam was going to lose it. He gave Lee a scary smile. I was afraid of what he—either he—was going to say, so I grabbed Adam’s arm and tugged him out the door.
If he’d wanted to, Adam could have shaken me off, but he went along with it. I hadn’t brought my car because the dojo was just a short hike across cheatgrass and down the railroad tracks from my shop. Adam’s SUV wasn’t there either.
“Did you drive a different car?” I asked in the parking lot.
“No, I had Carlos drop me off after work so I could walk back with you to your shop.” Carlos was one of his wolves, one of three or four who worked for him at his security business, but not one I knew well. “I remember you told me you liked to cool down on the walk back.”
I’d told him that several years earlier. He’d been waiting for me at my shop with a warning ... I looked down at the asphalt and turned my head so he wouldn’t see my smile.
It had been after I first hauled the old parts car out of my pole barn and stuck it in the middle of the field so Adam couldn’t help but see it out of his window. He’d been dispensing orders left and right and, knowing werewolves as I had, I hadn’t dared to defy him outright. Instead, knowing how organized and neat Adam was, I’d tortured him with the battered old Rabbit.
He’d stopped by the garage and found my car but not me. He’d never said, but I thought he must have trailed me to the dojo—and instead of complaining about the junkmobile, he’d dressed me down about wandering around the Tri-Cities by myself at night. Exasperated, I’d snarled right back at him. I’d told him I used the not-very-long walk back to my shop as an after-workout cool off. It had been after his divorce, but not by much. Years ago.
He’d remembered all this time.
“What are you so smug about?” he asked me.
He’d remembered what I’d told him, as if I’d been important to him even then ... but I could have described the exact shade of the tie that he had worn that day, the tone that worry had given his voice.
I hadn’t wanted to admit I was attracted to him. Not when he’d been married, and not when he’d been single. I’d been raised by werewolves, had left them, and didn’t want to find myself back in that claustrophobic, violent environment. I especially had no desire to date an Alpha werewolf.
And yet here I was, walking with Adam, who was as Alpha as could be.
“Why didn’t you jump into the fight with Lee?” I asked, changing the subject. He’d wanted to—that’s why the glasses had come on, so that everyone wouldn’t see that his eyes had lightened to the wolf’s gold.
He didn’t answer right away. The man-made bank up to the railroad track, which was the shortest route to my shop, was steep, and the small gravel made it a bit treacherous. I was sore, so I ran up it. My quads, tired from three hundred kicks, protested the additional effort I was asking of them, but running meant the climb was over faster.
Adam ran easily up the slope behind me, even in slick dress shoes. Something about the way he was following me made me feel nervous, like I was a deer being stalked. So I stopped at the top and stretched out my tired legs. I’d be damned if I would run from Adam.
“You had him,” Adam said, watching me. “He’s better than you in form, but he has never fought for his life. I wouldn’t want you tied up and alone with him for very long, but he never had a chance in the dojo.” Then his voice deepened with a slightly rougher tone. “If you hadn’t been stupid, you wouldn’t have even gotten hit. Don’t do that again.”
“Nossir,” I told him.
I’d been trying not to think about Adam all day—since the crossed bones on my door made it clear that Marsilia wasn’t finished with me. I knew, even though Zee would check out other things, I knew that it had been the vampires marking my business. And, like Tony had said, it felt like a death threat. I was a dead woman, it was only a matter of time. All I could do was figure out a way to keep other people from dying with me.
Adam would die for his mate. He wouldn’t let me just leave, either. Christy, his first wife, hadn’t been his mate or they’d still be married. I had to figure out some way to undo what I had done last night.
But it was hard to believe in death with him here beside me, the rich autumn sunlight glinting in his dark hair and lightening his eyes, making him squint and highlighting faint laugh lines.
He took my hand in a casual move I had no way of evading without making a big deal of it. Especially when I didn’t want to evade him. He tilted his head as if trying to figure me out—had he caught what I was thinking? His hand was broad-palmed and warm. The calluses on it made it no softer than my own work-roughened skin.
I turned away from him, but kept his hand as I started down the track to my shop. It was awkward for about four steps, then he made an adjustment to his gait, and suddenly the rhythm of our bodies synced.
I closed my eyes, trusting my balance and Adam to keep me headed in the right direction. If I cried, he’d ask me why, and you can’t lie to a werewolf. I needed to distract him.
“You’re wearing a new cologne,” I told him, and my voice was husky. “I like it.”
He laughed, a warm rumbly sound that settled in my stomach like a warm piece of apple pie. “Shampoo most likely—” Then he laughed again and tugged me off balance until I bumped against him. He let go of my hand and took a light grip on my far shoulder, his arm warm across my back. “No. You’re right, I’d forgotten. Jesse sprayed something at me as I left the house tonight.”
“Jesse has excellent taste,” I told him. “You smell good enough to eat.”
The arm across my shoulders stiffened. I thought back over what I’d said and felt my cheeks warm right up. Part of it was embarrassment ... but part of it wasn’t. But it hadn’t been the Freudian slip that had caught his attention.
Adam stopped. Since he was holding me, I stopped, too. I looked at him, then followed his gaze to my shop.
Whoops. Oh well, I’d been looking for a way to distract him so he wouldn’t wonder why I was upset. This wasn’t the ideal way to do it.
“I guess Zee didn’t tell you?”
“Who did it?” There was a growl in his voice. “The vampires?”
How to answer that without telling a lie, which he would smell, or starting a war?
If I had known that Marsilia knew I’d killed Andre, I never would have told Adam I was willing to be his mate. Another wolf might understand that a war with the vampires wasn’t going to save me, just get more people killed. A war with the vampires here in the Tri-Cities might spread like the plague throughout all the Marrok’s dominion.