"Mercy," Adam said, breaking into my monologue about Karmann Ghias and air-cooled versus water-cooled engines as I turned into my drive. He sounded both amused and resigned. It was a tone I heard from him a lot.
"Hmm?"
"Why did the vampires paint a pair of bones on your door?"
"I don't know," I told him in a deliberately relaxed voice. "I don't even know that it was the vampires.
The camera didn't catch who it was exactly. Zee and I just figured it was the vampires because of Stefan.
He's going to check with Uncle Mike to be sure it wasn't a fae, though."
"I won't let Marsilia hurt you," he told me in the quiet tones he used when making a vow of honor.
The wolves do that, some of the older ones, anyhow. I wouldn't have thought Adam was one of them.
He was a 1950s model, stuck forever looking like he was in his midtwenties. When I say older wolves, I mean a lot older than 1950, a couple of hundred years at least.
It's not that modern men don't have honor, just most of them don't think of it that way. It gives them a flexibility that the previous generations didn't have. Some of the old lobos take their vows very, very seriously.
What I wouldn't have given to be stupid enough to believe that Adam could promise that Marsilia wouldn't kill me-and even more to believe that he wouldn't kill himself trying to keep his word.
I wasn't resigned to my fate or anything like it, but if I had learned one thing being raised by werewolves, it was to keep a clear eye on probable outcomes and how to mitigate damage. And if Marsilia wanted me dead… well that was just the most probable outcome. Really probable. Enough so that I could feel another stupid panic attack hovering. My first today, if I didn't count a little shortness of breath once or twice.
"She's not dumb enough to attack me," I told him, opening my door. "Especially once she hears I've officially accepted you as my mate. That puts me under your pack's protection. She won't be able to do much to me." It should have been true… but I didn't think it would be that easy. "Stefan's the one in trouble."
He got out and waited for me to round the front of the van, then he asked, "Would you go out with me tomorrow… to someplace nice? Dinner and a little dancing."
It hadn't been what I expected him to say, not when he was watching me with those cool, assessing eyes.
It took me a moment to change subjects, my impending death at Marsilia's hands being a little preoccupying.
Adam wanted to take me on a date.
He touched my face—he liked to do that and had been doing it more and more lately. I could feel the warmth of his fingers all the way to my toes. Suddenly, my approaching demise wasn't so engrossing.
"All right. That would be good." I put my hand on my stomach to settle the butterflies, unsure as to whether it was the notion of going on another date with Adam or the knowledge that I was going to have to break it off with him before I brought death to him and his pack. Maybe I'd have to go on the run tonight-would it hurt him more that I'd agreed to a date? Should I find a reason that tomorrow wouldn't work?
A sudden thought came to me. If I hurt him enough, drove him from me in anger… would he care when Marsilia killed me, or would he let it go? A newly familiar breathlessness started to shiver up from my stomach—that panic attack that had been hovering.
"I need to take a shower," I told him, my voice very steady. "But then I'd like to talk to Stefan."
"No problem," he said agreeably, going up my front steps ahead of me. He opened the door and held it for me. "I'll wait while you shower—Samuel's not home."
There was no reason to feel like Adam's prey, I told myself firmly as I walked past him into my own house. No reason to feel Adam's intent eyes on my back. He couldn't read my mind to know that I was planning on running. But I didn't turn back as I said, "Make yourself at home. I'll be right out." And I closed my bedroom door on him and leaned against it.
I SCRUBBED MY HANDS FIRST, USING A STIFF-BRISTLED brush and Fast Orange to get the last of the day's grime off. It never managed to get it all, but if it bothered Adam to run around with someone who had dirt ingrained in the skin of her hands, he'd never said anything. When they were as good as they were going to get, I stepped into the shower.
Could I change my mind about being Adam's mate?
I'm not as sensitive to pack magic as the werewolves are. They don't talk much about it. Secretive bunch, those werewolves. I've been finding out that there's a lot more to it than I'd believed. I knew it was possible for a mated pair to dissolve their union, though I'd never met any who had.
Had my agreement been just words, or had it started some process in the pack magic? Consent, I knew, was necessary for a lot of magic to take place. I am immune to some magic. Maybe mating would turn out to be one of those things. I also knew pack magic worked subtly differently for the Alpha than it did for the rest of the pack. Adam had bound himself to me by declaring me his mate before his pack—and it had had an effect on the pack's magic, and on Adam. I was pretty sure it didn't work quite that way for most wolves, that both had to agree, and that their mating was a more private matter.
I frowned. There was a ceremony. I was almost certain of it. Something happened to make a couple into a mated pair—and then there was some sort of werewolf-only ceremony. Maybe Adam had done it backward? Maybe mating an Alpha was no different than mating with any other wolf. Maybe I was going to drive myself crazy. I needed real information, and I had no idea who to ask.
It couldn't be any of Adam's pack—it would undermine his authority. Besides, they'd just go tell him I was asking. Samuel didn't seem like a good choice either, not after we'd only just agreed not to try it as a couple. Or Bran, for the same reason. I knew he had sent Samuel to the Tri-Cities in a misguided attempt at matchmaking. I wasn't sure Samuel had told him it hadn't worked. I wished, not for the first time, that my foster father, Bryan, was still around. But he'd killed himself a good long time ago.
I turned my face in to the hot spray of my shower. Okay. So assume the mating thing wasn't permanent.
How would I make Adam hate me?
Well, I certainly wasn't sleeping with Samuel. Or hurting Jesse.
Water hit the healing wound on my chin, and I tipped my head down. Making him leave me had seemed logical, but Adam wasn't the kind of person to leave when things got rough. And even if I managed it, wouldn't he still care if Marsilia killed me? Maybe if I had a few months or a year to work on it, I might manage.
Could I run? With my bank balance, I might make it as far as Seattle.
The threatening panic attack faded as relief swamped me. First time being broke had ever made me happy.
I might be a dead woman, but I was going to get to keep Adam for however long I had left.
THOUGH ADAM'S HAND WAS COURTEOUSLY UNDER MY arm as we walked across my field to the barbed-wire fence between our properties, there was a proprietary feeling to the charged air that always seemed to accompany him. Mine, it said.
If it weren't for Marsilia, doubtless I'd have been grumpy about the possessiveness stuff. As it was, I was unhappy because I couldn't just relax into the safety he represented… not without risking his getting hurt because of me.
Maybe I needed to leave, money or not.
My stomach was back in knots, and if I didn't bottle everything up, I was going to have that stupid panic attack, and not safely behind the sound of water and the closed bathroom door. Right here where anyone could see. Next to the poor beat-up Rabbit, with Adam's phone number painted on the roof. For a good time call…
He stopped. "Mercy? What are you so angry about?"
He would know. Even I could smell it: anger and fear and… I had it all, and I had nothing.
It was too much. I closed my eyes and felt my body shake helplessly and my throat close, refusing to let air through…