Bone Crossed (9 page)

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 ...

Adam caught me as I fell and pulled me against him, in the shadow of the old car. He was so warm, and I was so cold. He put his nose against my neck. I couldn’t see him, lack of air left me with black dots impairing my vision.

I heard the growl shake Adam’s chest, and his mouth closed on mine—and I sucked a deep breath though my nose. I could breathe again, and the weight on my stomach lifted, and I was left shaking, with blood ... no, snot running down my face.

Embarrassed beyond anything, I jerked free of Adam’s hold—knowing with humiliating certainty that he
let
me go. I wiped my face with the bottom of my shirt. And settled in the shelter of the Rabbit, my cheek against the cooling metal.

Weak. Broken. God damn it. God damn
me.
I felt the wave of it hovering, ready to descend upon me again. Despair and helpless anger ... They were all dead.
All dead, and it was my fault.

But no one was dead. Not yet.

I smelled Stefan.

Adam’s golden eyes met mine, the color proving the wolf ascendant. He kissed me again, pressed something against my lips, forcing it between my teeth with a forefinger and thumb without removing his mouth from mine.

It was such a small scrap of bloody meat to burn down my throat as it had. It meant something.

“Mine,” he told me. “You aren’t Stefan’s.”

The dry grass crackled under my head, and the coarse dirt made a noise like sandpaper that echoed behind my eyes. I licked my lips and tasted blood. Adam’s blood.

The Alpha’s blood and flesh
... pack.

“From this day forward,” said Adam, his voice pulling me out of wherever I had been. “Mine to me and mine. Pack and only lover.” There was blood on his face, too, and on the hands he touched my face with.

“Yours to you, mine to me,” I answered, though it was a dry croaking voice that made the noise. I didn’t know why I answered, other than the old “shave and a hair cut” involuntary response. I’d heard this ceremony so many times, even if he’d added the “only lover” part.

By the time I remembered why I shouldn’t do it, what it meant, it was already too late.

Magic burned through me, following the path of that bit of flesh—and I cried out as it tried to make me other than I was, less or more.
Pack.

I felt them all through Adam’s touch and Adam’s blood. His to protect to govern. All of them were mine now, too—and I theirs.

Panting, I licked my lips and stared at Adam. He let me go, coming to his feet and taking two steps away from me where I lay against the side of the old car. He’d bitten his forearm savagely.

“He can’t have you,” he told me, his gold eyes telling me the wolf was still speaking. “Not now. Not ever. I don’t owe him that.”

Belatedly, I realized what had happened. I wiped my mouth with my wrist to give myself time to think. My wrist was pink with Adam’s blood.

Stefan was awake ... and somehow he’d invaded my mind. It had been his panic attack I’d felt.

All dead...
I had a sick, sick feeling that I knew who he meant. I’d met some of the people, human people who fed Stefan. Had learned how horribly vulnerable they were if something happened to the vampire who fed off them and protected them.

I glanced at the setting sun. “It’s a little early for a vampire to be up, isn’t it?” I asked.

Time for everyone to calm down. Me, included.

My sense of the pack was fading, but it would never completely go away. Not now that Adam had made me pack. It was more usual to do it in a full pack meeting, but the pack wasn’t required. Just a bit of the Alpha’s flesh and blood and an exchange of vows.

I hadn’t thought it possible to induct someone who wasn’t a werewolf. I certainly hadn’t thought that he could make me pack. Magic works oddly on me sometimes, and at others I’m pretty much immune to it. But from the results I could feel, it had worked just fine this time.

Adam had turned and stood with his back to me, his shoulders hunched, his hands fisted at his side. He didn’t answer my question, but said stiffly, “I’m sorry for that. I panicked.”

I put my forehead down on my knees. “There’s been a lot of that going around recently.”

I heard the dry grass crunch as he walked back to me. “Are you laughing?” he sounded incredulous.

I looked up at him. The last rays of the sun silhouetted him in golden rays and obscured the expression on his face. But I could see shame in the set of his shoulders. He’d made me pack without asking me—without asking the pack either, though that wasn’t strictly necessary, just traditional. He was waiting for me to yell at him as he felt he deserved.

Adam was used to paying for the consequences of his choices—and sometimes the choices were hard ones. He’d been making a lot of hard choices for me lately.

Stefan had been so far in my head that I had smelled like him. And Adam had made me pack to save me. He was prepared to pay the price—and I was pretty sure there would be a price extracted. But not by me.

“Thank you, Adam,” I told him. “Thank you for tearing Tim into small Tim bits. Thank you for forcing me to drink one last cup of fairy bug-juice so I could have use of both of my arms. Thank you for being there, for putting up with me.” By that point I wasn’t laughing anymore. “Thank you for keeping me from being another of Stefan’s sheep—I’ll take pack over that any day. Thank you for making the tough calls, for giving me time.” I stood up and walked to him, leaning against him and pressing my face against his shoulder. “Thank you for loving me.”

His arms closed around me, pressing flesh painfully hard against bone. Love hurts like that sometimes.

I’D HAVE LOVED TO STAY THERE FOREVER, BUT AFTER A few minutes, I felt the cold sweat break out on my forehead and my throat started to close down. I stepped back before I had to do something more forceful in reaction to the aversion to touch that Tim had left me with.

Only when I was no longer pressed against Adam did I notice we were surrounded by pack.

Okay, four wolves doesn’t a pack make. But I hadn’t heard them come, and, believe me, when there are five werewolves (including Adam) about, you feel surrounded and overmatched.

Ben was there, a cheerful expression that looked just wrong on his fine-featured face, which was more often angry or bitter than happy. Warren, Adam’s third, looked like a cat in the cream. Aurielle, Darryl’s mate, appeared neutral, but there was something in her stance that told me she was pretty shaken up. The fourth wolf was Paul, whom I didn’t know very well—but I didn’t like what I did know.

Paul, the leader of the “I hate Warren because he’s gay” faction of Adam’s pack, looked like he’d been sucker punched. I thought I’d just given him a new most-hated person in the pack.

Behind me, Adam laid his hands on my shoulders. “My children,” he said formally, “I give you Mercedes Athena Thompson, our newest member.”

Much awkwardness ensued.

 

 

 

IF I HADN’T FELT HIM EARLIER, I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT Stefan was still unconscious or dead or whatever from the sun. He lay stiffly on the bed in the cage, like a corpse on a bier.

I turned the light on so I could see him better. Feeding had healed most of the visible damage, though there were still red marks on his cheeks. He looked fifty pounds lighter than he’d been the last time I’d seen him—too much like a concentration camp victim for my peace of mind. He’d been given new clothes to replace his filthy, torn, and stained ones, the ubiquitous replacement clothing every wolf den had lying around—sweats. The ones he wore were gray and hung off his bones.

Adam was conducting what was rapidly developing into a full pack meeting in his living room upstairs. He’d looked relieved when I’d excused myself to see Stefan—I thought he was worried someone would say something that might hurt my feelings. In that he underestimated the thickness of my hide. People I cared about could hurt my feelings, but almost complete strangers? I could care less about what they thought.

Wolf packs were dictatorships, but when you’re dealing with a bunch of Americans brought up on the Bill of Rights, you still had to step a little carefully. New members were generally announced as prospective rather than as faits accomplis. A little care would have been especially appropriate when he was doing something as outrageous as bringing a nonwerewolf into the pack.

I’d never heard of anyone doing that. Nonwerewolf mates weren’t part of the pack, not really. They had status, as the mates of wolves, but they weren’t pack. Couldn’t be made into pack with fifty flesh-and-blood ceremonies—the magic just wouldn’t let a human in. Apparently my coyoteness was close enough to wolf that the pack magic was willing to let me in.