Winter Lost

5

Adam

Adam watched Mercy scramble up the stairs, listened to her ragged breathing until she shut their bedroom door. His wolf wanted to go after her, and so did he. But he had a job to do—and Mercy didn’t enjoy an audience. Not until she had matters under better control.

She wasn’t in danger. She wasn’t in danger. No matter how their bond felt, she wasn’t in danger. His wolf was reluctant to believe that, no matter how many times Adam rebuked him.

“I thought she was done with those,” growled a voice that set the beast, the one not his wolf, into high alert.

That had the benefit of making his wolf quiet. The two monsters who lived under his skin did not come out at the same time.

Adam turned cautiously to face Siebold Adelbertsmiter. The walking stick was gone to wherever it went, but Zee didn’t look one bit less dangerous without it. Adam suspected Zee had used the walking stick to make Ymir and Adam back down so that he didn’t have to do something more lethal.

Adam wasn’t intimidated by Zee—which might or might not be foolish—but he was wary around him when Mercy wasn’t in the room. Despite the tone he’d used, the tightness around Zee’s mouth made Adam think he was hurt rather than angry.

“It’s been a while,” Adam said carefully. He didn’t say it had been since last October, when the vampire who had his own ties to Adam’s mate had commanded her to stop panicking. None of that was anything Mercy would want Zee to know.

Adam knew that Mercy was afraid that one of her beloved monsters would kill one of her others. It was why Adam hadn’t killed Stefan already—that, and the knowledge that having the vampire on call helped keep Mercy safe, sometimes when Adam couldn’t. There was also the distinct possibility that Stefan’s death would not free Mercy but kill her, too. He didn’t know why Zee hadn’t killed the vampire, but assumed the old fae’s decision tree had followed the same path as his own.

“A while?” Zee asked suspiciously.

Adam nodded. “She thought she was done with them, too.” That felt true enough to appease Zee without betraying anything that Mercy hadn’t told him. Mercy didn’t like people to worry about her, so she didn’t tell them things. Like the way she hadn’t told him about Bonarata’s call—even after Ben had warned her that they all knew.

The back door opened, and Tad, Honey, and Jesse spilled in, followed by Warren. Adam had known his draw on the pack bonds would result in a mass invasion by the pack, but he’d expected it to take longer. Warren must have been in the neighborhood.

Honey glanced at him, and he tipped his head to Mary Jo and her unexpected guardian, who were still on the floor where Mercy had left them. Mary Jo was stable, so Adam had kept his attention on the biggest threat in the room, but having pack here to take care of Mary Jo was good.

Warren gave Zee a hard look, but Adam caught his eye and directed him to Mary Jo and Gary as well. Mary Jo would need all the pack support she could get for a while.

“What happened?” Jesse demanded.

“I will go,” Zee said, pointedly not looking at his son. “I will talk to the people I know who might have information on this brother of Ymir’s.”

“That would be useful,” Adam said.

Zee made a sour noise and left through the front door.

“Dad?” Jesse asked again.

The whole pack would have felt his power draw to free Mary Jo. “Wait just a second. If I don’t let the pack know they can stand down, we’ll have everyone here.”

After he sent a text to the pack, he took the opportunity to text Darryl, Auriele, and Sherwood separately. Those three he needed.

That done, he evaluated his audience—while he’d been texting, Mary Jo had recovered enough to listen. Good. He gave them all a brief synopsis on how Gary got here and why they’d called Ymir in. Then he took them through a play-by-play from the moment he realized that Ymir had caught Mary Jo.

“He can’t do that again?” asked Jesse, wide-eyed.

“I don’t know,” Adam said honestly. “But Sherwood might. He, Darryl, and Auriele are on their way over. That’s one of the things we’ll discuss.”

He could feel Mercy’s distress as a burn in his chest. But she wouldn’t thank him for abandoning his duty. He moved on to the next thing.

“Jesse, it’s late and you have school tomorrow.” He was adjusting to thinking of Jesse as an adult who could make her own decisions. The decisions she made had so far been good ones, and that had made it easier.

She was his daughter; she would know he wasn’t sending her up to bed like a ten-year-old—he hoped. He was sending her upstairs with a mission.

“Yeah,” she said, giving him a rueful smile. “I should hit the hay. How about I check on Mercy on the way?”

And that made his wolf settle a bit.

“I would appreciate that,” he told her, and watched her absorb the praise implicit in his words. Maybe he should praise her a little more often if it meant that much to her.

She gave Tad a playful shove with both hands. Whatever tension had been between the two of them earlier, it was evidently settled. “You have school, too. Get out of here.”

“Test, even,” agreed Tad, and he gave a nod to Adam. Then he went out the door and Jesse went up the stairs, leaving Adam to deal with the werewolves.

“I’m going home,” Mary Jo said. She started to get up but wobbled back to the floor, snarling at Warren when he reached over to help steady her. Adam judged the wobbles to be as much from her still-finishing shift from wolf to human as from what Ymir had done. She wasn’t usually disabled by the shift, but Ymir had ripped her from her human shape to the wolf in the space of seconds. It would be a few days before her shifts felt normal again.

But she would recover—Adam could tell by the way her attitude resembled the bonhomie of a shedding rattlesnake.

Gary, Adam’s other problem, remained silent—much better than the strange noises he made when he tried to talk. Adam’s wolf winced from those sounds the same way he did when exposed to something too loud or sharp. Gary’s body language was alert but not combat ready. Adam didn’t think that he’d break for it and try to run again.

Gary had put his body between Mary Jo and the frost giant to protect her. As far as Adam knew, Gary had met Mary Jo briefly, but hadn’t spent any time with her that would make him treat her any different from any person on the street. And Gary didn’t seem to be able to recognize anyone. But Mary Jo had been in distress, she’d smelled like pack—and Gary had thrown himself into danger without hesitation.

Before he’d seen it himself, Adam wouldn’t have put money on Gary being protective of anyone. Mercy said that her half brother was a better person than he pretended to be, but Mercy always thought the best of people. It wasn’t really that she was a good judge of character, but mostly that people tried to live up to her view of them. Adam had taken her opinion of Gary with a grain of salt.

Now Adam could see who Gary was when all of his defenses were removed.

Seated beside Gary, Honey had her calm face on, telling Adam that she was really disturbed. Gary was leaning against her lightly, like a blind man keeping his sense of place rather than for reassurance.

The other bookend of the four, Warren, looked both relaxed and awkward with his too-long legs taking up a lot of room on the tile. Like Honey, his face was calm despite the rage that Adam felt through the bonds. Warren was keeping it buried deep enough that Adam didn’t think anyone else would find it. Adam hoped he was doing as well with his own fury.

Ymir had taken one of theirs.

“I’m going home,” Mary Jo said again, as if someone was arguing with her.

You aren’t wrong about that fight you’re about to get into, Adam thought with amusement. No one here is going to let you go off by yourself. We’re all just hoping someone else will stick their neck out first.

He wasn’t surprised when Warren took the lead.

“How about you give a call to Renny, darlin’. Or I could. If we knew you weren’t alone, we wouldn’t fuss at you.”

“I broke up with him,” Mary Jo snapped, answering the mystery of why she’d felt off to Adam for the last few days. “The whole point of that was to get Renny free of my life.”

Raw hurt rolled out with her voice, and hearing it, she flushed, closing her eyes. When she spoke again, her tone was filled with calm dignity. “That was the point. I’m going home.”

Honey tried next. “You need to be with people.”

Mary Jo gave the room a cool look. “I am a grown woman. A werewolf. A monster. If I’m not safe, no one is.”

She stood up—this time with a lot more success—and brushed her arms off, as if that meant she could brush off the rest of the conversation with it.

“Mary Jo.”

Three of them jumped when Adam spoke, and Gary stiffened a moment later, tilting his head in Adam’s direction. Adam hadn’t intended to put so much power in those words, but the moon was still strong and Mary Jo wasn’t the only one who was going through some things tonight.

“Yes, Adam?” Mary Jo said, with an edge in her voice.

He could give her orders. But living with Mercy had taught him that sometimes going around things was so much easier than bulling through them.

“I am sending Gary home with Honey tonight,” Adam said.

Honey raised her head to look at him, but she didn’t seem displeased.

“We don’t know what’s wrong with him. I need you to go with Honey,” he said. He held up a hand when Mary Jo looked at Warren and started to say something. “I can’t spare Warren tonight. I know you are hurting, but I can’t leave Honey alone with Gary when he’s damaged and I have no real idea what he can do.”

Mary Jo was a fireman. Fireperson? He sometimes lost track of what terms were polite this decade. She fought fires and saved people, anyway. She was fierce. As driven to duty as he himself was. They would never have gotten her to go with Honey for Mary Jo’s own good. But to keep Honey safe?

And it had the benefit of being true. He would feel better—with the memories of how easily Gary had moved Honey and of the speed and strength with which he’d fought Adam fresh in his mind—if he didn’t send Honey home alone with Gary.

“Okay,” she said grudgingly.

Warren helped Honey escort Gary out to her car while Mary Jo ran downstairs to get clothes to wear from the pack stores. Adam went out to the garage and found the plywood they’d used the last time the big window in the living room had been broken. When he got back into the house, only Warren remained. The two of them secured the plywood, sealing the winter outside once more.

Then, with Warren left on guard duty, Adam was finally free to go to his mate.

The room was dark and quiet except for Mercy’s ragged breathing. She’d found a corner and wrapped herself in a blanket that didn’t do enough to warm her, judging by the way she was shivering.

Adam left the lights off and sat on the floor beside her, his back to the wall. He left a little space between them. If she wanted touch, he was there.

“Fat lot of use I am,” she said, struggling to get the words out around the vibrations of her jaw. “If we had had to fight him, all I would have been able to do is collapse in a corner.”

He didn’t tell her that if Zee and he hadn’t been able to take care of Ymir, she didn’t stand a chance. He didn’t say it because no matter how much that looked true, Mercy had proven it wasn’t. She could face off with volcano gods and come out of it with nothing more than a scar on her cheek.

He considered his words.

“Nah,” he said.

He’d tried to make it playful, a contrast to what she was feeling. But his monsters, roused by his mate’s condition, lent their darkness, so the casual word came out rich with…something not playful.

He waited and tried again, and this time he sounded more normal. “You pushed this off until the enemy was gone. You’d have held out until you did what you had to do.”

She shook her head fiercely. And for a moment he hoped she’d argue with him—arguing was sometimes useful in her battle with her panic attacks. But when she spoke, it was to direct the conversation away from herself.

“Ymir is a problem,” she said raggedly, “if he can take our wolves.”

She was absolutely right.

“Sherwood is on his way over,” Adam told her. “I don’t know if he’ll have suggestions, but he’s our best bet.”

Mercy tried to say something, but it didn’t come out. Adam fought back the urge to look at her, because she preferred not to be stared at. This was a bad attack. He’d expected her to be mostly done with it by the time he’d been able to come up.

If he’d only gotten to Tim sooner—

He wound that thought up tight and shoved it down where it belonged before one of his beasts got even more stirred up. The important thing was not yesterday—the important thing was tomorrow.

Mercy thumped the back of her head against the wall. “Six weeks.” She growled. “Six weeks without a panic attack. Anxiety attack. Stupid attack. Whatever. Not since Stefan—”

Her voice broke off and she quit breathing.

Every muscle in Adam’s body locked up with the need to help her. There was nothing he could do—not unless he was willing to use the pack bonds to force her recovery. In a life-or-death circumstance, he might do something like that. But she wasn’t going to die today.

And he wouldn’t take advantage of her vulnerability like that.

After a few seconds, she caught a breath. Then another. She scooted over an inch and leaned against him, resting her forehead on his arm.

“Mary Jo?” she asked, her voice hoarse.

“She’s pretty scared,” he admitted. “She’s going home with Honey and Gary. The women don’t seem to fret Gary as much as the men do.”

Mercy gave a hiccup of laughter. “No surprise there.”

But Adam didn’t think it was like that. He’d gotten the impression that Gary didn’t care about the sex of the people he took to his bed—or flirted with. But women felt safer. Or maybe it was just Honey and Mary Jo.

Mary Jo. That reminded him he had a few questions.

“Warren was trying to get permission from Mary Jo to call Renny and get him over there, too. Something happened between them?”

“He proposed to her, so she broke up with him,” she told him.

“That makes sense,” he told her, because it didn’t.

She huffed a laugh. “He’s human, and being her boyfriend has already gotten him hurt.”

Oh, that. Yes. Adam understood that in a visceral way.

“She really loves him, then,” Adam said.

Mercy nodded. “She really does.” Her voice was sad.

He was quiet for a while, wondering, as he often did, whether joining his pack had put Mercy in more danger or less. He used to think he knew the answer, because his pack had been quiet before he’d decided to court Mercy. But lately he’d found himself wondering if all the stuff they’d been hit with the last few years hadn’t been going to happen anyway. Maybe if Mercy’s life and his had not merged, none of them would have survived this long—they were stronger together.

“I didn’t even know what to tell her,” Mercy said. “Except that she should talk to you.”

He couldn’t help but give her a wry laugh. “Thanks for that.”

“He’s human,” Mercy said. “He works in a dangerous job—and the Tri-Cities are not getting any more safe for police work. He could pull the wrong car over tomorrow—or trip coming down stairs.”

Neither of them mentioned Changing Renny. His chances of survival weren’t high, and being a werewolf came with its own set of worries. The average life expectancy of a werewolf who survived the initial Change was now around eight years. The drop was due to the increased pressure on the Marrok to take care of troublemakers before they drew the attention of the human authorities. Being out to the humans had been unavoidable, given modern technology, but it hadn’t made their lives easier.

“Honey might be the best person for her to talk to,” Adam said. “She’s seen more than I have.”

“What do you think she’ll tell Mary Jo?” Mercy asked. Her body was softening against him, and the tremors were subsiding.

“To do what will leave her with the fewest regrets,” Adam said. “But to have a clear eye on just what that means. And you are forgetting one part of this.”

She looked up at him and he ran a gentle finger along the scar on her cheek, the one that looked a little like war paint. As much as he regretted the wound, he loved that scar. It was a reminder to him, and to the pack, that his mate could hold her own.

“What am I forgetting?” she asked.

He couldn’t tell if she was okay with his touch yet or not, so he let his hand fall away.

“Renny,” he said. “If that man lets Mary Jo walk away again, he doesn’t deserve her.”

That got him a watery smile, and she hummed a few bars of a song. Her pitch was usually spot-on, but tonight wasn’t “usually,” so it took him a moment to recognize the Beatles’ “Revolution.”

“Yeah,” he said. “A determined person can change the world.”

She leaned away from him to drag up the edge of the blanket and used it to wipe her face.

“Good thing snot washes out,” she said, looking at the wet spot her face had left on the fabric.

“Can I hug you yet?” Adam asked, his voice sounding wistful even to himself.

In answer, she crawled into his lap, snotty blanket and all. What was a little snot compared to the overwhelming relief of her? He wrapped his arms around her, being careful how much of his strength he used.

She tucked her face under his jaw, wiggling until she was where she wanted to be. His body was honed to maximize his ability to protect her and his pack; he knew it didn’t have much more give than a cement bench. Her body wasn’t exactly squishable, either, for that matter. But she always seemed to find a way to fit against him.

With her safe in his arms, his beasts—the wolf and the other monster—gave him some peace. Sometimes he wished that his world could be only this: he and Mercy curled together in the dark.

But he knew he wouldn’t last long like that. Peace was, for him, a momentary thing that rapidly turned into boredom. Mercy rubbed her cheek on his neck and he couldn’t help but smile. She was worse than he was. Always up and doing something was his Mercy.

He waited while her breathing slowed. For the first few minutes of sleep, her breath stuttered like a baby’s after a crying jag. He heard the quiet sounds as Sherwood arrived, followed shortly by Darryl and Auriele. He ignored them for the moment. When he was sure Mercy was asleep, he rose to his feet, the wolf’s strength making his awkward position on the floor trivial. He wasn’t often grateful to be a werewolf.

Mercy was heavier than his first wife had been. Christy had worked out, but not the way Mercy did. Especially lately. Asleep, her face appeared gaunter than it had a year ago. He wondered, not for the first time, if he was driving them all too hard. There was a fine line between peak performance and broken.

Adam didn’t want to break his mate. He wanted to give her everything he knew, every bit of training to help her survive, and hope it would be enough.

The best way to save a drowning man, his father had liked to say, was to teach him to swim before he fell in the river—so he could keep himself safe instead of depending upon you. His dad had been big on independence. He would have adored Mercy.

Adam set her on their bed and stripped off her clothes. She wasn’t usually a heavy sleeper, but a bad panic attack damn near put her into a coma. She also slept cold.

He rustled up one of his T-shirts, soft from wear, and put it on her. He was pretty sure that she had woken up sometime in the process, but she didn’t give him any help. He covered her up and kissed the soft spot between her jawbone and the back of her ear. She made a grumpy noise and rolled over to bury her head in her pillow, leaving her knees folded and her rump sticking up.

She looked like Jesse had when she was a toddler and they’d let her get too tired. After a moment, Mercy rolled onto her side, patted his half of the bed. Finding it empty, she tipped her face until one eye peered at him.

“You need to do Alpha stuff?” she asked, her voice foggy with exhaustion.

“Yes.”

“Got a call from the Prince of Darkness on the way to the pub,” she said.

“I know.”

She blinked at him, her other eye opening for a moment as she tried to read his expression.

He wasn’t sure what she saw, but it seemed to make her happy. “Okay. Didn’t want to lie to you. Tempted, though.”

“I get that,” he said. “Me, too, sometimes.”

Both of her eyes narrowed on him, more alert than they had been. “Anything I need to know?”

“Not tonight,” he told her. “We can talk in the morning.”

“Anyone die?”

“No one you know,” he assured her. “New Mexico business.”

She nodded and closed her eyes. “Gonna sleep now.”

“You do that. I’ll be up when I’m done with my Alpha stuff.”

“Okay,” she said, and her body went limp.

These were the things that he was privileged to see, vulnerabilities his tough-like-Timex mate kept well hidden. She had to be strong. It was a good thing she was.

His grandfather’s voice rang in his head: “A man protects his woman, Adam.”

He and his whole pack had been uprooted from New Mexico to protect her. Bran’s little coyote might have thought she’d been abandoned at sixteen by the pack that had raised her, but the Marrok hadn’t given up responsibility for her. When she’d moved somewhere without a pack to serve the Marrok’s purposes, Bran had given Adam his transfer orders.

Adam had resented that at first. Then he’d been bewildered by it. For nearly a decade he’d lived next door and a few acres away from her, and nothing had happened. For years nothing had happened.

Until it did.

When he first noticed his attraction to Mercy, Adam had mapped their relationship out. He had craved her kindness, her humor, and her body. He’d thought that her toughness and independence were an obstacle he had to overcome to get her to accept him. He had looked after his first wife. He would take care of his mate.

Hah.

On his way out of the bedroom, Adam stopped and looked back. Mercy had burrowed under the covers again until only a lump showed that their bed was occupied.

Thank God Mercy was tough.

He closed the door behind him and took one step down the dark hallway. Then he returned to his bedroom door and placed the flat of his hand against it. Then he leaned his forehead against the varnished wood and closed his eyes, expanding their mate bond.

She was sleeping, dreaming of something only a little worrying. It had to do with Medea—he’d gotten the feel of the cat’s purr. He slid his attention to the pack bonds, listening, for lack of a better word, to the general health and well-being of the pack.

He could feel Mary Jo’s emotional disturbance—and Honey’s, too. More of Honey’s distress than he’d have thought based on what she’d been like before they’d left. But Honey was good at concealing things.

Pack bonds only went so far. Adam couldn’t invade their privacy deeper to find out how much of their distress was due to Ymir’s attack, and how much was other things. Renny. Gary. Some boundaries shouldn’t be crossed.

He stayed there, basking in the power of his pack for a minute. Then he opened himself up to the new thing—the awareness that had begun after Mercy had faced down a troll on the suspension bridge and claimed the Tri-Cities as pack territory. That had been magic; they had all felt it when something happened. At that moment, he’d gained a link to the land his pack claimed for their own. He hadn’t figured out just what it was good for yet—he’d never gotten a warning of trouble from it.

A while ago, he’d dismissed it as one of those weird things magic sometimes did. He’d found it neither threat nor help, so he’d mostly ignored it. Until October.

Mercy wasn’t the only one the Soul Taker had affected. Since he’d fought that damned artifact, this bond had grown deeper in a worrying way. It was too easy to lose himself in the exploration of every roadway, every blade of grass, the ancient sheets of basalt that lurked beneath the earth. His territory.

“Is she okay, Adam?” Warren said, his voice calling Adam back to himself.

He blinked. If he’d been in wolf form, he’d have shaken the numbness off. In human-seeming, he just rubbed his face with both hands.

“Mercy?” Warren stood at the top of the stairs and looked worriedly at the door between them and Mercy.

“She’s okay,” Adam said. “Or at least she’ll be okay after some sleep. I was just recharging.”

As he followed Warren down the stairs to where his people were waiting, he realized that was true. He did feel better. Refreshed. And he hadn’t drawn that from the pack, had he. Had he?

Mercy crossed her ankles and rested her feet on the dash because she knew Adam hated that. He wasn’t worried about the car, but he’d seen photos of what happened to people in car accidents. He was a very good driver, but there was a “wintry mix” dripping down and he wasn’t the only person on the road.

Mercy wouldn’t walk away from a car accident the way he would.

One of the first things he’d noticed about Mercy was that she understood people. She really knew how to get under their skin. Under his skin.

Her feet on the dash told him that she was really annoyed with him. He wasn’t sure why. He dealt with it for a few miles, giving her a chance to tell him. Just outside of Eltopia, the car behind them fishtailed violently and pulled off onto the shoulder.

Mercy wiggled her feet.

“What did I do?” he asked in what he hoped was a reasonable voice.

She gave him a look that said his tone had been less inquiry and more demand. But she took pity on him because, when push came to shove, his Mercy was the more reasonable of the two of them.

“You need to be in New Mexico,” she said. “Darryl isn’t military, and neither is Auriele. He doesn’t know how to thread the needle between threat and cooperation that allows your company to work with the various military arms of the government.”

“Darryl will be fine,” Adam told her. “He’s smart.” Brilliant, in fact, which was why he had a bunch of letters behind his name and a big check for working with a think tank. “Auriele can charm the birds out of the sky.”

That last drew an incredulous look from Mercy that made him wave an acknowledging hand.

“Nothing you have seen her do,” he said, a little sadly.

Auriele had adjusted to Mercy as his mate. Mostly, she’d even quit blaming Mercy for hurting Adam’s first wife with her very existence. Christy was good at making her friends forget that Christy had left Adam a long time before Mercy had looked at him with anything besides exasperation. But Auriele didn’t go out of her way to be friendly with the woman she’d always see as Christy’s replacement.

“Can they handle the business in New Mexico as well as you would?” Mercy asked.

There was a problem with living with someone who could hear even the whitest of lies. He chose not to answer—which was an answer in itself.

“You left the pack with Warren and Sherwood,” she continued. “The first time they disagree, they will pull the pack apart.”

Ah. He knew what she was so angry about.

“If they do,” he said, his voice rough with some emotion he couldn’t quite label, except that it made his wolf stir under his skin. “If the pack can’t manage a few days without me to babysit, if Darryl and Auriele between them can’t run down the problems in New Mexico—that is on me. My choice.”

“Because of me,” she said, her face turned away from him. He didn’t need to see her expression to know he’d nailed it.

“Mercy,” he said, quelling the growl that wanted to exit his throat.

“I would have been fine on my own,” she said sharply. “Or you could have sent Warren or Sherwood with me. Or Warren and Sherwood. That would have helped Darryl run the pack without our three most powerful wolves killing each other in your absence. You could take care of New Mexico.”

The SUV slid a little, sending the traction lights into a quiet frenzy.

“Would you please take your feet off the dash?” Adam asked.

She looked at him, heaved a sigh, and pulled them down.

“Thank you,” he said fervently, feeling his back loosen just a bit.

“Sorry,” she mumbled at the window. “But you didn’t need to do this. You shouldn’t have done this.”

“I did, though,” he told her. “I absolutely needed to.”

He waited until she looked at him—though he kept most of his attention on the road, which was getting a little dicey. Once they got into the mountains, it would be colder and the icy mix should turn to honest snow. Snow was a lot safer than wet slush.

“You didn’t,” she insisted. If something happened to the pack, to the people in New Mexico, Mercy thought it would be her fault.

He held up a finger. “I left the pack in the hands of two very competent wolves. Warren is very, very good at negotiating rough water. Sherwood is focused on our pack’s safety. And”—he was a little smug about this—“I made Honey the third vote in any disagreement between Warren and Sherwood.”

Mercy drew in a breath. “They agreed to that?”

He nodded. “They aren’t dumb, either. They know that they needed a path to compromise, and both of them respect Honey’s judgment.”

He waited, but she didn’t have anything to say about that. He put up a second finger. “Neither you nor I know what’s really going on down in New Mexico. I don’t know what skill set would be more valuable, mine or Darryl’s. But I have a cell phone, and Darryl is not prideful in that way. If he needs advice, he’ll ask for it. And no one, no matter how many stars or bars they have on, is going to disrespect Darryl.”

Darryl was good at being scary.

“Especially not with Auriele around,” he added. Mercy made a huffy sound that tried not to be agreement.

“We are headed into the mountains of Montana,” Mercy said. “The chances of cell reception are not great. Darryl might not be able to get through to you.”

He shrugged. “I have good people in New Mexico. They just need a werewolf or two to manage things. Auriele and Darryl know how to manage.”

She grunted.

“Third, and most important, Mercy.” He held up three fingers, then touched them to his lips. “I could live if I lose the pack. I could live if my business folds. If a bunch of people I don’t know die in New Mexico when I might have been able to save them, I could live with that, too. None of those things would make me happy—but I have a lot worse things on my conscience.”

She was staring at him.

“I could not live with losing you,” he told her, his throat tight. “There are times when I have had to let you go out into danger without me. More times when I haven’t known about threats to your life until they were long past. But this time…this time I have the privilege of being backup while you head out to see if we can rescue your brother.”

She didn’t say anything to that. A few minutes later the weather turned more serious and took his attention. She liked to think things through sometimes, his Mercy. But she put a hand on his leg and he wished for the Chevy truck he’d driven in high school because it had had a bench seat.

Eventually she said, “It was easier when I was mad at you. I can’t shake the feeling that this is stupid. Running to Montana to try to talk a frost giant out of cursing my brother? If that’s really what happened. I’m not inclined to trust any word that came out of Ymir’s mouth.”

He’d always known his Mercy wasn’t stupid. “I agree with you. But Zee said it was Jötnar magic at work, too. If we hadn’t talked to Ymir at all, I would have suggested going to the place where Gary was damaged as a logical next step.”

She didn’t say anything, but when he glanced at her, she had her bottom lip between her teeth.

“Ymir just gave us a name to check out,” he said gently. “We’ll figure out what happened to Gary.” He wanted to say that they’d fix it. But he was looking at living proof that things weren’t always that easy.

He hadn’t been able to find a fix for what the Soul Taker had done to her—or even enough of a fix to take to Mercy as a possibility. He wouldn’t lie to her, so he didn’t promise they could help her brother, either.

“Okay,” she said after a few miles. “But it was easier to be mad at you instead of scared for my brother. Could you do something to make me mad, please?”

“I need inspiration,” he apologized. “Maybe if you could say something stupid or offer to risk your life for people I don’t care about?”

She laughed, as he meant her to. It didn’t last long, but she didn’t resume chewing on her lip.

They stopped in Coeur d’Alene to get food and fuel up. The temperature had dropped nearly fifteen degrees from when they’d left home. The cold didn’t bother him, but Mercy stamped her feet to get warm while the diesel tank in his SUV filled.

“Would you go inside and get me a lot of black coffee?” he asked.

She gave him a sharp look that said I know what you’re doing but walked briskly into the busy convenience store.

While his tank filled, he overheard two truckers. The fill stations for the semis were a ways off, but the pair were shouting over the sounds of the big engines.

“Big storm brewing in the Montana mountains, Jenny,” a small man with a big bass voice rumbled.

“I heard,” said the other trucker, who was so bundled up that Adam hadn’t realized she was a woman until she spoke. “I’m stopping in Sandpoint. I have friends there with space to park the truck.”

Adam pulled out his cell and texted Mercy a request for backup food. Just in case. Because the address Honey had given him for the last place she knew that Gary was working was outside of Libby, Montana. According to the map app on the SUV, they would be driving through Sandpoint, Idaho, to get there.

The storm worsened the whole way from Coeur d’Alene up the panhandle of Idaho to Bonners Ferry, where he stopped to put chains on. The roads were bad enough to spawn multiple winter advisories, and traffic disappeared entirely except for an occasional snowplow and a few cars off to the side of the road as they climbed the mountains above Bonners Ferry. Mercy fell silent again, and not because she was mad at him. Her hand on his leg grew tense until she let go of him.

He glanced away from the snowdrifts that fought to pull him off the mountain pass and into the valley below. Mercy was squinting into the blizzard, leaning forward in her seat as if that would allow her to see farther. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her midriff, and he wished she’d put her hand back on his leg. He missed her touch.

“If you had a car manufactured in this century, we could have taken that and you could be driving,” he told her, his eyes on the road again.

“My van could have handled the roads, but she would have traveled slower,” she told him. “Her center of gravity is too high for speed in this kind of terrain.”

“Speed being a relative thing for a Vanagon,” he observed.

“There is that,” she agreed, and he could feel the grin he didn’t take his eyes off the road to see. “And you’re a better driver for this kind of road than I am.”

Her reply shouldn’t have surprised him. He wasn’t sure it was true—Mercy was a good driver and knew it. But her opinion made him want to puff his chest out like a teenager. Ridiculous.

“I love your dimple,” she said. “Like a promise of the soft middle in a crusty roll.”

He laughed at that as he changed the angle of his tires to account for the drag of a deep bit of snow that the wind had gathered in a protected curve of the road. “I’ll show you a crusty roll.”

“No nudging when you are driving on snowpack,” she warned him.

“I am the Alpha,” he informed her with mock smugness. “I can nudge anytime I want to.”

The SUV chose that moment to fishtail, and it took a bit of finesse to get it traveling in the direction of the road.

“Anytime within reason,” he admitted. “Though there is something to be said about flirting during these life-or-death moments.”

She laughed—but it turned into a squeak when he came around a sharp turn to find a car stuck, wheels spinning, in the middle of his lane. He dodged it and pulled over, hoping he didn’t catch a soft edge and have his rig roll down the mountain. Mercy hopped out before the wheels were fully stopped. By the time he made it to the stuck car, she was already talking to the driver.

“You aren’t going to get a two-wheel-drive anything up the rest of this hill,” Mercy was saying. “Do you have chains?”

He didn’t. Mercy gathered the three kids and two car seats and organized them in the SUV while Adam and their father pushed the car out of the traffic lane. On a dry road, Adam could have pushed the car at a brisk jog. But no matter how strong you were, the coefficient of friction mattered. He could only push until his boots lost traction.

Satisfied that the car was as far off the road as they could manage without pushing it down the side of the mountain, Adam chivvied the driver into the shotgun seat of the SUV. Mercy had shoved their luggage to the side and put herself in the far back, behind the kids. No seat belt back there, but it couldn’t be helped.

It took them half an hour to deliver the small family to their intended destination—a house a couple of miles up a country road behind the cluster of gas stations where Highway 2 broke east and 95 kept going north. In better weather, it would have been a five-minute drive. By the time they parked in front of his house, their adult passenger had recognized Adam.

Being rescued by a werewolf should have terrified him, but instead their new friend Wayne was thrilled. Adam found himself smiling for selfies and posing with each of the children as he simultaneously turned down heartfelt offers of lodging and food. It took some effort to extract himself without offending anyone.

Mercy—who had managed to stay in the SUV—regarded him as he left Wayne’s mother’s house with a little more speed than was prudent under the driving conditions.

“Say it,” he growled.

She unbuckled so she could turn in her seat and kiss his cheek, then she belted herself back in. “You’re cute when you’re embarrassed.”

The delay, the driving conditions, and the short winter days meant that it was already dark when they hit Libby, Montana. He fueled up and Mercy managed to get “Montana directions” for where they were heading.

“The ranch Honey told us he was babysitting is on the same side road as someplace called Looking Glass Hot Springs,” she said, putting a large cup of steaming coffee in the cup holder beside him. “There will be two signs. The second one is right next to the road we need to take. If we don’t feel a cattle guard as we leave the highway, we need to stop because we’ve missed the turn and there’s a drop-off on either side of the road that tends to get filled with snow and look like it’s level ground. Gary’s ranch will be at the end of the road, about a mile after we pass the resort.” She took a sip of her own drink, grimaced, and set it aside.

“Gas station hot chocolate is dangerous,” he murmured, taking a swig of coffee. It wasn’t the worst he’d had, and it was hot.

“That’s fair. Sounds like the place we’re looking for is a dude ranch open in the summer months. They hired some stranger, meaning someone not native to Libby, to watch the place and keep the water pipes from freezing—which they did last year. That would be my brother. He was all alone up there. The owners take their horses to California for the winter months, but sometimes they leave a pair for the resort to use for winter weddings, which apparently are a big moneymaker.”

He smiled. “Worried about the horses?”

“Got to keep the watering troughs filled and ice-free so they don’t colic, and plenty of food so they keep warm,” Mercy said. “Perils of growing up in Montana with a bunch of people who still think of horses as their primary source of transportation.”

“Charles?” Adam asked.

“Could be.” She sighed. “He scared a whole bunch of information into me that comes out at odd moments.”

“December weddings in Montana seem pretty optimistic,” Adam said. He did not have fond memories of Montana winters—and this storm wasn’t going to help that.

“There’s supposed to be one this weekend,” Mercy said. “Some famous billionaire marrying a regular working-class girl.” She paused, gave him an amused look, and whispered, “It’s a secret.”

“So how did you find out about it?” Adam asked. “Was it in the local newspaper?”

She laughed. “I thought you grew up in a small town. The clerk who gave me directions told me about it. The guy behind me in line used his cell phone to show me photos of the groom. No one knows who the bride is except the local baker who made the cake—because the father of the bride paid for it. Not that they are going to use it now.”

People talked to Mercy. He thought it was because she listened. She was interested in their stories.

“The baker was sad about the cake,” she told him. “It wasn’t huge, but pretty. Paid for, of course. You don’t make a wedding cake without making them pay for it up front.” A little mournfully, she said, “It’s a lot of work to build a wedding cake, and now it will probably just get cut up and used for sampling.”

“Shame,” he said. “Didn’t we get our cake because someone ordered one and didn’t pay for it?”

She flashed a smile at him and leaned her head briefly against his shoulder. “So we did.”

Outside of Libby, the already ferocious wind picked up. Adam had to pay attention, conscious of fatigue trying to fog his reactions. This kind of driving was harder on his brain than his body. He finished off his coffee. He was pretty sure that caffeine worked differently on him than it had before he’d become a werewolf, but it still helped to keep him sharp.

Mercy opened her window and dumped her cup of sludge. He’d probably be washing hot chocolate off the side of his SUV when they got home. She stopped the window as it started to roll back up, and he felt something flash in the bond they shared.

“There’s magic in this storm,” Mercy said.

As bad as the road was, he still glanced at her, getting a quick snapshot. She was holding on to the grab handle above the door with a white-knuckled grip—as if without that hold, she might fly out the window. Her eyes, normally a dark chocolate, were bright yellow, as if she were a werewolf, too. He’d seen that happen before—more often since the incident with the Soul Taker. For a werewolf it was a sign that their wolf was trying to take over. He wasn’t sure what it meant in Mercy.

“Magic?” he asked.

“Can’t you feel it?” Her voice was dreamy, and she tipped her chin to allow the cold wind to blast over the skin of her face more effectively. Their bond was lit up with a fizzy static he couldn’t read anything through.

He hit the button on his side of the SUV that would close her window.

“Mercy?” he asked. “Are you okay?”