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.
All dead. All of my children, my loves, and it was my fault. I put them at risk and failed. They died because of my failure.
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.