Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

across my bed, too.
    He wasn’t tall, but he didn’t need height to add to the impression he made. Wide cheekbones and a full, soft mouth topping a stubborn jaw combined to give him movie-star beauty. When his eyes were open, they were a dark chocolate only a shade lighter than mine. His body was almost as pretty as his face—though I knew he didn’t think of himself that way. He kept himself in shape because he was Alpha and his body was a tool he used to keep his pack safe. He’d been a soldier before he was Changed, and the military training was still there in the way he moved and the way he took charge.
    â€œWhen Samuel gets back from the hospital, he’s going to spend the rest of the night at my house,” Adam said without opening his eyes. Samuel was my roommate, a doctor, and a lone wolf. Adam’s house was behind mine, with about ten acres between them—three were mine and the rest were Adam’s. “We have time to talk.”
    â€œYou look horrible,” I said, not quite truthfully. He did look tired, with dark circles under his eyes, but nothing short of mutilation could make him look terrible. “Don’t they have beds in D.C.?”
    He’d had to go to Washington (the capital—we were in the state) this weekend to clean up a little mess that was sort of my fault. Of course if he hadn’t ripped Tim’s corpse into bits on camera, and if the resultant DVD hadn’t landed on a senator’s desk, there wouldn’t have been a problem. So it was partially his fault, too.
    Mostly it was Tim’s fault, and whoever had made a copy of the DVD and mailed it off. I’d taken care of Tim. Bran, the head-honcho werewolf above all of the other head-honcho werewolves, was apparently taking care of the other person. Last year, I would have expected to hear about a funeral. This year, with the werewolves barely having admitted their existence to the world, Bran would probably be more circumspect. Whatever that would mean.
    Adam opened his eyes and looked at me. In the dimness of the room (he’d only turned on the small light on the little table by my bed), his eyes looked black. There was a bleakness in his face that hadn’t been there before, and I knew it was because of me. Because he hadn’t been able to keep me safe—and people like Adam take that pretty seriously.
    Personally, I figured it was up to me to keep me safe. Sometimes it might mean calling in friends, but it was my responsibility. Still, he saw it as a failure.
    â€œSo have you made up your mind?” he asked.
    Would I accept him as my mate, he meant. The question had been up in the air too long, and it was affecting his ability to keep his pack under control. Ironically, what happened with Tim had resolved the issue that had kept me from accepting Adam for months. I figured if I could fight back against the fairy magic potion Tim had fed me, a little Alpha mojo wasn’t going to turn me into a docile slave either.
    Maybe I should have thanked him before I hit him with the tire iron.
    Adam isn’t Tim, I told myself. I thought of Adam’s rage when he’d broken down the door to my garage, of his despair when he persuaded me to drink out of that damned fae goblet again. In addition to robbing me of my will, the goblet also had the power to heal—and I’d needed a lot of healing by that point. It had worked, but Adam had felt like he was betraying me, believed I’d hate him for it. But he’d done it anyway. I figured it was because he wasn’t lying when he said he loved me. When I’d hidden in shame—I put that down to the fairy brew, because I knew ... I knew I had nothing to be ashamed about—he’d pulled my coyote self out from under his bed, bitten my nose for being foolish, and held me all night long. Then he’d surrounded me with his pack and safety whether I needed it or not.
    Tim was dead. And he’d always been a loser. I’d be damned if I was going to be the victim of a loser—or anyone else.
    â€œMercy?” Adam stayed on his back on my bed, taking the position of vulnerability.
    In answer, I pulled the T-shirt over my head and dropped it on the floor.
    Adam was off the bed faster than I’d ever seen him move, bringing the comforter with him. He had it wrapped around me before I could blink ... and then I was pressed tightly against him, my bare breasts resting against his