Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

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.
    â€œThank 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.

4
    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.
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    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