Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

I picked up from my human foster mother, Evelyn.
    â€œI was stupid and young,” I said. “I needed to hear what you told me. So if you’re looking for forgiveness, you don’t need it. Thank you.”
    He cocked his head. In human form his eyes were warm hazel, like a sunlit oak leaf.
    â€œI’m not apologizing,” he said. “Not to you. I’m explaining.” Then he smiled, and the resemblance to Samuel, usually faint, was suddenly very apparent. “And Samuel is a wee bit older than sixty.” Amusement, like anger, sometimes brought a touch of the old country—Wales—to Bran’s voice. “Samuel is my firstborn.”
    I stared at him, caught by surprise. Samuel had none of the traits of the older wolves. He drove a car, had a stereo system and a computer. He actually liked people—even humans—and Bran used him to interface with police and government officials when it was necessary.
    â€œCharles was born a few years after you came here with David Thompson,” I told Bran, as if he didn’t know. “That was what . . . 1812?” Driven by his association to Bran, I’d done a lot of reading about David Thompson in college. The Welsh-born mapmaker and fur trader had kept journals, but he hadn’t ever mentioned Bran by name. I wondered when I read them if Bran had gone by another name, or if Thompson had known what Bran was and left him out of the journals, which were kept, for the most part, more as a record for his employers than as a personal reminiscence.
    â€œI came with Thompson in 1809,” Bran said. “Charles was born in the spring of, I think, 1813. I’d left Thompson and the Northwest Company by then, and the Salish didn’t reckon time by the Christian calendar. Samuel was born to my first wife, when I was still human.”
    It was the most I’d ever heard him say about the past. “When was that?” I asked, emboldened by his uncustomary openness.
    â€œA long time ago.” He dismissed it with a shrug. “When I talked to you that night, I did my son a disservice. I have decided that perhaps I was overzealous with the truth and still only gave you part of it.”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œI told you what I knew, as much as I thought necessary at the time,” he said. “But in light of subsequent events, I underestimated my son and led you to do the same.”
    I’ve always hated it when he chose to become obscure. I started to object sharply—then realized he was looking away from my face, his eyes lowered. I’d gotten used to living among humans, whose body language is less important to communication, so I’d almost missed it. Alphas—especially this Alpha—never looked away when others were watching them. It was a mark of how bad he felt that he would do it now.
    So I kept my voice quiet, and said simply, “Tell me now.”
    â€œSamuel is old,” he said. “Nearly as old as I am. His first wife died of cholera, his second of old age. His third wife died in childbirth. His wives miscarried eighteen children between them; a handful died in infancy, and only eight lived to their third birthday. One died of old age, four of the plague, three of failing the Change. He has no living children and only one, born before Samuel Changed, made it into adulthood.”
    He paused and lifted his eyes to mine. “This perhaps gives you an idea of how much it meant to him that in you he’d found a mate who could give him children less vulnerable to the whims of fate, children who could be born werewolves like Charles was. I have had a long time to think about our talk, and I came to understand that I should have told you this as well. You aren’t the only one who has mistaken Samuel for a young wolf.” He gave me a little smile. “In the days Samuel walked as human, it was not uncommon for a sixteen-year-old to marry a man much older than she. Sometimes the world shifts its ideas of right and wrong too fast for us to keep up with it.”
    Would it have changed how I felt to know the extent of Samuel’s need? A passionate, love-starved teenager confronted with cold facts? Would I have seen beyond the numbers to the pain that each of those deaths had cost?
    I don’t think it would have changed my decision. I knewthat because I still wouldn’t have married someone who didn’t love me; but I think I would have