Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

company better, and if I had been a cat, I’d have purred.
    â€œYou look happy.” He took a sip of his coffee and stretched out a leg so his foot was against mine.
    â€œYou make me happy,” I told him.
    â€œYou could be happy all the time,” he said, eating the last bite of baked potato, “and move in with me.”
    To wake up next to him every morning . . . but . . . “Nope. I’ve caused you enough trouble,” I told him. “The pack and I need to come to . . . détente before I’m moving in. Your home is the den, the heart of the pack. They need a place where they feel safe.”
    â€œThey can adjust.”
    â€œThey’re adjusting as fast as they can,” I told him. “First there was Warren—did you hear that after you let him in, several other packs have allowed gay wolves to join, too? And now there’s me. A coyote in a werewolf pack—you have to admit that’s quite a lot of change for one pack to take.”
    â€œNext thing you know,” he said, “women will have the vote or a black man will become president.” He looked serious, but there was humor in his voice.
    â€œSee?” I pointed my fork at him. “They’re all stuck in the eighteen hundreds, and you’re expecting them to change. Samuel likes to say that most werewolves have all the change they can deal with the first time they become wolf. Other kinds of change are tough to force on them.”
    â€œPeter and Warren are the only ones who’ve been around since the eighteen hundreds,” Adam told me. “Most of them are younger than I am.”
    The waitress came and blinked a little as Adam ordered three desserts—werewolves take a lot of food to keep themselves fueled up. I shook my head when she looked my way.
    When she left, I took up the conversation from where I’d left off. “It won’t hurt us to wait a few months until things settle down.”
    If he hadn’t basically agreed with me, I’d have been sleeping in his house already instead of making do with dates. He understood as well as I did that pulling me into his pack had caused a lot of resentment. Maybe if it had been a healthy, well-adjusted pack beforehand, things wouldn’t have gotten so tense.
    A few years ago, some of his pack had started harassing me—a coyote living next door. Werewolves, like their natural brethren, are territorial, and they don’t share their hunting ground easily with other predators. So to put a stop to it, Adam declared me his mate. I hadn’t known at the time why the harassment abruptly stopped—and Adam hadn’t been in a hurry to tell me. But pack magic demanded that the declaration be answered, and Adam bore the cost when it wasn’t. It left him weaker, crabbier, and less able to help his pack stay calm, cool, and collected. By bringing me in as a member of his pack at virtually the same time our mating bond connected, Adam hadn’t given his people a chance to get their feet underneath them before throwing them back onto uncertain ground.
    â€œOne more month,” he said finally. “And then they—and Samuel, too—will just have to get used to it.” His eyes, the color of bitter dark chocolate, were serious as he leaned forward. “And you will marry me.”
    I smiled, showing my teeth. “Don’t you mean, ‘Will you marry me?’ ”
    I meant it to be funny, but his eyes brightened until little gold flecks were swimming in the darkness. “You had your chance to run, coyote. It’s too late now.” He smiled. “Your mother is happy that she’ll be able to use some of the stuff from your sister’s wedding that wasn’t.”
    Panic swelled my heart. “You didn’t talk to her about this, did you?” I had visions of a church filled with people and white satin everywhere. And doves. My mother had had doves at her wedding. My sister had eloped to get away from her. My mother is a steamroller, and she doesn’t listen very well . . . to anyone.
    The wolf left his eyes, and he grinned. “You’re okay with marrying a werewolf who has a teenage daughter and a pack that’s falling apart—and your mother panics you?”
    â€œYou’ve met my mother,” I said. “She ought to panic you, too.”
    He laughed.
    â€œYou just weren’t around her long enough.” It was only fair that I