Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

choice.
    Whoever had worked on me was trying to drive us apart.
    So who had it been? The whole pack? Part of the pack? Was it deliberate—or more that the whole pack hated me and was trying to force me away? Most important of all, to me anyway, was: how did I stop it from ever happening again?
    There had to be a way—doubtless if a werewolf could influence a pack member as easily as they’d influenced me, Alphas would have much tighter control of their packs than they did. A pack would run more like a cult and less like a bunch of testosterone-laden wild beasts momentarily subdued by the threat of immediate death under their leader’s fangs. That or they’d have killed each other off entirely.
    I’d needed Samuel to be home so I could ask him about how things worked. Adam doubtless knew, but I wanted to go into this conversation knowing how to approach him.
    If Adam thought one of his pack members was trying mind-influencing tricks on me . . . I wasn’t certain what the rules were for something like that. That was one of the things I wanted to find out from Samuel. If someone was going to die, I wanted to make sure I approved, or at least knew about it before I pulled the trigger. If someone was going to die, I might just keep this to myself and create a suitable punishment of my own instead.
    I’d have to wait until Samuel got back from work. Until then, maybe I’d just keep a good hold on the walking stick and hope for the best.
    I stayed out on the little rocky beach watching the river in the moonlight as long as I dared. But if I didn’t get back before Ben realized I was gone, he’d call out the troops. And I just wasn’t in the mood for a pack of werewolves.
    I stood up, stretched, and started the long run back home.

    WHEN I ARRIVED AT MY BACK DOOR, BEN WAS PACING back and forth in front of it uneasily. When he saw me, he froze—he’d started realizing something was wrong, but until he saw me, he hadn’t been sure I wasn’t there. His upper lip curled, but he didn’t quite manage a snarl, caught as he was between anger and worry, dominant male protective instincts and the understanding that I was of higher rank.
    Body language, when you know how to read it, can be more expressive than speech.
    His frustration was his problem, so I ignored him and hopped through the dog door—much, much too small for a wolf—and straight to my bedroom.
    I changed out of my coyote form, grabbed underwear and a clean T-shirt, and headed for bed. It wasn’t horribly late—our date had been very short, and my run hadn’t taken much longer. Still, morning came soon, and I had a car to work on. And I had to be in top form to figure out just how to approach Samuel so he wouldn’t tell Adam what I was asking.
    Maybe I should just call his father instead. Yes , I decided. I’d call Bran.

    I WOKE UP WITH THE PHONE IN MY EAR—AND THOUGHT for a moment that I’d completed the task I’d decided upon before falling asleep, because the voice in my ear was speaking Welsh. That didn’t make any sense at all. Bran wouldn’t speak freaking Welsh to me , especially not on the phone, where foreign languages are even harder to understand.
    Muzzily, I realized I could still almost remember hearing the phone ring. I must have grabbed it in the process of waking up—but that didn’t explain the language.
    I blinked at the clock—I’d been asleep less than two hours—and about that time I figured out whose voice was babbling to me.
    â€œSamuel?” I asked. “Why are you speaking Welsh? I don’t understand you unless you talk a lot slower. And use small words.” It was kind of a joke. Welsh never seems to have small words.
    â€œMercy,” he said heavily.
    For some reason my heart started beating hard and heavy, as if I were about to get some very bad news. I sat up.
    â€œSamuel?” I addressed the silence on the other end of the phone.
    â€œCome get—”
    He fumbled the words, as if his English were very bad, which it wasn’t and never had been. Not as long as I’d known him—which was most of my thirty-odd years of life.
    â€œI’ll be right there,” I said, jerking on my jeans with one hand. “Where?”
    â€œIn the X-ray storeroom.” He barely stumbled over that phrase.
    I knew where the storeroom was, on the far end of the emergency room at