I wondered if I'd been set up. I thought of Wulfe's oh-so-convenient aid when I'd killed Andre. He'd known I was looking for Andre - I'd stumbled upon his resting place before I found Andre's. I'd thought he kept it from the Mistress for his own reasons... but maybe he hadn't. Maybe Marsilia had planned it.
My head hurt.
"Maybe we were suspecting the wrong vampire of trying to take over Marsilia's seethe," Adam said.
I thought about the vampire who had been Bernard's maker and had stood to watch this... trial.
I didn't want to be sympathetic; I wanted to hate Marsilia cleanly for what she had done to Stefan. But I'd become passing familiar with evil and all its shades, and that vampire, Bernard's maker, set off every alarm that I had. Not that all vampires weren't evil... I wished suddenly that I could say except for Stefan. But I couldn't. I'd met his menagerie, the ones Marsilia had killed - and I knew that for most of them, except for the very few who became vampire, Stefan would be their death. Still, the other vampire had hit pretty high on my coyote's "get me out of here" scale. There had been something in his face...
"Makes me glad I'm a werewolf," said Darryl. "All I have to worry about is when Warren will lose his self-control and challenge me."
"Warren's self-control is very good," said Adam. "I wouldn't wait dinner on his losing it."
"Better Warren as second than a coyote in the pack," said Aurielle tightly.
The atmosphere in the car changed.
Adam's voice was soft, "Do you think so?"
"'Rielle," Darryl warned.
"I think so." Her voice brooked no argument. She was a high school teacher, Darryl's mate, which made her... not precisely third in the pack - that was Warren. But second and a half, just below Darryl. If she had been a man, I didn't think she would have ranked much lower.
"Unlike vampires, wolves tend to be straightforward critters," I murmured, trying not to feel hurt. Rejection, for a coyote raised by wolves, was nothing new. I'd spent most of my adulthood running from it. I wouldn't have thought that exhaustion and hurt was a recipe for epiphany, but there it was. I'd left my mother and Portland before she could tell me to go. I'd lived alone, stood on my own two feet, because I didn't want to learn to lean on anyone else.
I'd seen my resistance to Adam as a fight for survival, for the right to control my own actions instead of a life spent following orders... because I wanted to obey. The duty that Stefan clung to with awful stubbornness was the life I'd rejected.
What I hadn't seen was that I had been unwilling to put myself in a place where I could be rejected again. My mother had given me to Bran when I was a baby. A gift he returned when I became... inconvenient. At sixteen, I'd moved back in with my mother, who was married to a man I'd never met and had two daughters who hadn't known of my existence until Bran had called my mother to tell her he was sending me home. They had been all that was loving and gracious - but I was a hard person to lie to.
"Mercy?"
"Just a minute," I told Adam, "I'm in the middle of a revelation."
No wonder I hadn't just rolled over at Adam's feet like any sensible person would when courted by a sexy, lovable, reliable man who loved me. If Adam ever rejected me... I felt a low growl rise in my throat.
"You heard her," said Darryl, amused. "We'll have to wait for her revelation. We have a prophet for our Alpha's mate."
I waved at him irritably. Then looked up at Adam, whose eyes were, quite properly, on the road.
"Do you love me?" I asked him, pulse pounding in my ears.
He gave me a curious look. He was wolf, he knew intensity when he heard it. "Yes. Absolutely."
"You'd better," I told him, "or you'll regret it."
I looked over my shoulder at Aurielle, holding the full force of my will close to me. Adam was mine.
Mine.
And I would take up all the burdens he could give me, even as he did the same with mine. It would be an equal sharing. That meant he protected me from the vampires... and I protected him from what problems I could.
I stared at Aurielle, met the predator in her eyes with the one in mine. And after only a few minutes, she dropped her eyes. "Suck it up and deal with it," I told her, and I put my head on Adam's shoulder and fell asleep.
IT WAS, SADLY NOT VERY LONG BEFORE ADAM STOPPED the car. I stayed where I was, half-awake, while Darryl, Aurielle, and Paul got out of the car. We stayed where we were until I heard Darryl's Subaru fire up, and Adam started for home.
"Mercy?"
"Mmm."
"I'd like to take you home with me."
I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and sighed. "Once I go horizontal, I'm going to be out like a light," I told him.
"It's been days" - I tried to remember, but I was too tired - "several at least since I had a good night's sleep." The sun, I noticed, was brightening in the sky.
"That's all right," he said. "I'd just..."
"Yeah, me too." But I shivered a little. It was all very well and good to get hot and heavy over the phone, but this was real. I stayed awake all the way to his house.
AN ALPHA'S HOME IS SELDOM EMPTY - AND WITH THE recent troubles, Adam was keeping a guard there, too. When we came in, we were greeted by Ben, who gave us an offhand salute and trotted back downstairs, where there were a number of guest bedrooms.