I froze where I stood, resisting the temptation to drop flat or hide. Motion attracts attention, and my fur is colored to blend in with the desert.
Ben didnt even glance my way, and as soon as he rounded the cornerobviously heading toward my front porchI took off through the sagebrush and dry grass, off into the desert night.
I was on my way to the river, to a rock beach where I could be alone, when a rabbit broke out of the brush in front of me. And it was only then I realized how hungry I was.
Id eaten a lot at dinnerthere was no reason for me to be hungry. Not just a little hungry. Starving. Something was wrong.
I set that thought aside as I gave chase. I missed that rabbit, but not the next, and I ate him down to the bones. It wasnt nearly enough. I hunted for another half hour before I found a quail.
I dont like to kill quail. The way the lone feather sticking up on top bobs in opposition to their heads when they walk makes me smile. And they are silly, without a sporting chance against a coyote, at least not against me. I suppose they cant be that vulnerable because Im not the only coyote around, and there are a lot of quail. But I always feel guilty about hunting them.
As I finished my second kill, I planned what Id do to the person who made me so hungry I had to eat quail.
A werewolf pack can feed off of any of its members, borrowing energy. I wasnt sure exactly how it worked, though Id seen it often enough. Its part of what makes an Alpha wolf more than he was before he took on that mantle.
None of that had ever affected me before Id become a member of Adams pack, so I hadnt worried about it. No one had been able to get inside my head and make me think that throwing a bowling ball at a toddler was a good idea. Or make me take out my frustration on Adam.
Finished and full, I made it to my final destination without further incident.
I dont know if anyone owned this little bit of the river; the nearest fence was a hundred yards away, the nearest house a little farther than that. There were a few old beer cans scattered around, and if the weather had been a little bit warmer, I might have run into people.
I climbed on the big rock and tried to feel the pack or Adam. I was alone. Just me, the river, and, far up on the Horse Heaven Hills, the little lights from the windmill farms. I dont know if it was the distance, or if there was something special about this little bit of ground, but Id never been able to feel the touch of mate or pack bond here.
Thank goodness.
Only when I was certain Adam couldnt hear me did I let myself dwell on how creepy it was to have someone else in my head, even Adam, whom I loved. Something I would never, if I could help it, allow Adam to know.
Oddly, because Adam had been a wolf for longer than I was alive, I accepted him as a werewolf more easily than he did himself. Knowing that I was freaked-out by the greatest gift any wolf could give another wouldnt surprise him (as it did me), but it would hurt him needlessly. I would adjust in timeI didnt have any choice if I wanted to keep him.
If I had to deal with only the mate bond between Adam and me, it would be easier. But hed made me pack, too, and when the link worked as it was supposed to, I could feel all of them there, with me. And with that bond, apparently, they could suck energy from me and make me fight with their Alpha.
Alone in my head, it was easy to look back and see how it had happeneda nudge here, a push there. I would do a great deal to keep Adam from being hurt, but not endanger an innocentand I have never in my life given anyone the silent treatment. Anyone who offends me deserves to hear exactly how they trespassedor needs to be lulled into a false sense of security before the sneak attack when they arent paying attention. But silence had been Adams ex-wifes weapon of 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 deliberateor 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 waydoubtless if a werewolf could influence a pack member as easily as theyd 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 leaders fangs. That or theyd have killed each other off entirely.
Id 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 wasnt 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.
Id have to wait until Samuel got back from work. Until then, maybe Id 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 didnt get back before Ben realized I was gone, hed call out the troops. And I just wasnt 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 frozehed started realizing something was wrong, but until he saw me, he hadnt been sure I wasnt there. His upper lip curled, but he didnt 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 doormuch, much too small for a wolfand straight to my bedroom.
I changed out of my coyote form, grabbed underwear and a clean T-shirt, and headed for bed. It wasnt horribly lateour date had been very short, and my run hadnt 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 wouldnt tell Adam what I was asking.
Maybe I should just call his father instead. Yes, I decided. Id call Bran.
* * *
I WOKE UP WITH THE PHONE IN MY EARAND THOUGHT for a moment that Id completed the task Id decided upon before falling asleep, because the voice in my ear was speaking Welsh. That didnt make any sense at all. Bran wouldnt 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 upbut that didnt explain the language.
I blinked at the clockId been asleep less than two hoursand about that time I figured out whose voice was babbling to me.
Samuel? I asked. Why are you speaking Welsh? I dont 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.
Mercy, 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.
Samuel? I addressed the silence on the other end of the phone.
Come get
He fumbled the words, as if his English were very bad, which it wasnt and never had been. Not as long as Id known himwhich was most of my thirty-odd years of life.
Ill be right there, I said, jerking on my jeans with one hand. Where?
In 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 Kennewick General, where he worked. Ill come for you.
He hung up without saying anything more.
Something had gone very wrong. Whatever it was, it couldnt be catastrophic if he was going to meet me in the storeroom, away from everyone. If they knew he was a werewolf, there would be no need for storerooms.
Unlike Adam, Samuel was not out to the public. No one would let a werewolf practice medicinewhich was probably smart, actually. The smells of blood and fear and death were too much for most of them. But Samuel had been a doctor for a very long time, and he was a good one.
Ben was sitting on my front porch as I ran out the door, and I tripped over him, rolling down the four steep, unyielding stairs to land on the ground in the gravel.
Hed known I was coming out; I hadnt tried to be quiet. He could have moved out of my way, but he hadnt. Maybe hed even moved into my way on purpose. He didnt twitch as I looked up at him.
I recognized the look though I hadnt seen it from him before. I was a coyote mated to their Alpha, and they were darned sure I wasnt good enough.
You heard about the fight tonight, I told him.
He laid his ears back and put his nose on his front paws.
Then someone should have told you that they were using the pack bonds to mess with my head. I hadnt meant to say anything about it until I had a chance to talk to Samuel, but falling down the stairs had robbed me of self-control.
He stilled, and the look on his body was not disbelief, it was horror.
So it was possible. Damn. Damn. Damn. Id hoped it wasnt, hoped I was being paranoid. I didnt need this.
Sometimes it felt like both the mate and the pack bonds were doing their best to steal my soul. The analogy might be figurative, but I found it nearly as frightening as the literal version would have been. Finding out that someone could use the whole mess to make me do things was just the flipping icing on the cake.
Fortunately, I had a task to take my mind off the mess I was in. I stood up and dusted myself off.
I had planned on waiting and talking to Adam directly, but there were some advantages to this scenario, too. It would be a good idea for Adam to know that some of the pack were . . . active about their dislike of me. And if Ben told him, he couldnt read my mind to figure out that I wasnt weirded out only by the mind control, but also by the whole bond thing, pack and mate.
I told Ben, You tell Adam what I said.
He would. Ben could be creepy and horrible, but he was almost my friendshared nightmares do that.
Give him my apologies and tell him Im going to lie lowAdam would know that meant stay away from the packuntil I get a handle on it. Right now, Im going to get Samuel, so youre off duty.
Chapter 3
I DROVE MY TRUSTY RABBIT TO KGH AND PARKED IN the emergency lot. It was still hours before dawn when I walked into the building.
The trick to going wherever you want unchallenged in a hospital is to walk briskly, nod to the people you know, and ignore the ones you dont. The nod reassures everyone that you are known, the brisk pace that you have a mission and dont want to talk. It helped that most of the people in triage knew me.
Through the double doors that led to the inner sanctum, I could hear a baby cryinga sad, tired, miserable sound. I wrinkled my nose at the pervading sour-sharp smell of hospital disinfectant, and winced at the increase in both decibels and scent as I marched through the doors.
A nurse scribbling on a clipboard glanced up at my entrance, and the official look on her face warmed into a relieved smile. I knew her face but not her name.
Mercy, she said, having no trouble with mine. So Doc Cornick finally called you to take him home, did he? About time. I told him he should have gone home hours agobut hes pretty stubborn, and a doctor outranks a nurse. She made it sound like she didnt think that should be the proper order of things.
I was afraid to speak because I might thrust a hole into whatever house of cards Samuel had constructed to explain why he had to go home early. Finally, I managed a neutral, Hes better at helping people than asking for help.
She grinned. Isnt that just like a man? Probably hated to admit he trashed that car of his. I swear he loved it like it was a woman.
I think I just stared at herher words made no sense to me.
Trashed his car? Did she mean he had a wreck? Samuel had a wreck? I couldnt picture it. Some werewolves had trouble driving because they could be a little distractible. But not Samuel.
I needed to get to Samuel before I said something stupid.
I better
Hes just lucky he didnt get hurt worse, she said, and turned her eyes back to whatever she was writing. Apparently she could carry on a conversation at the same time, because she continued. Did he tell you how close he came? The policeman who brought him in said that he almost fell into the waterand thats the Vernita bridge, you know, the one on Twenty-four out in the Hanford Reach? Hed have died if he made it overits a long way down to the river.
What the heck had Samuel been doing all the way out at the bridge on the old highway north of Hanford? That was clear on the other side of the Tri-Cities and then some, and nowhere near any possible route between our house and the hospital. Maybe hed been running out in the Reach, where people were scarce and ground squirrels plentiful. Just because he hadnt told me that he was going out hunting didnt mean he hadnt. I wasnt his keeper.
He didnt say anything about danger to him, I told her truthfully and followed it with a small lie designed to lead her into telling me more details. I thought it was just the car.
Thats Doc Cornick, she snorted. He wouldnt let us do anything other than get the glass out of his skinbut just from the way hes moving, you can tell he did something to his ribs. And hes limping, too.
Sounds like it was worse than he told me, I commented, feeling sick to my stomach.
He went all the way through the windshield and was hanging on to the hood of the car. Jackthats the policemanJack said he thought that Samuel was going to fall off the hood before he could get there. The wreck must have dazed Doc because he was crawling the wrong wayif Jack hadnt stopped him, hed have gone over.
And then I understood exactly what had happened.
Honey? Honey? Are you okay? Here, sit down.
Shed pulled out a chair when I wasnt watching and held it behind me. My ears were ringing, my head was down between my knees, and her hand was on my back.
And for a moment, I was fourteen again, hearing Bran tell me what Id already knownBryan, my foster father, was deadhis body had been found in the river. Hed killed himself after his mate, my foster mother, had died.
Werewolves are too tough to die easily, so there arent many ways for a werewolf to commit suicide. Since the French Revolution pretty much unpopularized the guillotine in the eighteenth century, self-decapitation just isnt all that easy.
Silver bullets have some difficulties, too. Silver is harder than lead, and the bullets sometimes blow right through and leave the wolf sick, in pain, and alive. Silver shot works a little better, but unless rigged just right, it can take a long time to die. If some busybody comes along and picks all the shot outwell, theres all that pain for nothing.
The most popular choice is death by werewolf. But that wouldnt be an option for Samuel. Very few wolves would take up his challengeand those that would . . . Let me just say I wouldnt want to see a fight between Samuel and Adam. Even odds arent what suicidal people are looking for.
Drowning is the next most popular choice. Werewolves cant swim; their bodies are too denseand even a werewolf needs to breathe.
I even knew why hed chosen the location he had. The Columbia is the biggest river in the area, more than a mile wide and deep, but the three biggest bridges over itthe Blue Bridge, the suspension bridge, and the interstate bridgeall have two heavy-duty guardrails. There is also a fair bit of traffic on those, even in the middle of the night. Someone is sure to see you go over and attempt a rescue. It takes a few minutes to drown.
The bridge hed chosen instead was not as heavily traveled and had been built before bridges were designed so that even morons would have a hard time driving off of them. The river is narrower at that pointwhich means deeper and fasterand the drop-off is . . . impressive.
I could see it, Samuel on the nose of the car and the police officer running up. It had been sheer dumb luck that the only other vehicle on the road was a police car. If it had been an ordinary bystander, he might have been too fearful of his own safety to attempt a rescue, and would have let Samuel drown. But a policeman might just follow him in and try to rescue him. Might put his life at risk for Samuel.
No, Samuel wouldnt have fallen once the police officer found him.
No matter how much he wanted to.
My dizziness was fading.
You be happy, hed told me when Id left on my ill-fated date. A wish for my life and not for the date.
The jerk. I felt the growl rise in my throat and had to work to swallow it.
Hes all right, the nurse assured me. I pulled my head out from between my knees and noticed on the way up that her name tag read JODY. We got the glass out, and though hes moving stiffly, he hasnt broken anything major or he wouldnt have lasted this long. He should have gone home, but he didnt want toand you know how he is. He never says no, but sends you on your way without ever saying yes either.
I knew.
Im sorry, I told her, standing up slowly so as to give the appearance of steadiness. It just caught me off guard. Weve known each other a long timeand he didnt tell me it was anywhere near that bad.
He probably didnt want to scare you.
Yeah, hes considerate like that. My aching butt he was considerate. Id kill him myselfand then he wouldnt have to worry about suicide.
He said he was going to find a quiet place and rest for a minute, Nurse Jody said, looking around as if he ought to appear from thin air.
He said I could find him in the X-ray storage room.
She laughed. Well, I guess it is quiet in there. You know where it is?
I smiled, which is tough when youre ready to skin someone.
Sure. Still smiling, I walked briskly past curtained-off rooms that smelled of blood and pain, nodding to a med tech who looked vaguely familiar. At least the babys cries had muted to whimpers.
Samuel had tried to commit suicide.
I knocked on the storage-room door, then opened it. White cardboard file boxes were piled up on racks with a feeling of imposed orderas if somewhere there was someone who would know how to find things here.
Samuel sat on the floor, his back against a stack of boxes. He had a white lab coat on over a set of green scrubs. His arms rested across his knees, hands limp and hanging. His head was bowed, and he didnt look up when I came in. He waited until I shut the door behind me to speak, and he didnt look at me then either.
I thought it was because he was ashamed or because he knew I was angry.
He tried to kill us, Samuel said, and my heart stopped, then began to pound painfully in my chest because Id been wrong about the bowed head. Very wrong. The he he was talking about was Samueland that meant that he was no longer in charge. I was talking to Samuels wolf.
I dropped to the ground like a stone and made damned sure my head was lower than the werewolfs. Samuel the man regularly overlooked breaches of etiquette that his wolf could not. If I made the wolf look up at me, hed have to acknowledge my superiority or challenge me.
I change into a thirty-odd-pound predator built to kill chickens and rabbits. And poor silly quail. Werewolves can take out Kodiak bears. A challenge for a werewolf I am not.
Mercy, he whispered, and lifted his head.
The first thing I noticed was hundreds of small cuts all over his face, and I remembered Jody the nurse saying that theyd had to get the glass out of his skin. That the wounds werent healed yet told me that there had been other, more severe damage his body had to address first. Niftyjust a little pain and suffering to sweeten his temper.
His eyes were an icy blue just this side of white, hot and wild.
As soon as I saw them, I looked at the floor and took a deep breath. Sam, I whispered. What can I do to help? Should I call Bran?
No! The word left him in a roar that jerked him forward until he was crouched on both hands, one leg knee up, one leg still down on one knee.
That one knee on the ground meant that he wasnt, quite, ready to spring on me.
Our father will kill us, Sam said, his voice slow and thick with Welsh intonation. I . . . We dont want to make him do that. He took a deep breath. And I dont want to die.
Good. Thats good, I croaked, suddenly understanding just exactly what his first words to me had meant. Samuel had wanted to die, and his wolf had stopped him. Which was good, but left us with a nasty problem.
There is a very good reason that the Marrok kills any werewolves who allow the wolf to lead and the man to follow. Very good reasonslike preventing-mass-slaughter sorts of reasons.
But if Samuels wolf didnt want them to die, I decided it was better he was in charge. For a while. Since he didnt seem to want to kill me yet. Samuel was old. I dont know exactly how old, but sometime before the Mayflower at least. Maybe that would allow his wolf to control himself without Samuels help. Maybe. Okay, Sam. No calls to Bran.
I watched out of the corner of my eye as he tilted his head, surveying me. I can pretend to be human until we get to your car. I thought that would be best, so I held this shape.
I swallowed. What have you done with Samuel? Is he all right?
Pale ice blue eyes examined me thoughtfully. Samuel? Im pretty certain hed forgotten I could do this: it has been so long since we battled for control. He let me out to play when he chose, and I left it to him. He was quiet a moment or two, then he said, almost shyly. You know when Im here. You call me Sam.
He was right. I hadnt realized it until he said it.
Sam, I asked again, trying not to sound demanding, what have you done with Samuel?
Hes here, but I cannot let him out. If I do, hell never let me get the upper hand againand then we will die.
Cannot sounded like never. Never was bad. Never would get him killed as surely as suicideand maybe . . . probably a lot of other people along the way.
If not Bran, what about Charless mate, Anna? Shes Omega; shouldnt she be able to help?
Omega wolves, as I understand them, are like Valium for werewolves. Samuels sister-in-law, Anna, is the only one Ive ever metId never heard of them before that. I like her, but she doesnt seem to affect me the way she does the wolves. I dont want to curl up in a ball at her feet and let her rub my belly.
Samuels wolf looked wistful . . . or maybe he was just hungry. No. If I were the problem, if I were ravaging the countryside, she might help. But this is not impulse, not desperation. Samuel just feels that he no longer belongs, that he accomplishes nothing by his existence. Even the Omega cannot fix him.
So what do you suggest? I asked helplessly.
Anna, I thought, might be able to put Samuel back in the drivers seat, but, like the wolf, I was afraid that might not be a good thing.
He laughed, an unhappy laugh. I do not know. But if you dont want to be trying to extract a wolf from the emergency room, it would be good to leave very soon.
Sam rocked forward to get up and stopped halfway with a grunt.
Youre hurt, I said as I scrambled up to give him a hand.
He hesitated but took it and used me to give him better leverage so he could get all the way to his feet. Showing me his weakness was a sign of trust. Under normal circumstances, that trust would mean I was safer with him.
Stiff, Sam answered me. Nothing that wont heal on its own now. I drew upon your strength to heal enough that no one would know how bad the injuries were.
How did you do that? I asked, suddenly remembering the fierce hunger that had resulted in a rabbit-and-quail dinner on top of the salmon Id had with Adam. Id thought it had been someone in Adams packfor the very good reason that borrowing strength was one of those things that came with apack bond. We arent pack, I reminded him.
He looked directly at me again, then away. Arent we?
Unless you . . . Unless Samuels been conducting blood ceremonies when I was asleep, were not. I was starting to feel panicky. Claustrophobic. I already had Adam and his pack playing with my head; I didnt particularly want anyone else in there.
Pack existed before ceremonies, Sam said, sounding amused. Magic binds more obviously, more extensively, but not more deeply.
Did you mess with my head on my date with Adam? I couldnt keep the accusation out of my voice.
No. He tilted his head, then snarled, Someone hurt you?
No, I said. Its nothing.
Lies, he said.
Right, I agreed. But if it wasnt you who did it, the incident is something for Adam and me to handle.
He was still a moment. For now, he said.
I held the door open for him, then walked beside him through the emergency room.
As we moved through the walkway and out the door, Sam kept his eyes on me, and his regard had a weight to it. I didnt protest. He did it so that no one would see the change in his iris colorbut also because when a werewolf as dominant as Samuel meets someones gaze with his wolf in the fore, even humans bow their knees. That would be pretty awkward and hard to explain. At this point, we were operating with the hope that it would matter to Samuel that he could come back and practice medicine here again.
I helped him into the backseat of the Rabbitand noticed that the towel-wrapped book was still there. I wished that getting it back to its owner was the extent of my troubles. I grabbed it and put it in the far back, out of harms reach. Hopping in the front, I drove out from under the parking-lot lights as soon as I could. It was still the wee small hours, but Samuel was a big man, and it would be hard to miss him stripping in the back of my little car.
It didnt take him long to dispose of the clothes and begin his change. I didnt look, but I could tell when he started because the noises turned from shredding fabric to pained whines. What the wolves go through when they change is one of the many reasons I am very grateful to be what I am instead of a werewolf. For me, the change from coyote to human or back is virtually instantaneous. The side effects are nothing more annoying than tingles. For a werewolf, change is painful and slow. From the grunts he was making, he hadnt yet fully finished his shift by the time I drove into my driveway.
Home wasnt the safest place to bring him. No werewolf who saw him would miss what had happened, and Adams housevisited often by members of his packwas just behind my back fence. But I couldnt think of anyplace better.
Eventually, wed have to tell BranI knew it, and I suspected that Samuel . . . Sam knew it, too. But Id give him what time I couldassuming he didnt go on a rampage and start eating people.
That meant keeping him out of sight of Adam and his pack.
My pack. My mate and my pack.
It felt wrong to hide things from him. But I knew Adam, and one thing he was very good at was honor and duty. It was one of the reasons Id grown to love himhe was a man who could make the hard choice. Duty and honor would force him to call Bran. Duty and honor would force Bran to execute Samuel. Samuel would be dead, and two good men would suffer as well.
Luckily for all of them, my sense of duty and honor was more flexible.
I got out of the car and turned in a slow circle. I caught Bens scent, fading. Otherwise, we were alone with the more mundane creatures of the night: bats, mice, and mosquitoes. The light was on in Adams bedroom, but it went dark as I was watching. Tomorrow, Id need to come up with a better place for Sam.
Or a good reason to avoid the pack.
I opened the back door of the Rabbit, keeping it between Sam and me in case he came out of the change in a bad mood. The pain of the change does not make for a happy wolfand Sam was already hurt when he started. But he seemed okay. When he hopped out, he waited politely for me to close up the car, then followed me to the door.