Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson, #5)

by Patricia Briggs

Adam was putting himself up as a shield between Samuel and his father. If something happened, Bran would hold him responsible.

“Don’t lie to me, Mercy. Not to me. No lies between us.” I rubbed my eyes—I was not in tears. I wasn’t. It was just the adrenaline letdown after taking on a gunman with a rogue werewolf at my back.

I hadn’t heard it go; I’d only been able to hear Adam. Who had made no sound, I realized. His cry had hit me from a different place altogether, where our bond tied me to him and him to me. Adam didn’t turn around. “Don’t be afraid of me,” he whispered. “Don’t leave me.” No lies between us.

with my casual pose, to defuse the situation. “Adam, I don’t have the sense to be afraid of Sam in the state he’s in now. I don’t know why you think I’d be smart enough to be afraid of you.”

I’d been taught you make your choices and live with the consequences long before I’d first read Immanuel Kant in college.

For Adam, screwed-up bonding thing or not, I’d wait forever.

“Really?” he asked in a tone I’d never heard from him before. Softer. Vulnerable. Adam didn’t do vulnerable. “Really what?” I asked. “Despite the way our bond scares you, despite the way someone in the pack played you, you’d still have me?” He’d been listening to my thoughts. This time it didn’t bother me. “Adam,” I told him, “I’d walk barefoot over hot coals for you.”

“You didn’t take advantage of this thing with Samuel as a way of putting distan...

I shook my head. “Peter probably thought that telling the guy he wasn’t one of Jesus’ followers was the smartest thing to do. Kept him alive, for one. I thought keeping Samuel alive—as he wasn’t raving or killing anyone . . . yet—was a good idea. I thought that telling you I needed a little space was good. Give me some time to wrap my head around having other people rattling around in my mind without hurting you because it scared me silly.”

“You don’t like being a werewolf,” I told him. “Oh, you deal with it—but you hate it. You think that it makes you a freak. I didn’t want you to know I had problems with some of the werewolf stuff, too.” I swallowed.

“I am a freak, Mercy,” he said, and I snorted. “Yeah, such a freak,” I agreed. “That’s why I’ve been drooling over you for years even though I’d sworn off werewolves for life after Samuel. I knew that if I told you being a member of the pack and the bonds and all that were bothering me—it would hurt you. And you are already putting up with . . .” I couldn’t wrap my mouth around the ugly word “rape,” so I softened it as I often did. “With the aftermath of Tim. I thought if I gave myself a little time, figured out how to keep the pack from turning me into your ex-wife, and bought Samuel a little extra time as well . . .”

“You were trying to keep me from being hurt,” he said, still in that odd voice. “Yes.”

Since I love you, as you are, where you are—it hardly makes sense for me to kick about it when you act like yourself. Right?”

“Yeah, well, I don’t promise I’ll always be logical about it.” He gave a rueful glance to my broken counter and the cash register on its side. “Especially at first.” His smile dropped away. “I thought you were trying to leave me.” “I might be dumb,” I told him, putting my nose against his silk tie, “but I’m not that dumb. I’ve gotcha now, and you aren’t getting away.”

His arms tightened almost painfully around me.

“If something like that happens to me—you call Bran and you stay as far from me as you can get. My wolf is not like Samuel’s.” He gave the counter another look. “If I lose it . . . you just stay away until I’m dead.”

“Get a room,” said Ben from inside the truck. “Stuff it.” Adam turned around, kissed me, and hopped in the truck.

Sam with his wolf ascendant had always been even more protective of me than Samuel himself had.

Kyle’d shaken a few trees, bribed a few officials (probably) and maybe blackmailed more, and gotten Warren a private detective’s license. Warren guarded clients and did quiet investigations for Kyle’s law firm.

“Hey, darling,” he told Sam. “I bet you’re gorgeous in man shape, hmm?” “It’s Sam,” I told Kyle dryly. And even though I knew it would just stir up trouble, I had to warn him again because I really liked him. “You need to be careful about whom you flirt with among the wolves—you might get more than you bargain for.”

“You want to put a towel in my safe?” “It’s a very special towel,” I told him as I ducked around him and into the house. “Dried Elvis’s hair on the day of the last concert.”

“I have guests, Mercy. Mostly divorces are messy and hurtful for everyone involved. All that hurt can explode on the wrong people. Sometimes people need a place to be safe for a while—and if there’s a pool and a hot tub in the backyard, so much the better.”

Kyle hid people in his home, children who needed to be safe.

“I love my son,” Bran said, “but I love you, too.” I heard everything that he didn’t say. He’d chosen his son over me before—that was how he saw it. That was how I might have seen it at the time, too.

“He’s not going to hurt me,”

MERCY! Adam’s voice in my head screamed at such volume that I couldn’t move. A blasting yet soundless noise that grew and grew until . . . there was nothing at all. The cry left me with a headache that made the one I’d woken up with in Phin’s basement seem like a pinprick.

Arms snagged me hard and pulled me close. “Oh God, oh God, Mercy. He thought you were effing dead. Went through the side of the bloody trailer to find you.” Ben’s voice was hoarse from the smoke and almost unrecognizable. If it hadn’t been for the British accent, I wouldn’t have been certain it was him.

Werewolves tend to lose their human halves when badly injured, but they can be recalled to themselves by a mate or by a more dominant wolf. Samuel was more dominant than Adam, and I was Adam’s mate. Either of us should have been able to bring him back.

Ben gave me a “why me?” look. In return, I glanced at Adam—obviously incapacitated—and then Sam, who was a wolf. Ben looked up at the sky, invoking God’s pity, I supposed.

I caught Mary Jo’s eye and interrupted a look directed at me . . . such a look. As soon as she realized I was looking at her, her face cleared. I couldn’t interpret the emotion I’d seen, just that it was very strong.

“I was supposed to follow you if you left. Make sure you didn’t get hurt. But you see, I think everyone would be better off if one of the vampires had killed you.”

“Stupid,” I said, blinking hard. “As if I’d die without taking you with me.”

“Attaboy,” Warren drawled without flinching. “Go ahead and chew some if it helps. Too far from the heart to do me much harm. Dang, but I hate fires. Guns, knives, fangs, and claws are tough—but fires are the worst.”

“I just can’t do it any longer,” he said, finally. “It’s better to go now, before I hurt someone.” I was too tired to put up with his garbage. “The hell you can’t. ‘Do not go gentle into that good night,’ Samuel. ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’ ” He’d helped me memorize that poem when I was in high school. I knew he’d remember. “ ‘Life’s but a walking shadow,’ Mercy, ‘a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.’ ” He countered my Dylan Thomas with Shakespeare, spoken with as much weary bleakness as any stage actor ever managed. “ ‘It is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying . . . nothing.’ ” He said the last word with a bite of bitterness. I was so angry I could have hit him. Instead, I clapped my hands in mock appreciation. “Very moving,” I said. “And stupid. Macbeth killed his overlord and followed his ambition, bringing misery and death to everyone involved. Your life is worth more, I think, than his was. More to me—and to every patient who crosses your path. Tonight, it was Adam and Ben.”

“If you hadn’t been here when that demon got ahold of me not so long ago, I’d be dead.”

“Might not be able to save you, old son,” Adam said, lying back again and closing his eyes. “But I can buy us a little time to kick you in the butt hard enough you stop thinking about ‘tomorrow and tomorrow’ and start thinking about how much your butt hurts.”

“I was bitter when I first came here. Eastern Washington is a big comedown from London.” He didn’t say anything for a while, but about the time I turned onto the highway he continued in a soft voice. “Warren’s okay. He cares about the pack, and that’s not as common in the upper echelon as you’d think. Took me a while to appreciate—and that’s on me.”

I patted his arm. “Took us a while to warm up to you, too,” I said. “Must be your charming personality.”

He laughed again, and this time it was with genuine humor. “Yes. No doubt. You’re a right ...

The response was elementary-school automatic. “Takes one to...

“He is my soldier, and he follows my orders.”

I’d heard that kind of talk before and felt my lips curl in anger—on behalf of a stranger who’d mainly just ticked me off . . . but mostly for a friend of mine, Stefan, another soldier who’d been used too hard and had finally broken.

“The Silver Borne,” she said.

“Is there room for one more?” asked Ben. I lifted up my head to see him standing in the doorway in a pair of baggy sweats. His hair was ruffled on one side as if he’d been lying down before he came up. “If not, I can go—”

Warren rolled off the bed, and Ben crawled on. He put one foot on mine, then let out a sigh and collapsed like a puppy who’d been playing for too long. Pack is for comfort when you hurt, I thought, putting my head back down. And for the first time in a long time, maybe the first time ever, I appreciated being a part of one.

I wiped my eyes and nose on my shoulder (both hands being occupied with cat and covered with cat hair anyway). Then I leaned forward and kissed Ben’s nose.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’d have missed her a lot.” “Yeah.” He stretched out on his back, hands carefully laid across his belly. “We’d have missed her, too. Only cat I’ve ever seen who tolerates werewolves.” He sounded oddly vulnerable. I don’t think he was used to being the hero.

Jesse breezed in and squealed. “Oh my goodness, Darryl is cooking. I’d almost forgotten it was Sunday. Orange juice, please.” She glanced at me and laughed. “Mercy doesn’t do orange juice or coffee,” she said, grabbing a glass out of the cupboard and filling it out of the pitcher Darryl had set out. “So sad. More orange juice for me.”

Mine, whispered a voice in my head, but I was pretty sure that it was my own voice.

“Next time, I’ll tell her not to bother bringing you back,” I promised. I tapped my foot and wondered how far I really wanted to push this. Some of it depended upon what role I wanted to take in the pack. Just then I was channeling my inner Bran, using the techniques I’d grown up watching the Marrok use, techniques that came so easily to me it made me a little uncomfortable—I don’t see myself as a manipulative person. For the moment, though, I set that aside and considered the case at hand.