Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson, #5)

by Patricia Briggs

“Figure out the results you want and do what you can to get them” was one of Bran’s favorite sayings. Well, then, exactly what results did I want?

The look that said she’d have been happier with him dead than with him on my lap.

“Adam is mine,” I told her. “And you can’t handle it. Does it bother you that I’m a coyote? That we have sort of an extreme case of an interracial—in our case maybe even cross-species—mating? Darryl is African and Chinese, and Auriele is Hispanic, and they don’t seem to bother you.”

“How long have you wanted him?” I asked her. “You had all these years since Jesse’s mother left.”

Had it been Samuel standing there, I’d have worried that he would be too soft on her. But Adam didn’t really see women as the weaker sex, and he knew how to organize and how to recognize organization when he saw it.

He smiled. “I love you, too, sweetheart. And thanks to the time you bled all over it, I now know a place that can clean almost anything off the carpet.”

“¡Hijo de perra!”

“Alpha,” he called. “I chal—” He never got the whole word out—because I drew my foster father’s SIG and shot him in the throat before he could. For a split second everyone stared at him, as if they couldn’t figure out where all that blood had come from.

“Stop the bleeding,” I said. Though I made no move to do it myself. The rat could die for all I cared. “That was a lead bullet. He’ll be fine.” Though he wouldn’t be talking—or challenging Adam—for a while. “When he’s stable, put him in the holding cell, where he can’t do any more harm.”

Adam looked at me. “Trust you to bring a gun to a fistfight,” he said with every evidence of admiration. Then he looked at his pack. Ou...

“Adam will miss you in about five minutes,” he told me. “And in six minutes you’re going to need to get him upstairs and in bed without letting the whole pack know that in ten minutes that man is going to be unconscious on the floor.”

Honey caught me on my way to get Adam, who was sitting on one end of the leather couch. I hadn’t noticed her in the garage—and I would have because Honey doesn’t go unnoticed, partly because she is very dominant and partly because she is very beautiful—so she must have been one of the latecomers.

“Scott?” Adam said as we headed upstairs. “Yeah?” “Unless someone shoots you, skins you, and throws the results on the floor, I don’t want to see you lying in the walkway again.” “Yessir!”

“Secret girl stuff,” she said. “And if they try to send Warren with us because for some reason they think he ought to be interested in girlie things—which really makes no sense, since Kyle likes men, after all, the more manly the better—what do we do?” “Preemptive strike,” I told her. “Let’s find Warren first and send him up to keep an eye on your father, who is sleeping.” And then Sam crawled out from under the bed.

She did grin then. “All you have to do is let him yell at you, then sleep with him. Men will forgive you anything for sex.”

“Jessica Tamarind Hauptman, who taught you that?” I said in mock horror.

“Samuel Cornick,” she said, her eyes catching mine. “Samuel Marrokson, Samuel Branson, Samuel Whitewolf, Samuel Swift-foot, Samuel Deathbringer, Samuel Avenger.”

She glanced at Samuel, who was looking over our heads and out the window. His face was composed, but I could see the pulse beating fast in his throat.

the next he was a tall, sleek warrior with skin dark as wet bark. Sunlight tinted his hair gold. It hung in a thick braid that flowed over one shoulder and hung lower than his belt. The last time I’d seen him, his pointed ears had been pierced many times, and he had worn bone earrings in the piercings. There were no decorations at all.

Zee’s true face was uncanny—beautiful, proud, and cruel. I remembered the stories I’d found about the Dark Smith of Drontheim. Zee had never been the kind of fairy who cleaned houses or rescued lost children. He’d been one to avoid if you could and to treat very, very courteously if you couldn’t. He’d mellowed a little with age and didn’t disembowel anyone who displeased him anymore. Not that I’d seen anyway.

“Wow,” said Jesse. “You are beautiful. Scary. But beautiful.” He looked at her a moment, then said, “I have heard Gabriel say the same of you, Jesse Adamstochter. It was meant as a compliment, I believe.”

“We are ready,” Samuel said, looking at Ariana with a hunger that had nothing to do with his stomach.

“Erde, geliebte Mutter, dein Kind ruft. Schmecke mein Blut. Erkenne deine Schöpfung, gewähre Einlass.”

“Erde mein, lass mich ein.”

“Gibst mir Mut!”

“Trinkst mein Blut. Erkenne mich.”

“Öffne Dich.”

“Erde mein,”

“Lass mich ein. Gibst mir Glut.” He put his forehead on the ground. “Trinke mein Blut. Es quillt für Dich hervor. Öffne mir ein Tor!”

“Has anyone ever told you that you don’t look like anyone’s grandmother? Is it a rescue, then? Like in the old stories?”

I bit the inside of my lip until it bled—and it hurt because human-shaped teeth aren’t sharp

enough to cut through skin easily. “Samuel,” I said, “a kiss for courage and clear-seeing, my love?” Samuel turned to me, startled—a kiss was probably the last thing that he’d been thinking of. I stood on my tiptoes and damn near had to climb him to get to his mouth. I clamped my open lips to his and tried to get as much blood into his mouth as I could.

“He can’t call his hounds, Ari, my love. Don’t worry. They are dead and gone. I made sure of it. He’s not real, not real. She doesn’t have that kind of power. My da, he killed yours. I killed the hounds, and they are not coming back.”

“Semper Fi,” he said, glancing down at Zee’s rock. Then he hurried after the others. So far as I knew, Samuel had never been a Marine. But he’d known I’d catch the reference. The Marines never leave a man behind. He’d be back, and so would Adam. All I had to do was survive.

“Whom do you serve?” she asked aloud, pulling her hand away from my head. Not as though she were interested in the answer. “ ‘Choose this day whom you will serve,’ ” I murmured. “ ‘But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ ” It seemed appropriate to quote Joshua at her.

We stopped by the end, and there was a rock tied . . . enveloped in a soft cage of silver. The rock glowed a warm yellow that was very welcome in this cold place.

That she has done this is an unforgivable offense”—once

“No,” he said. “I want you to look here for a bit. Can you find Darryl’s connection to Auriele? It’s different from the pack bonds.” I looked and looked. I found Auriele’s rock nearby, but I couldn’t see anything. Finally, in desperation, I picked up Darryl’s rock and saw that it moved Auriele’s, too—as if they were tied together . . . and then I couldn’t understand how I’d missed the blazing gold rope between them, it was so obvious. Maybe I’d been looking too hard for a silver garland and instead their bond was very different—softer, stronger, and deeper. Unlike the pack bond, it wasn’t tied onto the rocks; it originated in one and ended in the other.

All but buried in the pack magic was a very, very black rock. It radiated anger and fear and sorrow so strongly it was hard to go near it.

“Don’t be frightened,” Bran said, and there was a rough affection in his voice. “Adam has been frightening quite enough people lately. Look and tell me what you see.”

“He’s hurt,” I said, then corrected myself. “He’s hurting.” “Where is your mate bond?” It lay in the snow, a fragile and worn thing. There were a lot of places where it had been roughly knotted, just to keep it together.

I could see that around the knotted places, the rope was worn, as if a dog . . . or a wolf had chewed on it until someone had tied it to keep it from breaking.

Though it had been recovering from that, hadn’t it? When had I lost the connection? It hurt to know that it was broken.

Would I hurt Adam if I touched it?

“Go ahead,” said Bran. “He would give anything for you to touch it again.” “Mine,” I said. “Mine.” But I still didn’t touch it. With that superior humor he occasionally used, which made me want to hit him every time, Bran said, “I’m sure he can find someone else who wants it.”

I grabbed it with both hands—and not because I was worried there would be someone else, no matter what Bran thought. But because we belonged together, Adam bound to me, me to him. I loved it when he let me make him laugh—he was a serious man by nature and weighed down by the responsibility he held. I knew he would never leave me, never let me down—because the man had never abandoned anything in his long life. If I hadn’t ...

For an instant I almost saw something completely different standing beside me, then she smiled at me, and said, “Not my glamour you don’t, Mercedes.”

The snow hid a lot, and the pack had cleaned it up. They’d had the whole month that I’d been missing to do it. I suppose I was lucky it hadn’t been a year or a century.

Zee said that the Gray Lords were torn between anger at the way the fairy queen had used a forest lord and a black witch, and triumph at the proof that Underhill was returning some power to all of the fae.

The first time I’d seen the place, there had been a coyote hiding under the porch, and I’d taken it as an omen. When I’d finally bought it, I’d felt like I had a home for the first time in my life. A home no one could take away from me. “Saying good-bye?” I hadn’t heard the Marrok, but Bran was like that. “Yeah.”