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“He’s in bad condition and it’s cold out there,” she said. Then, more slowly, “Yes. I think he could be dangerous.” More hastily, probably in reaction to his expression, she continued dryly, “If he wasn’t freezing to death on our porch. There’s something about him—like the wolves, Dad. Dangerous but not wicked.”
His daughter was pretty sharp about people. If she didn’t think this stranger was a threat, he probably wasn’t. He didn’t ask her to stay back when he went to the front door and opened it.
The figure huddled on his stairs looked miserable and cold, visibly shivering in the icy northern wind. His jacket was a good one—it should keep a man warm in colder weather than this. He smelled sweaty, like someone who was breaking a fever, though he didn’t smell sick. He smelled of fur and forest and a little like Mercy.
For a moment Adam wondered that Jesse hadn’t known who this was. But the man curled over on himself, his face drawn tight and hollowed, didn’t look like Gary Laughingdog. Jesse wasn’t a werewolf to identify people by scent.
“Gary?”
Mercy’s brother didn’t react to his name.
“Gary?” Adam said again, taking two quick steps until he was right next to him.
The man didn’t even twitch.
“Gary?” Adam softened his voice and put a hand on Gary’s shoulder.
That’s when it all went south.
Gary snapped up, the leg nearest Adam planting itself behind Adam’s foot. He got a wrestler’s hold around Adam’s leg, hands clasped just in front of Adam’s knee, with Gary’s shoulder laced over the top—turning Adam’s leg into a lever. Gary drove his head into Adam’s ribs to keep Adam from leaning forward and regaining his balance.
It was a good takedown, one that Adam used himself. It wouldn’t have worked if Gary had been a normal human. But he, like Mercy, was just a bit faster than Adam—and werewolves were supernaturally quick.
The natural progression of the move would have allowed Gary to knock Adam off his feet and away. If Adam had been thinking, if he’d kept his head, he would have allowed the move to do what it was supposed to do. Gary wasn’t his enemy—and this wasn’t a move designed to cripple or kill. It was designed to let Gary get away.
But Adam was surprised, the head in his ribs had not hit gently, and it was three days since the full moon. His instincts—powered up by the moon’s call and the unexpected pain—took over. As he told his pack over and over, you fight how you train. And he had trained for decades, for more than half a century, how not to allow an opponent to get what he wanted out of a fight.
He took advantage of his superior strength and the frost on the porch to slide his raised leg and Gary around just enough that he regained his balance. Gary had ended up on the top of the steps. When Adam didn’t fall as Mercy’s brother had intended, Gary threw his weight backward and sent both of them tumbling down the stairs.
On the ground, Gary pushed away with impressive speed and force. Maybe if the moon had been fainter in the sky; maybe if Gary’s frantic scramble away from Adam hadn’t meant that he was moving toward Jesse, who was standing in the doorway; maybe if Adam hadn’t hit the corner post of the porch railing with his shoulder and if the burn of magic healing the crack in his scapula wasn’t more painful than the original injury…maybe if all of that or some of that had been different, Adam could have stopped the fight right then.
But the moon was still large in the sky, and the adrenaline of hearing the alarm in his office when he knew Jesse was alone in the house sang in his blood. And Gary smelled—and acted—like prey. Adam could no more have stopped the wolf, his wolf, from going after his brother-in-law than he could have stopped the sun from shining.
Once the wolf took him, Adam retained only bits and pieces of the fight. Usually it didn’t work that way. Usually Adam could break down his werewolf’s actions with clinically sharp memory.
The next clear thought Adam had was when he sat on top of Mercy’s brother, who was face down in the snow. They were in the backyard.
Gary was pinned but showed no sign of trying to throw Adam off. He was absolutely still. Limp.
I’ve killed Mercy’s brother.
For an instant he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. And then Gary’s whole body shivered and Adam realized he—Gary, not Adam—was breathing in little gasping pants, like a terrified rabbit.
“Dad, don’t hurt him,” Jesse said urgently.
She was, he thought with gratitude for her common sense, all the way across the yard. He didn’t look at her—you never look away from your prey. Your opponent, he corrected himself.
Except it is okay to look away if you have them immobilized—and Mercy couldn’t break this hold, so he assumed Gary couldn’t, either. He glanced over at his daughter.
Jesse was standing in the back doorway. “That’s Mercy’s brother. He’s not an enemy.”
She’d heard him call the man by name. Or maybe she’d recognized him once they’d started fighting. In any case, he hadn’t been about to kill Mercy’s brother. Probably. If the wolf had wanted Gary dead, Gary would be dead.
“He’s okay,” Adam growled to Jesse, and saw her whole body relax in relief. She started forward—but Adam didn’t trust himself that much. “Stay back.”
She nodded and stayed where she was, allowing him to turn his attention to his prisoner. His brother-in-law, he reminded himself.
“Gary,” he said, and he tried to keep the roughness out of his voice with indifferent success. “Gary, what’s wrong with you?”
