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The Suburban he’d purchased in Spokane made it to Bonners Ferry only because of the chains he had on all four wheels. When he reached the barricade, he turned around and parked at the gas station a half mile back down the road. The lot was full of semitrucks and stranded motorists.
He left the Suburban and headed into the storm.
12
Adam
Adam had tried to talk Mercy into eating before she headed out to the ranch. Liam was determined that his snow shovelers should have lunch before he put them to work. But once Mercy had decided that the horses needed tending to, waiting was not an option.
“When someone locks them up in a barn, they can’t take care of themselves,” she told him. Then, with a frown, she asked, “Are you sure you want to do that? I can just leave my coat behind.”
He’d already destroyed the straps on his pack, so her words came a little late.
“I can get another one,” he told her.
“Yes, but I know how much that one cost.”
Her coat didn’t fit in her pack—which was much smaller to accommodate her coyote. He was tired of watching Mercy shiver. His pack was replaceable, and with a sharp knife and liberal application of duct tape—which he always kept in his SUV—his larger pack could be made to work. He was just grateful he’d thought to throw the packs they carried in their other forms into the SUV at the last minute.
“I can get another one,” he repeated.
Keep it casual, Hauptman, he cautioned himself. If he smothered her, she would leave. If he smothered her and she did not leave, he would be making her weaker. Less safe. And that was unacceptable.
He measured the pack straps against her and cut off another three inches.
“Another hour wouldn’t hurt them,” he tried.
“You tend to your horses before you tend to yourself,” she said, and he recognized both the cadence and the finality. Silently, he cursed Charles and anyone else who had taught Mercy about the care and feeding of horses.
He reminded himself that Mercy would be okay if she waited until she got back to eat. She’d eaten a big breakfast. She wasn’t a werewolf; she didn’t need the calories that the rest of the pack did.
His wolf wanted to insist on going with her. He’d already done that once, and it had gotten him here. But that had been different, and for a different cause. He didn’t mistrust her ability to take care of herself—he had wanted, had needed, her to know that she came first. Before pack.
His Mercy was prickly about her independence, and it had taken a battering over the past couple of years. He didn’t want to change her; he only wanted to keep her safe. Sometimes he had to admit he couldn’t do both. He had to trust her to know her limits. She was good about asking for help when she needed it.
The ranch wasn’t that far away, and the storm had subsided a little. Her coyote was probably even better equipped for traveling through this country in the winter than his wolf was. She was light enough to run on top of the snowpack, whereas he would have to break a trail.
He might still have insisted on coming if it hadn’t been for the reconsideration he’d seen in Liam’s face when Adam hadn’t fussed about Mercy going out in the storm on her own. Mercy was safer if everyone saw that Adam respected her ability to protect herself. It made them understand she was dangerous—even though most of them wouldn’t know why.
When Bonarata had demonstrated how easily he could have killed Adam, it had rubbed Adam’s nose in the fact that, at the levels Mercy and he were now playing at, he could not count on his werewolf being powerful enough to keep her safe. But he’d been dumped on his own, under-armed, in a country where he didn’t speak the language and had no good way of telling friend from foe. He’d been outclassed in Vietnam, too, and he’d survived. He’d done that by learning, by getting better at his job, and by figuring out how to do that job with inadequate tools.
So directly after Bonarata had finished educating Adam, Adam had gone to the scariest, most deadly warrior he knew and asked him for lessons. He was learning how to be more lethal, but he was also learning how to keep Mercy safe among the paranoid, powerful fae.
Zee told him that having your enemy overestimate you was as useful as having them underestimate you. Adam’s casual acceptance of Mercy running out alone in the storm made Liam wonder what Mercy was capable of.
If letting Mercy go alone to the ranch without a fight made her safer from the assorted crazy and powerful beings here, he could do that. He’d still rather have had her eat first, but that was her choice.
“Stop growling,” she said, stripping out of her clothes and stuffing them into the pack with her coat. “It’s cute but it won’t get you anywhere.”
Adam couldn’t help his sheepish smile—and didn’t bother fighting it because she wasn’t looking at him anyway.
She held up a boot to size it against the space left in the backpack, shrugged, and stuffed her tennis shoes in. He didn’t protest because she wasn’t going to be wearing them out in the storm. But he took her socks out of her hands and put a pair of his woolen hiking socks in the bag instead.
She laughed and then went to work zipping up the pack. The light shone along her naked back and flank, highlighting the faint silvery scars where some Montana rancher had unloaded a shotgun at a coyote. At least there wouldn’t be anyone out hunting coyotes in a storm like this.
He ran his hand over the scars—a reminder that his mate was a target, that he couldn’t protect her from everything, but also that she was a survivor. She leaned into his touch, and he bent until he could wrap both of his arms around her waist and pull her into his body.
“Not going to get this pack zipped up this way,” she said with a huff of laughter.
