Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson, #12)(15)

Two weeks ago, I thought. He’d been a wolf when I woke up. I’d just assumed that he’d had a restless night; we both were prone to those after the witches. Sometimes on bad nights we’d go out for a run—on two legs or four. I’d thought he’d decided to let me sleep. It had been after that night that the odd distance he’d forced between us had happened; it might have been right after that night.

He saw me remember and nodded. “Yes. That time. But it doesn’t feel like the wolf is trying to take over. I know how to control that.”

“We cannot keep the people around us safe from ourselves,” growled his wolf.

I couldn’t find it in myself to be frightened of Adam—though I remembered clearly the look in his eyes when I confronted him on the stairs. He hadn’t hurt me then—and he would never hurt me. But I wasn’t the one who needed convincing.

“Is it something to do with the witches?” I asked tentatively.

“I don’t think so,” said Adam. “It doesn’t feel like magic.”

“Yes,” contradicted the wolf—startling Adam.

It was pretty weird having a three-way conversation when there were only two of us in the room. Adam and his wolf were usually more integrated than this.

“Okay, then,” I said. “Do we believe your wolf? It was something the witches did?” They had made him obey them—it was a gift one of the Hardesty witches had. One of the nightmares Adam had after that night was that under the witch’s orders, he killed me or Jesse.

Adam shook his head. “I don’t think he knows anything I don’t.”

“Okay,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I agreed. “Now that we have all that out in the open, how about you open up our mating bond?”

“No,” Adam said with emphasis. “I don’t want this spilling out on you.”

“No,” agreed the wolf.

“All of what spilling out on me?” I asked.

Adam flattened his lips.

“Adam?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

He backed up against the door when I tried to put a hand on his shoulder. I raised both my eyebrows and stalked forward until he was flat against the wall and I pressed myself against him.

He could have pushed me away. Instead I could feel him try to pull himself back, as if he wished his body could dissolve through the door so we would no longer touch.

He turned his head from me, his eyes . . . ashamed.

“To hell with that,” I muttered. He was only about four inches taller than I was, which meant that if he was trying to keep his lips away from me, there was still a lot of him I could reach. I kissed the skin under his jaw, soft but for the bristly hint of beard growing in. Then I rested my face against his neck and just breathed.

Gradually, his breathing matched mine and his body relaxed, melting into mine. Finally, his arms wrapped around me.

“I’m sorry,” he told me, his lips on my temple. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” I told him. “Fix it.”

His chest huffed with a silent laugh, though the expression in his eyes hurt me. “I don’t know how.”

“Figure it out,” I told him. “The first step might be letting me in.” And I tugged lightly on the mating bond between us so he would be in no doubt about what I meant.

“No,” he said adamantly. “There are things . . .”

“What kind of things?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Just things.” His arms tightened around me and we stood, wrapped around each other like two children in the dark.

But he would not let me in.





3





I went upstairs with the intention of washing up, but as I walked past Jesse’s room, I hesitated. Light edged the bottom of her door. I knocked.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“Me,” I said, then, in case she thought Adam was with me, “just me.”

“Come in,” she said.

I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t a completely cleaned room (though the carpet still needed vacuuming and some spot stain remover). It was dark outside, but I wouldn’t have thought we’d been away from the house long enough for Jesse to have accomplished tidy in her room—but here it was. She took on her room once a month, and she was about a week out from her usual weekend cleaning frenzy.

Not only that, she’d had time to dye her hair—and freshen her makeup.

With her newly teal hair still wet, lip gloss and eyeliner intact, Jesse was sitting cross-legged on her neatly made bed, where she had been reading something on her phone. She set her phone aside when I came in and motioned for me to shut the door. It didn’t guarantee privacy, but it did mean that any werewolf in the house wouldn’t overhear us whether they wanted to or not.

Her eyes were puffy, but her lips quirked up. “I thought I’d try rage-cleaning. You are right, it does help. You were also right when you warned me I should tell them up front about changing schools.”

“To be fair,” I said, “I didn’t expect this level of fireworks—and I’m not sure it would have been any better if you had told them both the day you made the decision.”

“It might have kept Mom from bringing Auriele into it,” Jesse said.