Night Broken (Mercy Thompson, #8)(11)

Tad was twenty feet away in the office—and the stranger was probably only a customer who’d come around to the open garage bays instead of to the office. It happened all the time. I was perfectly safe. Reason didn’t have much effect on my spiking heartbeat and the shaft of terror that was my body’s reaction to being startled by a strange man in my garage.

I’d been assaulted a while ago. Just when I thought I was over it, some stupid little thing would bring it back.

I nodded stiffly at him, then visibly focused on the job ahead, no matter where my panicky attention really was. I kept talking to the bolt, finding the soothing tones surprisingly useful even if they were my own. I fought to regain control by the time the bolt came out. Every twist, I told myself, meant I had to calm a little more. To my relief, the silly exercise worked—six twists of the wrench, and I was no longer on the verge of shaking, tears, and (more rare, but what it lacked in frequency it made up for in humiliation) throwing up on a perfect stranger.

I set the wrench down and turned with a smile to face him. He had stayed right where he had been—at a polite and safe distance. He didn’t look directly at me, either—he was a werewolf, he’d know that I had panicked, but he’d allowed me to save face. Points to him for courtesy.

He was neither tall nor short for a man and carried himself pulled tightly toward his core. Arms in, shoulders in, head tipped down. His hair was curly and pulled back in a short ponytail. He looked as though he could use a good meal and a pat on the head.

“I’m looking for a place to be,” he said. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder that looked as old as the Beetle I was repairing. Maybe it was.

Several years ago, another werewolf had approached me at the garage, looking for a place to be. He was dead.

I nodded at this new wolf, to show him that I heard him and that I was not rejecting his almost request. But between panic attack and memory, words were beyond me at the moment.

“I called the home number of the local Alpha.” He’d given me time to talk and sounded a little stressed when he had to break the silence. “The girl that answered sent me here when I told her I didn’t have easy means of transport out that far. The city bus got me over here.” He glanced over his shoulder as if he’d rather have been anywhere else. It dawned on me that the reason he wasn’t looking me in the face had more to do with him than with my almost–panic attack. “I drift, you know? Don’t like to stay anywhere long. I’m bottom of the pack, so that means I don’t cause no trouble.”

His American accent was Pacific Northwest, but there was something about the rhythm of his words that made me think that English was not his native tongue, though he was comfortable in it. “Bottom of the pack,” like his averted eyes, meant submissive wolf: they tended to live longer than other werewolves because they weren’t so likely to end up on the losing end of a fight to the death. Submissive wolves also got to travel because no Alpha would turn down a submissive wolf—there weren’t many of them, and they tended to help a pack function more smoothly.

Honey’s mate, Peter, who had been killed a few months ago, had been our only submissive after Able Tankersley left. A wolf I’d only been barely acquainted with, Able had taken a job offer in San Francisco. It was not only the violence of Peter’s death but his absence that was affecting the pack. A new submissive wolf would be welcome.

“Bran send you to us?” I asked.

“Hell no,” he said, with emphasis. “Though he gave me a list of numbers when I told him I was drifting this way. Neither of us knew I would end up here at the time.” He looked out the garage door, again, at the bare beginnings of spring. “Don’t think I’ll stay here long, though. Hope you don’t take it amiss. I don’t generally stay where it’s hot, and I heard tell at the bus depot that this place gets scorching in the summer.”

“That’s fine. Do you need a place to stay?”

He gave my garage a dubious look, and I laughed. “I don’t know how much you know. I’m Mercy Hauptman, and my husband’s the Alpha here. We have extra bedrooms at home—that are open to pack members who need them.” Maybe with another visitor, the effects of Christy’s stay would be diluted.

“I’m Zack Drummond, Ms. Hauptman. I’d be grateful for a room tonight, but after that, I’d rather find my own place.”

“All right,” I said. “I’m headed out there at five thirty”—usually it was closer to six thirty, but usually my husband’s ex wouldn’t have been running around in my territory that used to be hers—“if you want to catch a ride. I can’t officially welcome you to the pack, that’s my husband’s job, but we don’t have a submissive in our pack, and we could use one.”

“If I can’t find another way out,” he said, “I’ll be here at five fifteen.”

He hesitated, started to say something, then hesitated again.

“What is it?” I asked.

“What are you?” he said. “You aren’t fae or werewolf.”

“I’m a shifter—Native American style,” I told him. “Better known as a walker. I change into a coyote.”

His eyes widened and, finally, rose to examine every inch of me. “I’ve heard of your kind,” he said finally. “Always thought they were a myth.”