Bone Crossed (Mercy Thompson #4)(73)

I shook my head. "No. I knew someone had been hurt - but I didn't know it was Mary Jo until I saw her."

"Okay," he said, encouraged by my answer. "It shouldn't be bad for you then. Unless you need them, or they need you, the pack will just be... a shield at your back, warmth in the storm. Our mate bond - when it settles down - will probably add a little oddity to it."

"What do you mean 'when it settles down'?" I asked him.

He shrugged. "Hard to explain." He gave me an amused look. "When I was learning how to be a wolf, I asked my teacher what mating felt like. He told me it was different for different couples - and being Alpha adds a twist to it as well."

"So you don't know?" Because that wasn't an answer - and Adam didn't evade questions. He answered or told you he wasn't going to.

"I do now," he said. "Our bond"  -  he made a gesture with his hand indicating something in the small space in the bathroom that lay between us - "feels to me like a bridge, like the suspension bridge over the Columbia. It has foundations and the cables and all that it needs to be a bridge, but it doesn't span the river yet." He looked at my face and grinned. "I know it sounds stupid, but you asked. Anyway, if all you felt when Mary Jo was dying was that someone was hurt, that you caught the few who don't welcome you as part of our pack is my fault. You felt them through me. On your own, you won't even be aware of it unless certain conditions are met. Things like proximity, how open you are to the pack, and if the moon is full." He grinned. "Or how grumpy you are with them."

"So if I don't feel it, it shouldn't matter if they don't want me?"

He gave me a neutral look. "Of course it matters - but it won't be shoved down your throat every minute of the day. Mostly, I expect you'll know the ones who don't want a coyote in the pack. As Warren knows the wolves who hate what he is more than what he does." Briefly, sorrow lit his eyes for Warren's trials, but he kept speaking. "Just as Darryl knows the wolves who resent being given orders by a black man made uppity by a good education." He smiled, just a little. "You aren't alone, most people are prejudiced about something. But you know, after a while the edges wear down. You know who hated Darryl the most when he joined us, way back when we were still in New Mexico?"

I raised my eyebrows in inquiry.

"Aurielle. She thought he was an arrogant, self-important snob."

"Which he is," I observed. "But he's also smart, quick, and given to small kindnesses when no one is watching."

"So," he nodded. "We are none of us perfect, and as pack, we learn to take these imperfections and make them only a small part of who we are. Let us bring you truly into our shelter, Mercedes. And the wolves who resent you will deal with it as you will deal with the ones you don't like, for whatever reason.

I think, with the healing you have already done on your own, the pack can help stop your panic attacks."

"Ben's rude," I said, considering it.

"See, you already know most of us," Adam said. "And Ben adores you. He doesn't quite know how to deal with it yet. He's not used to liking anyone... and liking a woman..."

"Ish," I said, deadpan.

"Let's try again," he suggested, and put out his hand.

This time when I touched him, all I felt was skin and calluses, no warmth, no magic.

He tilted his head and evaluated me sternly. "It's hard to argue with instinct, even with reason and logic, isn't it? May I knock?"

"What?"

"May I see if I can touch you first? Maybe that'll allow you to open to the pack."

It sounded harmless enough. Warily, I nodded... and I felt him, felt his spirit or something, touch me. It wasn't like when I'd called Stefan. That had been as intimate as talking was - not very much. Adam's touch reminded me more of the presence I felt sometimes in church - but this was unmistakably Adam and not God.

And because it was Adam, I let him in, accepting him into my secret heart. Something settled into place with a rightness that rang in my soul. Then the floodgates opened.

THE NEXT TIME I WAS CONSCIOUS OF ANYTHING REAL, I was back in Adam's lap but on his bedroom floor instead of in the bathroom. A number of the pack surrounded us and stood with their hands linked. My head hurt like the one and only time I'd gotten truly drunk, only much worse.

"We're going to have to work on your filtering skills, Mercy," said Adam, his voice sounding a little rough.

As if that was a signal, the pack broke apart and became individuals again - though I hadn't been aware they were anything else until it was gone. Something stopped, and my head didn't hurt so much.

Uncomfortable at being on the floor when everyone else was on their feet, I rolled forward and tried to use my hands to get leverage so I could stand.

"Not so fast," Samuel murmured. He hadn't been one of the circle, I'd have noticed him, but he pushed his way through to the front of the line. He gave me a hand and pulled until I was on my feet.

"I'm sorry," I told Adam, knowing something bad had happened, but I couldn't quite focus on what it had been.

"Nothing to be sorry for, Mercy," Samuel assured me with a little edge to his voice. "Adam is old enough to know better than to draw his mate into the pack at the same time as he seals your mate bond. Sort of like someone teaching a baby to swim in the ocean. During a tsunami."