Night Broken (Mercy Thompson #8)(92)
Honey didn’t have a table big enough to seat the whole pack—and Adam had called the whole pack together. Samuel and Ariana showed up toward the end of dinner.
Elizaveta could have made a spell to make one werewolf resistant to Guayota’s elemental fire magic—her term, not mine—but she would have needed a piece of his hair or fingernails. If I’d stuck Guayota’s finger in my pocket, she could have used that, but I didn’t think we’d have much luck getting it back from the police.
Ariana said she could help. With fireproofing, not finger-stealing.
We all settled down in the big upstairs room to see what she had to offer. She and Samuel stood in front of the big-screen TV.
Dr. Samuel Cornick was tall, compelling but not handsome, and when I was sixteen, I’d thought he was the love of my life. He’d thought I was someone who might be able to give him children that lived. It was a relationship that was doomed to make neither of us happy, and his father, the Marrok, had seen it before we’d fully committed tragedy and so had sent me away. For a long time, I’d compared every man I met to Samuel—Adam was the only one who had stood up to the comparison.
Samuel’s mate, Ariana, stood in his shadow. Where he drew the eye, even in a crowded room, she could go unnoticed. Her hair was blond, her eyes gray, her skin clear, and her entire aspect unremarkable. But that was a fae thing. Being too beautiful or too ugly made someone interesting, and mostly, the fae would rather go unnoticed. I’d seen what she really looked like under her glamour, and she was spectacularly beautiful.
“Okay,” she said when everyone was in the room. She held Samuel’s hand with white-knuckled strength because she was afraid of us, all of us. To say she had a canine phobia was a masterly understatement. “I command earth, air, fire, and water—though not as well as I once did. That I command fire means that I can protect you, some of you, from this demon-god. I don’t know how many I can spell. I think it unlikely that I can do more than ten, but probably at least five. Adam, you should pick the ones you need to take with you in order of the most useful in battle.”
Adam nodded and stood up, but before he could speak, Samuel said, “I’m going, and she’s already tried out the spell on me.”
Adam gave him a look.
“This is not my pack,” Samuel said to Adam’s unspoken comment. “But Mercy is part of my family by my choice, and that makes you, by extension, my brother by marriage. I’m going. You don’t get a choice.”
So the fear I’d seen in Ariana’s eyes hadn’t just been because she was in a roomful of werewolves.
Adam said, “I would not have asked, but I’m very glad to have you on our side.”
Then he looked around the room, his gaze touching each of us as he spoke. “Guayota is our enemy. He is not our enemy because he hurt one of our own, though he has. He is not our enemy because he violates our territory, though that is also true. He is not our enemy because he attacked my mate. He is not even our enemy because he is evil. He is our enemy because he kills those who cannot protect themselves against him. Because he will not stop until someone stops him.”
He paused and took a deep breath. “I have seen him fight—and so have you. I am not sure this is a fight we can win. But there is one thing I do know, and that is that we will not, we cannot, wait around until he kills another innocent. We might die fighting him, but if we do not try and stop him, we are already defeated.”
The room was silent and at the same time it echoed with the power of his words.
He looked at Darryl. “We don’t always see things the same way, but you have always put the pack first and foremost. I have fought Guayota, and I tell you that without Tad’s help, he would have defeated me. Ariana can make us invulnerable to his heat—but you saw the video. I don’t know that he can be killed, or if he can, how it might be done. I have spoken to Bran, and if we fail here tonight, then he will send Charles. But Guayota invaded my territory. This is my fight. You should also know that Ariana told me what she could and could not do, and I’ve had time to think. Darryl, I need you to protect the pack if this fight doesn’t go well.”
He looked around at the whole room, and we were all silent, even Lucia, Jesse, and Christy, who were not pack, even Darryl, who wanted to protest. We were silent because he wanted us to be so, and he was the Alpha. His eyes lingered on mine, and if there was grief in them, I think it was only our mating bond that let me see it. He didn’t think he was going to survive this—or he’d have taken Darryl with him.
“I will take the walker Gary Laughingdog, who brings a prophecy that he must come,” Adam said into the silence. “Then myself. The rest of you are volunteers. Feel free to say no because the estimate that Ariana gave me was six wolves. If you would rather not die tonight, or rather wait until another night, there is no shame. Warren?”
Warren drawled his “Yes, boss” without hesitation.
The wolves stirred and began to howl. Emerging from human throats, it was not as pure or carrying as it would have been out of the wolves, but the emotion was the same. There was respect and a celebration of his bravery in accepting and in the honor of being chosen to fight beside his Alpha.
It took Warren entirely by surprise. He grabbed Kyle’s hand and held on as his eyes brightened with tears that threatened to spill over.
Warren had spent most of his very long life alone, when wolves are meant to live in packs. I’d first met him while he worked at a gas station near here. I’d introduced him to Adam—who I resented at the time but couldn’t help but respect. As Gary had said, Adam was what an Alpha should be, and I’d known it. Adam had welcomed Warren into the pack, but the pack had taken him in with mixed feelings.