Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson #5)(16)

It didn't take him long to dispose of the clothes and begin his change. I didn't look, but I could tell when he started because the noises turned from shredding fabric to pained whines. What the wolves go through when they change is one of the many reasons I am very grateful to be what I am instead of a werewolf. For me, the change from coyote to human or back is virtually instantaneous. The side effects are nothing more annoying than tingles. For a werewolf, change is painful and slow. From the grunts he was making, he hadn't yet fully finished his shift by the time I drove into my driveway.

Home wasn't the safest place to bring him. No werewolf who saw him would miss what had happened, and Adam's house - visited often by members of his pack - was just behind my back fence. But I couldn't think of anyplace better.

Eventually, we'd have to tell Bran - I knew it, and I suspected that Samuel . . . Sam knew it, too. But I'd give him what time I could - assuming he didn't go on a rampage and start eating people.

That meant keeping him out of sight of Adam and his pack.

My pack. My mate and my pack.

It felt wrong to hide things from him. But I knew Adam, and one thing he was very good at was honor and duty. It was one of the reasons I'd grown to love him - he was a man who could make the hard choice. Duty and honor would force him to call Bran. Duty and honor would force Bran to execute Samuel. Samuel would be dead, and two good men would suffer as well.

Luckily for all of them, my sense of duty and honor was more flexible.

I got out of the car and turned in a slow circle. I caught Ben's scent, fading. Otherwise, we were alone with the more mundane creatures of the night: bats, mice, and mosquitoes. The light was on in Adam's bedroom, but it went dark as I was watching. Tomorrow, I'd need to come up with a better place for Sam.

Or a good reason to avoid the pack.

I opened the back door of the Rabbit, keeping it between Sam and me in case he came out of the change in a bad mood. The pain of the change does not make for a happy wolf - and Sam was already hurt when he started. But he seemed okay. When he hopped out, he waited politely for me to close up the car, then followed me to the door.

He slept on the foot of my bed. When I suggested he might be more comfortable in his room, he regarded me steadily with ice-colored eyes.

Where does a werewolf sleep? Anywhere he wants to.

I thought it would bother me, thought it would scare me. It ought to have bothered me. But somehow I couldn't work up the energy to be too worried about the big wolf curled up on my feet. It was Sam, after all.

* * *

MY DAY STARTED OUT EARLY DESPITE MY LATE NIGHT.

I woke up to the sound of Sam's stomach growling. Keeping him fed had attained a new priority level, so I bounced up and cooked him breakfast.

And then, because cooking is something I do when I'm upset or nervous - and because it sometimes helps me think, especially if the cooking involves sugar - I indulged myself with a spate of cookie baking. I made a double batch of peanut butter cookies, and while they were in the oven, I made chocolate chip, for good measure.

Sam sat under the table, where he was out of my way, and watched me. I fed him a couple of spoonfuls of dough even though he'd eaten several pounds of bacon and a dozen eggs. He had shared the eggs with my cat, Medea. Maybe that was why he was still hungry. I fed him some of the baked cookies.

I was in the middle of putting cookies into baggies when Adam called.

"Mercy," he said. His voice was fuzzy with fatigue, his tone flat. "I saw the light was on. Ben told me what you said. I can help you with that."

Usually, I follow Adam's conversations just fine, but I'd had less than three hours of sleep. And I was preoccupied with Samuel, which he could not know anything about. I rubbed my nose. Ben. Oh. Adam was talking about how the pack had screwed up our date. Right.

I had to keep Adam away. Just until I figured out some brilliant plan to keep Samuel alive . . . And here before me was the perfect excuse.

"Thank you," I said. "But I think I need a break for a few days - no pack, no . . ." I let my voice drift off. I couldn't tell him I needed space from him when it wasn't true. Even over the phone he might pick up the lie. I wished he was here. He had a way of making things black-and-white. Of course, that meant that Samuel should be killed for the good of the wolves. Sometimes gray is the color I'm stuck with.

"You need some distance from the pack - and me," Adam said. "I can understand that." There was a small pause. "I won't leave you without protection."

I looked down. "Samuel's off for a couple of days." I needed to call before heading to work and get him time off, but that didn't change the fact that he wasn't going to be at work for the next couple of days. The wreck made a convenient excuse. "I'll keep him with me."

"All right." There was an awkward pause, and Adam said, "I'm sorry, Mercy. I should have noticed there was something wrong." He swallowed. "When my ex-wife decided I'd done something she didn't like, she'd give me the silent treatment. When you did it . . . it threw me."

"I think that was the point someone was aiming for," I said dryly, and he laughed.

"Yeah. I didn't stop and consider how unlikely a tactic that was from you," he agreed. "Sneak attacks, guerilla warfare, but not silence."

"Not your fault," I told him, before I bit my lip. If I didn't need to keep him away from Sam, I'd have said more. A lot more, but I needed time for Samuel to fix himself. "I didn't figure it out until we were almost home."