A FULL TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER, I WOKE UP NAKED in sheets that felt like silk and with the smell of my mate all around me. I sat up and rubbed my face, careful of the cheek that was sore. The shower was running.
Libor had offered sleeping space in his bakery, but we’d gone to a hotel. Adam had wanted me alone, and I wasn’t arguing.
For the first time in forever, I wasn’t exhausted and alone.
I walked naked into the bathroom. The shower was clear glass, and Adam had his back to me. I leaned against the doorframe and smiled.
“You going to watch my butt all day, or are you going to join me?” asked my mate.
“What if I had said I was going to watch your butt all day?” I asked curiously as I opened the door and stepped into the hot water.
“I’ve been considering belly-dancing lessons,” he told me in a serious voice. His arms were tight around me, and he pulled me hard into him. “It would have given you something to watch. But I’m not sure if I could hold my head up around other Alpha werewolves if I did.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, the cells of my body both soothed and energized by the touch of his skin. “I know how much you worry about what other Alpha werewolves might think of you.”
We made love under the water. He kissed my bruises and I kissed the healing slice over his shoulder. We said the kinds of things that wouldn’t make any sense to anyone else. And when he was buried inside of me, his breath rough and his skin hot, that’s when I knew I was home.
—
WE FLEW OUT OF PRAGUE THREE DAYS LATER. IT GAVE us time to do the diplomacy things that Adam pretends he isn’t any good at. Bran stayed on the plane. With me safe, he didn’t want to risk anyone’s knowing he was there, because that would invite all sorts of random attacks of opportunity (Adam’s words). Libor knew but had, for his own reasons, decided to keep his own counsel. I found out later that Bran had coerced Zack into calling Libor to request that his father take good care of me. I also found out that Adam had done the same thing—all of this before Libor had met me in the garden and made me bargain with him. Coyote would like Libor.
Bonarata was charming, but I couldn’t forget or forgive him for Lenka. Honey stayed away from him, and I noticed that Libor kept Jitka and the other female werewolves in his pack away from the vampire, too.
Elizaveta was remaining in Europe, a guest of Bonarata’s, for a full month. He was paying her to remove his addiction to werewolf blood and to do all the things that Mary had once done for his seethe. He was going to try to hire her away from us, Adam said, but he hadn’t sounded worried. She would come home—a lot wealthier than when she’d left.
Marsilia had pursed her lips when Adam had told us what Elizaveta intended.
“It won’t work in the long run,” she said. “Addicts have to want to be clean. As long as Jacob thinks that it gives him more power, he won’t quit.”
When she spoke of Bonarata, she didn’t do it the way she used to. There had been so much energy wound up in her voice, but now that spring had worn down. He was someone she had once known well, but now was an acquaintance.
Bonarata was staying at Kocourek’s seethe, helping him rebuild. I didn’t think too hard about what that meant. Kocourek had pulled me aside and asked me not to tell anyone about how Mary had managed to create vampires so much faster.
“With her and the other vampires dead,” Kocourek said, “no one knows what she managed except for you, me, and my people. It is better that way, no?”
“Agreed,” I assured him. But part of me couldn’t help but think of that saying about how two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.
Adam and I spent two days playing tourists. We explored the castle complex, which included a cathedral and a church nearly as old as I think Bran is, and walked through the streets of Old Town. Adam bought me an amber necklace and matching earrings. I found an antique crystal goblet with the figure of a wolf on it.
—
ADAM AND I WERE CUDDLED UP WATCHING A MOVIE in one of the meeting rooms in the jet when Bran came in bearing a bowl of ice with three soda cans buried deep. He closed the door behind him, set the bowl on the floor, and watched the movie with us for about ten minutes before I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Matt Smith?” I said. “Really? You are not the Doctor, Bran. At your age, it is important to keep a lookout for excessive hubris.”
“Thank you,” he said. He took a drink of his soda. “Your mother put you in my arms when you were less than three months old. I knew that I had no room in my life for such a fragile thing. I gave you to the best man for the job.”
“Bryan was amazing,” I told him, wondering what his point was.
Bran nodded. “Leah would have killed you if I had kept you.”
“She almost killed me anyway,” I said dryly. Bran’s wife and I had a hate-hate relationship that worked quite well for both of us.
“And yet,” Bran said softly, “you were mine from the day I first held you. No matter how hard I fought it. It isn’t safe to be in my family, Mercy. And you were this fragile creature who put herself in the path of destruction on a daily basis.”
He had abandoned me twice. First when he sent me away because Samuel wanted me. Samuel was nearly as old as Bran, who is older than dirt, and I’d been sixteen. Bran could have sent Samuel away—but Samuel was his son, and I was only an annoying stray. It had taken an Adam to make me trust people again. The second time Bran had abandoned me was worse, because it was the second time. He’d cut his ties to my pack, for all the right reasons—and it had felt just as bad as it had when I was sixteen, only I felt stupider.
And then he’d risked everything he believed in—because if Bonarata had known who Matt Smith really was, all hell would have broken loose—to help Adam rescue me. He’d risked war between the werewolves and the vampires to keep me safe.
Carefully I said, “Thank you for coming after me.”
“You rescued yourself,” he said. “I should have stayed home.”
Adam laughed. “I’d have been in trouble if you hadn’t been there. And why do you think Libor was so cooperative? If it had just been me, we’d have had to fight it out before he agreed to go hunt down Mary’s seethe—I know his type.”
I sat up and looked at Bran while my body was warmed by Adam. “What did you do to Zack that made his father hate you so much?” I paused. “I think his birth name is Radim, right?”
“Zack?” said Adam.
Bran made a Bran sound. “Radim. Poor Radim. I can’t tell you the details. Let’s just say that being a submissive in Libor’s pack would not be something I’d wish on my worst enemy. Particularly if, as in Radim’s case, he was Libor’s son.” He tapped a finger on the top of his empty soda can. “I might have kidnapped him,” he said finally.
“Okay,” I said, and settled back against Adam.
“No wonder Zack doesn’t like you,” Adam said.
“That’s a different story,” Bran said. “You’ll have to ask him.”
We watched the rest of the movie without talking. When it was over, Bran said, “I love you.”
I said, “I know.” Adam nudged me with his shoulder, and I laughed. “I love you, too.”
—
WE TURNED DOWN OUR STREET JUST AFTER DARK. THAT made it easy to see the flashing lights of the fire department trucks. Adam didn’t say anything, but he put his foot down on the gas pedal.
We parked on the lawn to avoid blocking the driveway for the fire trucks. The garage roof was a blackened ruin, and there was at least one wall that was a burned wreck. The whole house and yard were soggy with water. I could smell char and burnt things, but I couldn’t see anything burning. People—werewolves and firemen for the most part—were wandering all over the place.
In the bustle and hum, no one noticed us except Aiden, because everyone else was focused on the garage.
He had his arms crossed and a militant expression on his face as he marched up to us.