I loved Samuel. Loved him with all my heart. But I had no desire to tie myself to him for the rest of my life. Even if there had been no Adam, I did not feel that way about him.
So why had it taken me so long to admit it?
Because Samuel needed me. In the fifteen years more or less between the day I’d run away from him and last winter when I’d finally seen him again, something in Samuel had broken.
Old werewolves are oddly fragile. Many of them go berserk and have to be killed. Others pine and starve themselves to death—and a starving werewolf is a very dangerous thing.
Samuel still said and did all the right things, but sometimes it seemed to me that he was following a script. As if he’d think, this should bother me or I should care about that and he’d react, but it was a little off or too late. And when I was coyote, her sharper instincts told me that he was not healthy.
I was deathly afraid that if I told him I would not take him for a mate and he believed me, he would go off someplace and die.
Despair and desperation made my response to his kiss a little wild.
I couldn’t lose Samuel.
He pulled away from me, a hint of surprise in his eyes. He was a werewolf after all; doubtless he’d caught some of the grief I felt. I reached up and touched his cheek.
“Sam,” I said.
He mattered to me, and I was going to lose him. Either now, or when I destroyed us both fighting the gentle, thorough care he would surround me with.
His expression had been triumphant despite his surprise, but it faded to something more tender when I said his name. “You know, you are the only one who calls me that—and only when you’re feeling particularly mushy about me,” he murmured. “What are you thinking?”
Samuel is way too smart sometimes.
“Go play, Sam.” I pushed him away. “I’ll be fine.” I hoped that I was right.
“Okay,” he said softly, then ruined it by tossing Tim a smug grin. “We can talk later.” Marking his territory in front of another male.
I turned to Tim with an apologetic smile for Samuel’s behavior that died as I saw the betrayed look on his face. He hid it quickly, but I knew what it was.
Damn it all.
I’d started out with an agenda, but the discussion had made me forget entirely what I was doing. Otherwise I’d have been more careful. It’s not often I got a chance to pull out my history degree and dust it off. But still I should have realized that the discussion had meant a lot more to him than it had to me.
He thought I’d been flirting when I’d just been enjoying myself. And people like Tim, awkward and unlikable by most standards, don’t get flirted with much. They don’t know how to tell when to take it seriously or not.
If I’d been beautiful, maybe I’d have noticed sooner or been more careful—or Tim would have been more guarded. But my mongrel mix hadn’t resulted as nicely for me as it had for Adam’s second Darryl, who was African (his father was a tribesman from Africa) and Chinese to my Anglo-Saxon and Native American. I have my mother’s features, which look a little wrong in the brown and darker brown color scheme of my father.
Tim wasn’t dumb. Like most people who don’t quite fit in, he’d probably learned in middle school that if a beautiful person paid too much attention to you, like as not, there was another motive.
I’m not bad looking, but I’m not beautiful. I can clean up pretty nice, but mostly I don’t bother. Tonight my clothes were clean, but I wasn’t wearing any makeup and hadn’t taken particular care when I braided my hair to keep it out of my face.
And it had to have been obvious I’d been enjoying the conversation—to the point that I’d forgotten that I was supposed to be gathering information about Bright Future.
All this went through my head in the time it took him to clear his face of the hurt and anger I’d seen. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t have a clue on how to get out of this without hurting him—which he didn’t deserve.
I liked him, darn it. Once he got over himself (which took a little effort on my part), he was funny, smart, and willing to concede a point to me without arguing it into the ground—especially when I thought he was more right than wrong. Which made him a better person than I was.
“A bit possessive, isn’t he?” he said. His voice was light, but his eyes were blank.
There was a spill of dry cheese on the table and I played with it a little. “He’s usually not bad, but we’ve known each other a long time. He knows when I’m having fun.” There, I thought, a sop for his ego, if nothing else. “I haven’t had a debate like that since I got out of college.” I could hardly explain that I hadn’t flirted on purpose without embarrassing us both, so that was the closest I could come.
He smiled a little, though it didn’t go to his eyes. “Most of my friends wouldn’t know de Troyes from Malory.”
“Actually, I’ve never read de Troyes.” Probably the most famous of the medieval authors of Arthurian tales. “I took a class in German medieval lit and de Troyes was French.”
He shrugged…then shook his head and took a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get all moody on you. There was this guy I know. We weren’t close or anything, but he was murdered yesterday. You don’t expect someone you know to be murdered like that. Austin brought me here because he thought we both needed to get out.”
“You knew that guy, the one who was a guard at the reservation?” I asked. I’d have to be careful now. I didn’t think that my connection to Zee would have been newsworthy, but I didn’t want to lie either. I didn’t want to hurt him any more than I already had.
He nodded, “Even though he was pretty much a jerk, he didn’t deserve killing.”
“I heard they caught some fae they think did it,” I said. “Pretty scary stuff. It would bother anyone.”
He examined my face, then nodded. “Listen,” he said. “I probably ought to collect Austin and go—it’s almost eleven and he has to leave for work at six tomorrow. But if you are interested, some friends and I are having a meeting Wednesday night at six. Things are apt to be a bit odd this week—we usually met at O’Donnell’s. But we do a lot of discussion about history and folklore. I think you’d enjoy it.” He hesitated and then finished in a bit of a rush. “It’s the local Citizens for a Bright Future chapter.”
I sat back, “I don’t know…”
“We don’t go out and bomb bars, or anything,” he said. “We just talk and write to our congressmen”—he smiled suddenly and it lit up his face—“and our congresswomen. A lot of it is research.”
“Isn’t that a little bit of an odd fit for you?” I asked. “I mean, you know Welsh and, obviously, all sorts of folklore. Most of the people I know like that are—”
“Fairy lovers,” he said matter-of-factly. “They go to Nevada on vacation and hang out at the fae bars and pay fae hookers to make them believe for an hour or two that they aren’t human either.”
I raised my eyebrows. “That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?”
“They’re idiots,” he said. “Have you ever read the original Brothers Grimm? The fae aren’t big-eyed, gentle-souled gardeners or brownies who sacrifice themselves for the children in their care. They live in the forest in gingerbread houses and eat the children they lure in. They entice ships onto rocks and then drown the surviving sailors.”
So, I thought, here was my chance. Was I going to investigate this group and see if they knew anything that would help Zee? Or was I going to back out gracefully and avoid hurting this fragile—and well-informed man.
Zee was my friend and he was going to die unless someone did something. As far as I could tell, I was the only someone who was doing anything at all.
“Those are just stories,” I said with just the right amount of hesitation.
“So is the Bible,” he said solemnly. “So is every history book you read. Those fairy tales were passed down as a warning by people who could neither read nor write. People who wanted their children to unders
tand that the fae are dangerous.”
“There’s never been a case of a fae convicted of hurting any human,” I said, repeating the official line. “Not in all the years since they officially came out.”
“Good lawyers,” he said truthfully. “And suspicious suicides by fae ‘who could no longer bear being held so near cold-iron bars.’”
He was persuasive—because he was right.
“Look,” he said. “The fae don’t love humans. We are nothing to them. Until Christianity and good steel came along, we were short-lived playthings with a tendency to breed too fast. Afterward we were short-lived, dangerous playthings. They have power, Mercy, magic that can do things you wouldn’t believe—but it’s all there in the stories.”
“So why haven’t they killed us?” I asked. It wasn’t really an idle question. I’d wondered about it for a long time. The Gray Lords, according to Zee, were incredibly powerful. If Christianity and iron were such a bane to them, why weren’t we all dead?
“They need us,” he said. “The pure fae do not breed easily, if at all. They need to intermarry in order to keep their race going.” He put both hands on the table. “They hate us for that most of all. They are proud and arrogant and they hate us because they need us. And the minute they don’t need us anymore, they will dispose of us like we dispose of cockroaches and mice.”
We stared at each other—and he could see I believed him because he pulled a small notebook and a pen out of his back pocket and ripped out a sheet of paper.
“We’re holding the meeting at my place on Wednesday. This is the address. I think you ought to come.” He took my hand and put the piece of paper in it.
As his hands folded around mine, I felt Samuel approach. His hand closed on my shoulder.
I nodded at Tim. “Thank you for keeping me company,” I told him. “This was an interesting evening. Thank you.”
Samuel’s hand tightened on my shoulder before he released it completely. He stayed behind me as I walked out of the pizza place. He opened the passenger door of his car for me, then got in the driver’s side.
His silence was unlike him—and it worried me.
I started to say something, but he held up a hand in a mute request for me to be quiet. He didn’t seem angry, which actually surprised me after the display he’d put on for Tim. But he didn’t start the car and drive off either.
“I love you,” he said finally, and not happily.
“I know.” My stomach tightened into knots and I forgot all about Tim and Citizens for a Bright Future. I didn’t want to do this now. I didn’t want to do this ever. “I love you, too.” My voice didn’t sound any happier than his did.
He stretched his neck and I heard the vertebrae crack. “So why aren’t I tearing that little geeky bastard into pieces right now?”
I swallowed. Was this a trick question? Was there a right answer?
“Uhm. You don’t seem too angry,” I suggested.
He hit the dash of his very expensive car so fast that I didn’t even really see his hand move. If his upholstery hadn’t been leather, he’d have cracked it.
I thought about saying something funny, but decided it wasn’t quite the moment. I’ve learned a little something since I was sixteen.
“I guess I was mistaken,” I said. Nope. Haven’t learned a thing.
He turned his head slowly toward me, his eyes hard chips of ice. “Are you laughing at me?”
I put my hand over my mouth, but I couldn’t help it. My shoulders started to shake because I suddenly knew the answer to his question. And that told me why it bothered him that he wasn’t in a killing rage. Like me, Samuel had had a revelation tonight—and he wasn’t happy about it.
“Sorry,” I managed. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”
“What?”
“You had this great plan. You’d weasel your way into my house and carefully seduce me. But you don’t want to seduce me all that much. What you really want to do is cuddle, play, and tease.” I grinned at him, and he must have been able to smell the relief pouring off me. “I’m not the love of your life; I’m your pack—and it’s really ticking you off.”
He said something really crude as he started the car—a nice Old English word.
I giggled and he swore again.
That he didn’t really consider me his mate answered a lot of questions. And it told me that Bran, who was both the Marrok and Samuel’s father, didn’t know everything, even if he and everyone else thought he did. Bran was the one who told me Samuel’s wolf had decided I was his mate. He’d been wrong: I was going to rub his nose in it next time I saw him.
Now I knew why Samuel been able to restrain himself and not attack Adam all these months. I’d been crediting Samuel’s control with a dash of the magic that comes from being more dominant than most other wolves on the planet. The real answer was that I wasn’t Samuel’s mate. And since he was more dominant than Adam, if he didn’t want to fight, it would make it much easier for Adam to hold off.
Samuel didn’t want me any more than I wanted him—not that way. Oh, the physical stuff was there, plenty of spark and fizzle. Which was puzzling.
“Hey, Sam,” I asked. “Why is it, if you don’t want me as a mate, that when you kiss me, I go up in flames?” Why was it that after the first rush of relief was over—I was starting to feel miffed that he didn’t actually want me as a mate?
“If I were human, the heat between us would be enough,” he told me. “Damned wolf feels sorry for you and decided to step down.”
Now that made no sense at all. “Excuse me?”
He looked at me and I realized he was still angry, his eyes glittering with icy fury. Samuel’s wolf has snow-white eyes that are freaking scary in a human face.
“Why are you still angry?”
He pulled over on the shoulder of the highway and stared at the lights of Home Depot. “Look, I know my father spends a lot of time trying to convince the new wolves that the human and wolf are two halves of a whole—but that’s not really true. It is just easier to live with and most of the time it’s so close to being the truth that it doesn’t matter. But we’re different, the wolf and the human. We think differently.”
“Okay,” I said. I could kind of understand that. There were plenty of times when my coyote instincts fought against what I needed to do.
He closed his eyes. “When you were about fourteen and I realized what a gift had been dropped in my lap, I showed you to the wolf and he approved. All I had to do was convince you—and myself.” He turned to look me squarely in the eyes and he reached out and touched my face. “For a true mating, it isn’t necessary for the human half to even like your mate. Look at my father. He despises his mate, but his wolf decided that he had been alone long enough.” He shrugged. “Maybe it was right, because when Charles’s mother died, I thought my father would die right along with her.”
Everyone knew how much Bran had loved his Indian mate. I think that was part of what made Leah, Bran’s current mate, a little crazy.
“So it is the wolf who mates,” I said. “Carrying the man along for the ride whether he wants to or not?”
He smiled. “Not quite that bad—except maybe in my father’s case, though he’s never said anything against Leah. He never would, nor permit anyone else to say anything against her in his hearing either. But we weren’t talking about him.”
“So you set your wolf on me,” I said, “when I was fourteen.”
“Before anyone else could claim you. I was not the only old wolf in my father’s pack. And fourteen was not an uncommon age for marriage in older days. I couldn’t chance a prior claim.” He rolled down the window to let the cooler night air flush the stuffy car. The noise of the traffic zipping past us increased dramatically. “I waited,” he whispered. “I knew you were too young but…” He shook his head. “When you left, it was a just punishment. We both knew it, the wolf and I. But one moon I found myself outside of Portland where the wolf had taken us. The need…we went all the way to T
exas to make sure there was no chance of an accidental meeting. Without distance…I don’t know that I could have let you leave.”
So, Bran had been right about Samuel after all. I couldn’t bear the closed-off look on his face and I put my hand over his.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You shouldn’t be. It wasn’t your fault.” His smile changed to a lopsided grin as his hand gripped mine almost painfully tight. “Usually things work out better. The wolf is patient and adaptable. Mostly he waits until your human half finds someone to love and then he claims her, too. Sometimes years after they marry. I did it backward on purpose and got caught in the backlash. Not your fault. I knew better.”
There’s something really disturbing about finding out how little you really know about something you felt like you were an expert on. I grew up with the wolves—and this was all news to me.
“But your wolf doesn’t want me now?” That came out pretty pathetic sounding. I didn’t need his laugh to tell me so.
“Jerk,” I said, poking him.
“Here I thought you were above all that girl stuff,” he said. “You don’t want me as your mate, Mercy, so why are you miffed that my wolf finally admitted defeat?”
If he’d known how much that last statement told me about how hurt he was that I’d rejected him, I think he’d have bitten off his tongue. Was it better to talk about it—or just let it pass by?
Hey, I may be a mechanic and I may not use makeup very often, but I’m still a girl: it was time to talk it out.
I nudged him. “I love you.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned sideways so he could see me without twisting his neck. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. And you’re hot—and a terrific kisser. And if your father hadn’t interfered, I’d have run away with you all those years ago.”
The smile slid off his face, and I couldn’t tell what he was feeling at all. Not with my eyes or my nose—which is usually a better indicator. Maybe he was feeling as confused as I was.
“But I’m different now, Samuel. I’ve been taking care of myself too long to be happy letting anyone else do it. The girl you knew was sure that you would make a place for her to belong—and you would have.” I had to say this right. “Instead I made a place for myself and the process changed me into who I am now. I’m not the kind of person you’d be happy with, Samuel.”