Fire Touched (11 page)

He let the pause linger.

“I'm done with it.” All hint of softness was gone from his voice. “I am done with listening to you attack my mate while she is trying to save you. Again. I called this meeting to give notice. If I hear or hear about any of you saying anything to my mate that is in the least bit disrespectful, I will end you. No warnings, no second chances. I will end you.”

And he walked through the aisle left between the chairs and out of the room without looking me in the eyes.

Darryl stood up in the silence and addressed the room. “Adam has authorized both Warren and me to help anyone who wishes to leave this pack in light of this announcement. Do not go to Adam. I assure you that he is quite serious.”

I sat where I was, dumbstruck. On the one hand—that was pretty sexy. On the other—holy cow. He couldn't
do
that. I'd just started making real inroads into the general prejudice of the pack. He'd silenced them. My life was going to be hellish, full of people
who hated me but couldn't say anything out in the open so we could hash it out. It would just fester.

“For what it's worth,” Warren said to me, “if he hadn't done that, I think Honey would have. And that would have been a disaster.” He looked at my face. “It'll be okay, kid.”

I opened my mouth. “He can't do that.”

Ben grinned at me. “Of course he can. This isn't a democracy, Mercy. That was brilliant.”

I shook my head. “That was a disaster.”

“How so?” asked Mary Jo, who had gotten up and was standing in the queue to get out of the room. “And I mean that respectfully, Mercy.”

She didn't sound sarcastic, but it lurked in her eyes.

“He can't dictate how people feel,” I said.

“Some people need to shut their mouths in order to use their brains,” said George. He sounded . . . thoughtful.

I stared at him.

“And I'm beginning to think that I'm one of them,” he said. “I think . . . I think that you're right. The Tri-Cities is our territory. If we don't police our territory, then who could blame the fae for thinking we wouldn't do anything when they sent a troll through downtown? It never occurred to me that the pack wouldn't help. I saw Darryl up there, and thought, ‘Good, they've made it.' And if I know that—maybe we should make sure that the rest of the world knows it, too. It might stave off incidents like the one we had today.”

He crouched so his head and mine were at an equal height, ignoring the way that meant he blocked the path out of the room.

“Honey was right,” he said. “If it had been Darryl up there on the bridge, promising the sun, moon, and stars, we'd all have backed him. And you not only outrank Darryl, you've proven that you
deserve that rank to anyone who isn't an outright idiot. We should have backed you. And now we will.”

“This isn't a third-world dictatorship,” I said.

“Yes,” said Mary Jo slowly. “Yes, it is, Mercy.” Her voice softened. “It has to be. We are too dangerous. Controlling our wolves is much, much easier when we are a pack, following a leader. This needed to happen a long time ago.”

Warren stayed by me as the room cleared of strangely happy werewolves. When Honey made it to us, she slid into the row of chairs in front. She pulled out one chair and stacked it on its neighbor, then took another and turned it around until she faced us. She sat on this one, crossed her legs at the knee, and waited, bland-faced, for the room to clear. Under her gaze, it cleared a little faster than it had been. Darryl gave her an ironic salute as he passed, which she returned.

When we were the only three left, she said, “Okay. Any ideas on how this petitioning for sanctuary is going to work? Word of it is going to spread, and I expect that this Aiden character isn't going to be the last. There are a lot of people in hiding from the powerful groups—the fae, the witches, the vampires—who will look upon this as an invitation. Do we take them all? What if the bad guys demand sanctuary?”

“Like Gary,” said Warren in a serious voice.

Gary was my older half brother. My very-much-older half brother who was smitten with Honey and had made no bones about it—he wasn't, strictly speaking, a bad guy. On the other hand, he wasn't a poster child for the heavenly choir, either.

Honey flushed, raised her chin, and said, “Like Gary. Are we mediators? A hotel for the night? And how will we deal with expenses?”

“Do you really think that it's going to get that big?” I said,
taken aback. “I was looking upon it more like a line in the sand. A ‘this is our territory and we will defend it' rather than a clarion call of blanket protection for anyone who wanted to show up.”

She examined me with a small smile. “Who knows?” she said. “I was just trying to distract you from your intention of cornering Adam in a private place and ripping him a new one. I figured it would be easier for me to do it than whatever Warren had planned.”

Warren grinned at her, but when he turned to me, his face was sober. “He had to do it, Mercy. I'm surprised he let it go this long, but he was worried that you would run if he stepped in too soon.”

That startled me. “Did he tell you that?” I asked.

“Today,” Warren said. “Darryl and me both, while he was getting fixed up. And Zack, too, I guess, because Zack also needed repairs. You were a tough hunt for him. He had to all but turn himself inside out not to scare you away.” He looked up at the ceiling, then he looked at Honey. “The rest of this conversation is private, I think. You've distracted her from her panic, thank you.”

Honey nodded her elegant head and left, the foggy shape of her dead husband's ghost followed her. Peter was fading now, I thought with sad satisfaction. It wasn't safe for the living to cling too hard to the dead; it pulled the living in the wrong direction.

She shut the door behind her.

Warren closed his eyes a moment, and I felt when the pack magic slid back into place, locking us into a private space where no one could overhear.

When he opened his eyes, they were yellow, but that faded. “When you found me alone all those years ago and sent me to Adam, I thought that it would be the usual talk—don't get in our way, don't make a stink, and we might not come for you some night and run you out of our territory.”

“That's not Adam,” I said.

He nodded. “No. He's not the usual Alpha at all, is he? For which we are all grateful. He's taking a lot of flak, you know. Not from Bran, but from other places. We are the only pack on the planet that has members who are not werewolves or human mates of werewolves, and even that last is right uncommon.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And you upset the applecart over how our female werewolves are ranked, much to the betterment of their lot everywhere, no matter how much Honey hates it,” he said. “And she hates it less every day. You and Adam, you've broken a lot of traditions between the two of you. You are probably lucky you haven't become targets of other packs. It may not have happened since Bran assumed control—but our history is full of packs who were exterminated when they got uppity.”

“What does that have to do with anything that happened tonight?” I asked, honestly puzzled.

“Most of the pack members are actually pretty happy about a lot of the changes. That one about the women, that is the best one because it allows the pack power structure to lay as it should instead of how the Alpha thinks it best. Makes our bonds tighter, healthier.”

I waited, and he smiled at me. “Well, now, Mercy. Today, you did the right thing—and whatever he said today about not judging that decision, he and I and Darryl talked a lot about it. We all think it was not only the right decision, it was the only decision you could make.” His Texas accent got momentarily thicker. “An' when you held up thet flaming walking stick, thet was ahlmighty somethin'.” He grinned, and his voice went back to normal, which still had a Texas flavor. “But it's going to cause a real whoop-de-do all over
the place, and we cannot afford to have the pack focused on you instead of on business, or some of our people are going to get hurt.”

“The vampires?” I asked. “Adam thinks Marsilia is going to be up in arms because I claimed the Tri-Cities for us?”

“No, ma'am,” said Warren. “Darryl is worried about that, but Adam says, and I reckon he's right, that Marsilia will be pleased at having that little bit to throw at any other vampires who think to come here and challenge her like that one did a while back. Besides, we can handle the vampires. Stefan won't move against you”—he didn't say why not; Warren was one of the few who knew about the bond between Stefan and me—“and that leaves Marsilia herself, and Wulfe. The rest of them aren't old or powerful enough to give Zack a fair fight.”

“So where is the problem?” I asked. “The Gray Lords?”

“Uniting the pack against the fae won't be no trick.” Warren reached up to tip his cowboy hat—and rubbed his ear instead when he realized it was sitting on his knee because we were inside. Warren didn't wear hats inside a building because it was rude. He was also perfectly capable of speaking with good grammar, he just didn't always bother. “The fae are pretty good at making themselves unlikeable—excepting Zee and Tad.”

“Excepting Tad,” I said. “Zee can be as obnoxious as the best of them when he wants to be.” But I was still working through what he said—and I figured it out. “Oh holy wow. Oh wow. Oops.”

Warren smiled. “See, I knew you'd think of it when you got going. But if it helps, Adam thinks that pot was boiled when Darryl and Zack jumped in to face off with the troll.”

“Bran,” I said. “Bran is going to be livid.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said.

“He just got things smoothed over from when Charles took out that monster in Arizona,” I said. Livid wasn't even in the ballpark of what Bran was going to be.

“We figured he'd get the news when it broke on the national front—about twenty minutes ago.”

“National news,” I said.

He tipped his imaginary hat to me. “Yes, ma'am. One of our local reporters was close enough to get your declaration on camera, complete with fiery sigils lit up and down your walking staff.”

I sucked in a breath. This wasn't my fault. At least, it wasn't all my fault. It was the fault of the fae for letting a troll loose in my town.

There was no way we could have left that troll to the police. The troll's appearance was outside my ability to affect—therefore this was not my fault. I felt guilty anyway.

“So what does Bran have to do with Adam's sudden, knuckle-dragging declaration of protection?” I asked.

“Wait a moment,” Warren said. “He wrote it down because he was worried I might mess it up.” He lifted his hip off the chair and dug around in the back pocket of his jeans. “Here it is.” He handed me a three-by-five card that had seen better days. He'd folded it in half to stick it into his pocket—and Adam had bled on it. There was writing on both sides.

In small, neat engineers' block lettering I read:

1.
I've wanted to do this for a long time.

2.
I cannot afford dissent in the pack over anything if we are to square off against Bran. If they are showing disrespect to my mate, they are not committed to me. They need to be loyal to me, that will matter to Bran.

3.
The rest of the packs all over will now have to decide what they are going to do. If they don't follow our example, they are going to appear weak. If they follow our example in this, in making our territories truly our territories, they will follow, will they or not, the other changes that have begun in our pack. For this to happen, we must be united.

4.
Even if Bran eases off, the fae will not. I had a little talk with Zee. They want Aiden. They will not be gentle, and Aiden has done nothing to raise their ire, but that won't save him from torture or worse. I'm not ready to turn someone over for torture just because it would be easier for me. So—here, too, we cannot afford for the pack to be divided.

I turned the card over. The writing on this side was different, more angular, larger, and the pen had dug into the surface of the card.

5.
Most importantly. I love you. And I am done with standing by while my pack thinks it is acceptable to disrespect you. I am done.

After the last “done,” he'd written, “I'm sorry,” but it was crossed out. Evidently he wasn't sorry.

Warren tapped the card. “The back side he wrote after we had to break his shoulder blade a second time. Apparently, all we did the first time was open a hairline fracture into a full break in the wrong place. Which is why we'd brought Zee down. He's better with a hammer than any of us.”

I flinched. “He should have let me be there,” I said.

“He needed an excuse to be strong,” said Warren. “He was afraid that he couldn't hold the illusion of strength if you were there.”

I tucked the card into a front pocket. “You win,” I said. “I won't yell at him about his declaration. I wouldn't have even if you hadn't added that last bit.”

Warren wrapped his long-fingered hand around the back of my neck and pulled me over so he could kiss the top of my head. “Go ahead and yell at him,” he said. “He's tough, he won't mind. Just don't leave, and he'll be good.”

“I wouldn't have left him over this,” I said, feeling insulted. Then I rubbed my face. “It's just . . . Warren, I was raised with werewolves. I was raised among the wolves in the Marrok's pack, where no one was allowed to say anything bad about Bran's mate, Leah. Sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the night and use phrases I learned from Ben and aim them at her because now I can.”

“Adam told me that your experience with Leah would make you madder about Adam's stance,” Warren said. “I've met Leah, and she deserves the worst Ben's potty mouth can offer. Adam knew putting you in Leah's position wasn't going to make you happy.”