I expected Samuel to go outside, but he did something else. His power rushed through the house with the force of a firestorm after some idiot opens a door to let oxygen into a room that has been smoldering for hours. The air filled with him, with his scent and power; it popped and crackled until I felt as though I was breathing the sparklers that children play with on the Fourth of July. Discharges of power sparked on my skin until it felt raw, loosening my control of my extremities. I fell helplessly to my knees. My vision began to sparkle, too. Black swirls and bright snapping lights made me drop my head on my knees as I fought to keep conscious.
"Enough, Samuel," said a voice I dimly recognized as Adam's. "I think you made your point, whatever it was."
I left my head on my knees. If Adam was here, everything else could wait until I caught my breath.
Footsteps came down the stairs with the light, quick movements I associated with Adam-he had been doing some rapid healing. I raised my head too soon and had to put it back down. Adam rested his hand on the top of my head, then moved away.
"What was this about?" he asked.
"We've been looking for you for two days, Adam." Darryl's voice sounded a little distorted. "All we had was a message on Elizaveta Arkadyevna's answering machine that she told us was from Mercy-and your wrecked house with three dead werewolves that no one could put names to. You, Jesse, and Mercy were all missing. We've been watching your house, but it was sheer dumb luck that one of the pack saw Mercy riding around with Kyle earlier. When I called Warren, he wouldn't admit you were here, but he didn't say you weren't either, so I called the pack and came over."
I looked up again, and this time the world didn't spin. Darryl and Warren were both kneeling on the floor, near where they'd been fighting when I'd last seen them. I saw the reason for the odd enunciation problem Darryl was having-a nasty cut on his lip was visibly healing.
"I couldn't lie to Darryl," explained Warren. "You were in a healing sleep, and I couldn't wake you up. I couldn't let any of the pack up there while you were vulnerable."
Samuel sat beside me and licked my face, whining softly.
"Ish," I said, thrusting him away. "That's just gross. Stop it, Samuel. Didn't Bran teach you any manners at all?"
It was a deliberate distraction, designed to give us all a chance to decide how to handle the situation without more bloodshed.
"Warren was acting under my orders," said Adam slowly.
"I see," said Darryl, his face becoming carefully expressionless.
"Not against you." Adam waved his hand at chest height- don't feel hurt, the gesture said, it wasn't personal.
"Then who?"
"We don't know," I told him. "There was just something that bothered me."
"Tell them what happened that night," Adam said.
So I did.
To my surprise, when I told them that I'd had a bad feeling about calling in the pack, Darryl just nodded, saying, "How did they know where Adam lived? Or when the meeting was over? How did they know he didn't have an army at his house like some of the Alphas do? Jesse's not stupid. When she heard the sound of the tranq guns firing, she wouldn't have screamed-but they knew where she was anyway."
I thought about that. "There was just the one human they sent up after her-and he went right to her room."
Darryl made a sweeping gesture. "I'm not saying that there are not explanations other than a betrayal by one of the pack-but you made the right choice."
It shouldn't have made me feel good-but I'm as much a sucker for a pat on the back as the next woman.
"Go on, Mercy," said Adam.
So I continued the explanation as succinctly as possible-which meant I left out any details that weren't their business, such as my past relationship with Samuel.
The rest of the pack filtered in while I talked, taking up seating on the floor-moving broken furniture out of the way as necessary. It wasn't the whole pack, but there were ten or fifteen of them.
Auriele sat next to Darryl, her knee just brushing his. She had a nasty bruise on her forehead, and I wondered if she would continue to treat me with the cool courtesy she'd always extended to me-or if she, like the females in Bran's pack, would consider me an enemy from now on.
Warren, I thought, with Adam's support, had just cemented his place in the pack-at least with Darryl, whose body language told the rest of the pack that Warren was not in disgrace. Darryl valued loyalty, I thought, suddenly certain it wasn't Darryl who had betrayed Adam.
Who then? I looked out over the faces, some familiar, some less so; but Adam was a good Alpha, and other than Darryl, there were no wolves dominant enough to be Alphas themselves.
I got to our decision to bring Adam to Warren's, saying only that we thought it would be a better hiding place than his house or mine, and stopped because Darryl was all but vibrating with his need to ask questions.
"Why did they take Jesse?" he asked, as soon as I quit speaking.
"Warren tells me there haven't been any ransom calls," Adam said. He'd begun pacing sometime during my story. I couldn't see any sign he'd ever been hurt, but I suspect some of that was acting; an Alpha never admits weakness in front of the pack. "I've been thinking about it, but I honestly don't know. One of the wolves who came to my house was someone I once knew-thirty years ago. We were both turned at the same time. His experience was... harrowing, because he Changed without help." I saw several of the wolves wince. "He might bear a grudge because of it, but thirty years is a long time to wait if revenge is the only reason for taking Jesse."
"Does he belong to a pack?" Mary Jo asked from the back of the room. Mary Jo was a firefighter with the Kennewick FD. She was small, tough-looking, and complained a lot because she had to pretend to be weaker than all the men on her team. I liked her.