Page 41 of Winter Lost

He rustled up one of his T-shirts, soft from wear, and put it on her. He was pretty sure that she had woken up sometime in the process, but she didn’t give him any help. He covered her up and kissed the soft spot between her jawbone and the back of her ear. She made a grumpy noise and rolled over to bury her head in her pillow, leaving her knees folded and her rump sticking up.

She looked like Jesse had when she was a toddler and they’d let her get too tired. After a moment, Mercy rolled onto her side, patted his half of the bed. Finding it empty, she tipped her face until one eye peered at him.

“You need to do Alpha stuff?” she asked, her voice foggy with exhaustion.

“Yes.”

“Got a call from the Prince of Darkness on the way to the pub,” she said.

“I know.”

She blinked at him, her other eye opening for a moment as she tried to read his expression.

He wasn’t sure what she saw, but it seemed to make her happy. “Okay. Didn’t want to lie to you. Tempted, though.”

“I get that,” he said. “Me, too, sometimes.”

Both of her eyes narrowed on him, more alert than they had been. “Anything I need to know?”

“Not tonight,” he told her. “We can talk in the morning.”

“Anyone die?”

“No one you know,” he assured her. “New Mexico business.”

She nodded and closed her eyes. “Gonna sleep now.”

“You do that. I’ll be up when I’m done with my Alpha stuff.”

“Okay,” she said, and her body went limp.

These were the things that he was privileged to see, vulnerabilities his tough-like-Timex mate kept well hidden. She had to be strong. It was a good thing she was.

His grandfather’s voice rang in his head: “A man protects his woman, Adam.”

He and his whole pack had been uprooted from New Mexico to protect her. Bran’s little coyote might have thought she’d been abandoned at sixteen by the pack that had raised her, but the Marrok hadn’t given up responsibility for her. When she’d moved somewhere without a pack to serve the Marrok’s purposes, Bran had given Adam his transfer orders.

Adam had resented that at first. Then he’d been bewildered by it. For nearly a decade he’d lived next door and a few acres away from her, and nothing had happened. For years nothing had happened.

Until it did.

When he first noticed his attraction to Mercy, Adam had mapped their relationship out. He had craved her kindness, her humor, and her body. He’d thought that her toughness and independence were an obstacle he had to overcome to get her to accept him. He had looked after his first wife. He would take care of his mate.

Hah.

On his way out of the bedroom, Adam stopped and looked back. Mercy had burrowed under the covers again until only a lump showed that their bed was occupied.

Thank God Mercy was tough.

He closed the door behind him and took one step down the dark hallway. Then he returned to his bedroom door and placed the flat of his hand against it. Then he leaned his forehead against the varnished wood and closed his eyes, expanding their mate bond.

She was sleeping, dreaming of something only a little worrying. It had to do with Medea—he’d gotten the feel of the cat’s purr. He slid his attention to the pack bonds, listening, for lack of a better word, to the general health and well-being of the pack.

He could feel Mary Jo’s emotional disturbance—and Honey’s, too. More of Honey’s distress than he’d have thought based on what she’d been like before they’d left. But Honey was good at concealing things.

Pack bonds only went so far. Adam couldn’t invade their privacy deeper to find out how much of their distress was due to Ymir’s attack, and how much was other things. Renny. Gary. Some boundaries shouldn’t be crossed.

He stayed there, basking in the power of his pack for a minute. Then he opened himself up to the new thing—the awareness that had begun after Mercy had faced down a troll on the suspension bridge and claimed the Tri-Cities as pack territory. That had been magic; they had all felt it when something happened. At that moment, he’d gained a link to the land his pack claimed for their own. He hadn’t figured out just what it was good for yet—he’d never gotten a warning of trouble from it.