Luckily for all of them, my sense of duty and honor was more flexible.

I got out of the car and turned in a slow circle. I caught Ben’s scent, fading. Otherwise, we were alone with the more mundane creatures of the night: bats, mice, and mosquitoes. The light was on in Adam’s bedroom, but it went dark as I was watching. Tomorrow, I’d need to come up with a better place for Sam.

Or a good reason to avoid the pack.

I opened the back door of the Rabbit, keeping it between Sam and me in case he came out of the change in a bad mood. The pain of the change does not make for a happy wolf—and Sam was already hurt when he started. But he seemed okay. When he hopped out, he waited politely for me to close up the car, then followed me to the door.

He slept on the foot of my bed. When I suggested he might be more comfortable in his room, he regarded me steadily with ice-colored eyes.

Where does a werewolf sleep? Anywhere he wants to.

I thought it would bother me, thought it would scare me. It ought to have bothered me. But somehow I couldn’t work up the energy to be too worried about the big wolf curled up on my feet. It was Sam, after all.

MY DAY STARTED OUT EARLY DESPITE MY LATE NIGHT.

I woke up to the sound of Sam’s stomach growling. Keeping him fed had attained a new priority level, so I bounced up and cooked him breakfast.

And then, because cooking is something I do when I’m upset or nervous—and because it sometimes helps me think, especially if the cooking involves sugar—I indulged myself with a spate of cookie baking. I made a double batch of peanut butter cookies, and while they were in the oven, I made chocolate chip, for good measure.

Sam sat under the table, where he was out of my way, and watched me. I fed him a couple of spoonfuls of dough even though he’d eaten several pounds of bacon and a dozen eggs. He had shared the eggs with my cat, Medea. Maybe that was why he was still hungry. I fed him some of the baked cookies.

I was in the middle of putting cookies into baggies when Adam called.

“Mercy,” he said. His voice was fuzzy with fatigue, his tone flat. “I saw the light was on. Ben told me what you said. I can help you with that.”

Usually, I follow Adam’s conversations just fine, but I’d had less than three hours of sleep. And I was preoccupied with Samuel, which he could not know anything about. I rubbed my nose. Ben. Oh. Adam was talking about how the pack had screwed up our date. Right.

I had to keep Adam away. Just until I figured out some brilliant plan to keep Samuel alive . . . And here before me was the perfect excuse.

“Thank you,” I said. “But I think I need a break for a few days—no pack, no . . .” I let my voice drift off. I couldn’t tell him I needed space from him when it wasn’t true. Even over the phone he might pick up the lie. I wished he was here. He had a way of making things black-and-white. Of course, that meant that Samuel should be killed for the good of the wolves. Sometimes gray is the color I’m stuck with.

“You need some distance from the pack—and me,” Adam said. “I can understand that.” There was a small pause. “I won’t leave you without protection.”

I looked down. “Samuel’s off for a couple of days.” I needed to call before heading to work and get him time off, but that didn’t change the fact that he wasn’t going to be at work for the next couple of days. The wreck made a convenient excuse. “I’ll keep him with me.”

“All right.” There was an awkward pause, and Adam said, “I’m sorry, Mercy. I should have noticed there was something wrong.” He swallowed. “When my ex-wife decided I’d done something she didn’t like, she’d give me the silent treatment. When you did it . . . it threw me.”

“I think that was the point someone was aiming for,” I said dryly, and he laughed.

“Yeah. I didn’t stop and consider how unlikely a tactic that was from you,” he agreed. “Sneak attacks, guerilla warfare, but not silence.”

“Not your fault,” I told him, before I bit my lip. If I didn’t need to keep him away from Sam, I’d have said more. A lot more, but I needed time for Samuel to fix himself. “I didn’t figure it out until we were almost home.”

“If I’d realized something was up while it was still happening, I could have found out who it was,” said Adam, a growl in his voice. He took a deep breath and let it out. When he spoke again, his voice was calmer. “Samuel will know how to stop them, too. While he’s escorting you around, why don’t you ask him to teach you how to protect yourself? Even when it’s not deliberate—” He had to stop again. “The needs and desires of the pack can influence you quite a bit. It’s not too hard to block if you know how. Samuel can show you.”

I looked at the white wolf sprawled out on the kitchen floor with Medea cleaning his face. Sam looked back at me with pale eyes ringed in black.

“I’ll ask him,” I promised.

“See you,” he said, but continued in a rush. “Is Tuesday too soon?”

It was Saturday. If Samuel wasn’t better by Tuesday, I could cancel. “Tuesday would be really good.”

He hung up, and I asked Sam, “Can you teach me how to keep the pack out of my head?”

He made a sad noise.

“Not without being able to talk,” I agreed. “But I promised Adam I’d ask.” So I had three days to fix Samuel. And I felt like a traitor for . . . I hadn’t really lied to Adam, had I? Raised among werewolves, who are living lie detectors, I’d long ago learned to lie with the truth nearly as well as a fae.

Maybe I had time to make brownies, too.

My cell phone rang, and I almost just answered it, assuming it was Adam. Some instinct of self-preservation had me hesitate and glance at the number: Bran’s.

“The Marrok is calling,” I told Samuel. “Think he’ll wait three days? Me either.” But I could delay him a little by not answering the phone. “Let’s go work on some cars.”

SAM SAT IN THE PASSENGER SEAT AND GAVE ME A sour look. He’d been mad at me since I put his collar on—but the collar was camouflage. It made him look more like a dog. Something domesticated enough for a collar, not a wild animal. Fear brings violence out in the wolves, so the fewer people who are scared of them, the better.

“I’m not going to roll the window down,” I told him. “This car doesn’t have automatic windows. I’d have to pull over and go around and lower it manually. Besides, it’s cold outside, and unlike you, I don’t have a fur coat.”

He lifted his lip in a mock snarl and put his nose down on the dashboard with a thump.

“You’re smearing the windshield,” I told him.

He looked at me and deliberately ran his nose across his side of the glass.

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, that was mature. The last time I saw someone do something that grown-up was when my little sister was twelve.”

AT THE GARAGE, I PARKED NEXT TO ZEE’S TRUCK, AND as soon as I got out of the car, I could hear the distinctive beat of salsa music. I have sensitive ears, so it was probably not loud enough to bother anyone in the little houses scattered among the warehouses and storage units that surrounded the garage. A little figure at the window waved at me.

I’d forgotten.

How could I have forgotten that Sylvia and her kids were going to be cleaning the office? Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have been a problem—Samuel would never hurt a child, but we weren’t dealing with Samuel anymore.

I realized that I’d gotten used to him, that I was still thinking of him as though he was only Samuel with a problem. I’d let myself forget how dangerous he was. Then again, he hadn’t killedme yet.

Maybe if he stayed with me in the garage . . .

I couldn’t risk it.

“Sam,” I told the wolf, who’d followed me out of the car, “there are too many people here. Let’s—”