“Ask Samuel to leave us.”

“Sam?” I asked. He’d heard Adam.

He growled, and Adam returned the favor. With interest.

“Sam,” I said, exasperated. “He’s my mate. He’s not going to hurt me. Go away.”

Sam looked at me, then returned his attention to Adam’s back. I could see that back tighten up as if Adam could feel Sam’s gaze. Maybe he could.

“Why don’t you go see what Zee is up to?” I asked. “You’re not helping here.”

Sam whined. Took a half step toward Adam.

“Sam, please.” I couldn’t stand it if they ended up fighting. Someone would die.

The big white werewolf turned reluctantly and walked stiffly, with frequent pauses to see if Adam had moved at all. Finally, he hopped over the wreckage of the door and was gone.

“Adam?” I asked.

But he didn’t answer. If he’d been human, I’d have bugged him—just to get it over with. I’d hurt him, and I waited to take my punishment. I’d been taught you make your choices and live with the consequences long before I’d first read Immanuel Kant in college.

But he wasn’t human. And just then, if I was any judge, he was fighting his wolf. Being Alpha, being dominant, didn’t make that fight any easier, maybe the opposite. Being stubborn helped—and Adam was well qualified on that front.

Getting Sam to leave helped more. The only other thing I could do to help was to sit quietly and wait while Adam stared at the wreckage he’d made of my office.

For Adam, screwed-up bonding thing or not, I’d wait forever.

“Really?” he asked in a tone I’d never heard from him before. Softer. Vulnerable. Adam didn’t do vulnerable.

“Really what?” I asked.

“Despite the way our bond scares you, despite the way someone in the pack played you, you’d still have me?”

He’d been listening to my thoughts. This time it didn’t bother me.

“Adam,” I told him, “I’d walk barefoot over hot coals for you.”

“You didn’t take advantage of this thing with Samuel as a way of putting distance between us,” he said.

I sucked in a breath. I could see how he might have interpreted it that way. “You know that section of the Bible, where Jesus tells Peter he’ll deny him three times before morning? Peter says, ‘Heck no.’ But sure enough when he’s asked by some people if he’s one of Jesus’ followers, he says he’s not. And after the third time, he hears the cock crow and realizes what he’s done. I feel like Peter right now.”

Adam started laughing. He turned around, and I saw bright gold eyes looking through me the way wolves’ eyes always seem to do. More than that, he’d actually begun to change a little—his jaw was longer, the angle of his cheekbones slightly different. “You’re comparing me to Jesus? Like this?” He used his fingers to motion toward his face. “Don’t you think you’re being a little sacrilegious?”

His voice was bitter.

“No more than I’m Saint Peter,” I told him. “But I had Peter’s ‘what have I done’ moment—only his was instantaneous, and mine took a lot longer. It started when I heard Maia scream while I was working in the garage and continued pretty much up until you talked to Bran and bought Samuel a little more time. Funny how making decisions that seem right at the time . . .”

I shook my head. “Peter probably thought that telling the guy he wasn’t one of Jesus’ followers was the smartest thing to do. Kept him alive, for one. I thought keeping Samuel alive—as he wasn’t raving or killing anyone . . . yet—was a good idea. I thought that telling you I needed a little space was good. Give me some time to wrap my head around having other people rattling around in my mind without hurting you because it scared me silly.”

“What?” asked Adam incredulously.

I bowed my head, and said, “Because it scared me—scares me—silly.”

He shook his head. “Not that part—the keeping it from hurting me part.”

“You don’t like being a werewolf,” I told him. “Oh, you deal with it—but you hate it. You think that it makes you a freak. I didn’t want you to know I had problems with some of the werewolf stuff, too.” I swallowed. “Okay, more problems than just that whole ‘I must control your life because you belong to me’ that most of the werewolves I know have.”

He stared at me with his yellow eyes and elongated face. His mouth was open slightly because his upper and lower jaw no longer quite matched up. I could see the edges of teeth that were sharper and more uneven than they usually were.

“I am a freak, Mercy,” he said, and I snorted.

“Yeah, such a freak,” I agreed. “That’s why I’ve been drooling over you for years even though I’d sworn off werewolves for life after Samuel. I knew that if I told you being a member of the pack and the bonds and all that were bothering me—it would hurt you. And you are already putting up with . . .” I couldn’t wrap my mouth around the ugly word “rape,” so I softened it as I often did. “With the aftermath of Tim. I thought if I gave myself a little time, figured out how to keep the pack from turning me into your ex-wife, and bought Samuel a little extra time as well . . .”

Adam leaned against the wall just inside the door—the wall my counter used to block—and folded his arms across his chest.

“What I’m trying to say,” I told him, “is that I’m sorry. It seemed like a good idea at the time. And, no, I did not engineer this to put some distance between us.”

“You were trying to keep me from being hurt,” he said, still in that odd voice.

“Yes.”

He shook his head slowly—and I noticed that sometime while we’d been talking, he’d lost the wolfish aspect, and his face had returned to normal. Warm brown eyes caught the light from the windows as one side of his mouth quirked up.

“Do you have any idea how much I love you?” he asked.

“Enough to accept my apologies?” I suggested in a small voice.

“Heck no,” he said, and pushed off from the wall, stalking forward.

When he reached me, he put his hands up and touched the sides of my neck with the tips of his fingers—as if I were something fragile.

“No apologies from you,” he told me, his voice soft enough to melt my knees and most of my other parts. “First of all, as I already pointed out—you would make the same choices again, right? So an apology doesn’t work. Secondly, you, being who you are, could have made no other choice. Since I love you, as you are, where you are—it hardly makes sense for me to kick about it when you act like yourself. Right?”

“People don’t always see it that way,” I said, stepping into him until our hip bones bumped.

He laughed, a quiet sound that made me happy down to my toes. “Yeah, well, I don’t promise I’ll always be logical about it.” He gave a rueful glance to my broken counter and the cash register on its side. “Especially at first.” His smile dropped away. “I thought you were trying to leave me.”

“I might be dumb,” I told him, putting my nose against his silk tie, “but I’m not that dumb. I’ve gotcha now, and you aren’t getting away.”

His arms tightened almost painfully around me.

“So why didn’t you tell Bran about Samuel?” I asked him. “I was sure you’d have to tell him. Aren’t you bound by blood-sworn oaths?”

“If you’d called me last night and told me what was going on, I’d have called Bran—and shot Samuel myself. But . . . based on what happened this morning, he seems to be holding it together okay. He deserves some time.” His arms, which had loosened a little, pulled me against him even harder. “If something like that happens to me—you call Bran and you stay as far from me as you can get. My wolf is not like Samuel’s.” He gave the counter another look. “If I lose it . . . you just stay away until I’m dead.”