“Can you hold him?” asked Samuel.

“Not if he doesn’t want me to,” I told him.

“It’ll be all right,” Adam said. “I won’t hurt her.”

Samuel smiled tightly. “No, I didn’t think you would.”

When Samuel started on Adam’s face with the brush, I had to close my eyes.

“Shh,” Adam comforted me. “It’ll be over soon.”

WARREN ARRIVED NOT LONG AFTER THAT. TOO LATE to help with Adam, but he and Mary Jo held on to Ben while Samuel scrubbed his hands free of black skin and blisters. He hadn’t changed twice and started healing wrong, but it was still bad enough.

Adam had closed his eyes and was resting while I stood with my hands wrapped around his upper arm, one of the places where he hadn’t lost any skin. The connection between us hadn’t reset yet, and I had to rely on my senses to tell me what he felt. It surprised me, given how unhappy I’d been with that bond, that I missed the connection when it was gone. My ears told me that he wasn’t fully asleep, just catnapping.

Ben wasn’t as quiet as Adam had been, but he was obviously doing his best to keep his cries down. Finally, he sank his teeth into Warren’s biceps and dug in.

“Attaboy,” Warren drawled without flinching. “Go ahead and chew some if it helps. Too far from the heart to do me much harm. Dang, but I hate fires. Guns, knives, fangs, and claws are tough—but fires are the worst.”

Adam’s hands looked like raw hamburger, but at least they didn’t look like burnt hamburger—and one of them reached over and closed over my fingers. I tried to let go of him, but he opened his eyes and held on to me.

“Okay, that’s it,” Samuel said, and he stepped back from Ben. “Sit him down on the stool and leave him alone a bit.”

“I brought an ice chest filled with beef roasts,” Warren said. “It’s out in the truck, so we can feed them.”

Samuel jerked his head up. “Your Alpha was in trouble, and you stopped and went grocery shopping?”

Warren smiled with cool eyes while blood dripped to the floor from the arm Ben had gnawed on. “Nope.”

Samuel stared at him—and Warren gazed at the wall beyond him without backing down a bit. He might like Samuel, but Samuel wasn’t his Alpha. He wouldn’t cede the lone wolf the right to question his actions.

I sighed. “Warren. Why do you have an ice chest filled with roast on hand?”

The cowboy turned to me and gave me a wide smile. “Kyle’s idea of a joke. Don’t ask.” A light blush bloomed on his cheekbones. “The freezer and the fridge are already full at Kyle’s house. We put them in the ice chest out in the garage to take back to my apartment, where I have an empty freezer, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet.” He looked toward Samuel. “Bit snappy, aren’t you?”

“He’s waiting for Mercy to start in on him,” said Adam. His voice was faint, but, hey, we all had good hearing. “And Mercy is wondering if she should do it with all of us listening in or not.”

“What’s Mercy got on you?” asked Warren. When it was obvious Samuel wasn’t going to answer, Warren looked at me.

I was watching Samuel.

“I just can’t do it any longer,” he said, finally. “It’s better to go now, before I hurt someone.”

I was too tired to put up with his garbage. “The hell you can’t. ‘Do not go gentle into that good night,’ Samuel. ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’ ” He’d helped me memorize that poem when I was in high school. I knew he’d remember.

“ ‘Life’s but a walking shadow,’ Mercy, ‘a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.’ ” He countered my Dylan Thomas with Shakespeare, spoken with as much weary bleakness as any stage actor ever managed. “ ‘It is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying . . .nothing .’ ” He said the last word with a bite of bitterness.

I was so angry I could have hit him. Instead, I clapped my hands in mock appreciation.

“Very moving,” I said. “And stupid. Macbeth killed his overlord and followed his ambition, bringing misery and death to everyone involved. Your life is worth more, I think, than his was. More to me—and to every patient who crosses your path. Tonight, it was Adam and Ben.”

“Count me in on that,” said Warren. He might not have been in on the cause of the conversation, but any wolf would have caught the gist of what we were talking about. “If you hadn’t been here when that demon got ahold of me not so long ago, I’d be dead.”

Samuel’s reaction was not what I expected. He ducked his head and snarled at Warren, “I am not responsible for you.”

“Yes, you are,” said Adam, opening his eyes.

“That chap your hide?” suggested Warren gently. He shrugged. “People die. I know that; you know that. Even wolves like us die. Fewer people die when you are around. Those are the facts. Being upset about them don’t make them false.”

Samuel stalked away from us all. There wasn’t much room to get away, though, and he stopped with his head down. “I was hoping this could be easier, Mercy. But I forgot—you don’t do easy.” He turned around and met my eyes. When he spoke again, it was in that gentle patronizing tone I thought I’d cured him of a long time ago. “You can’t save me, Mercy. Not when I don’t want to be saved.”

“Samuel,” said Adam in a demanding tone, much stronger than his condition allowed. He raised himself up on his elbows and stared at the other wolf.

Samuel met Adam’s eyes . . . and I saw shock in his face for just an instant before he began to shift to wolf. It was a dirty trick, something Alphas—strong Alphas—could do, forcing the change on another wolf. I suspected that if Adam hadn’t caught Samuel by surprise, it would never have worked. Adam held Samuel’s gaze while we waited with bated breath. Fifteen minutes is a long time to hold still. And at the end of it, Samuel was gone, leaving the white-eyed wolf in his place. The wolf smiled at Adam.

“Might not be able to save you, old son,” Adam said, lying back again and closing his eyes. “But I can buy us a little time to kick you in the butt hard enough you stop thinking about ‘tomorrow and tomorrow’ and start thinking about how much your butt hurts.”

“Sometimes,” said Warren, “it’s real easy to see you were in the military, boss.”

“Butt kicking being part and parcel of the service, both on the giving and receiving end,” agreed Adam, without opening his eyes.

Mary Jo had been staring at Sam. “His wolf is in control,” she said, horrified.

“Has been for a couple of days,” agreed Adam. “No bodies yet.”

He didn’t know about the fae at the bookstore . . . but I wasn’t sure the fae counted. It had been a defensive killing rather than an uncontrolled killing spree, though Sam had nearly taken me as dessert afterward.

Sam met my eyes thoughtfully, and I realized that he seemed . . . different, more expressive, than he had in Phin’s bookstore—just as I was used to seeing Samuel’s wolf. I’d thought he was getting more aggressive earlier, but I could see that he’d also been becoming . . . less Samuel, even less Sam. Our little disaster might have bought us a little more time.

“Ah take it that the Marrok does not know about Samuel?” Warren broke the silence, sounding very cowboy, very laid-back—which was usually a sign that he wasn’t.

“Sort of,” I said. “I told him he didn’t want to know yet, and he believed me. But only on the condition that I’d talk to Charles. According to Charles, the good news is that if Samuel’s wolf was more independent of him, he’d have started causing mayhem right away. Bad news is that if we don’t get Samuel out of his funk soon, his wolf is going to fade, too.” As he had been doing. “And we’ll be left with a dead Samuel anyway, but only after a bonus of lots of other dead bodies.”

“A regular Vikin’ funeral,” commented Warren.

Mary Jo gave him a sharp look, which he returned.