"Unlike vampires, wolves tend to be straightforward critters," I murmured, trying not to feel hurt. Rejection, for a coyote raised by wolves, was nothing new. I'd spent most of my adulthood running from it. I wouldn't have thought that exhaustion and hurt was a recipe for epiphany, but there it was. I'd left my mother and Portland before she could tell me to go. I'd lived alone, stood on my own two feet, because I didn't want to learn to lean on anyone else.

I'd seen my resistance to Adam as a fight for survival, for the right to control my own actions instead of a life spent following orders… because I wanted to obey. The duty that Stefan clung to with awful stubbornness was the life I'd rejected.

What I hadn't seen was that I had been unwilling to put myself in a place where I could be rejected again. My mother had given me to Bran when I was a baby. A gift he returned when I became… inconvenient. At sixteen, I'd moved back in with my mother, who was married to a man I'd never met and had two daughters who hadn't known of my existence until Bran had called my mother to tell her he was sending me home. They had been all that was loving and gracious—but I was a hard person to lie to.

"Mercy?"

"Just a minute," I told Adam, "I'm in the middle of a revelation."

No wonder I hadn't just rolled over at Adam's feet like any sensible person would when courted by a sexy, lovable, reliable man who loved me. If Adam ever rejected me… I felt a low growl rise in my throat.

"You heard her," said Darryl, amused. "We'll have to wait for her revelation. We have a prophet for our Alpha's mate."

I waved at him irritably. Then looked up at Adam, whose eyes were, quite properly, on the road.

"Do you love me?" I asked him, pulse pounding in my ears.

He gave me a curious look. He was wolf, he knew intensity when he heard it. "Yes. Absolutely."

"You'd better," I told him, "or you'll regret it."

I looked over my shoulder at Aurielle, holding the full force of my will close to me. Adam was mine.

Mine.

And I would take up all the burdens he could give me, even as he did the same with mine. It would be an equal sharing. That meant he protected me from the vampires… and I protected him from what problems I could.

I stared at Aurielle, met the predator in her eyes with the one in mine. And after only a few minutes, she dropped her eyes. "Suck it up and deal with it," I told her, and I put my head on Adam's shoulder and fell asleep.

IT WAS, SADLY NOT VERY LONG BEFORE ADAM STOPPED the car. I stayed where I was, half-awake, while Darryl, Aurielle, and Paul got out of the car. We stayed where we were until I heard Darryl's Subaru fire up, and Adam started for home.

"Mercy?"

"Mmm."

"I'd like to take you home with me."

I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and sighed. "Once I go horizontal, I'm going to be out like a light," I told him.

"It's been days" — I tried to remember, but I was too tired—"several at least since I had a good night's sleep." The sun, I noticed, was brightening in the sky.

"That's all right," he said. "I'd just…"

"Yeah, me too." But I shivered a little. It was all very well and good to get hot and heavy over the phone, but this was real. I stayed awake all the way to his house.

AN ALPHA'S HOME IS SELDOM EMPTY—AND WITH THE recent troubles, Adam was keeping a guard there, too. When we came in, we were greeted by Ben, who gave us an offhand salute and trotted back downstairs, where there were a number of guest bedrooms.

Adam escorted me up the stairs with a hand on the small of my back. I was sick-to-my-stomach nervous and found myself taking in deep breaths to remind myself that this was Adam… and all we were going to do was sleep.

Repairs were in progress on the hall bathroom. The door was back up, and mostly the hall wall next to it just needed taping, texturing, and painting. But the white carpet at the top of the stairs was still stained with brown spots of old blood—mine. I'd forgotten about that. Should I offer to have his carpet cleaned? Could blood be cleaned out of a white carpet? And what kind of stupid person puts white carpet in a house frequented by werewolves?

Bolstered by indignation, I took a step into his bedroom and froze. He glanced at my face and pulled a T-shirt out of a drawer and threw it at me. "Why don't you use the bathroom first," he said. "There's a spare toothbrush in the top right-hand drawer."

The bathroom felt safer. I folded my dirty clothes and left them in a small pile on the floor before pulling on his T-shirt. He wasn't much taller than me, but his shoulders were broad, and the sleeves hung down past my elbows. I washed my face around the stitches in my chin, brushed my teeth, then just stood there for a few minutes, gathering courage.

When I opened the door, Adam brushed by and closed the bathroom behind him—pushing me gently into his room to face the bed with its turned-down comforter.

There should be only so much terror you can feel in a night. I should have met my limit and then some. And the fear of something that wasn't going to happen—Adam would never hurt me—shouldn't have been enough to register.

Still, it took every bit of courage I had to crawl into his bed. Once I was there, though, in one of those odd little psychological twists everyone has, the scent of him in the sheets made me feel better. My stomach settled down. I yawned a few times and fell asleep to the sound of Adam's electric razor.

I awoke surrounded by Adam, his scent, his warmth, his breath. I waited for the panic attack that didn't come. Then I relaxed, soaking it up. By the light sneaking in around the heavy blinds, it was late afternoon. I could hear people moving around the house. His sprinklers were on, valiant defenders of his lawn in the never-ending battle against the sun.

Outside, it was probably in the seventies, but his house—like mine since Samuel moved in—had a chill edge to the air that made the warmth surrounding me that much better. Werewolves don't like the heat.

Adam was awake, too.

"So," I said… half-embarrassed, half-aroused, and, just to round things out, half-scared, too. "Are you up for a trial run?"

"A trial run?" he asked, his voice all rumbly with sleep. The sound of it helped a lot with the halves I was feeling—virtually eliminating embarrassed, reducing scared, and pushing aroused up a few notches.

"Well, yes." I couldn't see his face, but I didn't need to. I could feel his willingness to participate in my trial pressed against my backside. "Thing is, I've had different things happen with these stupid panic attacks. If I stop breathing, you could just ignore it. Eventually I start breathing again, or I pass out. But if I throw up…" I let him draw his own conclusions.

"Quite a mood breaker," he observed, his face on the back of my neck as he wrapped an arm more fully around me on top of the covers.

I tapped his arm with my finger, and warned, only half in jest, "Don't laugh at me."

"I wouldn't dream of it. I've heard stories about what happens to people who laugh at you. I like my coffee without salt, please. Tell you what," he said, his voice dropping even lower. "Why don't we just

play for a bit—and see how far it gets? I promise not to be" — amusement fought with other things in his voice—"dismayed if you throw up."

And then he slid down in the bed.

When I flinched, he stopped and asked me about it. I found I couldn't say anything. There are things you don't tell someone you're still trying to impress. There are other things you don't want to remember either. Panic tightened my throat.

"Shh," he said. "Shh." And he kissed me there, where he'd caused me to shy. It was a gentle, caring touch—almost passionless, and moved on to somewhere less… tainted.

But he was a good hunter. Adam isn't patient by nature, but his training was very thorough. He worked his way back to the first bad spot and tried again.