"Adam?"

"Stubborn," he said with an appraising look. "I got bits and pieces from you, though. We don't love you, so you won't take anything from us?" The question in his voice was self-addressed, as if he weren't quite sure of his analysis.

I sat back down on my heels, caught by the accuracy of his reading.

"Instincts drive the wolf… coyote, too, I imagine," he told me after a moment. He looked relaxed, one knee up and the other stretched out just to the side of me. "Truth is without flourishes or manners and runs with a logic all its own. You can't let the pack give without giving in return, and if we don't want your gift…"

I didn't say anything. I didn't understand how the pack worked, but the last part was right. After a bit, he said, "It's inconvenient sometimes to be a part of the pack. When the pack magic is in full swing—like now with the moon close to her zenith—there's no hiding everything from each other all the time like we do as humans. Some things, yes, but we can't chose which ones stay safely secret. Paul knows I'm still angry with him over his attack on Warren, and it makes him cringe—which just makes me angrier because it's not remorse for trying to attack Warren when he was hurt but fear of my anger."

I stared at him.

"It's not all bad," he told me. "It's knowing who they are, what's important to them, what makes them different. What strengths they each contribute to the pack."

He hesitated. "I'm not sure how much you'll get. If I want to, at full moon in wolf form, I can read everyone almost always—that's part of being Alpha. It allows me to use the individuals to build a pack. Most of the pack get bits and pieces, mostly things that concern them or big things." He gave me a little smile. "I didn't know that bringing you into the pack would work at all, you know. I couldn't have done it with a human mate, but you are always an unknown." He looked at me intently. "You knew Mary Jo had been hurt."

I shook my head. "No. I knew someone had been hurt—but I didn't know it was Mary Jo until I saw her."

"Okay," he said, encouraged by my answer. "It shouldn't be bad for you then. Unless you need them, or they need you, the pack will just be… a shield at your back, warmth in the storm. Our mate bond—when it settles down—will probably add a little oddity to it."

"What do you mean 'when it settles down'?" I asked him.

He shrugged. "Hard to explain." He gave me an amused look. "When I was learning how to be a wolf, I asked my teacher what mating felt like. He told me it was different for different couples—and being Alpha adds a twist to it as well."

"So you don't know?" Because that wasn't an answer—and Adam didn't evade questions. He answered or told you he wasn't going to.

"I do now," he said. "Our bond" — he made a gesture with his hand indicating something in the small space in the bathroom that lay between us—"feels to me like a bridge, like the suspension bridge over the Columbia. It has foundations and the cables and all that it needs to be a bridge, but it doesn't span the river yet." He looked at my face and grinned. "I know it sounds stupid, but you asked. Anyway, if all you felt when Mary Jo was dying was that someone was hurt, that you caught the few who don't welcome you as part of our pack is my fault. You felt them through me. On your own, you won't even be aware of it unless certain conditions are met. Things like proximity, how open you are to the pack, and if the moon is full." He grinned. "Or how grumpy you are with them."

"So if I don't feel it, it shouldn't matter if they don't want me?"

He gave me a neutral look. "Of course it matters—but it won't be shoved down your throat every minute of the day. Mostly, I expect you'll know the ones who don't want a coyote in the pack. As Warren knows the wolves who hate what he is more than what he does." Briefly, sorrow lit his eyes for Warren's trials, but he kept speaking. "Just as Darryl knows the wolves who resent being given orders by a black man made uppity by a good education." He smiled, just a little. "You aren't alone, most people are prejudiced about something. But you know, after a while the edges wear down. You know who hated Darryl the most when he joined us, way back when we were still in New Mexico?"

I raised my eyebrows in inquiry.

"Aurielle. She thought he was an arrogant, self-important snob."

"Which he is," I observed. "But he's also smart, quick, and given to small kindnesses when no one is watching."

"So," he nodded. "We are none of us perfect, and as pack, we learn to take these imperfections and make them only a small part of who we are. Let us bring you truly into our shelter, Mercedes. And the wolves who resent you will deal with it as you will deal with the ones you don't like, for whatever reason.

I think, with the healing you have already done on your own, the pack can help stop your panic attacks."

"Ben's rude," I said, considering it.

"See, you already know most of us," Adam said. "And Ben adores you. He doesn't quite know how to deal with it yet. He's not used to liking anyone… and liking a woman…"

"Ish," I said, deadpan.

"Let's try again," he suggested, and put out his hand.

This time when I touched him, all I felt was skin and calluses, no warmth, no magic.

He tilted his head and evaluated me sternly. "It's hard to argue with instinct, even with reason and logic, isn't it? May I knock?"

"What?"

"May I see if I can touch you first? Maybe that'll allow you to open to the pack."

It sounded harmless enough. Warily, I nodded… and I felt him, felt his spirit or something, touch me. It wasn't like when I'd called Stefan. That had been as intimate as talking was—not very much. Adam's touch reminded me more of the presence I felt sometimes in church—but this was unmistakably Adam and not God.

And because it was Adam, I let him in, accepting him into my secret heart. Something settled into place with a rightness that rang in my soul. Then the floodgates opened.

THE NEXT TIME I WAS CONSCIOUS OF ANYTHING REAL, I was back in Adam's lap but on his bedroom floor instead of in the bathroom. A number of the pack surrounded us and stood with their hands linked. My head hurt like the one and only time I'd gotten truly drunk, only much worse.

"We're going to have to work on your filtering skills, Mercy," said Adam, his voice sounding a little rough.

As if that was a signal, the pack broke apart and became individuals again—though I hadn't been aware they were anything else until it was gone. Something stopped, and my head didn't hurt so much.

Uncomfortable at being on the floor when everyone else was on their feet, I rolled forward and tried to use my hands to get leverage so I could stand.

"Not so fast," Samuel murmured. He hadn't been one of the circle, I'd have noticed him, but he pushed his way through to the front of the line. He gave me a hand and pulled until I was on my feet.

"I'm sorry," I told Adam, knowing something bad had happened, but I couldn't quite focus on what it had been.

"Nothing to be sorry for, Mercy," Samuel assured me with a little edge to his voice. "Adam is old enough to know better than to draw his mate into the pack at the same time as he seals your mate bond. Sort of like someone teaching a baby to swim in the ocean. During a tsunami."

Adam hadn't gotten up when I did, and when I looked at him, his face was grayish underneath his tan. He had his eyes closed, and he was sitting as if moving would be very painful. "Not your fault, Mercy. I asked you to open up to me."

"What happened?" I asked him.

Adam opened his eyes, and they were as yellow as I'd ever seen them. "Full-throttle overload," he said.

"Someone probably should call Darryl and Warren and make sure they're all right. They stepped in without notice and helped tuck you back into your own skin."