"I am sorry," I said in a low voice. "I played on your guilt to keep you away."
He leaned against the counter and folded his arms. "You didn't lie, though, did you, Mercy? The pack bothers you, and so do I."
"I just need time to get used to it."
He looked at me - and I squirmed just as I'd seen his daughter do under that look.
"Don't lie to me, Mercy. Not to me. No lies between us."
I rubbed my eyes - I was not in tears. I wasn't. It was just the adrenaline letdown after taking on a gunman with a rogue werewolf at my back.
Adam turned his back to me. I thought it was so I wouldn't see the look on his face. Until he grabbed the counter and broke it in half - sending my cash register and a pile of receipts and book-keeping stuff boiling to the floor.
Oddly, my first reaction to the violence was the dismayed recognition that without Gabriel, it would be my job to figure out how all those papers needed to be reorganized to keep the IRS off my back.
Then Adam howled. An unearthly sound to come out of a man's throat - I'd only heard it once before out of a wolf's. My foster father, Bryan, when he held his wife, his mate's body, in his hands.
I took a step toward him - and Sam was standing between us, his head lowered in readiness.
The door between my office and the garage is steel set in steel. After Sam's entrance, it was also bent and broken, dangling from one hinge. I hadn't heard it go; I'd only been able to hear Adam.
Who had made no sound, I realized. His cry had hit me from a different place altogether, where our bond tied me to him and him to me.
Adam didn't turn around. "Don't be afraid of me," he whispered. "Don't leave me."
No lies between us.
I blew out a breath, took a couple steps back, and flopped in one of the battered chairs that lined the wall, trying, with my casual pose, to defuse the situation. "Adam, I don't have the sense to be afraid of Sam in the state he's in now. I don't know why you think I'd be smart enough to be afraid of you." It would be smarter to be more afraid of a werewolf so upset that he took out a counter Zee had built than of a little paperwork and the IRS.
"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 c**k 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.