“Why is it that all cars are women?" he asked.
"Because they're fussy and demanding," answered Zee.
"Because if they were men, they'd sit around and complain instead of getting the job done," I told him.”
“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.”
“I knew he would never leave me, never let me down-because the man had never abandoned anything in his long life. If I hadn’t taken the gold rope of our bond, I knew Adam would have sat on me and hog-tied me with it. I liked that. A lot.”
“Mine, ... Mine is what she is. ”
“Where does a werewolf sleep? Anywhere he wants to.”
“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.”
“Adam has always had . . . heroic tendencies.”
I touched Adam’s arm. “He’s my hero.”
There was another pause. . .
“That is the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard you say,” Bran said. “Be careful, Adam, or you’ll turn her into a real girl.”
Adam looked at me. “I like her just the way she is, Bran.” And he meant it, greasy overalls, broken fingernails, and all.”
“Christmas garland and a rock?" he said, a smile in his voice. "Why not an ornament?"
"Wolves aren't fragile," I told him. "And they're... stubbon and hard to move.”
“The trick to going wherever you want unchallenged in a hospital is to walk briskly, nod to the people you know, and ignore the ones you don’t. The nod reassures everyone that you are known, the brisk pace that you have a mission and don’t want to talk.”
“Such a small thing to cause so much trouble.”
“My will broke at the sound of his voice, and my head turned
with as much inevitability as a sunflower turning its face to
the sun.”
“There is no cash in battling evil: just the opposite in my experience”
“Heart turned to me, his face thoughtful. “Yesterday morning. Yes, that means that Daphne hadn’t been home for two days before that.” He smiled at me. “You were supposed to be the Alpha’s eye candy.”
Adam laughed.
“What?” I asked him. “You don’t think I’d be good eye candy?” I looked down at my overalls and grease-stained hands. I’d torn another nail to the quick.
“Honey is eye candy,” said Ben apologetically. “You’re . . . just you.”
“Mine,” said Adam, edging between Heart and me. “Mine is what she is.”
“There is something incredibly arousing about being wanted. I pulled my hand back and sucked in a deep breath. “Adam,” I said.”
“You are a sick, sick man,” I told him.
“Thank you,” Ben replied, looking modest.”
“Coffee or orange juice?”
“Water is fine.”
His eyebrows went up.
“Uh-oh,” Auriele said, but she was smiling.
Darryl was not. “Are you implying that my coffee is not the best in four counties? Or my fresh-squeezed orange juice is less than perfect?”
“I'm not going to roll the window down," I told him. "This car doesn't have automatic windows. I'd have to pull over and go around and lower it manually. Besides, it's cold outside, and unlike you, I don't have a fur coat."
He lifted his lip in a mock snarl and put his nose on the dashboard with a thump.
"You're smearing the windshield," I told him.
He looked at me and deliberately ran his nose across his side of the glass.
I rolled my eyes. "Oh, that was mature. The last time I saw someone do something that grown-up was when my little sister was twelve.”
“I thought you were dead.
Stupid. As if I'd die without taking you with me.”
“Kelly looked at the cop, then sighed. “What a cluster. I take it you haven’t been killing young women and leaving their half-eaten bodies in the desert?”
Adam was ticked. I could tell it even if he was looking like a reasonably calm businessman. Adam’s temper was the reason he wasn’t one of Bran’s werewolf poster boys. When angered, he often gave in to impulses he wouldn’t otherwise have given in to.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Adam told Kelly in silky tones. “But I prefer rabbits. Humans taste like pork.” And then he smiled. Kelly took an involuntary step backward.
Tony gave Adam a sharp look. “Let’s not make things worse, if we can help it, gentlemen.”
“When we got to the moron who was sitting in the only path to the stairway, Adam caught my waist and lifted me over before stepping over the man himself.
“Scott?” Adam said as we headed upstairs. “Yeah?”
“Unless someone shoots you, skins you, and throws the results on the floor, I don’t want to see you lying in the walkway again.”
“Yessir!”
“Don’t try threatening an Alpha. They don’t like it.”
“If it looks like a hallway, feels like a hallway, and acts like a hallway—is it important to figure out that it isn’t a hallway?”
“Pack is for comfort when you hurt, I thought, putting my head back down. And for the first time in a long time, maybe the first time ever, I appreciated being a part of one.”
“Hey, Zee,” I said. “I take it that you can fix it, but it’ll be miserable, and you’d rather haul it to the dump and start from scratch.”
“Piece of junk,” groused Zee. “What’s not rusted to pieces is bent. If you took all the good parts and put them in a pile, you could carry them out in your pocket.” There was a little pause. “Even if you only had a small pocket.”
I patted the car. “Don’t you listen to him,” I whispered to it. “You’ll be out of here and back on the road in no time.”
Zee propelled himself all the way under the car so his head stuck out by my feet. “Don’t you promise something you can’t deliver,” he snarled.
I raised my eyebrows, and said in dulcet tones, “Are you telling me you can’t fix it? I’m sorry. I distinctly remember you saying that there is nothing you can’t fix. I must have been mistaken, and it was someone else wearing your mouth.”
He gave a growl that would have done Sam credit, and pushed himself back under again, muttering,“Deine Mutter war ein Cola-Automat!”
“Her mama might have been a pop machine,” I said, responding to one of the remarks I understood even at full Zee-speed. “Your mama . . .” sounds the same in a number of languages.
“But she was a beauty in her day.” I grinned at Gabriel. “We women have to stick together.”
“I've been keeping an eye on Henry throughout the fight. I glanced at him just as he stepped onto the mat.
"Alpha," he called. "I chal—"
He never got the whole word out—because I drew my foster father's SIG and shot him in the throat before he could.
For a split second everyone stared at him, as if they couldn't figure out where all that blood had come from.
"Stop the bleeding." I said. Though I made no move to do it myself. The rat could die for all I cared. "That was a lead bullet. He'll be fine." But he wouldn't be talking—or challenging Adam—for a while. "When he's stable put him in the holding cell where he can't do any more harm."
Adam looked at me. "Trust you to bring a gun into a fist fight." He said with every evidence of admiration. Then he looked at his pack. Our pack. "What she said." He told them.”
“Mine was bright green with gold swirls. Adam's was black.
"You have no imagination," I told him smugly. "It wouldn't hurt if you found a pink ball to bowl with."
"All the pink balls have kid-sized holes in them," he told me. "The black balls are the heaviest."
I opened my mouth, but he shut me up with a kiss. "Not here," he said. "Look next to us."
We were being observed by a boy of about five and a toddler in a frilly pink dress.
I raised my nose in the air. "As if I were going to joke about your ball. How juvenile.”
“Most of the pack would rather have Darryl mad at them than Auriele.”
“I'm a coyote shapeshifter playing in a world of werewolves and vampires--outmatched is an understatement.”
“All Adam needed was an answer, and 'no' would have worked just as well to set the pack back in order. I agreed because...because he's Adam. Mine, whispered a voice in my head, but I was pretty sure it was my own voice.”
“As he was gasping for air he realized something. He was in deep shit. Haley was his life now. His woman. His heart.
He was so screwed.”
“Sometimes, Gin, life leaves you without directions, without guideposts or signs. When this happens, you just have to pick a direction and run like hell.”
“No one actually saw it land, which raised the interesting philosophical point: When millions of tons of angry elephant come spinning through the sky, but there is no one to hear it, does it - philosophically speaking - make a noise?”
“I lock myself in the stall, take out the flask, unscrew it, and attach myself to it like a leech. I’m sitting on the bench, my heart is empty, my head is empty, my soul is empty, gulping down the hard stuff like water. Alive. I got out. The Zone let me out. The damned hag. My lifeblood. Traitorous bitch. Alive. The novices can’t understand this. No one but a stalker can understand. And tears are pouring down my face—maybe from the booze, maybe from something else. I suck the flask dry; I’m wet, the flask is dry. As usual, I need just one more sip. Oh well, we’ll fix that. We can fix anything now. Alive. I light a cigarette and stay seated. I can feel it—I’m coming around.”
“Tavi looked wildly around the courtyard, and when his gaze flicked toward them, his face lit witha ferocious smile. "Uncle Bernard! Uncle Bernard!" he shouted, pointing at Doroga. "He followed me home! Can we keep him?”
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