Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson 7)

We went on like that. Him touching a cut, a bruise, a bump, and I'd tell him what happened.

When he was finished, he put his forehead on my shoulder and pulled me hard against him. "You'll be the death of me," he told me. "I could wish you less bold, less brave - less driven by right and wrong."

"Too bad for you," I commiserated. "I know it's rough. My husband tried to kill himself to save the pack, you know. And earlier today, he faced down a fae he knew nothing about - and some of the fae are forces of nature."

"My wife was going to fight him," explained Adam. "I had to protect him from that."

I laughed.

"You know what Jesse's mother would have done if the feds came and took the pack while she was my wife?" he asked.

"Filed for divorce," I hypothesized.

It was his turn to laugh. "Point to you. And then she would go to everyone she knew and tell them how awful her life was, how people expected too much of her. Do you know what my second wife did?"

"Got beaten up and ran in circles mostly while you rescued yourself," I told him.

"She cared for the pack that was left," he said. "She got my child to safety. She got word to Bran - who sent help. She stepped between my child and those who would harm her."

I snorted. "Sounds like a paragon."

"She saved my life and gave me strength to save the rest of the pack." He heaved a sigh and pulled back so he could look at me. "And I have this urge to turn you over my knee and bruise your butt so that you do exactly what my first wife did."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "You ever lay a hand on me and you better never go to sleep again."

He laughed, sat down on the carpeted floor more as though he just couldn't stand up anymore than as if he'd actually made the decision to sit, and laughed some more. He was very, very tired - but he had just threatened to spank me, so he got no sympathy from me. I folded my arms.

He wiped his eyes with his thumb and looked up at me. His laughter had died altogether. "You don't know how fragile you are, Mercy. The last time we got into trouble, you spent months in a wheelchair. You fight as long and as hard as any werewolf, without any of the weapons we've been given. You are smart. You are careful. And you've been very, very lucky. And that scares me more than any spriggand carrying one of Zee's swords or a Cantrip zealot armed with silver. Luck runs out."

"I tell you what," I said, sitting beside him and biting down the urge to feed him the line he'd given me: did you think I'd die of old age? I hadn't found it funny at the time and didn't think that he would, either. "Think of me as Coyote's daughter, if that helps you. Coyote is lucky."

Adam shook his head. "No, Mercy. Coyote isn't lucky. Coyote is rash, and everyone around him dies - including him. But when the sun rises, he's all better and he goes out to look for new friends. Because Coyote is immortal." And you are not. He didn't say it, but we both heard it.

I tapped on the floor and then leaned forward. Time for a distraction. "This coyote is all better right now. Are you and I going to be friends, wolf?"

He canted his head and touched my chin with his hand. "I don't know. Are you going to keep doing your best to get yourself killed?"

It hadn't been I who had been trying to commit suicide - I hadn't realized I was still mad at him about that. I turned my head and nipped his finger. I'd meant it as chastisement, but he didn't take it that way. Gold lit his eyes with fire, and he left his finger where it was.

"I guess so," he said, sounding resigned, but his lips were soft on mine.

Both of us dozed a bit afterward, not really asleep but too content to get up. I buried my nose under his ear, where his scent could wrap around me. I licked tenderly at the warm skin of his neck.

"Peter is dead," he told me suddenly.

I put my weight on his chest, so he wouldn't feel so alone. "Yes."

"It was my job to protect him."

"The average werewolf lives ten years after he is changed," I reminded Adam. "A human has seventy years or so upon the earth before his time is done. Peter was older than that, four times older than you are. His was not a short life, and his death was quick." It wasn't enough, and I knew it. But it would count for something later, when his death wasn't so ... near.

"My fault," Adam said. Someone who didn't know him would have thought his voice was calm. "There were not so many of them. If I had attacked them when they came to take the pack ..."

"You thought they were feds," I said. He knew all of this, but if he needed to have me say it again, then I would. "If werewolves start killing federal agents, soon there won't be any werewolves. It was the right thing to do. I was there when Peter was killed, and it could have been any one of you. Jones had decided to kill someone, and nothing would have stopped him."

"Jones is dead." But his body was relaxing underneath me. Adam wasn't stupid. This wasn't the first time bad things happened that he couldn't control.

"I'm not surprised."

He huffed a laugh. "I didn't kill him."

I lifted my head so I could see his face. "That does surprise me."

"I killed the rest of them and let Honey kill Jones." He watched my face closely. He'd hidden what he was from his first wife, who had been entirely human, and she'd still run away from what little she'd glimpsed.

"Good," I said. "That way, I won't have to."

He laughed again, and his body softened as much as it ever did - there just wasn't much soft about Adam. "I love you," he said.

"I know," I told him seriously. "How could you help it?"

He laughed again and rolled over until I was on the bottom, and flexed his hips against mine. "I tried," he whispered in my ear. "But it didn't work."

I breathed into his ear for the pleasure of feeling him shiver against me. "Of course not." He smelled like home, like safety, like love. "Of course not."

"I promise I won't spank you," he told me, his voice rough and low as he added, "not unless you ask me to."

I let him feel my laugh against his shoulder. "That's because you aren't genuinely suicidal."

We loved again then, the short nap of the rug soft under my skin and the warmth of him surrounding me.

Afterward, he fell asleep while he was eating, between one bite and the next, like a toddler. I don't think that he had slept since the pack was taken. He didn't even stir when I pulled away from him to go put my clothes on.