Fire Touched (Mercy Thompson 9)

That was so unusual as to be almost unheard-of. Outside challenges usually came from lone wolves too dominant to be welcomed into a pack on their own. One of the secrets of Bran’s successful rule was that he tried to keep track of the lone wolves and found places for them to be useful—even building new packs—to accommodate their needs. It didn’t save them all, or even most of them, but it helped.

One Alpha only challenged another when two packs were too close together—or if an Alpha had a personal vendetta against another. Such battles were supposed to be one-on-one, but, historically speaking, unless an Alpha was utterly useless, his pack would fight for him, too. Quite often both Alphas and most of both packs would die in the fight.

“I am aware,” Adam said.

One of the things Bran had done was virtually eliminate fighting between packs. He’d send Charles out at the first hint of real conflict—and none of the werewolves wanted to have Charles land in the middle of their business. If he thought an Alpha was taking liberties without provocation, he was likely to take out that Alpha. He’d done it a couple of times I knew of, and I expected that the werewolves, who had longer memories, would know of other times.

So why was Bran issuing a warning now?

“Make her declaration real,” Bran said in a low voice. “Give us grounds to make some places safe. Let us be heroes as well as monsters.” He looked at me then. “And do not make this into a full-scale war.”

“Unless you can’t help it,” murmured Charles.

“You know what this means,” said Bran.

“I do,” agreed Adam.

The two of them stared at each other for a moment, then Bran said, “I repudiate you and your pack. You are sundered from me and mine.”

Something happened to the pack bonds, a shivery pain slid through them into my head and was gone a moment later. It hit Adam harder; he took a deep breath, and his whole body broke out in a light sweat.

Bran’s eyes caught mine. He started to say something, then shook his head.

The monitor went blank for a moment, then the familiar Skype screen reappeared.

“He had to do that,” Adam said. “Or else there would have been a war between werewolves and the fae. By cutting us off, by making us a rogue pack, he made sure that this stayed a local matter. We should expect that he will get word to the other packs and to the fae immediately, or else there would be no point.”

He waited, then said in a soft voice, “Mercy, he had to do this.”

“Of course he did,” I said, still frozen on Adam’s lap.

He leaned sideways and grabbed his cell phone off his desk. I started to get up, but his arm wrapped around my middle. He hit a button on the phone.

“Yes,” said Darryl.

“We’re on our own,” Adam told him.

“I felt that,” Darryl said, “and you warned us. I’ll let the pack know.”

“Tell them they can leave if they want to,” he said.

Darryl laughed. “Like that will happen. After your performance tonight, you couldn’t pry anyone out of this pack with a crowbar and a bucketful of dynamite, as Warren would say. No worries, we’ve got this.”

Adam disconnected and set the phone back on the desk.

“I suppose,” I said, my voice more wobbly than I liked, “that it’s a good thing you yanked the pack’s chain. If it’s going to be us against the world, we better all be fighting the enemy instead of each other.”

My stomach felt like I’d been kicked. Bran wasn’t my father, wasn’t even my foster father, but he had raised me just the same. “You knew this was going to happen?”

“I thought it might.” Adam relaxed back against his seat and pulled me more tightly against him.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“Not your fault,” he said.

“Uhm.” I considered the progress of events again. “Yes, it is.”

He shook his head. “Nope. If you hadn’t given notice to the fae—what would they do next? I’m not willing to allow them to prey upon our town.” He paused. The Tri-Cities are three towns . . . and a bunch of small towns tucked right up against them. “Towns. Our towns.” He growled, and I made a sympathetic noise. He said, finally, “Our territory.” That sounded right.

Bran might have cut me loose, but Adam would never do that. Adam was mine, and I was his. Sometimes I chafed a little at all the belonging I’d been doing lately: belonging to Adam, to Jesse, to the pack, and having them belong to me in return. Oddly, the responsibilities of taking care of them didn’t bother me at all; only being taken care of brought out my claustrophobic reactions. I had spent most of my life being independent, and it took an effort to have to answer to other people, no matter how much I loved them. Loved him.

Right now, belonging felt a lot better than being alone. The last time Bran had abandoned me, I’d been alone.

“Are you done being mad at me?” Adam asked. He was changing the subject for me, I knew. There was nothing more to be said about Bran.

“I wasn’t really mad at you,” I told him. It wasn’t a lie, because it had been myself I’d really been angry with. “You’d have known if I’d really been mad.”

“For a good time, call—” he said, and I gave a watery laugh and put my forehead against his shoulder—his good shoulder.

The old VW still sat facing the backyard of this house, looking more and more disreputable every day. Once, Adam threatened to have it towed, and Jesse—not me—told him, seriously, that it was a bad idea.