Unfortunately, Samuel wasn't himself this evening and Adam had fried our mate bond in his panic when he thought I was trapped in the trailer. I didn't know what that meant in terms of how he would respond to me. He lowered his head and took a step forward, and my time to dither ran out.
"Adam," I said.
His whole body froze.
"Adam?" I stepped away from Ben and Sam. "Adam, it's all right. These are the good guys. They're trying to help - you've been hurt."
I'm fast, and I have good reflexes, and I didn't even see him move. He pinned me back against the doorframe, rising on his poor burnt hind legs until his face and mine were at the same height. The scent of smoke and burning things wrapped around us as his hot breath touched my cheeks. He inhaled, and his whole body began shaking.
He'd really thought I was dead.
"I'm okay," I murmured while I closed my eyes and tilted my chin to expose my throat. "I wasn't in the trailer when it blew."
His nose brushed from my jaw to my collarbone and he let out a low, wheezing cough that seemed to go on forever. When it was finally over, he laid his head on my shoulder and began to change.
It would be safer for everyone if he were human, which was probably why he'd done it. But he'd just been badly hurt - and only just completed a change from human to wolf. To attempt to reverse the shift within minutes was miserably difficult. That he chose to do it anyway made it obvious to me that he was in very bad shape.
He'd never have started changing while he was touching me if he'd been fully aware. The change is agonizing enough in itself; skin-on-skin contact makes it even worse. Add to that his awkward position and the pain Adam was already in because of his burns, and I didn't know what would happen. I slid slowly down the wall, bringing him with me as his skin stretched and the bones moved. Watching a wolf change is not a beautiful thing.
I put my palms flat on the floor, so as not to give in to the temptation to touch him. As much as my head knew more skin contact was the last thing he needed, my body was curiously convinced that I could alleviate the agony of the change.
I looked up at Ben and jerked my chin toward the nurse . . . and the doctor who'd pulled the curtain back to join the fuss out front. Ben gave me a "why me?" look. In return, I glanced at Adam - obviously incapacitated - and then Sam, who was a wolf.
Ben looked up at the sky, invoking God's pity, I supposed. He trudged over, hands cradled in front of his body, to solve the problems he could. I caught Mary Jo's eye and interrupted a look directed at me . . . such a look. As soon as she realized I was looking at her, her face cleared. I couldn't interpret the emotion I'd seen, just that it was very strong.
"Anybody hurt?" asked Ben. When he extends himself beyond his usual nasty personality, people tend to find Ben reassuring. I think it's the nifty British accent and composed appearance - and even with the burns and the charred clothing, he looked somehow more civilized than anyone else.
"No," said the doctor, whose name tag read REX FOURNIER, MD. He looked to be in his late forties. "I surprised him when I opened the curtains." And then in a spirit of fairness seldom seen in terrified people, he said, "He was pretty careful not to hurt anyone, just knocked me aside. If I hadn't stumbled over the stool, I'd have kept my feet."
"He was unconscious when I left," Mary Jo told Ben, half-apologetically. "I came out to see if I could find someone to help him - we'd been here for a while. I didn't realize I'd been away long enough for him to change."
"Not so long," I said. "I saw the ambulance pass us. You can't have been here more than a half hour, and it takes about half of that for him to complete the change. Whose bright idea was it to bring Adam to the hospital in his condition anyway?"
It had been Mary Jo's. I could see it in her face.
"All he needed was the dead flesh peeled off," she said.
A really, really painful procedure - and no painkillers work on werewolves for long. It was such a bad idea that we all stared at her, all of us who knew, anyway - Ben, Sam, and I. Adam was preoccupied with his change.
"I didn't realize how bad it was," she defended herself. "I thought it was just his hands. I didn't see his feet until we were already in the ambulance on the way over here. If it had just been his hands, it would have been okay."
Maybe. Probably.
"I thought you and Samuel were dead," she said. "And that left it my problem as the pack medic. And as medic and as my Alpha's loyal follower, I deemed the hospital the safer option."
She'd just lied.
Not about Adam being safer at the hospital than home. With the recent upheavals, she was probably right that a badly wounded Adam wasn't safe with the pack in his condition. They'd tear him apart and apologize and maybe even feel bad afterward. But that first statement . . .
Maybe she thought we were too overwrought to notice - and Ben was sometimes not as aware of subtle cues as some of the other wolves. But maybe Mary Jo didn't realize that I could tell when she was lying as well as any of the wolves could have.
"You knew we weren't in the house," I said slowly. And then the light dawned about what that meant. "Did Adam send you out to keep watch over me while he met with the others? Did you see us leave?"
She had. It was in her face - and she didn't bother denying it. She might be able to lie to the humans in this room, but not to the rest of us.
"Why didn't you tell him?" asked Ben. "Why didn't you stop him before he went into the fire?"
"Answer him," I said.
She met my eyes for a long count of three before finally dropping them. "I was supposed to follow you if you left. Make sure you didn't get hurt. But you see, I think everyone would be better off if one of the vampires had killed you."
"So you chose to defy Adam's orders because you disagreed with him," said Ben. "He picked you to watch Mercy because he trusted you to take care of business while he dealt with the pack - and you betrayed that trust."
I was grateful that Ben kept talking.
Mary Jo was one of the people in Adam's pack I'd thought was my friend. Not because a debt the fae owed me had kept her from dying a little while ago . . . I suspected that had been a mixed blessing, like most fairy gifts. But we'd spent a lot of hours in each other's company because Adam liked to use her as a guard when he felt I needed one.
Mary Jo wanted me dead. That was what that look had been about.
It was such a shock that I might have missed her answer to Ben's question if she hadn't sounded so defensive.