He gave Mary Jo a look, and she dropped her eyes.
“It’s okay,” I said to Adam, and tried to make it not a lie. “Really.”
I bake when I’m stressed. If I had to make enough chocolate chip cookies to feed Richland while she was here, it would be okay because Adam needed me to be okay with it.
If she tried anything, she would be sorry. Adam was mine. She had thrown him away, thrown Jesse away—and I had snatched them up. Finders keepers.
Maybe she didn’t want them back. Maybe she just needed to be safe. My gut wasn’t convinced, but jealousy isn’t a logical emotion, and I had no reason to be jealous of Christy.
“All right,” Adam said. “All right. You can come.” Then, his voice gentle, he asked, “Do you need money for plane tickets?”
I went back to the dishes and tried not to hear the rest of the conversation. Tried not to hear the concern in Adam’s voice, the softness—and the satisfaction he got from taking care of her. Good Alpha werewolves take care of those around them; it’s part of what makes them Alpha.
I might have been able to ignore it better if all the wolves still in the house hadn’t drifted into the kitchen. They listened to Adam’s finalization of the details that would bring Christy here and snuck occasional, furtive glances my way when they thought I wouldn’t notice.
Auriele took the last cup from my hand. I unplugged the sink and shook the water from my hands before drying them off on my jeans. My hands aren’t my best feature. The hot water had left my skin pruney, and my knuckles were red and swollen. Even after washing dishes, there was still some black grease embedded in my skin and under my nails. Christy’s hands were always beautiful, with French-manicured nails.
Adam hung up the phone and called the travel agent he used to coordinate his not-infrequent business travel: both business business and werewolf business.
“She can stay with Honey and me,” said Mary Jo to me, her voice neutral.
Mary Jo and Honey were the other two female werewolves in the pack. Mary Jo had moved in with Honey when Honey’s mate had been killed a few months ago. Neither of them liked me very much.
Until Mary Jo made the offer of hospitality, I’d been half planning to put Christy up with one of the other pack members because I hadn’t thought it through. I knew that putting Christy in with Mary Jo and Honey would be a mistake.
Adam and I were working hard to increase the pack cohesion, which meant that I was trying very hard not to further alienate either Mary Jo or Honey. I was doing pretty well at keeping our interactions to polite neutrality. If Christy moved in with them, she would use their dislike of me and fan it into a hurricane-force division that would rain down on the pack in a flood of drama.
Once I recognized the power of Christy as a divisive force, I realized that it wasn’t just a problem for my relationship with the pack, but also for Adam’s. Putting Adam’s ex-wife in the same house with Honey and Mary Jo would be stupid because it would force Mary Jo to take Christy’s side on any tension between Christy and Adam or Christy and the pack. The same thing would be true of anyone Christy stayed with.
Christy was going to have to stay here with Adam and me.
“Christy needs to be here, where she’ll feel safe,” said Auriele before I could reply to Mary Jo.
“Uhm,” I said, because I was still reeling under the weight of just how much it was going to suck having her not just here in the Tri-Cities, but here in my home.
“You don’t want her here?” asked Auriele, and for the first time, I realized that Auriele, like Mary Jo, had liked Christy better than she did me. “She’s scared and alone. Don’t be petty, Mercy.”
“Would you want Darryl’s ex staying at your house?” asked Jesse hotly. I hadn’t realized she’d come back downstairs. Her chin was raised as she flung her support my way. I didn’t want her to do that. Christy was her mom—Jesse shouldn’t be trying to choose between us.
“If she needed help, I would,” Auriele snapped. It was easy for her to be certain because Darryl, as far as I knew, didn’t have an ex-wife. “If you don’t want Christy here, Mercy, she is welcome at my house.”
Auriele’s offer was followed up by several others, accompanied by hostile stares aimed at me. Christy had been well liked by most of the pack. She was just the sort of sweet, helpless homemaker that appealed to a bunch of werewolves with too much testosterone.
“Christy will stay here,” I said.
But since Mary Jo and Auriele were arguing hotly about where Christy would be happiest, and the men were paying attention to them, no one had heard me.
“I said”—I stepped between the two women, drawing on Adam’s power to give weight to my words—“Christy will stay here with Adam and me.” Both women dropped their eyes and backed away, but the hostility in Auriele’s face told me that only the Alpha’s authority in my voice had forced her to stop arguing. Mary Jo looked satisfied—I was pretty sure it meant that she thought Christy’s staying here might give Christy a chance to resume her position as Adam’s wife.
Though Adam was still on the phone, my pull on his authority had made him look around to see what was happening in the kitchen, but he didn’t slow his rapid instructions.
“Having her here isn’t a good idea. She’d do okay at Honey and Mary Jo’s.” Jesse sounded almost frantic.
“Christy stays here,” I repeated, though this time I didn’t borrow Adam’s magic to make my point.
“Mercy, I love my mother.” Jesse’s mouth twisted unhappily. “But she’s selfish, and she resents that you took her place here. She’ll cause trouble.”
“Jesse Hauptman,” snapped Auriele. “That’s your mother you are talking about. You show her some respect.”
“Auriele,” I growled. This morning needed a dominance fight between the two of us like it needed a nuclear bomb. But I couldn’t let her dictate to Jesse. “Back off.”
Teeth showing in a hostile smile, Auriele turned her hot gaze on me, yellow stirring in the cappuccino depths of her eyes.
“Leave Jesse alone,” I told her. “You’re overstepping your authority. Jesse is not pack.”
Auriele’s lips whitened, but she backed down. I was right, and she knew it.
“Your mom will feel safer here,” I told Jesse without looking away from Auriele. “And Auriele’s also right when she says we can protect Christy better here.”