Warren coughed the words “blue dye” into his hand.
Adam’s smile flickered into being, then disappeared. “She has rightfully earned the reputation, that goes back to her days in the Marrok’s pack, of being someone people respected. No one in Bran’s pack wanted to get on her bad side because Mercy always comes out on top. And she has acquitted herself very well in my pack, defending herself from whatever you’ve thrown at her. But today on the bridge, I discovered something.”
He let the pause linger.
“I’m done with it.” All hint of softness was gone from his voice. “I am done with listening to you attack my mate while she is trying to save you. Again. I called this meeting to give notice. If I hear or hear about any of you saying anything to my mate that is in the least bit disrespectful, I will end you. No warnings, no second chances. I will end you.”
And he walked through the aisle left between the chairs and out of the room without looking me in the eyes.
Darryl stood up in the silence and addressed the room. “Adam has authorized both Warren and me to help anyone who wishes to leave this pack in light of this announcement. Do not go to Adam. I assure you that he is quite serious.”
I sat where I was, dumbstruck. On the one hand—that was pretty sexy. On the other—holy cow. He couldn’t do that. I’d just started making real inroads into the general prejudice of the pack. He’d silenced them. My life was going to be hellish, full of people who hated me but couldn’t say anything out in the open so we could hash it out. It would just fester.
“For what it’s worth,” Warren said to me, “if he hadn’t done that, I think Honey would have. And that would have been a disaster.” He looked at my face. “It’ll be okay, kid.”
I opened my mouth. “He can’t do that.”
Ben grinned at me. “Of course he can. This isn’t a democracy, Mercy. That was brilliant.”
I shook my head. “That was a disaster.”
“How so?” asked Mary Jo, who had gotten up and was standing in the queue to get out of the room. “And I mean that respectfully, Mercy.”
She didn’t sound sarcastic, but it lurked in her eyes.
“He can’t dictate how people feel,” I said.
“Some people need to shut their mouths in order to use their brains,” said George. He sounded . . . thoughtful.
I stared at him.
“And I’m beginning to think that I’m one of them,” he said. “I think . . . I think that you’re right. The Tri-Cities is our territory. If we don’t police our territory, then who could blame the fae for thinking we wouldn’t do anything when they sent a troll through downtown? It never occurred to me that the pack wouldn’t help. I saw Darryl up there, and thought, ‘Good, they’ve made it.’ And if I know that—maybe we should make sure that the rest of the world knows it, too. It might stave off incidents like the one we had today.”
He crouched so his head and mine were at an equal height, ignoring the way that meant he blocked the path out of the room.
“Honey was right,” he said. “If it had been Darryl up there on the bridge, promising the sun, moon, and stars, we’d all have backed him. And you not only outrank Darryl, you’ve proven that you deserve that rank to anyone who isn’t an outright idiot. We should have backed you. And now we will.”
“This isn’t a third-world dictatorship,” I said.
“Yes,” said Mary Jo slowly. “Yes, it is, Mercy.” Her voice softened. “It has to be. We are too dangerous. Controlling our wolves is much, much easier when we are a pack, following a leader. This needed to happen a long time ago.”
Warren stayed by me as the room cleared of strangely happy werewolves. When Honey made it to us, she slid into the row of chairs in front. She pulled out one chair and stacked it on its neighbor, then took another and turned it around until she faced us. She sat on this one, crossed her legs at the knee, and waited, bland-faced, for the room to clear. Under her gaze, it cleared a little faster than it had been. Darryl gave her an ironic salute as he passed, which she returned.
When we were the only three left, she said, “Okay. Any ideas on how this petitioning for sanctuary is going to work? Word of it is going to spread, and I expect that this Aiden character isn’t going to be the last. There are a lot of people in hiding from the powerful groups—the fae, the witches, the vampires—who will look upon this as an invitation. Do we take them all? What if the bad guys demand sanctuary?”
“Like Gary,” said Warren in a serious voice.
Gary was my older half brother. My very-much-older half brother who was smitten with Honey and had made no bones about it—he wasn’t, strictly speaking, a bad guy. On the other hand, he wasn’t a poster child for the heavenly choir, either.
Honey flushed, raised her chin, and said, “Like Gary. Are we mediators? A hotel for the night? And how will we deal with expenses?”
“Do you really think that it’s going to get that big?” I said, taken aback. “I was looking upon it more like a line in the sand. A ‘this is our territory and we will defend it’ rather than a clarion call of blanket protection for anyone who wanted to show up.”
She examined me with a small smile. “Who knows?” she said. “I was just trying to distract you from your intention of cornering Adam in a private place and ripping him a new one. I figured it would be easier for me to do it than whatever Warren had planned.”