Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson #5)(73)
Author: Patricia Briggs

"Did you get all of that?" he asked. "I wasn’t sure how much made it through."

I looked at his innocent expression. "How much did you get back?"

He gave me wide eyes, then grinned. "I think that we both were getting a bit of a boost from an interested party."

"Who?"

"Zee had no trouble freeing the forest lord from his chains. He’s a charming fellow, by the way, very gracious as well as powerful. She kidnapped him from his own place in northern California about a year, year and a half ago. His wife and family were very glad to hear that he’ll be coming home soon. Daphne, the fairy queen, apparently visited the reservation and decided this would be a good place to roost. She enthralled a nasty witch and used her to grab the forest lord – because she didn’t have enough power to enthrall him."

"You think he helped us?"

"Someone did. I’d just about given up." He looked around at the remnants of my home. "I have a more probable answer, but I’m having a little trouble wrapping my head around it. Have you decided what you are going to do with this yet?"

"It was insured," I told him. "I might as well replace it." Gabriel might need to live somewhere.

He and Zee had kept the shop going for the month I’d been missing. His mother wasn’t happy with his doing that, so he was living at Adam’s house. In the basement – as far from Jesse’s bedroom as Adam could manage.

"Look," said Bran. "Your oak tree didn’t burn down."

"Yeah," I said, pleased. "Scorched a bit, but I think it’ll be okay." I took a step toward it, and my foot caught something and moved it. I thought at first it was a broom handle, but when I bent down to retrieve it, it turned out to be my old friend the walking stick.

"Ah," said Bran. "I wondered where that had gotten off to."

I gave it a thoughtful look. "You’ve seen it?"

"It was sitting on the couch in Adam’s basement," he said. "When I picked it up – suddenly all my efforts bore fruit at last, and I found you among the pack bonds as if you had never been missing."

I gave him a wry smile. "It does seem to show up at interesting moments."

"So," he said, "have you given any thought to raising sheep?"

"Not at the present time," I replied dryly. "No."

We walked a little more in companionable silence.

"I have some photos," Bran said abruptly. "Of Bryan and Evelyn." My werewolf foster family. "Some of your old school pictures, too, if you want them."

"I’d like that," I said.

He looked back toward Adam’s house, and I saw that someone else was headed over.

"Looks like you’ve been missed. I’ll leave you alone." He kissed my forehead and jogged off.

He met Adam at the barbed-wire fence, and Adam said something I couldn’t quite hear that made Bran laugh.

"Hey," I said, as Adam approached me. His response was a blast of warmth that had me blushing.

"Do you have keys to your van?" he asked, his voice a dark caress that gave me goose bumps. He smelled of need and impatience.

"They’re in the van."

"Good," he said, taking my arm and walking briskly toward the pole barn that had survived the fire without a scorch mark. "If I had to go get my truck, someone might notice us leaving. I have keys to Warren’s apartment. He said the guest room has clean sheets."

He stopped at the van. "I need to drive."

Normally, I’d have argued with him just on general principle, but sometimes, especially with Adam so intense that he was ready to explode, it was just better to give Alpha males their way. Without a word, I headed toward the passenger side of the van.

He didn’t speed and he didn’t talk. We made it to Richland without hitting a red light, but there our luck ran out.

"Adam," I said gently, "if you break my steering wheel, we’ll have to walk the rest of the way to Warren’s house."

He loosened his hands but didn’t look at me. I put a hand on his thigh, and it vibrated under my palm.

"If you want to make it to Warren’s," he said, his voice almost guttural, "you’ll have to keep your hands to yourself."

There is something incredibly arousing about being wanted. I pulled my hand back and sucked in a deep breath. "Adam," I said.

The light turned green at last. I had the whimsical thought that my time in Elphame had completely skewed my internal clock, because I could have sworn we were there for hours instead of seconds.

Warren lived in an A house, one of a group of "Alphabet Houses" built during World War II to accommodate the exploding population of nuclear-industry workers in Richland. The one he lived in was still a duplex. Both sides were dark – and the other duplex had a FOR RENT sign on the window.

Adam parked the van and slid out without looking at me. He closed the door with exquisite gentleness that said a lot about his state of mind. I got out and didn’t even bother to worry about whether my prized Vanagon Syncro was locked – which I suppose said equally as much about my state of mind.

Adam unlocked the door of Warren’s apartment and held it open for me. As soon as we were both inside, he closed the door and locked it.

When he turned to face me, his eyes were bright gold and his cheeks were flushed. "If you don’t want this," he told me, as he had since the . . . incident with Tim, "you can say no."

"Race you to the bedroom," I said, and started for the stairs.

He caught my arm in a very careful grip before I took more than two steps. "Running . . . would not be a good idea right now." He was ashamed of his lack of control; maybe someone else would have missed it in his voice. Maybe I would have, too, if it weren’t for the bond between us.

I put my hand over his and patted it. "Okay," I said. "Why don’t you take me to bed?"

I hadn’t been ready for him to grab me and pick me up that fast or I wouldn’t have squeaked.

He froze.

"Sorry," I said. "I’m fine."

He took me at my word and carried me to the stairs. I halfway expected him to run, but instead his pace was deliberate, his step almost heavy. The stairs were narrow and steep, and he was careful not to bang my head or feet.

He set me down just inside the guest bedroom and closed the door. He stood there, his back to me, breathing heavily.

"A month," he said. "And neither Zee nor any of the fae we knew could tell us if we’d ever get you back. Samuel’s woman couldn’t find you – everything you had burned up in the fire. Neither the van nor the Rabbit worked as a close enough tie. She tried to approach me to see if she could use me, but she couldn’t even walk into the same room as me – not half-crazed as I was. Touching me was out of the question. I thought I had lost you."