Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson #5)(9)
Author: Patricia Briggs

I needed to shed my skin, free myself for a little while of the pack and mate bonds that left too many people with access to my head. I could do that: maybe I couldn’t get rid of everything, but I could shed my human skin and run alone, clear my head for just a little bit.

I needed to figure out for certain what had happened tonight. Distance didn’t always provide me with solitude, but it usually worked to weaken the bonds between Adam and me – and also between the pack and me. I needed to leave before whoever he decided to send over to guard me arrived, because they certainly wouldn’t let me run off on my own.

Without bothering to go to my bedroom, I stripped. Setting down the walking stick took more effort, which told me that I’d already convinced myself that it had served to block whoever had been influencing me.

I waited, ready to pick up the walking stick again, but there were no more voices in my head. Either they had lost interest because Adam was gone and they’d succeeded in their efforts. Or else distance was as much of a factor as I believed. Either way, I would leave the stick behind because a coyote carrying such a thing would draw too much attention.

So I slid into my coyote-self with a sigh of relief. I felt instantly safer, more centered, in my four-pawed form. Stupid, because I’d never noticed that changing shape interfered with either my mate bond or pack bond in the least. But I was willing to grab onto anything that made me feel better at this point.

I hopped through the dog door Samuel had installed in my back door and out into the night.

Outside smelled different, better, clearer to me. In my coyote skin, I took in more information than the human me. I could scent the marmot in her nearby den and the bats who nested in the rafters of my garage. The month was half-gone, and the moon was a wide slice that was orange – even to my coyote color-impaired eyes. The dust of the last of harvest was in the air.

And a werewolf in lupine form was approaching.

It was Ben, I thought, which was good. Darryl would have sensed my coyote, but Ben had been raised in London and had lived there until a year and a half ago. He would be easier to fool.

I froze where I stood, resisting the temptation to drop flat or hide. Motion attracts attention, and my fur is colored to blend in with the desert.

Ben didn’t even glance my way, and as soon as he rounded the corner – obviously heading toward my front porch – I took off through the sagebrush and dry grass, off into the desert night.

I was on my way to the river, to a rock beach where I could be alone, when a rabbit broke out of the brush in front of me. And it was only then I realized how hungry I was.

I’d eaten a lot at dinner – there was no reason for me to be hungry. Not just a little hungry. Starving. Something was wrong.

I set that thought aside as I gave chase. I missed that rabbit, but not the next, and I ate him down to the bones. It wasn’t nearly enough. I hunted for another half hour before I found a quail.

I don’t like to kill quail. The way the lone feather sticking up on top bobs in opposition to their heads when they walk makes me smile. And they are silly, without a sporting chance against a coyote, at least not against me. I suppose they can’t be that vulnerable because I’m not the only coyote around, and there are a lot of quail. But I always feel guilty about hunting them.

As I finished my second kill, I planned what I’d do to the person who made me so hungry I had to eat quail.

A werewolf pack can feed off of any of its members, borrowing energy. I wasn’t sure exactly how it worked, though I’d seen it often enough. It’s part of what makes an Alpha wolf more than he was before he took on that mantle.

None of that had ever affected me before I’d become a member of Adam’s pack, so I hadn’t worried about it. No one had been able to get inside my head and make me think that throwing a bowling ball at a toddler was a good idea. Or make me take out my frustration on Adam.

Finished and full, I made it to my final destination without further incident.

I don’t know if anyone owned this little bit of the river; the nearest fence was a hundred yards away, the nearest house a little farther than that. There were a few old beer cans scattered around, and if the weather had been a little bit warmer, I might have run into people.

I climbed on the big rock and tried to feel the pack or Adam. I was alone. Just me, the river, and, far up on the Horse Heaven Hills, the little lights from the windmill farms. I don’t know if it was the distance, or if there was something special about this little bit of ground, but I’d never been able to feel the touch of mate or pack bond here.

Thank goodness.

Only when I was certain Adam couldn’t hear me did I let myself dwell on how creepy it was to have someone else in my head, even Adam, whom I loved. Something I would never, if I could help it, allow Adam to know.

Oddly, because Adam had been a wolf for longer than I was alive, I accepted him as a werewolf more easily than he did himself. Knowing that I was freaked-out by the greatest gift any wolf could give another wouldn’t surprise him (as it did me), but it would hurt him needlessly. I would adjust in time – I didn’t have any choice if I wanted to keep him.

If I had to deal with only the mate bond between Adam and me, it would be easier. But he’d made me pack, too, and when the link worked as it was supposed to, I could feel all of them there, with me. And with that bond, apparently, they could suck energy from me and make me fight with their Alpha.

Alone in my head, it was easy to look back and see how it had happened – a nudge here, a push there. I would do a great deal to keep Adam from being hurt, but not endanger an innocent – and I have never in my life given anyone the silent treatment. Anyone who offends me deserves to hear exactly how they trespassed – or needs to be lulled into a false sense of security before the sneak attack when they aren’t paying attention. But silence had been Adam’s ex-wife’s weapon of choice.

Whoever had worked on me was trying to drive us apart.

So who had it been? The whole pack? Part of the pack? Was it deliberate – or more that the whole pack hated me and was trying to force me away? Most important of all, to me anyway, was: how did I stop it from ever happening again?

There had to be a way – doubtless if a werewolf could influence a pack member as easily as they’d influenced me, Alphas would have much tighter control of their packs than they did. A pack would run more like a cult and less like a bunch of testosterone-laden wild beasts momentarily subdued by the threat of immediate death under their leader’s fangs. That or they’d have killed each other off entirely.

I’d needed Samuel to be home so I could ask him about how things worked. Adam doubtless knew, but I wanted to go into this conversation knowing how to approach him.