River Marked (11 page)

As if I hadn’t said anything, my mother said, “Any kind of alpha takes some serious managing. Werewolves are controlling bastards—and Alpha werewolves are worse than that. If you don’t watch it, you find that you are doing exactly what they tell you to.”

There was an interesting snap in her voice, and I wondered how often Bran had gotten her to do what he wanted her to. Not as often as he wanted, I’d bet, but evidently more than she was happy about.

“I know how to take care of myself.” I wasn’t worried. Adam was dominant—that was certainly true. But I’d more than proved to myself that I could hold my own against him if I needed to.

“I know you do,” Mom said with satisfaction. “But remember, confrontations aren’t productive with an Alpha. You’ll just lose—or worse, make him lose control.”

“He won’t hurt me, Mom.”

“Of course not,” she said. “But a man like Adam, if he loses control, he’ll feel terrible. He’ll worry that he
might
have hurt you. Making him feel horrible isn’t what you want.” She paused, considered what she said, then modified it. “Unless it is useful for him to feel horrible, of course. Mostly, though, I’ve found that isn’t productive. Men who are miserable can be unpredictable.”

I wondered if my stepfather knew how lucky he was that she felt it was in her best interests that he was happy instead of miserable. Probably he did; he was a smart man.

“I am the queen of hit-and-run,” I told her. “All the satisfaction, none of the danger.”

“Good,” she said. “Just make sure he doesn’t turn you into the good little wife. You’d manage it for a while—you were the ‘good little daughter’ in my house from the time you moved in until you went to college.”

There was a little edge to her voice, as if I’d hurt her—which hadn’t been my intention at all. When I’d left Bran’s pack to live with my mother and stepfather, I’d been sixteen, and they’d already had a family without me. No. They’d had the perfect family without me. I hadn’t wanted to disturb them any more than I could help.

“But if you try that in a marriage,” she continued, “the marriage will self-destruct eventually, and there will be casualties everywhere you look.”

“Adam doesn’t want a good little wife,” I told her.

“Of course not,” she said. But she didn’t know Adam that well, and I figured she was just humoring me, until she kept going. “But he was taught how to be a husband when it was assumed that his wife would be a combination cook/housekeeper/mother who would need him to provide and protect her. He knows in his head and his heart that you are an equal, but his instincts were instilled a long time ago. You are going to have to help him with that and be patient with him.”

My mother would not be nearly as terrifying if she weren’t right so often.

SO INSTEAD OF STICKING AROUND TO FIGHT WITH Adam, I ran to let us both cool off, and to let the hurt of his patronizing remarks ease so I could think. I can’t be patient when I’m mad—unless I’m waiting to get back at someone, and I wasn’t that mad. Not yet.

I ran the first mile or so as fast as I could, then dropped down to a dog-trot.

I couldn’t let him treat me like his first wife. I couldn’t live surrounded by cotton wool.

But he knew that.

I trusted him. What he’d kept from me hadn’t been life threatening. He was right. The fae would not offend the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack. One werewolf was a tough creature—but the real power of the werewolves lay in their packs. I could understand him wanting to make sure our honeymoon was worry-free.

Okay. Okay.

So at what point had our discussion turned into an argument that left us both angry? And left me with an ache in my chest that felt as if he’d punched me instead of snapped at me. He hadn’t even worked up to a good rage, and I felt miserable.

A rabbit bolted right out in front of me. I hadn’t really intended on hunting, but if the stupid things want to present themselves for dinner ... With a fresh turn of speed, I gave chase.

I WAS EATING THE LAST OF THE RABBIT WHEN ADAM showed up in his glorious furred form. Adam is a beautiful man, and his wolf is beautiful, too. He is colored like a Siamese cat, though in bluish grays that deepen to near black.

He dropped a second rabbit at my feet and lay down in front of me, nose on his paws and his ears flattened.

Nothing says you’re sorry like a dead bunny.

I remembered his first wife. Christy had made him apologize a lot, apologize for things that were not his fault. I didn’t want an apology. I wanted to know why we’d just had a fight, and I hadn’t even enjoyed it.

I
liked
to fight with Adam.

He’d been mad first.

I considered that.

Adam got mad for three reasons. The most common, and my personal favorite, was frustration. Usually, when Adam was mad at me, frustration was the spark that set him off. Adam frustrated and angry with me usually started with fireworks and ended in good ways with a lot of adrenaline engendered and spent along the way.

The second was if anyone was trying to harm someone under his protection. We’d established that the fae were probably not planning our deaths or even near-fatal entrapments.

The third was pain—physical or otherwise.

Having established that he wasn’t frustrated and neither I nor anyone else was in any danger—I must have hurt him somehow.

I narrowed my eyes at him. Usually, Adam was pretty straightforward. It was one of my favorite things about him. Figuring out why he’d been mad should have been a lot easier.

He’d tried to protect me, and I objected. We did that all the time, and he seldom got mad unless or until I got hurt.

He’d tried to make sure our wedding and honeymoon were fun. He’d thought that I’d fret about borrowing the van from Uncle Mike but that I’d also have a better time out here than I would have in a more typical honeymoon.

He’d gotten mad when he thought I was going to get mad at him for not telling me about the trailer. It was his belief that I would get mad about it that had hurt him. I wiggled my hips into a more comfortable position and tried to think like Adam—a very smart person poisoned by testosterone.

First—he knew I’d get mad if he kept anything big from me, but that wouldn’t hurt his feelings.

And suddenly I understood what had happened.

I got up and stepped over my kill, then over his. I licked his muzzle—and then shifted back into human.

“You made some assumptions,” I told him. “Take a note: it usually works better if you wait until I do something stupid before getting mad at me.”

Adam stared at me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

“This building a marriage is an ongoing project,” I told him. “And we’ll both make a lot of mistakes along the way. I did worry about borrowing the trailer. But after a half minute’s thought, I knew you’d never borrow anything from any fae without making sure you had a handle on the consequences.” I blew out a huff of air. “You got mad because you thought I wouldn’t trust you to know the difference. Not fair. Not fair at all.

“Me, I keep important stuff from you all the time.” I grinned at him. “But I know you’re a better person than I am. Still, I think that my frailty means you don’t owe me an apology for doing something I would do, so we’re even as far as keeping information from me is concerned.”

Now it was he who narrowed his eyes at me.

“Right,” I said as if he’d spoken. It was chilly in bare skin with the sun down, so I stretched out against him and let him keep me warm. “I know what I said before I took off—but I was provoked. No apologies from me or from you—but I’ll take the rabbit on account. However, if you try that patronizing sh-stuff on me again, not even a fat juicy rabbit is going to stop the fight we’ll have.”

Since it was unfair for me to keep being the only one who could talk, I shifted back into the coyote. And since I have a policy of accepting gifts graciously, I ate his rabbit. Besides, fighting always made me hungry, and there was no chocolate handy.

He thought it was funny that I ate the second rabbit without accepting his apology—so we were okay again. I expected that we’d have a lot more fights, and mostly I looked forward to them. Life with Adam wasn’t going to be boring, either.

WE WERE HEADED BACK TO THE CAMPSITE WHEN WE found the boat. On the way out, I hadn’t run right along the river. Instead, I’d followed one of the ridges that lined the gorge, avoiding the few houses and vineyards scattered here and there, and Adam had followed my trail. On the way back, though, we ran along the edge of the river. The moon was new, just a sliver in the sky, and the stars reflected in the black water.

The highway on the Oregon side was always busy, and this night was no exception. Our side, the Washington side, was a lot quieter: the river was wide, the noise of the cars a distant symphony accompanying the sounds of the night. One of those sounds was made by a boat bobbing against the shore.

I paused because this wasn’t a place I’d have expected to find a boat. As soon as my attention was drawn to it, I could smell blood and terror—the aftermaths of battle. A glance at Adam told me he’d noticed it, too. The fur along his spine was raised though he was silent.

The boat was tucked under the edge of three or four trees and accompanying brush that grew along the bank. From what I could see, and I wiggled a lot closer than Adam could, it was one of the small fishing boats, a bass boat, the kind that maybe two or three people could use to fish in. Small enough to row though there was a small outboard motor on the back of this one. I couldn’t see into the boat because of the underbrush, but I could smell a man’s fear and hear him talking.

“Don’t let it find me. Don’t let it find me.” Over and over again, very softly, barely even a whisper. I hadn’t been able to pick up his exact words until I was within a stone’s throw of the boat, and I have very good hearing. The boat hitting the rocks with the gentle rise and fall of the river’s waves was louder than his voice.

I backed out of the brush and met Adam’s eyes. Naked was going to be hard to explain, and I knew all about what those bushes were going to do with my skin. But Adam took too long to change, would be equally naked—and if whatever this man was afraid of came back, Adam the werewolf was our best defense.

Maybe other people wouldn’t have automatically assumed that whatever this man was afraid of would need a werewolf to fight it. There were no werewolves around here, vampires tended to be more of an urban monster, and the fae reservation was an hour the other side of the Tri-Cities—two hundred miles or more away from us. But the sheer magnitude of the terror he still felt made me think I wasn’t being paranoid.

I shifted to human. “Hey,” I called. “You in the boat. Are you okay?”

The man’s voice didn’t alter. He hadn’t registered my words at all.

“I think I’ll have better luck reaching him from the river side,” I told Adam. “That boat’s still floating. If he’s as badly hurt as all the blood I’m smelling makes me think he is, it’ll be easier if we’re not trying to drag him through the underbrush anyway.”