Winter Lost

12

Adam

Adam had tried to talk Mercy into eating before she headed out to the ranch. Liam was determined that his snow shovelers should have lunch before he put them to work. But once Mercy had decided that the horses needed tending to, waiting was not an option.

“When someone locks them up in a barn, they can’t take care of themselves,” she told him. Then, with a frown, she asked, “Are you sure you want to do that? I can just leave my coat behind.”

He’d already destroyed the straps on his pack, so her words came a little late.

“I can get another one,” he told her.

“Yes, but I know how much that one cost.”

Her coat didn’t fit in her pack—which was much smaller to accommodate her coyote. He was tired of watching Mercy shiver. His pack was replaceable, and with a sharp knife and liberal application of duct tape—which he always kept in his SUV—his larger pack could be made to work. He was just grateful he’d thought to throw the packs they carried in their other forms into the SUV at the last minute.

“I can get another one,” he repeated.

Keep it casual, Hauptman, he cautioned himself. If he smothered her, she would leave. If he smothered her and she did not leave, he would be making her weaker. Less safe. And that was unacceptable.

He measured the pack straps against her and cut off another three inches.

“Another hour wouldn’t hurt them,” he tried.

“You tend to your horses before you tend to yourself,” she said, and he recognized both the cadence and the finality. Silently, he cursed Charles and anyone else who had taught Mercy about the care and feeding of horses.

He reminded himself that Mercy would be okay if she waited until she got back to eat. She’d eaten a big breakfast. She wasn’t a werewolf; she didn’t need the calories that the rest of the pack did.

His wolf wanted to insist on going with her. He’d already done that once, and it had gotten him here. But that had been different, and for a different cause. He didn’t mistrust her ability to take care of herself—he had wanted, had needed, her to know that she came first. Before pack.

His Mercy was prickly about her independence, and it had taken a battering over the past couple of years. He didn’t want to change her; he only wanted to keep her safe. Sometimes he had to admit he couldn’t do both. He had to trust her to know her limits. She was good about asking for help when she needed it.

The ranch wasn’t that far away, and the storm had subsided a little. Her coyote was probably even better equipped for traveling through this country in the winter than his wolf was. She was light enough to run on top of the snowpack, whereas he would have to break a trail.

He might still have insisted on coming if it hadn’t been for the reconsideration he’d seen in Liam’s face when Adam hadn’t fussed about Mercy going out in the storm on her own. Mercy was safer if everyone saw that Adam respected her ability to protect herself. It made them understand she was dangerous—even though most of them wouldn’t know why.

When Bonarata had demonstrated how easily he could have killed Adam, it had rubbed Adam’s nose in the fact that, at the levels Mercy and he were now playing at, he could not count on his werewolf being powerful enough to keep her safe. But he’d been dumped on his own, under-armed, in a country where he didn’t speak the language and had no good way of telling friend from foe. He’d been outclassed in Vietnam, too, and he’d survived. He’d done that by learning, by getting better at his job, and by figuring out how to do that job with inadequate tools.

So directly after Bonarata had finished educating Adam, Adam had gone to the scariest, most deadly warrior he knew and asked him for lessons. He was learning how to be more lethal, but he was also learning how to keep Mercy safe among the paranoid, powerful fae.

Zee told him that having your enemy overestimate you was as useful as having them underestimate you. Adam’s casual acceptance of Mercy running out alone in the storm made Liam wonder what Mercy was capable of.

If letting Mercy go alone to the ranch without a fight made her safer from the assorted crazy and powerful beings here, he could do that. He’d still rather have had her eat first, but that was her choice.

“Stop growling,” she said, stripping out of her clothes and stuffing them into the pack with her coat. “It’s cute but it won’t get you anywhere.”

Adam couldn’t help his sheepish smile—and didn’t bother fighting it because she wasn’t looking at him anyway.

She held up a boot to size it against the space left in the backpack, shrugged, and stuffed her tennis shoes in. He didn’t protest because she wasn’t going to be wearing them out in the storm. But he took her socks out of her hands and put a pair of his woolen hiking socks in the bag instead.

She laughed and then went to work zipping up the pack. The light shone along her naked back and flank, highlighting the faint silvery scars where some Montana rancher had unloaded a shotgun at a coyote. At least there wouldn’t be anyone out hunting coyotes in a storm like this.

He ran his hand over the scars—a reminder that his mate was a target, that he couldn’t protect her from everything, but also that she was a survivor. She leaned into his touch, and he bent until he could wrap both of his arms around her waist and pull her into his body.

“Not going to get this pack zipped up this way,” she said with a huff of laughter.

He tucked his head between her neck and shoulder, just below her ear, and breathed in. “You come back safely,” he said. “I don’t want to live in a world without you in it.”

“Don’t worry,” she told him. “If I die, I’ll be like Jack and come back to haunt you.”

He bet she would, his stubborn love. Oddly, that reassured him enough that he could let her go—though not before he kissed her bare shoulder.

Standing, he said, “Get a move on. How can I miss you if you don’t go?”

“Way to ruin a tender moment,” she mock-complained, tightening the compression straps so the pack was dense instead of puffy and sloppy.

Then she shifted to coyote.

He put the pack on her, making sure the straps around her shoulders and belly were just right—too tight and she wouldn’t be able to get out of it or shift safely back to human, too loose and it would hinder her travel. She could have put it on and then shifted, but she let him do that for her.

He understood her, and tried very hard to give her what she needed. She tried very hard to do the same for him.

He opened a window and she hopped out and was away. He stood, the winter blowing into the room, until he couldn’t see her for the woods and the flying snow. Then, very quietly, he said, “Come back to me, love.”

The scene in the dining room was very much as it had been at breakfast. Adam contemplated the goblins, who were carefully not looking at him, and the Heddars—and sat down at the table with Elyna’s people.

Peter was a little twitchy, but Adam had been getting a lot of practice at dealing with hyperdominant people. He had no trouble finding common ground at a table filled with those who dealt with humanity at their worst and best moments.

Peter and one of the other men had served in the marines. When Adam admitted to his ranger background, they exchanged the kind of ribbing the branches of military reserved for their allies. His security career was enough like police work that it gave him an entry with the rest of Peter’s pack—as Mercy had dubbed them after breakfast.

By the time the teenager—Emily—came in with glasses, a pitcher of ice water, and sandwiches, they were exchanging absurd work stories. When it was his turn, he told them about how four of his men, responding to an alarm, chased the suspect down into a back office—and encountered a skunk. The skunk won handily.

Tammy came in late, picking up her food in the kitchen. She looked unhappy, and when she sat down, she said, “I tried calling Zane, but it looks like the phones are still down.”

Adam’s sat phone still wasn’t working, but he didn’t think it would be useful to tell them that.

The table looked grim.

“What happens if he doesn’t make it?” asked Peter.

She glanced at Adam and said, “The end of my world.”

That was so obvious that Adam decided to clear the air a bit. So he nodded at Tammy and said, “The end of the world.”

The whole table looked at him with a fair bit of hostility.

What had Liam said? Something about how the wedding guests would come to an understanding about what the wedding was and their part in it. He wondered how that had happened. Had they just woken up knowing about the Great Spell and accepting it and everything that it implied?

“I’m here to help,” Adam told them. “Or maybe to play some harp. Or is it a lyre?” He flapped his hands to imitate little wings on his shoulders.

“You’re an angel?” asked Peter sardonically. “You don’t look like one.”

No one at the table had a reaction when he said either “harp” or “lyre.” That confirmed that none of these people had the harp—and that Elyna hadn’t told them why Adam and Mercy were here. Mercy had asked her not to, until they had a better handle on what was going on. But Tammy and her people for damn sure knew about the Great Spell now.

“You’re right,” Adam agreed. “I’m a werewolf. We did come here to help Mercy’s brother. I’d prefer that we not participate in the end of the world.”

Peter sat back. “Fair enough.”

“How did you get caught up in a marriage that decides the fate of the world?” Adam asked the bride-to-be, deciding to take down the temperature a bit.

“For the money,” Tammy said instantly. “Why not?”

She was a good liar. The blue eyes she’d inherited from her father helped that innocent look along. Police officers learned to be good at deception, too. Blandness spread around the table like butter on warm bread.

“I bet you gave your dad fits when you were a teenager,” Adam said. “Werewolves can tell when someone is lying.”

She cracked up. She had a good laugh—earthy and warm.

“I practiced that one for the reporters,” she admitted. “It gives them something that will sell papers, and Zane knows it’s not true. That’s all that matters to me.”

He judged that if he took the tension down one more notch, no one would notice he didn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know. He wasn’t sure how the conflicting protections—the green man and the spirit of the lake—would sort themselves out with each other and with him and Mercy when they finally figured out where the artifact was. He decided keeping information close to his chest was still the best policy.

He asked the heart of the pack, “How did you meet?” and settled down to listen.

“It was the legs that caught his attention,” Tammy said in a sultry voice, hopping her chair back a couple of times so she could display her jean-clad legs. The table erupted into laughter.

Shuffling footsteps headed their way from the kitchen at a rapid pace. Adam checked Peter’s unconcerned face and didn’t turn around to see who the stranger was.

“I was in my office when our director brought a couple of big-money donors to meet me,” Tammy said, once the others had calmed down.

As the footsteps neared the table, a man’s toneless whisper said, “Is this the leg story? You promised me the leg story.”

“This is the leg story,” said Tammy, her voice gentling. “Join us.”

Adam turned to see an older man, his rolled-up shirtsleeves damp with dishwater, snagging a chair from the nearest table. He set his chair next to Tammy’s and regarded her with earnest attention.

He’d never been a big man, Adam judged, but age had shrunk the newcomer until he looked almost frail—except for the calluses on his hands. And an inner fierceness that Adam’s wolf noticed, though Adam didn’t know why the wolf was so certain.

“You must be Hugo,” Adam said, “who grew the flowers on the tables.”

Hugo offered Adam a sweet smile. “I am Hugo,” he said with odd emphasis, nodded, and repeated, “Hugo.” He reached a hand across the table so he could exchange a handshake. “You are the famous werewolf Adam Hauptman.” The whisper didn’t change, and Adam remembered that Liam had told them that Hugo’s voice had been damaged.

For all of his age, his grip was firm.

“I am Adam Hauptman,” Adam replied, deciding to ignore the “famous werewolf.” It had felt a little like a dig, though Hugo’s smile was friendly and his expression was a little unfocused.

As soon as the introductions were done, Tammy continued her story. “Now, in that job, we went out and checked in with our local homeless population all the time. We knew them, and they knew and trusted us.”

Hugo wasn’t fae. Adam was sure of that. Nor was he a witch. Adam wasn’t Mercy, who could pinpoint supernatural people by the scent of their magic, but he’d have been prepared to bet money that Hugo was something.

“—and because of that, I got a reputation. When anyone—park personnel, police, or even some of the homeless people—would find them, they would bring them to me—”

Adam listened to Tammy with half an ear. His wolf was fascinated by Hugo. Adam knew better than to discount the wolf’s instincts.

Liam had said Hugo was simple. Neurodiverse, maybe, Adam thought. The old man’s interpersonal communication was off. But there was a confidence in the way Hugo moved that belied any lack of intelligence.

Adam wished Mercy were here to tell him what she thought of Hugo. He was willing to bet—from his wolf’s reaction—that there was something very special about the lodge’s gardener.

“—‘Any questions?’ ”

He could tell from the happy anticipation of the rest of the table that Tammy was nearing the climax of the story, so Adam brought his attention back to her.

“And Zane said, ‘Just one. Why do you have three prosthetic legs on your desk?’ And I said, before my good sense could intervene, ‘Why? Are you a leg man?’ He leaned over the desk and said, ‘Absolutely. Would you come to dinner with me?’ ”

“And she said no,” Peter said proudly.

“Dating donors is a good way to ruin your charity’s funding,” she said. “It took him three months to talk me into it. He sent his dating résumé, with letters of recommendation from all of his former girlfriends—and one boyfriend.” She grinned.

Hugo asked her to repeat parts of her story—some he hadn’t quite understood, and some he wanted more information about. Subtle humor didn’t seem to be a concept he was very good with. The whole table chimed in, all of them, Adam thought with interest, protective of the gardener.

He was just getting ready to excuse himself when Liam came in to request help with the snow.

There had been other volunteers to help clear the roof, but Liam had quashed them all. The roof was pitched properly steep to have survived nearly a hundred years of Montana winters, which was steep enough to be dangerous, especially since the old shingles had been replaced with metal a few years ago. If Adam fell off, even from that height, he was unlikely to do any permanent damage to himself. The same could not be said of any of the humans.

Liam showed Adam where the extendable ladder was stored in an outbuilding and helped him carry the unwieldy thing over the snowdrifts to the back of the lodge. Where the greenhouse extended from the side of the lodge, they found a nook that was somewhat protected from the wind gusts, and set the ladder up.

Even in the shelter of the greenhouse, Liam had to hold the ladder to keep the wind from dislodging it. Liam had borrowed some climbing gear from the goblins—who had not volunteered to help. The goblins, with their mountain-climbing experience, would have probably been better at this than Adam. But according to Liam, they had handed over the gear without a word and disappeared into their rooms.

“The goblins really don’t like you,” Liam said, giving Adam a speculative glance.

“Someone told them I kill their kind,” Adam said, going over the equipment carefully. “It’s not true, but I don’t blame them for being wary.”

Adam put the climbing harness on, making adjustments as necessary. Liam didn’t say anything more, so Adam didn’t, either. He put the rope over his shoulder and started up the ladder, trusting Liam to hold it steady.

The wind grew stronger the higher up Adam climbed, but he’d been expecting that. He had grabbed a pair of safety glasses from the SUV because the driving snow did a pretty good job of sandblasting his eyes. But the second time he had to stop to clear them on the way to the roof, he put them in his pocket. His eyes would just have to deal.

Once at the top of the ladder, he examined the environment he’d be working in. He’d chosen to climb up the back of the building where the wind had blown the roof mostly clear. His initial plan had been to walk up this side of the roof and tie off to one of the chimneys that Liam had assured him were in superb shape and very sturdy.

From his current vantage point, though, he realized that plan needed some tweaking. He’d seen slides in playgrounds that looked less slick than this roof. Walking wasn’t going to work.

He knew there was a grin on his face as he charged up the roof—hopefully where the joist two-by-fours supported the aluminum from underneath. He reached the nearest chimney and roped himself up without incident. He let out a sharp whistle, so Liam knew he was free to go run herd on the ground-bound snow shovel personnel.

Snow shoveling in a blizzard when the metal underneath his feet was slick and set steeper than forty degrees was much more entertaining than the ordinary sort. Especially when, finished with the less snow-packed south-facing side, he turned his attention to the front, where the ice dam had kept the snow in place. The first load he shoveled off the roof landed either on top of someone or on a path someone had just cleared, from the swearing that drifted up to him.

“Sorry,” he called down, not really meaning it.

Adam had done his share of mountain climbing. The last time had been about twenty years ago, but he didn’t have any trouble remembering how it worked. The goblins’ equipment was a little lighter and more user-friendly than what he’d used, but that could have been as much due to price point as it was to a couple of decades of technological advancements.

Three stories in the air, the wind was more than brutal. After a few minutes of working on the north side, Adam put his safety glasses back on and pulled his balaclava over his face for good measure. He imagined Mercy making comments about bank robbers.

It wasn’t a quick job. There was a lot of roof, a lot of snow, and a stubborn ridge of ice. He had to temper the force he used when he was separating the ice from the metal roof so his hardened steel shovel didn’t go right through the aluminum.

After a bit the wind picked up and the temperature dropped, but by that time the work had warmed his muscles so he didn’t much notice. Werewolves were built for winter, even in human shape. He found clearing the roof deeply satisfying. An old soldier learned to relish a task with clear objectives.

Eventually, even with the bite of the wind and the occasional face-plant when his boots slipped, he lost himself in the work. The snowball caught him by surprise when it hit the back of his neck.

He jerked around, but there was no one on the roof with him. The trajectory had been wrong to come from the ground—it would have had to come over the ridge of the roof. He looked at the nearest trees suspiciously, though it would take a werewolf to make a snowball fly that far. No one lurked in the trees.

When nothing more happened, he looked down to take the next scrape—and saw an arrow drawn in the pristine snow he’d been about to shovel. The arrow had not been there when the snowball hit him. He would have noticed.

He inhaled, but he didn’t smell anyone. Though there was one person here he wouldn’t smell, wasn’t there?

“What’s up, Jack?” Adam asked, his gaze following the direction of the arrow until he saw something big moving out there in the woods. It was maybe a quarter of a mile away as the crow flies.

He pulled his safety glasses off and tipped his head to protect his eyes from the wind.

Without knowing exactly how far away it was, he couldn’t judge the size with accuracy—except that along the edges of the lake on the northeast side there were a series of picnic benches where, in better weather, guests could eat. One of those picnic tables was directly between Adam and the whatever it was—bear? It was the wrong shape for a bear, but closer to that than a moose. The picnic table, which was closer, was less than half the size of the creature. Grizzly, Adam thought. Or something with a grizzly size and shape.

Despite the distance, he breathed in, his wolf itching to identify the predator who had entered his territory, no matter how temporary that territory was. Adam agreed with the wolf, especially as the creature waited just along the path Mercy would be taking back from the ranch.

He stared at the distant creature for a few breaths. Thought about why Jack would be worried about a grizzly that far away from the lodge. Then he reached for Mercy through their bond.

It was his habit not to spy on his wife; he knew how she felt about it. Mostly he was content just to know that she was out there, somewhere. Instantly he could tell that she was close—and that was all he could pick up. She wasn’t blocking him, and there was nothing wrong with their bond. Maybe, he thought, as his pulse picked up with the call to action, whatever was interfering with their bond was the same thing that interfered with his sat phone. Hrímnir’s storm eliminating communication, maybe. Magic could be literal like that.

Mercy should be on her way back from the horses by now. He’d lost track of time, but he’d been up here awhile. And if she traveled cross-country, which would be faster than the road, he reckoned that her path would cross right where that beast was.

It—and it didn’t move like any bear he’d ever seen—was waiting for Mercy.

Although this conviction came without facts to back it up, Adam had survived this long by not questioning his odd convictions. Instincts. And something had driven Jack to make sure Adam noticed the creature lying in wait.

Adam dropped the glasses, ignoring how they tumbled off the edge of the roof. He rid himself of his safety line by the simple expedient of breaking the carabiner that attached his harness to the rope. Free, he ran down the freshly cleared roof, picking up speed from the steep pitch.

Discipline kept the wolf from emerging as he leapt off the edge of the roof. Clearing the mess of the lodge’s front gardens with a few feet to spare, he landed on his feet and rolled to protect his joints. They would heal if he damaged them, of course, but he needed them to get to Mercy.

He was conscious of Peter’s shout as Adam started sprinting through the deep snow. Without the thirty-odd feet of elevation, he couldn’t see the creature—and he’d never seen Mercy at all. But he knew where it was. He’d have to run around the edge of the lake.

He thought about traversing the lake. This side—he was on the far side of the lodge from the hot springs—was frozen solid, scored by drifts of snow. He might cut the distance by a third if he ran on the ice.

But werewolves can’t swim. If he fell through, he would never make it in time to help Mercy. He vaulted over assorted raised flower beds and fences until he was running along something that might be a path that edged the lake, where there were no trees or shrubs to hinder him. Like the rest of the ground, though, it was full of treacherous drifts that he had to break through or jump.

The wolf’s paws would be faster than his clumsy human feet that had no claws to dig into the snow. That knowledge burned in the magic in his blood. But he couldn’t afford the time it would take him to shift.

Someone from the lodge was running behind him, calling questions. But Adam’s wolf had risen in his heart, and he was unable to understand the human words. Adam didn’t slow himself down by looking behind him.

As he ran, Adam continued to reach out for Mercy through their mating bond. But none of the tricks he’d learned did anything to let him break through.

His wolf pulled on the pack bonds—which were of more use. From that pathway, he could tell she was in a lot of pain. Not quite enough to register in the pack without someone actively seeking her out. She wasn’t dying. Not yet. He didn’t kid himself that she was okay.

Something was hurting her.

Everything slowed down, as it did in the middle of battle—as if there were seconds between each of the beats of his heart. Someone had hurt his mate.

He would stop them.

His human body was too slow. He was armed, but that wasn’t enough for the wolf inside him. He needed to have access to his teeth and claws.

He needed to not be too late this time—as they had been too late before.

A flash of Mercy’s garage as it had been, blood and bits of flesh that used to be a human man. Mercy had already killed her attacker, and all that Adam could do was tear the body to bits. He had not been fast enough.

And on a barren vineyard just two months ago, he’d writhed in the understanding that if Bonarata had wanted to kill Mercy, there was nothing that Adam could do about that.

Adam knew that he didn’t have time to change. Even if his pack had all been present, there wasn’t time to change. Changing would make him slower. With the pack so far away, he wasn’t even going to be half-shifted by the time he got to the place where he’d seen the creature. Adam could fight as human or wolf—but mid-change, he was clumsy and slow.

He understood that.

But someone was hurting his mate and he needed to not be too late. The wolf answered that need and ignored logic—because this was not time for logic, or for human calculations. The wolf was ascendant now and Adam had lost his chance to stop it—if he had ever had one.

He shed his clothing as quickly as he could, with no thought of wearing any of it again—including his boots. He didn’t even notice when the climbing harness was ripped to pieces. He retained enough presence of mind to throw his gun at the lake.

He threw it like he’d have thrown a baseball. It broke through the ice and fell into the water—where it was less likely it could be used by his enemies. He quit fighting then, and gave himself over to the wolf.

But Adam despaired, even as the wolf pulled on the pack ties. He felt the strain of harvesting the pack’s strength from such a distance, but anything that sped up his change might be the difference between life and death. As Alpha, he asked and they gave—and then there was a sudden hard surge of power, different from the pack magic, that brought Adam down to the ground in a spectacular tumbling fall.

Sherwood’s wild magic freely sent.

He thrust himself to his feet again, needing to run as long as he could. As he did, he howled through his still mostly human throat with the agony of that burning power that neither Adam nor the wolf had the ability to use. This was wild magic, unfettered power that didn’t come willingly to his call the way the pack magic came.

But there was a part of him that could use it. The part that had allowed him to break Mary Jo free of Ymir.

Let me, suggested the Beast that lived inside him.

Neither Adam nor his wolf trusted that creature. This wasn’t their pack home, where he could count on others to help if the Beast was freed.

The creature a witch had cursed Adam with was horrific, swift, and deadly. But when it was in charge, it fought only by instinct—and instinct had not been enough to win against Bonarata.

Brute strength had not kept Mercy safe then. Adam didn’t think it would be enough now. Worse, he didn’t know if the Beast would even pick the right target.

He still had nightmares about the time when it had nearly killed Mercy.

But the Beast didn’t require Adam’s consent. It fed from the power Sherwood gave them and used it to peel off Adam’s human body with the same ease and care that Adam had used to shed his shredded coat—and in about the same amount of time.

There was a moment that Adam felt himself slipping under the rage—but before the Beast could force its form on Adam, the wolf seized control, driving the Beast under with the ruthless efficiency of the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack.

And the Beast understood and let itself be thrust to the background.

Adam decided he would worry about what that meant later. Now he rolled out of the snow and onto his feet, four feet that belonged to the wolf. Adam and his wolf fell into the one-in-purpose compromise that they had fought for together and achieved with the help of fifty-odd years of moon hunts.

The change had been at the swifter cursed-by-a-witch speed that brought the Beast out, and not the usual quarter of an hour or so that Adam would have managed instead. It wasn’t Mercy’s in-a-blink change, but it had been fast. Thirty seconds, maybe, between his fall and rising to run as the wolf.

Four clawed paws meant that he could increase his speed because there was no chance of slipping. While Adam had been down, the one who had been following him from the lodge, running flat-out with inhuman speed, had sped past without pausing. Some part of Adam understood it was Liam, but the wolf only understood the green man as someone who had yet to prove himself an ally.

But now, in wolf shape, the fae was no match for Adam’s speed. Far in the lead, Adam crested the rise of ground that hid what proved to be a small depression where he’d first seen the monster in the woods. But he wasn’t thinking about the green man except as a possible future threat because, finally, he saw Mercy.

In that odd place where time was plentiful, Adam took in the scene before him as he gathered himself to attack.

Mercy lay naked on the ground, curled on her side. Her body was wrapped around the walking stick as if to protect it—or the opposite. The old fae artifact was in its battle form, the sharp head of the spear just visible in the snow under her chin.

Crouched over her, the creature had enveloped Mercy’s shoulder in its enormous mouth—Adam caught a glimpse of the yellowish fangs buried deep. Mercy’s body moved as the beast’s jaws flexed. Adam’s sudden intrusion didn’t distract it from what it was doing. Feeding.

Even as he considered his best attack, Adam noted that he could smell wet dog and a scent that he recognized. But although he could see the fangs buried in Mercy’s shoulder, there wasn’t enough blood. He caught a faint metallic odor, but not as strongly as he should have for the apparent injury. What he smelled was indicative of scrapes, not wounds. No blood stained the snow.

The creature was immense. It had a bearlike body the size of a horse. The fighter in Adam categorized the fangs as commensurate with its size, but the claws were blunt and short. The rest of him noted absently that it was vaguely canid, from a more distant point of the canid tree than Adam’s own werewolf was.

And it had withstood Mercy, even armed with her guardian fae artifact. He tucked that back in his battle plans along with the green man who would be along shortly.

Now, though, now was the time for his fangs to bite deep and his claws to rend. No one was allowed to hurt his mate.

Mouth wide, he leapt upon the beast’s back. The best attack, he knew, would have been to go for the creature’s flanks. It moved enough like a normal animal that he felt comfortable assuming that its hind legs worked the same as the hind legs of most other mammals on the planet. Hamstringing was unlikely, given the size of the creature, but he could still do enough muscle damage to cripple it. He knew he could have dragged it off its prey—but that would further damage Mercy.

Instead, he aimed himself at the creature’s back, as if he were a cougar instead of a wolf—because werewolves had front paws and claws that were more cougarlike than wolflike. Once on the creature’s back, he could go for the side of its neck.

Only the landing went as planned.

There was a strange moment where Adam hung suspended on something that felt nothing like flesh and blood. He had already dived for its neck, and his mouth filled with something cool and tasteless that evaporated before he could puzzle out what it was. He was dropped to the ground on the far side of the creature, sliding awkwardly with the leftover force that should have been driving his claws and teeth deep into the enemy.

Somehow, it was like the hungry ghost—not quite in this world. He filed that information away and adjusted his plans again. Any soldier knows plans have to be flexible in the field of battle.

For all that the creature had the apparent consistency of pudding, Adam had managed to knock it off Mercy. But now it stood between Adam and his mate—which was unacceptable.

If he read the signs correctly from the tableau snapshot in his head of his initial sight of Mercy and this thing, Mercy had decided her best defense against this creature was Lugh’s spear—and it had not worked. Her first defense, when she was alone, was always to run. Running had not worked.

There were other possibilities, but his instincts and a preponderance of evidence told him that this creature had come specifically to attack Mercy. It had been feeding on her—and not her flesh and blood. The spider had told Mercy just this morning that the damage she’d suffered from the Soul Taker would attract things like the hungry ghost. It could be one of those.

Or.

Here before Adam was a giant doglike being, caught between life and death. How many of those could there be in a winter-torn corner of Montana? One. Garmr.

Lugh’s spear had done nothing to it. Lugh’s spear. If a weapon made by someone as close to a god as any of the fae had ever been was not able to hurt the creature, he didn’t know what could.

The creature lunged toward Mercy, and Adam lunged faster, landing between it and his mate. He got his shoulder in its way and shoved.

He couldn’t hurt it, but it held enough of some kind of mass that he could move it back. He forced it away from Mercy, throwing his weight against it, savaging it with fangs and claws.

Now he expected the lack of resistance and he followed it. It was like pushing mud. With that thought, he jumped back on top of it and dug at its whatever-it-had instead of flesh and blood as if he were digging a hole into the earth. That was more effective than he’d expected.

It broke away. Adam didn’t follow it.

Figure out your main objective, and don’t let your enemy distract you.

He couldn’t remember just now, in the heat of battle, if that was his old drill sergeant’s voice or Zee’s.

His main objective was to keep this thing away from Mercy. Because it wasn’t hurting him, but it had been able to hurt her. He stood foursquare against it. Against him, Garmr. Adam might have reservations about his identification, but his wolf knew. Patiently, Adam waited for the guardian of Hel to attack again.

Which he did.

Once more Adam managed to drive him back. This time Garmr jumped away half a dozen yards. Adam thought it might be a retreat, but his wolf wasn’t so sure. Garmr let out a hoarse, voiceless something that was not sound, but it shook the snow out of the trees anyway, snapping his vicious-looking fangs in frustration.

The green man was approaching—Adam heard his running feet on the snow. Friend or foe? The wolf moved his position so that, though he was still between Mercy and Garmr, he was also between Mercy and the place where the sound of the fae’s footfalls would take him.

With some distance giving him more time to observe, Adam noticed that Garmr was significantly smaller than he had been when Adam first attacked. It was still the size of a big grizzly, but the first time Adam had landed on its back, it had been larger than a polar bear.

Maybe his attacks were doing some kind of damage to it, enough to make it wary of him. He hoped it was true, because that would mean he could win. But it was too early to assume anything so optimistic.

Garmr abruptly turned his head in the direction of Liam’s footsteps, then, possibly driven by the knowledge that the green man was coming, it turned to run. It took two loping strides away from Mercy and away from the lodge, and stopped. Its long tail lowered and it dropped its head defensively, focused not on Liam’s approach but on something crashing through the underbrush.

The wolf was certain that there had been nothing approaching them from that direction before the noise started. He coiled his muscles, the better to defend Mercy from anyone or anything.

From the woods in front of Garmr, a huge stag broke out of the underbrush. Adam had the impression it had been moving at great speed, but it dropped to a stately walk as it emerged.

It wasn’t a real deer. Real deer weren’t larger than moose. They weren’t white with silver antlers that reached upward and outward in a testament of power.

The liquid-blue eyes of the stag took in Adam and Mercy in a quick glance. It snorted, the mist of its breath in the icy air rising to disappear in the shadow of the glittering antlers.

Its ribs rose and fell like an animal that had been engaged in a mad run through the forest. But there was nothing frantic about the slow strides that brought it closer to the creature that had attacked Mercy.

Without warning, the deer jumped forward, head lowered. Garmr tried to dodge, but the sharp tines buried themselves in the great hound’s side. It lifted Garmr off the ground and shook him.

Liam burst over the hill and stopped. Chest heaving, he held a long knife in one hand. Adam would have laid out money that it wasn’t a mundane weapon. Like Adam, he made no move toward the combatants.

Out of the wounds and around the horns of the stag a substance flowed from the hound. It was clear and it evaporated into nothingness almost as it hit the air. The hound’s body deflated gradually. The stag quit moving, letting the hound waste away to a mist that dripped off the antlers and dissipated before it touched the snow.

It did not feel like a death.

Adam thought about turning to check on Mercy, but the stag’s blue eyes focused on Adam. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. Adam bared his teeth and didn’t fight the growl that rose from his Alpha heart.

“No,” said Liam, striding rapidly between the two of them, staying closer to the stag than to Adam—which was prudent of him, because the wolf still wasn’t sure he was an ally.

Unexpectedly, Liam turned his back to Adam and dropped to one knee before the stag.

“My lord,” he said. “Thank fate that you are here. I had despaired.”

Like Mercy’s, the stag’s transformation was instantaneous. If Adam had not been watching him, he’d have missed it.

While a part of him might have expected to see a fae lord straight out of fairy tales, dressed in fashions of centuries ago, what stood in the footprints of the white stag was a young-looking man in black jeans that were wet up to his knees and a T-shirt covered in rips, as if he’d been running through a blackberry thicket. He ran his hands through dark hair that was too short to catch his fingers.

He looked tired. Deep circles of sleeplessness ringed his eyes, and it had been a few days since he’d shaved.

“The hound is loosed?” he said, voice hoarse. “I am too late.”

“No, my lord,” Liam said without rising to his feet. “Just restless, as he gets when the time nears. Especially when it looked as though the marriage and the rebinding were doomed.”

“Is there a reason there’s a naked woman lying in the snow and we’re not doing anything about it? And is the werewolf a friend or enemy?”

Unlike the stag he’d been, Zane Heddar carefully kept his eyes away from Adam’s as he spoke. Adam wouldn’t have needed introductions if he had met the man at a grocery store—he was a male, dark-haired version of his mother. But his dramatic entrance and the reaction of the green man removed any doubt Adam might have retained.

“Friend—or ally, at the very least.” Liam rose to his feet with grace, turning to face Adam.

“Leave off, do,” Liam said, his tone making it a very polite request, not an order.

Adam realized he was still growling.

“This is my lord upon whose arrival all things are made right,” Liam informed him. “Let us help you bring your Mercy out of the storm.”

Zane moved toward Mercy. Adam didn’t think the man was a threat, but he would have put himself between Mercy and a stranger even if his wolf hadn’t been fresh off the battlefield.

“Let me try,” Liam told his lord and master. He unzipped his parka and took it off.

When he approached Mercy, Adam shook with the effort it took to keep his wolf at bay. But he, wolf and man alike, knew how important it was to get Mercy warm, so they allowed it.

With a careful attention to Adam’s growling presence, Liam wrapped Mercy in his own coat, setting the spear-headed walking stick aside. As soon as he had her out of the snow, Liam broke into a swift trot back toward the lodge. Zane made as if to gather up the spear—but the walking stick had disappeared while everyone’s attention had been turned toward Mercy. Zane gave the snow where the weapon had lain a brief puzzled look. With a shrug, he set off after Liam and Mercy.

Adam brought up the rear—the better to watch the others. To keep Mercy safe.