“So I told him—” Auriele stopped talking abruptly, her sensitive ears caught by the familiar voice on the line.
“I need Adam.” My husband’s ex-wife’s voice was thick with tears. Christy Hauptman sounded desperate and half-hysterical.
“Mom?” Jesse’s voice was shaky. “Mom, what’s wrong?”
“Get Adam.”
“Mom?” Jesse gave me a frantic look.
“Adam,” I called. “Christy’s on the phone for you.”
He was in the living room talking to Darryl and a few of the pack who had lingered after breakfast, so I didn’t have to raise my voice much. It wasn’t the first time Christy had called needing something.
Dealing with Christy was usually enough to give me a stomachache. Not because of anything she could do to me or Adam. But Jesse, who loved her mother but was currently fighting to keep liking her, suffered every time that woman called. There was nothing I could do to stop it.
“He’s coming, Mom,” Jesse said.
“Please,” Christy said. “Tell him to hurry.”
Desperate, hysterical tears—those weren’t unusual. But she sounded scared, too. And that wasn’t anything I’d heard before.
Adam walked into the room, and from his grim face, I could tell he’d heard at least part of what Christy had said. He took the handset from Jesse but hugged her with the other arm. Jesse’s eyes grew watery under his comforting hold. She gave me a frantic look before bolting away, out the door, and up the stairs, presumably to her room, where she could collect herself.
“What do you need?” Adam said, most of his attention still on his daughter.
“Can I come home?”
Auriele glanced at me, but I was already wearing my blank face. She wouldn’t be able to tell what I was thinking from my expression.
“This isn’t your home,” Adam said. “Not anymore.”
“Adam,” Christy said. “Oh, Adam.” She sobbed, a small, hopeless sound. “I’m in trouble, I need to come home. I’ve been so stupid. He won’t leave me alone. He hurt me, he killed a friend of mine, and he follows me everywhere I go. Can I come home, please?”
That wasn’t anything I’d expected. Auriele quit trying to pretend she wasn’t listening to every word and jerked her face toward the phone.
“Call the police,” Adam said. “That’s what they are there for.”
“He’ll kill me,” she whispered. “Adam, he’ll kill me. I don’t have anywhere else to run. Please.”
Werewolves can tell when people are lying. So can some of the other supernatural critters running around—like me, for instance. Over the phone is a lot trickier because a lot of the telltale signs involve heartbeat and smell—neither of which is possible to detect over a phone line. But I could hear the truth in her voice.
Adam looked at me.
“Tell her to come,” I said. What else could I say? If something happened to her when we could help … I wasn’t sure if I could live with that. I knew that Adam couldn’t.
Auriele continued to watch me. She frowned, finally turned away, and started to dry the dishes again.
“Adam, please?” Christy pleaded.
Adam narrowed his eyes at me and didn’t say anything.
“Adam,” Mary Jo said from the doorway. Mary Jo is a firefighter, tough and smart. “She is owed by the pack for the years that she was yours. Let her come home, and the pack will protect her.”
He gave Mary Jo a look, and she dropped her eyes.
“It’s okay,” I said to Adam, and tried to make it not a lie. “Really.”
I bake when I’m stressed. If I had to make enough chocolate chip cookies to feed Richland while she was here, it would be okay because Adam needed me to be okay with it.
If she tried anything, she would be sorry. Adam was mine. She had thrown him away, thrown Jesse away—and I had snatched them up. Finders keepers.
Maybe she didn’t want them back. Maybe she just needed to be safe. My gut wasn’t convinced, but jealousy isn’t a logical emotion, and I had no reason to be jealous of Christy.
“All right,” Adam said. “All right. You can come.” Then, his voice gentle, he asked, “Do you need money for plane tickets?”
I went back to the dishes and tried not to hear the rest of the conversation. Tried not to hear the concern in Adam’s voice, the softness—and the satisfaction he got from taking care of her. Good Alpha werewolves take care of those around them; it’s part of what makes them Alpha.
I might have been able to ignore it better if all the wolves still in the house