Patricia Briggs - River Marked

“And you weren’t even there for the argument,” marveled Adam. “Darryl broke in, and said, ‘Family does.’ And that was the end of that. So what else are you worried about?”

“Stefan,” I said. “I asked Warren to look in on him, but ...”

“I had a talk with Stefan,” said Adam. “Unlike you, my conscience didn’t prevent me from telling him he needed to fill out his menagerie. One of his problems is that he doesn’t want to hunt in his backyard, and he can’t leave his menagerie alone. Ben offered to watch his people, and Warren should leave for Portland tomorrow with Stefan. Anything else?”

“Ten days,” I said, giving him a broad smile. “Ten days of vacation with you. No interruptions.”

Adam leaned over and kissed me—and that was the last time I worried about anything for some time.

WE SWAM IN THE RIVER—OR RATHER I SWAM AND ADAM waded in chest high because werewolves can’t swim. Their muscle mass is too dense to be buoyant, so they sink to the bottom like anchors.

The campground was built around a fair-sized backwater that was fast enough not to be stagnant but slow enough to be really good swimming. Strategic growths of Russian Olive and a selection of shrub-sized plant life I couldn’t name, as well as a ten- or fifteen-foot drop just before the river, gave the swimming area a feeling of privacy. The temperature had risen to somewhere around a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, so the water felt really good.

We splashed and dunked each other like a pair of kids, and I laughed until I had to go out and sit on the shore to catch my breath.

“Coward,” Adam said from the river, his hands just below the surface where he could gather ammunition to splash me.

“Not a coward,” I vowed, panting as the sun tried to bake the water out of my hair, skin, and swimming suit all at once.

“Then what are you doing up there?” he asked.

I opened my eyes wide and batted them at him. “Watching the wildlife.” I lowered my gaze to his midsection, where all sorts of lovely muscles were displaying themselves. Werewolves are seldom out of shape, but Adam was a little more ripped even than the average werewolf. “Some nice scenery around here,” I purred.

He made a soft sound, and when I raised my gaze, his eyes were hot. “I have to agree,” he said, stalking out of the water with purpose.

I squealed and came to my feet, laughing—and something out in the water beyond him caught my eye. He spun around to see what I’d noticed, but it was gone. A log maybe, I thought, floating a little below the surface. Hard to judge the size at this distance, but it had been too big for a fish.

Before the dams went in, some of the sturgeon got pretty darn big, upward of twelve feet if I believed Zee. Whatever I’d seen had been bigger than that. But it was gone now, and I’d distracted Adam from his hunt.

He was looking behind him. I took advantage of his momentary distraction and bolted toward the trailer.

Werewolves are quick. Not cheetah fast, maybe, but faster than timber wolves or dogs. I, too, am very fast. Faster than most werewolves I know—so maybe I wasn’t running as hard as I could. Or maybe sex inspires the male of any species to greater lengths. Either way, Adam caught me before I was halfway to the trailer. Without slowing down, he tossed me over his shoulder and ran all the way back while I laughed like a ninny and tried really hard to breathe. He pressed me against the side of the trailer and made sure I didn’t mind my capture at all.

Somewhere along the way, we made it into the trailer and up on the soft queen bed that was made with clean, new sheets—in fact, the whole trailer smelled brand-new. Trailers like this were expensive. Who did he know who would loan him a brand-new trailer?

That thought left me, too, and when we were finished, I was as hot and sweaty as I’d been before I first jumped into the river, the trailer smelled like us, and Adam was asleep.

Mating is a lot more permanent than marriage. Partly, I think, it’s that usually if you find your mate, he’s not going to be someone you need to divorce. Abuse is almost not possible when two people are connected by a mating bond, and it gives you insight into your mate that allows you to avoid the nastier fights that snowball into cold distance. And partly it is that magic is somewhat harder to deal with than legal paperwork, and the mating bond is pack magic.

Given that, I hadn’t really expected for the actual wedding to matter so much to me.

“I like having you wear my ring,” said Adam, his eyes yellow and gleaming out from under half-opened lids. Sometimes the mate bond gives more insight to one or the other of us. He seemed to be responding to the gist of what I’d been thinking, while I was being kept in the dark. “I like that people can just look at you and know that you are taken, that you are mine.” He closed his eyes and laughed. “And yes, I know that sentiment is at the top of the Women’s Liberation Movement’s list of things not to say to a modern woman.”

Something was bothering him, I thought. The last sentence or two had been just a little too tight.

“Uhm,” I said, rolling over so I could lick a bead of sweat off his chest. He tasted like Adam. Who needed champagne? “You better not take off your ring without a really good reason,” I told him, letting my inner coyote out where he could see her. Maybe he needed to know his possessiveness was returned, in spades. “And if your ex-wife or any moderately attractive woman from thirteen to seventy is in the area, you should be aware that there is no reason good enough for you to take off your ring.”

He laughed, and I rolled again, until I was all the way on top of him.

I hadn’t gotten it right yet, hadn’t worked out what was bothering him. Our bond might be talking to him, but it wasn’t letting me know anything that was going on behind his eyes—which had gone dark again. That’s the problem with magic. You start counting on it, and it disappears out from under your feet and leaves you floundering worse than if you’d never had it in the first place. So all I could go on was what most other women had to use to interpret their mates’ moods.

I had known Adam for more than ten years—I’d known his ex-wife, Christy, too. Maybe his problem was rooted in his first marriage. She’d been big on personal freedom—as long as it was her freedom. She’d been jealous of the pack; jealous, also, I thought, of Jesse, their daughter. She didn’t love him, but she had wanted to be the center of his world and would tolerate nothing else.

Maybe he felt that he was trying to do that to me. Maybe we both needed to lighten up the atmosphere a bit, give ourselves time to deal with all the changes.

I nipped his ear lightly. “If it were socially acceptable to tattoo my name across your forehead, I’d do it.”

“I only see my forehead when I look in a mirror,” he said. “I see my hand a lot more often.”

“It wouldn’t be for you,” I told him. “You know who you belong to. It’s for all the other women. Only fair to warn them when the wrong word might get them hurt. This coyote has fangs.”

His chest vibrated under me, the laugh not making it all the way out yet. He relaxed subtly.

“I thought that if you’re feeling primitive about this, it is only fair to let you know that I’m feeling pretty primitive, too,” I informed him lightly.

Then I rolled off him and over the edge of the bed to drop down on the floor. I kicked my swimming suit, now cold and clammy, aside. “However, you ought to know that I can’t work at the shop with my rings on unless I want to be known as Nine-Fingered Mercy. And”—I put my fingers on the pawprint just beneath my navel—“having gotten all the tattoos I ever intend to, I won’t tattoo your name on my forehead or anything like that.”