Patricia Briggs - Silver Borne

A few years ago, some of his pack had started harassing me—a coyote living next door. Werewolves, like their natural brethren, are territorial, and they don’t share their hunting ground easily with other predators. So to put a stop to it, Adam declared me his mate. I hadn’t known at the time why the harassment abruptly stopped—and Adam hadn’t been in a hurry to tell me. But pack magic demanded that the declaration be answered, and Adam bore the cost when it wasn’t. It left him weaker, crabbier, and less able to help his pack stay calm, cool, and collected. By bringing me in as a member of his pack at virtually the same time our mating bond connected, Adam hadn’t given his people a chance to get their feet underneath them before throwing them back onto uncertain ground.

“One more month,” he said finally. “And then they—and Samuel, too—will just have to get used to it.” His eyes, the color of bitter dark chocolate, were serious as he leaned forward. “And you will marry me.”

I smiled, showing my teeth. “Don’t you mean, ‘Will you marry me?’ ”

I meant it to be funny, but his eyes brightened until little gold flecks were swimming in the darkness. “You had your chance to run, coyote. It’s too late now.” He smiled. “Your mother is happy that she’ll be able to use some of the stuff from your sister’s wedding that wasn’t.”

Panic swelled my heart. “You didn’t talk to her about this, did you?” I had visions of a church filled with people and white satin everywhere. And doves. My mother had had doves at her wedding. My sister had eloped to get away from her. My mother is a steamroller, and she doesn’t listen very well . . . to anyone.

The wolf left his eyes, and he grinned. “You’re okay with marrying a werewolf who has a teenage daughter and a pack that’s falling apart—and your mother panics you?”

“You’ve met my mother,” I said. “She ought to panic you, too.”

He laughed.

“You just weren’t around her long enough.” It was only fair that I warn him.

WE WERE LUCKY AND GOT OUR SCORING TABLE TO ourselves, as the women who had the lane to our left were packing up when we got back from choosing our bowling balls from the available stack. Mine was bright green with gold swirls. Adam’s was black.

“You have no imagination,” I told him smugly. “It wouldn’t hurt if you found a pink ball to bowl with.”

“All the pink balls have kid-sized holes in them,” he told me. “The black balls are the heaviest.”

I opened my mouth, but he shut me up with a kiss. “Not here,” he said. “Look next to us.”

We were being observed by a boy of about five and a toddler in a frilly pink dress.

I raised my nose in the air. “As if I were going to joke about your ball. How juvenile.”

He grinned at me. “I thought you’d feel that way.”

I sat down and messed with player names on the interface on the scoring table until I was satisfied.

“Found On Road Dead,” he said dryly, looking over my shoulder.

“I thought I’d use our cars as names. You drive a Ford now. F-O-R-D.”

“Very Woo-hoo?”

“Not a lot of cool words start with a ‘W,’ ” I admitted.

He leaned over my shoulder and changed it to “Vintage Wabbit,” then into my ear, he said, “Very wicked. Mine.”

“I can live with that.” His warm breath on my ear felt very wicked, all right.

Until Adam, I’d always felt like his black bowling ball—boring but useful. I’m nothing special in the looks department, once you get past the slightly exotic coloring my Blackfoot father gave me. And Adam . . . Heads turn when Adam walks by. Even in the bowling alley, he was attracting attention.

“Go throw your boring black ball,” I told him sternly. “Flirting with the scorekeeper won’t help you because the computers keep score now.”

“As if I needed help,” he smirked, walking backward a few steps before he turned around to pay attention to the poor, helpless bowling pins.

He bowled with the deadly earnestness and decisive style with which he did everything else. Controlled power, that was Adam.

But I started noticing something other than admiration in the gazes of the people who were beginning to look at us. At Adam. He wasn’t really a celebrity; he tried to stay out of the news. But Adam was one of the wolves who was out to the public—a sober, successful businessman whose security company protected American nuclear technology from foreign hands: a good guy who happened to be a werewolf. All fine and dandy when they read about it in the newspapers, I guess. But it was different to see a werewolf at their bowling alley.

They are afraid of him.

The thought was so strong it felt as if someone were whispering into my ear, bringing with it worry.

Look at them . I saw the men bristling over their women, the mothers hastily gathering their children to them. In a moment, there would be a mass exodus—and that was assuming that some of the young men I saw coming to their feet about four lanes down didn’t do something stupid.

He hasn’t noticed yet.

Adam gave me a sly, pleased grin at his strike as he walked back—a strike more remarkable because there were no shattered pins, no broken equipment. Too much power can be as great a disadvantage as not enough.

Look beside you.

I took up my green ball and glanced at the people next to us. Like Adam, they were too involved in their game to notice the growing murmuring. The young boy was crawling under the chairs, and his parents were bickering over something on the score-board. Their too-cute toddler—with her pink dress and little pink lions in the two-inch ponytails that stuck out from the back of her head—had climbed up on the bowling platform and was playing with the ball return blowers designed to dry sweaty palms. She wiggled her little hands over the cool air and laughed.

Adam will feel bad when he notices that people are leaving because he’s here.

Sweat gathered on my forehead, which was ridiculous because it was cool inside. I paused halfway to the throw line (or whatever it was called) and, imitating Adam, I brought the ball up and held it in the middle of my chest.

Perhaps there’s a way to show everyone that he’s not a monster, he’s a hero.

I glanced over my shoulder and watched the toddler bang on the air vent. Her brother had wandered back through the seating area and was playing with the balls on the racks. His mother had just noticed he’d gotten away from her and had gotten up to go get him.

I turned my attention back to the pins.

“Are you watching?” I asked Adam. The urge to do something for Adam was so strong it made my hands clench.

“My eyes are peeled,” he said. “Are you going to do something amazing?”

I swung the ball awkwardly, as if I’d never bowled before, missed the release, and sent it zipping backward toward the little girl playing with the air.

As soon as it left my fingers, I couldn’t believe what I’d done. Sweating, shaking, and horrified, I turned. But as quick as I was, I’d missed the action.

Adam had caught the ball a good two feet short of the toddler.

She looked up at Adam, whose noisy fall to the ground had disturbed her play. When she saw that there was a strange man so close, her eyes got big, and her bottom lip stuck out.

Adam is mostly uninterested in children (other than his own) until they are teenagers or older and, as he told me once, capable of interesting conversation.

“Hey,” he said, looking very uncomfortable.

She considered him a moment. But she was female and Adam was . . . well, Adam. So she put her hands in front of her mouth and giggled.

It was adorable. Darling cute. He was a goner, and everyone who was watching could see it.