Last winter, though, he had needed me, and it changed things between us.

We went on three dates. During the first one I had a broken arm and he'd been very careful. On the second, he and his teenage daughter, Jesse, took me to the Richland Light Opera Company's presentation of The Pirates of Penzance. I'd had a great time. On the third date my arm had been almost healed and there had been no Jesse, no middle school auditorium to cool any passionate impulses we might have had. We went dancing and only his daughter waiting for him at his home, and Samuel waiting for me at mine, had kept our clothes on.

After he'd taken me home, I recovered enough to be scared. Falling in love with a werewolf is not a safe thing to do—but falling in love with an Alpha is worse. Especially for someone like me. I had fought too long to belong to myself, to allow myself to fall into line with the rest of his pack.

So the next time he called to take me out, I was unexpectedly busy. Avoiding someone who lives next door requires a lot of effort, but I managed. It helped that when the werewolves became public, Adam's time was suddenly taken up with trips back and forth between WashingtonD.C. and the Tri-Cities.

Though he was one of the hundred or so werewolves who'd revealed themselves to the public, Adam wasn't one of Bran's front men—he didn't have the temperament for being a celebrity. But after working with the government for forty-odd years, first in the military and later as a security consultant, he'd developed a network of contacts as well as an understanding of politics that made him invaluable to the Marrok—and to the government as they tried to decide how to deal with yet another group of preternatural creatures.

Between his schedule and my clever avoidance tactics I hadn't seen him for almost two months.

Even to my monocular gaze, he was beautiful, more beautiful than I remembered him being. I wanted to linger on his Slavic cheekbones and his sensuous mouth, damn it. I jerked my gaze to Samuel—which was hardly safer. He wasn't as pretty, but that didn't matter to my stupid hormones.

Samuel broke the silence first. "Why aren't you in bed, Mercy?" he drawled. "You look worse than the accident victim I had die on the table last week."

Adam came to his feet and crossed the living room in four long strides while I waited like a rabbit in a snare, knowing I should run, but unable to move. He stopped in front of me, whistling softly between his teeth as he examined the damage. When he leaned closer and touched my neck, I heard a noise from the kitchen.

Samuel had broken his coffee cup. He didn't look up at me as he set about cleaning the mess.

"Nasty," Adam said, drawing my attention back to him. "Can you see out of that eye?"