“Right,” I said. “That’s whose pack she found. He agreed to take me—but she couldn’t come with. She decided that it was the best place for me.” Mom never said exactly what had made her decide to do that, but I figured it was pretty bad, considering the stories she did tell me. I did know that she’d negotiated for visitation rights over Bran’s objections. “So I was raised by a pretty neat couple. She was human, and he was werewolf. She died, and he committed suicide to be with her. I was fourteen, and I didn’t want to live with anyone else, so Bran let me live on my own.” Bran was from an age when fourteen was an adult. “I was raised a coyote in a werewolf pack. I know exactly what it feels like not to have anyone to talk to. Tell me as much or as little as you’d like. I won’t swear not to tell Adam, he’s my mate. But if I’m a well, he’s a . . . bottomless pit.” I glanced at Margaret, then looked back at the road. “When we last left you, you were alone, chained in the dark, and hearing monsters.”

“Thomas found me there,” Margaret said, but she sounded more comfortable. Good. I’d worried that the “monster” talk would throw her. If so, she didn’t stand a chance taking on someone as . . . closed as Thomas. He reminded me of my foster brother Charles, and, for Charles, it had taken an Omega wolf with a backbone of titanium to learn how to make a relationship work. Omega wolves didn’t come around very often; maybe a fairy princess would do.

“He was . . . he was a very, very angry man. I asked for his help. He refused. I asked him what he wanted, and he said . . . no, that’s not right. He wanted. I felt what he wanted as if it were water, and he’d doused me in it, so I could feel his need in my bones. But what he asked for was to feed from me.”

There was a long moment as she weighed what had happened with how much she wanted to tell me. She smiled. “I was frightened—but not so frightened I didn’t see the hurt that caused his anger. I didn’t think he’d be happy to know how easy it was for me to see.”

She took a breath.