He shook his head. “Nope. If you hadn’t given notice to the fae—what would they do next? I’m not willing to allow them to prey upon our town.” He paused. The Tri-Cities are three towns . . . and a bunch of small towns tucked right up against them. “Towns. Our towns.” He growled, and I made a sympathetic noise. He said, finally, “Our territory.” That sounded right.

Bran might have cut me loose, but Adam would never do that. Adam was mine, and I was his. Sometimes I chafed a little at all the belonging I’d been doing lately: belonging to Adam, to Jesse, to the pack, and having them belong to me in return. Oddly, the responsibilities of taking care of them didn’t bother me at all; only being taken care of brought out my claustrophobic reactions. I had spent most of my life being independent, and it took an effort to have to answer to other people, no matter how much I loved them. Loved him.

Right now, belonging felt a lot better than being alone. The last time Bran had abandoned me, I’d been alone.

“Are you done being mad at me?” Adam asked. He was changing the subject for me, I knew. There was nothing more to be said about Bran.

“I wasn’t really mad at you,” I told him. It wasn’t a lie, because it had been myself I’d really been angry with. “You’d have known if I’d really been mad.”

“For a good time, call—” he said, and I gave a watery laugh and put my forehead against his shoulder—his good shoulder.

The old VW still sat facing the backyard of this house, looking more and more disreputable every day. Once, Adam threatened to have it towed, and Jesse—not me—told him, seriously, that it was a bad idea.

“As long as Mercy has that way to torment you,” she’d told her father, “you’ll know where it’s coming from. If you get rid of that now, you’ll never know what to watch out for.”

“She just wants to save it because she likes the bunny she painted on the trunk last week,” I’d said.

Adam had laughed, and the wreck stayed where it was, with “For a Good Time Call” followed by Adam’s phone number scrawled across it for anyone (in our backyard) to see.

“I am not mad at you,” I told him. “But you should be aware that if you try to keep me away from you when you are hurt again, I will take you down when you least expect it.”

“Seriously,” he said, “I didn’t expect it to work.”