Only when I stood up did it become apparent that instead of plush carpet under my bare feet, there was hard-packed dirt beneath the boots I hadn’t been wearing. They were a scuffed black, and the leather gave around my feet with the softness of long wearing. They weren’t my boots, but I knew them.

What was I doing wearing Adam’s boots? My bleary thoughts tried to figure out the logic while I became vaguely aware of my surroundings. The air smelled dry and still. It smelled like pack, my pack who were all sick and hurting. As soon as I let my awareness seek them, their pain, their sickness drifted over me.

“Mr. Hauptman,” a stranger’s voice said, shocking me out of my contemplation of Adam’s boots on my feet.

I blinked and saw a man in dark clothes bare of any official insignia, though they had that sharpness that marked a military uniform. I narrowed my eyes and studied him more closely because something about the picture didn’t match: his body was soft. Not the softness of a soldier who had retired from action and moved to deskwork. This man was soft in both mind and body—he’d never served in battle.

Paper-pusher. Gives orders for other men to die while sitting safe in home base. “We were told you’d probably be down for another hour or more. I do apologize about the restraints—rather medieval, don’t you agree? But we didn’t think you’d be feeling particularly happy with us when you woke up, and killing you after all the trouble that we’ve gone through to capture you would be unproductive. You may call me Mr. Jones.”

He looked at us as he spoke. And I became aware that part of the heaviness that kept me from moving much was some sort of binding on my ankles and wrists. I couldn’t really see them, something was off with my eyesight, but I could feel them, just as I could feel the bite of the silver—worse than the time I’d rushed between two trees and burst through a hornet’s nest. Everything hurt.

The “Mr. Jones” made Adam think seriously about rolling his eyes like Jesse, but it would require too much energy. Jones? Did this man not know that Adam could hear every lie out of his lips? At least it hadn’t been “Smith.”

Adam also thought about shedding the restraints and killing the man behind the desk—but so far no one had been irreparably injured. The burn of the silver fought with the dampening effect of the tranquilizer and left his temper raw and vicious. But he had people to protect. So he held his temper and sarcastic comments and continued the parley that Mr. Jones had begun.

“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get us here.” Adam’s voice slurred a little, and he pulled energy from the pack bonds, aware that he was taking from them what they didn’t have to give. But he needed to be strong and smart and able to fight for them. To do that, he could afford to show no weakness before the enemy. “What do you want?”