“Find another way to win,” I said, my voice hoarse.

There is no other way, he said. I love you.

But I’d been talking to myself and not to him. I pulled him back down to me.

He cooperated because he had no idea I was changing the rules of the game on him. I was not Coyote’s daughter, not quite. But that was okay because being almost Coyote’s daughter in my dream would be enough.

Adam’s lips came down upon my own and I opened my mouth. Looking into his eyes, I pulled the things that were killing him into me, swallowing down the silver that was poison to him and nothing to me.

He didn’t understand at first, but when he did, he struggled, but it was my dream, not his. In this dream, I wasn’t a coyote shapeshifter trying to hold a werewolf, I was Coyote’s almost daughter, and I had all the strength of the world in my arms.

“Mine,” I told him, though my mouth was still fastened to his. “Mine.”

I meant that he was mine, but also that the silver he took from the pack to save them was also mine to bear, not his. I also used the word to call the silver from his body into my own, the silver and the ketamine and all the rest of the harm that had been done to him.

But he was an Alpha werewolf, and he was more than a match for me, even in my dream.

He roared, ripped free of my hold and off of our bed—in my dreams it was still our bed at home, not the one in Kyle’s spare bedroom. It wasn’t anger in Adam’s voice when he spoke. Mercy, you don’t know what you’re doing. It was fear.

I started to go after him, but had to stop, kneeling on the edge of the bed because I was sick to my stomach. Either the silver or the ketamine wasn’t sitting well. Heck. Maybe it was the DMSO for all that I knew. Adam … he was better, I could feel his strength, could feel the pack stir in alertness because they could feel it, too.

Don’t do that, he ordered retroactively, coming to his feet. He knew how well I followed orders. He looked away, took a deep breath, and reached out toward me. If you die …

I didn’t think it would kill me, no matter how much my stomach hurt. But I wasn’t going to show him that it had affected me. “Not my day to die,” I told him.