Adam wondered how they would manage to find a pack for Darryl when his pack had no more ties to the Marrok, who ruled the wolves. Traditional methods tended to leave bodies behind. It was a momentary thought, though, brought about because of Darryl’s disobedience.

Adam’s wolf wasn’t worried. The future was what the future was, and for now, Darryl was still his. Darryl was smart; he would have a reason.

“We can agree on Stefan as neutral,” Darryl said when he was within conversational distance. “We think that you should meet as equals, though. So you need a second with you.”

He was right. Good to have a second who could think things through when all Adam really wanted to do was hunt down the vampires who had taken Mercy and obliterate them. Killing was too clean.

Impatiently, Adam nodded his agreement and took the seat opposite Marsilia. Darryl sat at his right, and the chair at his left stayed empty.

Marsilia was a real bombshell. Blond-haired Italians were never common, and he knew that the color was natural, because Stefan had commented upon it. But her beauty wasn’t a thing of color only; it was bone- and muscle-deep.

Beautiful people, mostly, lived like everyone else. Extraordinarily beautiful people, however, usually paid dearly for their beauty. Adam was pretty sure that had been no less true in fifteenth-century Italy than it was now.

Intelligent brown eyes examined him—maybe for weapons, maybe for weaknesses. He didn’t mind because he was doing the same. Though for both of them, what they were made them pretty efficient weapons all by themselves.

She was wearing slacks and some sort of silk top that left her arms and shoulders bare, covering her adequately otherwise while leaving no doubt that she wore no bra. She could have appeared on a news program or a Hollywood premiere in her outfit without attracting comment. She wore it like a woman who habitually used her body as a weapon rather than someone aiming a weapon at him personally. To her left sat Wulfe, who’d succeeded Stefan as her second-in-command when Stefan had left her seethe. Wulfe looked like a sulky punk rocker from the eighties, though maybe that look was back. Without Jesse’s prodding, Adam tended to lose track.

Wulfe’s pale hair stuck out in chick-soft-looking tufts about an inch long, whose ends were dyed pink. Wulfe was, in Adam’s estimation, more dangerous than Marsilia if only because he was unpredictable.

Stefan, interestingly, sat on her right. Wolves pay attention to body language, and Stefan’s body language was protective and worried.

“First,” she said, “I have to apologize for the way in which my past has rained down upon you. It is no secret that Mercedes and I are not friends, but I value the role that she plays in our community, and I do not think that anyone else could balance the werewolves, the fae, and the vampires as well as she does.”

“Differently,” murmured Wulfe. “More interestingly even, but not as peacefully.”