"This fight is without merit," I told her urgently. "There is no need for it."

Her eyes widened. "There is every need, Mercy. Darryl is second, and Warren defies him. It cannot go without answer. You can talk after he is through disciplining that one." Her mobile brows drew together as she stared at Samuel. In a completely different voice, she asked, "Who is that? There were strange wolves dead at Adam's house."

"This is Samuel," I said impatiently starting up the stairs. "I'm going in."

She'd started forward to intercept me, then hesitated as she took in Samuel's unusual coloration. "Samuel who?" she asked.

Twice a year the Alphas met with Bran in Bran's corporate headquarters in Colorado. They sometimes brought their seconds or thirds-but never the women. Part of that was practicality. Alphas are uncomfortable outside their own territory, and they interact badly with other Alphas. With their mates beside them, all of that discomfort and territorialism had a greater tendency to turn toward violence.

That meant Auriele had never met Samuel, but she'd heard of him. White wolves named Samuel are not very common.

"This is Dr. Samuel Cornick," I told her firmly. "Let us through. I've got information about the people who attacked Adam."

I was tired and worried about Warren-and Darryl; otherwise, I wouldn't have made such an obvious misstep: I doubt she heard anything except my command.

She wasn't stupid; she knew I was not Adam's mate, no matter that he'd claimed me before the pack. I was not werewolf, not pack, not her dominant, and she could not listen to me and keep her place.

All hesitation left her manner, and she closed with me. I was a fair bit taller than she, but it didn't slow her down. She was a werewolf, and when she put her hands on my shoulders and pushed, I stumbled back three or four steps.

"You are not in charge here," she said in a voice I'm certain worked very well in her classrooms.

She tried to push me again. Her mistake. She was a lot stronger than I, but she didn't have any experience in fighting in human shape. I moved aside, letting her momentum do most of my work. I helped her fall down the stairs with only a gentle push to keep her off-balance and make her lose control of her landing. She landed hard on the sidewalk, hitting her head on a stair.

I didn't wait around to make sure she was all right. It would take a lot more than a header down the stairs to slow a werewolf down much. The wolf closest to me started to move, but had to stop because it would have ruined the spell of Silence.

The door wasn't locked, so I opened it. Samuel brushed past me. The sound of Auriele's enraged snarl sent me scrambling in after him.

Warren's living room was a mess of scattered books and bits of broken furniture, but both Warren and Darryl were in human form. It told me that Darryl was still trying to keep the fight from being a fight to the death-and so was Warren. Werewolves in human form might be very strong, but they weren't half as deadly as the wolf.

Warren took one of his dining-room chairs and broke it over Darryl's face. The sound of the blow was absorbed by the pack's spell casting, so I could only judge the force by the size of the pieces the chair broke into and by the spraying blood.

In a move so quick my eyes couldn't quite catch it, Darryl had Warren on the ground with a lock on his throat.

Samuel darted in and closed his mouth over Darryl's wrist-then danced back out of reach. The unexpectedness of it-Darryl hadn't heard us come in-loosened Darryl's hold, and Warren broke out of it, scrambling away to get some room.

That meant Samuel could take up a position between both of them. Warren, breathing hard, sagged against a wall and wiped blood out of his eyes. Darryl had taken two swift steps forward before he recognized Samuel and almost fell over backward to keep from touching him, an expression of absolute astonishment on his face.

As soon as I was certain neither Darryl nor Warren was going to continue the fight, I tapped Samuel on the shoulder to get his attention. When he looked at me, I pointed to my mouth and ears. There wasn't a chance in hell that the werewolves outside would listen to me and stop their chanting-and we all needed to talk.

I expected Samuel to go outside, but he did something else. His power rushed through the house with the force of a firestorm after some idiot opens a door to let oxygen into a room that has been smoldering for hours. The air filled with him, with his scent and power; it popped and crackled until I felt as though I was breathing the sparklers that children play with on the Fourth of July. Discharges of power sparked on my skin until it felt raw, loosening my control of my extremities. I fell helplessly to my knees. My vision began to sparkle, too. Black swirls and bright snapping lights made me drop my head on my knees as I fought to keep conscious.

"Enough, Samuel," said a voice I dimly recognized as Adam's. "I think you made your point, whatever it was."

I left my head on my knees. If Adam was here, everything else could wait until I caught my breath.

Footsteps came down the stairs with the light, quick movements I associated with Adam-he had been doing some rapid healing. I raised my head too soon and had to put it back down. Adam rested his hand on the top of my head, then moved away.

"What was this about?" he asked.

"We've been looking for you for two days, Adam." Darryl's voice sounded a little distorted. "All we had was a message on Elizaveta Arkadyevna's answering machine that she told us was from Mercy-and your wrecked house with three dead werewolves that no one could put names to. You, Jesse, and Mercy were all missing. We've been watching your house, but it was sheer dumb luck that one of the pack saw Mercy riding around with Kyle earlier. When I called Warren, he wouldn't admit you were here, but he didn't say you weren't either, so I called the pack and came over."

I looked up again, and this time the world didn't spin. Darryl and Warren were both kneeling on the floor, near where they'd been fighting when I'd last seen them. I saw the reason for the odd enunciation problem Darryl was having-a nasty cut on his lip was visibly healing.

"I couldn't lie to Darryl," explained Warren. "You were in a healing sleep, and I couldn't wake you up. I couldn't let any of the pack up there while you were vulnerable."

Samuel sat beside me and licked my face, whining softly.

"Ish," I said, thrusting him away. "That's just gross. Stop it, Samuel. Didn't Bran teach you any manners at all?"

It was a deliberate distraction, designed to give us all a chance to decide how to handle the situation without more bloodshed.

"Warren was acting under my orders," said Adam slowly.

"I see," said Darryl, his face becoming carefully expressionless.

"Not against you." Adam waved his hand at chest height- don't feel hurt, the gesture said, it wasn't personal.

"Then who?"

"We don't know," I told him. "There was just something that bothered me."

"Tell them what happened that night," Adam said.

So I did.

To my surprise, when I told them that I'd had a bad feeling about calling in the pack, Darryl just nodded, saying, "How did they know where Adam lived? Or when the meeting was over? How did they know he didn't have an army at his house like some of the Alphas do? Jesse's not stupid. When she heard the sound of the tranq guns firing, she wouldn't have screamed-but they knew where she was anyway."

I thought about that. "There was just the one human they sent up after her-and he went right to her room."

Darryl made a sweeping gesture. "I'm not saying that there are not explanations other than a betrayal by one of the pack-but you made the right choice."

It shouldn't have made me feel good-but I'm as much a sucker for a pat on the back as the next woman.