River Marked

“I thought it was pretty cool when that little old lady tried to give you a twenty,” I said, and set him off again.

“The thing that spooked me”—he drove back out on the highway toward our campground—“was that woman at the table next to us, who looked like she bought the whole act, even after everyone else was laughing.”

Ah, Creepy Lady. She’d watched us both with her eyes wide and her jaw open, and still her expression managed to be blank. I was betting she was either a total psychopath—or fae, which was sometimes the same thing. I could have gone closer for a good sniff—I’ve learned what fae smell like—but it was my honeymoon. I didn’t want to know.

“I’m never going to be bored with you around,” Adam told me. The fu

“WANT TO GO FOR A RUN?” ADAM ASKED, HOPPING OUT of bed a few hours later.

We’d lain down to rest after our travels. Not much resting had taken place, but I wasn’t going to complain. Still, every bone in my body was Jell-O, and he wanted to go run?

“Ungh,” I said. That was the best I could do.

He gri

I waved a weak hand at him.

“I bet I catch a rabbit before you do,” he said.

Oh. He meant arun. We’d gotten back to the campground about dusk, so it was full dark. Full dark meant that in the unlikely event that someone saw Adam as werewolf, they’d think he was a dog—helped along by pack magic that let people see what they expected to see. The magic works in broad daylight, too, but darkness helps.

“Well, why didn’t you say so,” I grumped at him as I vaulted off the bed. I was wearing half a T-shirt—the left half—and my socks. The other half of my shirt was on the far side of the trailer. I was going to take an hour and clean the trailer really well before we returned it to its owner or I’d risk being embarrassed.

Which reminded me.“Hey, Adam?” I dropped the half shirt on the floor and stood on one foot to take off a sock. “Who loaned us the trailer? The only people I know who could have afforded it are you, Kyle, or Samuel. Samuel would not be caught dead with something this … bulky. You told me it isn’t yours. DidKyle buy it in an attempt to compromise with Warren’s desire to go camping?”

“Uncle Mike.”

I froze, one foot in the air.“What?” He’d borrowed something from a fae?

Adam steadied me with a hand on my shoulder.“I’m not wet behind the ears,” he told me, a little bite in his voice. “Uncle Mike called me and told me he’d heard I was pla

“You borrowed from Uncle Mike?”

“Uncle Mike offered it … Now, how did he phrase that? For services already rendered. You need to either get the sock off, Mercy, or put that foot down before you fall over.”

I pulled the sock off and stood on my own two feet.“Fae never give you anything for nothing,” I said urgently. “Not even Zee, and he’s my friend.”

The fae do things like make you pledge your firstborn child or your life’s blood for a piece of bubble gum, and make it sound like a good deal at the time.

“When the fae who owns this campground called to offer it up about an hour before Uncle Mike called, I was pretty suspicious,” Adam told me.

His voice had regained its usual relaxed tone, but he was irritated. I could tell by the way he stripped off his shirt. I could leave it alone … but he didn’t know the fae the way I’d come to know them.

“After Uncle Mike called,” he continued blandly, “I knew they wanted us here for some reason. I could have refused—I had reservations in San Diego—but I thought you’d enjoy this more than a hotel, and I knew I would.”

I frowned at him.

“I didn’t promise him anything,” Adam said with exaggerated patience. “You need to remember who you are now. They can’t just f—” He stopped speaking for a moment, then swallowed his temper with an effort—and not as much effect as he probably wanted because the bland tone deserted him entirely.

“Mercy, they can’t mess with you without messing with me and the whole pack—and Samuel—and Bran—and Zee—and Stefan probably, for that matter. I don’t know what they want. Maybe they needed us tonot go to San Diego—Uncle Mike mentioned San Diego specifically though I hadn’t told anyone where I was taking you. Maybe they needed us to stick closer to home. We werewolves are a potential ally against political attacks now since we are the only other supernatural group who admits its existence to the general public. Maybe there is something here—” He waved his hands to indicate the general area upon which the trailer sat. “It could be something as easy as using us as a deterrent to another fae who plans on destroying what Edythe has built here.”

Edythe must be the fae who owned the place. Of course it was a fae who had set up this campground, with its big trees and supergreen grass.

Adam was right. I’d forgotten that if the fae screwed with me, they were taking on the whole pack and then some. I was more than just a mechanic who fixed VWs and turned into a coyote because I had Adam, and I had friends. What a difference a year or two could make.

If he’d stopped there, I wouldn’t have gotten mad. Maybe I’d even have conceded that he’d been right, and I shouldn’t have worried. But he didn’t leave it alone—because Adam might be gorgeous and smart, but he wasn’t perfect.

“I suppose I could have driven myself crazy—” he bit out because our peculiar bond apparently wasn’t doing its thing. He didn’t know that I agreed with him. That he’d won. “Or more to the point,” he said, “I could have let you drive both of us crazy for the past few days speculating what nefarious plot Uncle Mike has hatched up—Uncle Mike, who has proved himself to be, at least, a valuable ally if you don’t consider him to be a friend. Or I could keep it to myself until your curiosity got the best of you and you asked so we could at least enjoy a couple days of our honeymoon before we started worrying about what the fu—” He was breathing harder now and had almost let that four-letter word all the way out.

I leaned forward, kissed the white line on his cheek that came out like war paint whenever he clenched his jaw, and said lightly,“All you ever had to do was tell me you had it under control, dear.” I batted my eyes demurely. “I’m just the wife. I don’t have to strain my poor weak brain worrying about the fae because you are here to protect me.”

Yep, I was ticked, too. He was patronizing me.

I could still, however, admit when he was right: the fae certainly weren’t the ones he had to worry about.

He narrowed his eyes at me.“That is not what I said. Don’t put words in my mouth.”

I reached around him, popped the door of the trailer open, and changed into a coyote before he finished his sentence—and I was off and ru

It would take a while before he could follow because werewolves take a lot longer to change. I supposed he could have chased after me in human form—but on two feet he’d never catch me, werewolf or not. Besides that, he was naked. The campground was rendered mostly private by topography and greenery, but it wasn’t completely private. Pack magic wouldn’t do anything to hide a naked man ru

I took advantage of him and left before he could continue the argument. *

“DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE DOING, MARRYING an Alpha werewolf?” my mother had said a few months ago, as I drove us to yet another wedding-dress outlet in Portland. Who knew there were so many white dresses? Who knew there were so many horrible white dresses? The oddest thing was that it seemed like the worse the dress, the more expensive it was.

“Yes, Mom,” I said, narrowly avoiding a brownish ’77 LTD being driven by a grandmother who could barely see over the dash. “I’ve known Adam for a long time. I know just what I’m getting myself into.”