her as a guard when he felt I needed one.
Mary Jo wanted me dead. That was what that look had been about.
It was such a shock that I might have missed her answer to Ben's question if she hadn't sounded so defensive.
"It wasn't like that. She was safe enough; she left with Samuel. There's nothing I could do that would protect her better than Samuel could."
"So why didn't you stop the arsonists?"
Arsonists? There had been arsonists?
"I wasn't ordered to protect her place. She wasn't in there."
Ben smiled in such satisfaction that I realized he hadn't known there were arsonists either. "Who were they, Mary Jo?"
"Fae," she said. "No one I knew. Just more trouble she's bringing to my pack's door. If they wanted to burn down Mercy's house, what did I care?" She looked at me, and said viciously, "I wish they'd burned it up with you in it."
"Ben!"
How he managed to stop his hand before it hit her face, I don't know. But he did. She'd have wiped the floor with him afterward. She might be nominally below him in the pack hierarchy, but that was only because unmated women were at the bottom of the pack.
She wanted to fight him. I could see it in her face.
I couldn't move with Adam mostly on my lap. "That's enough." I kept my voice soft.
Ben was panting, his hands shaking in rage . . . or pain. His hands were really damaged.
"He could have died," Ben said to me, his voice rough with the wolf. "He could have died because this - " He stopped himself.
And the violence was gone from Mary Jo's posture as quickly as if someone had hit a switch. Her eyes brightened with tears. "Don't you think I know that? He came running from the house, calling her name. I tried to tell him it was too late, but he just pulled the wall apart and jumped through the hole he'd made. He didn't even hear me."
"He'd have heard you if you told him she wasn't in there," said Ben, unaffected by the tears. "I was right behind him. You didn't even try. You could have just told him she was alive."
"Enough," I said. Adam's change was nearly finished. "Adam can settle this himself later."
I looked over at Sam. "Two changes is bad when there's tissue damage, right? It heals wrong." The human ear I could see was scarred, and the top half of Adam's head from his eyebrows up seemed to be as well. He must have had a wet towel or something over his head to cover his face, but it had fallen down at some point and hadn't protected his scalp.
Sam sighed.
The doctor had been listening to Mary Jo's story with fascination - I bet he watched soap operas, too. "I'm sorry," he told me, sounding it. "Unless you have some means of effectively restraining him, I cannot treat him here. I won't risk my staff."
"Can we have a room, then?" I asked.
Time wasn't our friend. We could take him back to his house and take care of him . . . but once Mary Jo had reminded me of the danger he'd be in wounded, in the middle of his pack, I really didn't want to take him back there and hurt him.
Sam caught my eye and looked down the line of curtained rooms to the one I'd retrieved him from.
I looked back at the doctor. "A real room would be best. Could we use the X-ray storage room?"
The doctor frowned, but Jody came to my rescue. "This is Doc Cornick's Mercy," she said. "She's dating Adam Hauptman, the pack Alpha."
"Who is lying in my lap," I told them. "I'm sorry. If it were anyone except for Adam who was hurt, we could make sure your personnel were safe - but Adam's the only one who could keep a lid on it reliably. You are right not to risk your people. But I've got a couple of wolves here - Mary Jo's an EMT - and we can manage on our own. If it weren't urgent that we get started, I'd just take him home. But if we don't do something soon, the scars will be permanent."
His feet were the worst. Wholly human and . . . I could see bone under blackened skin. He was unconscious, sweaty, and four shades paler than usual.
"What can we get you?" Fournier asked.
"A stretcher," said Mary Jo. She looked at Sam, waiting for him to take