This was very bad.
Power, rank with musk and pack, vibrated through the house, making the air thick.
Both of them were on edge.
They were dominants--tyrants if I'd have allowed it.
But their strongest, most urgent need was to protect.
And I'd been recently harmed while under their protection.
Once with Tim and a second time with Blackwood--and to a lesser extent with Stefan.
It left them both dangerously aggressive.
Being a werewolf wasn't like being a human with a hot temper--it was a balance: a human soul against a predator's instinctive drives.
Push it too hard, and it was the animal in control--and the wolf didn't care who it hurt.
Samuel was the more dominant, but he wasn't an Alpha.
If it came to a fight, neither of them would fare well.
In a few breaths, the pause before battle would stretch too long, and someone would die.
I grabbed my full glass of juice and tossed it on them, putting out a forest fire with a thimbleful of cranberry juice.
They were standing almost nose to nose, so I got them both.
The rage in their eyes as they turned to me would have caused a lesser person to run.
I knew better.
I ate a bite of pancake from Adam's plate that attached itself like glue to the back of my throat.
I reached across the table and took Samuel's coffee cup and rinsed the sticky knot down my throat.
You can't pretend not to be scared by werewolves.
They know.
But you can meet their eyes, if you're tough enough.
And if they let you.
Adam's eyes closed, and he took a couple of steps until his back rested against the wall.
Samuel nodded at me--but I saw more than he'd have wanted me to.
He was better than he'd been, but he wasn't the happy wolf I'd grown up knowing.
Maybe he hadn't been as easygoing as I'd once thought--but he'd been better than this.
"Sorry," he told Adam.
"Bad day at the office." Adam nodded, but didn't open his eyes.
"I shouldn't have pushed." Samuel took a towel out of a drawer and wet it down in the sink.