"I've been staying up nights," he told me.
"Between the vampires and the Washington bigwigs, I'm going to have to start taking naps like a two-year-old." "Trouble?" asked Samuel carefully.
He meant, trouble over me--or rather over that nifty video I'd never seen of Adam in a half-wolf form, ripping up Tim the Rapist's dead body.
Adam shook his head.
"Not really.
Mostly just the same old, same old." "Have you called Marsilia?" I asked.
"What?" Jesse had been getting a glass of milk for her dad, and she set it down a little too hard.
"Mercy," growled Adam.
"Part of the reason you're here is that your dad has a pair of vampires in his holding cell," I informed her.
"We're in negotiation with Marsilia so she'll quit trying to kill everyone." "I only get told half of what goes on," said Jesse.
Adam covered his eyes in a mock-exasperated fashion, and Samuel laughed.
"Hey, old man.
This is the tip of the iceberg.
Mercy's going to be leading you around with a ring in your nose." But there was something in his eyes that wasn't amusement.
I didn't think anyone else noticed or heard the odd note of unhappiness in his voice.
Samuel didn't want me, not really.
He didn't want to be an Alpha ...
but he wanted what Adam had, Jesse as much as me, I thought--a family: kids, a wife, a white picket fence or whatever the equivalent had been when he was a kid.
He wanted a home, and his last home had died with his last human mate long before I was born.
He glanced at me just then, and I didn't know what was in my face, but it stopped him.
Just stopped all the expression, and for a moment he looked amazingly like his half brother, Charles--one of the scariest people I've ever met.
Charles can just look at raging werewolves and have them whimpering in the corner.
But it was only for an instant.
He patted me on my head and said something funny to Jesse.
"So," I said.
"Did you call Marsilia, Adam?" He watched Samuel, but said, "Yes, ma'am.
I got Estelle.
She's supposed to give Marsilia my message and have her call me back." "She's playing one-upmanship games," observed Samuel.
"Let her," Adam said.
"Doesn't mean I need to do the same." "Because you have the edge," I said with satisfaction.