"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.