"You heard about the fight tonight," I told him.
He laid his ears back and put his nose on his front paws.
"Then someone should have told you that they were using the pack bonds to mess with my head." I hadn't meant to say anything about it until I had a chance to talk to Samuel, but falling down the stairs had robbed me of self-control.
He stilled, and the look on his body was not disbelief, it was horror.
So it was possible.
Damn.
Damn.
Damn.
I'd hoped it wasn't, hoped I was being paranoid.
I didn't need this.
Sometimes it felt like both the mate and the pack bonds were doing their best to steal my soul.
The analogy might be figurative, but I found it nearly as frightening as the literal version would have been.
Finding out that someone could use the whole mess to make me do things was just the flipping icing on the cake.
Fortunately, I had a task to take my mind off the mess I was in.
I stood up and dusted myself off.
I had planned on waiting and talking to Adam directly, but there were some advantages to this scenario, too.
It would be a good idea for Adam to know that some of the pack were .
.
.
active about their dislike of me.
And if Ben told him, he couldn't read my mind to figure out that I wasn't weirded out only by the mind control, but also by the whole bond thing, pack and mate.
I told Ben, "You tell Adam what I said." He would.
Ben could be creepy and horrible, but he was almost my friend--shared nightmares do that.
"Give him my apologies and tell him I'm going to lie low"-- Adam would know that meant stay away from the pack-- "until I get a handle on it.
Right now, I'm going to get Samuel, so you're off duty."
3
I DROVE MY TRUSTY RABBIT TO KGH AND PARKED IN the emergency lot.
It was still hours before dawn when I walked into the building.
The trick to going wherever you want unchallenged in a hospital is to walk briskly, nod to the people you know, and ignore the ones you don't.
The nod reassures everyone that you are known, the brisk pace that you have a mission and don't want to talk.