“Want to play some Battleship?”I wasn’t leaving him alone with that thing in there.Chad armed himself with a notebook, and we went to war. Historically, war has often been used as a distraction for problems at home.”

“Then he'd come back home and found out that war didn't cause fear—love did.”

“Are you going to tell me what that was about?” Adam asked as we went back upstairs.“Sometime,” I told him. “When we're telling ghost stories around a campfire, and I want to scare you.”

“In this dream, I wasn’t a coyote shapeshifter trying to hold a werewolf, I was Coyote’s almost daughter, and I had all the strength of the world in my arms.”

“Kelly looked at the cop, then sighed. “What a cluster. I take it you haven’t been killing young women and leaving their half-eaten bodies in the desert?”Adam was ticked. I could tell it even if he was looking like a reasonably calm businessman. Adam’s temper was the reason he wasn’t one of Bran’s werewolf poster boys. When angered, he often gave in to impulses he wouldn’t otherwise have given in to.“Sorry to disappoint you,” Adam told Kelly in silky tones. “But I prefer rabbits. Humans taste like pork.” And then he smiled. Kelly took an involuntary step backward.Tony gave Adam a sharp look. “Let’s not make things worse, if we can help it, gentlemen.”

“Thank you, Adam,” I told him. “Thank you for tearing Tim into small Tim bits. Thank you for forcing me to drink one last cup of fairy bug-juice so I could have use of both of my arms. Thank you for being there, for putting up with me.” By that point I wasn’t laughing anymore. “Thank you for keeping me from being another of Stefan’s sheep—I’ll take pack over that any day. Thank you for making the tough calls, for giving me time.” I stood up and walked to him, leaning against him and pressing my face against his shoulder.“Thank you for loving me.”His arms closed around me, pressing flesh painfully hard against bone. Love hurts like that sometimes.”

“I think I’ll just go take a shower,” I said. It wasn’t until Samuel stiffened that I remembered I’d just come out of the shower. So much for playing normal.”