He’d helped Tad and Zee escape. I owed him—and I wouldn’t have left anyone I could help at the mercy of the fae. As a last precaution, I tried to get permission from Adam, but either he didn’t hear me (most likely) or he wanted me to make the decision, because he didn’t answer.

“Twenty-four hours,” I said abruptly. “If you do not harm one who is pack or who belongs to the pack. If you obey the pack leaders as the pack itself does. Those leaders are Adam who is our Alpha, myself, Darryl”—I gave a general wave to Darryl, who had returned sometime during the Nietzsche discussion—“Warren”—Warren nodded as I looked toward him—“and Honey, who is not here. For twenty-four hours, we’ll grant you sanctuary in the pack stronghold—with the option to renew this agreement.”

I almost missed it, the faint widening of his eyes and the almost imperceptible loosening of his shoulders. Relief. Far more obvious was the rise of outrage from the wolves—that I would risk their lives for a stranger, that I had overstepped my authority. I couldn’t tell which wolves were spearheading it, my pack sense was not that clear at the moment. Maybe all of them were unhappy.

For the benefit of those unhappy wolves, I said aloud, “Bran Cornick taught me that the pack only rules the territory it can keep safe from other predators. He taught me that where a debt is owed, it must be repaid.”

“What did this boy do for us?” asked Mary Jo, who’d come up with the others of the pack. At her back, as usual, stood Paul and Alec. Mary Jo wore a baseball cap and sunglasses to keep from being recognized. She was a firefighter in Pasco and had chosen to keep what else she was secret from them. But her secrecy felt like a “for now” thing, not a “forever.”

We’d been friends, or at least friendly acquaintances, until Adam had courted and married me. She thought he deserved a human woman, someone better than a werewolf like she was. That he’d chosen me, a coyote shifter, had devastated her—but she needed to get over it.

“He saved Joel,” I said mildly. She’d been on the bridge long enough that I was pretty sure she knew that.

“Oh. Joel. Your pet, right? The one you invited into the pack.” She gave voice to the unhappiness I felt through the pack, the bond we all shared feeling like sandpaper.

I stared at her, and she met my eyes for a whole two seconds before she dropped them. The roar of the pack rebellion died down to a murmur that no longer pounded at me through the pack bonds. Mary Jo’s wolf was convinced I outranked her, whatever her human half thought; that left her no room to challenge me, and she knew it.

“Bran also taught me guesting laws,” I continued. “A person who asks for shelter will get twenty-four hours if he makes no move to harm. He will get food, drink, and a bed. Protection from his enemies. Safety. It is what we offer any who come to us.” Those guesting laws were old. Bran adhered to them, but not all the wolf packs did. From the unease in the pack, I thought that they would be happier if I hadn’t mentioned the guesting laws. But the walking stick warmed gently in my hand.

“Can you keep your half of that bargain?” the boy asked me, looking around at the rest of the pack. He couldn’t read pack bonds, but he apparently was pretty good at reading unhappy expressions.

“Aiden,” I said. “I bid you welcome to my territory and my home.” It wasn’t enough, but, with the walking stick heating beneath my fingers, I could feel the words that needed to be said. “By my name, Mercedes Athena Thompson Hauptman, by my authority as the mate of the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack, I give you as much safety as my pack can provide for twenty-four hours as long as you act as a guest in my house and my territory.” I don’t know what kept my tongue going, or why I raised the walking stick. “By my word as Coyote’s daughter and bearer of Lugh’s walking stick, I so swear.”

The staff lit up like a lantern. Red fire circled the silver ring at the bottom of the staff and raced up the bark in Celtic knots that spiraled from the bottom to the silver top that had once again lengthened to a spear and glowed as if heated in a blast furnace. It felt as though all of the pack held their breath, waiting.

I kept the staff up in the air, and said, “Let the Gray Lords in their halls know that the Columbia Basin Pack holds these lands and grants sanctuary to whomever we choose.”

Yes, said Adam in my head.

Yes, agreed the pack.

In movies, they stop rolling the film after the climactic speech, or they change scenes.

I had things to do.

I knelt beside Adam, but before I could do more, he rolled upright. He rose to his feet with only a little stiffness, then shook himself as if he’d been wet. I could feel the shivers of pain the motion set wracking and howling through his healing wounds, but no one else would.

The others all turned to go, leaving the cleanup for the poor humans whose city I had just claimed—and I already saw a dozen ways that was going to backfire on us. There was a chance that every supernaturally endowed creature in a hundred-mile radius hadn’t witnessed my declaration, but I was pretty sure that’s what the walking stick had been doing with its light show. It didn’t think, not like that, but I was getting better at reading its intentions anyway. Zee started to turn, hesitated, then turned back. “So that was what they were trying. Stupid verdammt troll,” he said.

I paused. “What who was trying when?”

“What the Gray Lords were trying to do when they sent that troll after me.” He didn’t say anything for a moment, and when he did, he sounded sad. “There aren’t a lot of trolls left, Mercy, not so many that they should have sent this one to die, sad excuse for a troll that he was. And do not mistake me, they meant for him to die—that’s what I missed.”