“I wish I was happy like that,” she told him wistfully.

“Do you?” he asked. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Why don’t you come for a walk with me?”

Galina touched my shoulder. “I can’t leave Mercy alone. She saved me from the golem.”

He smiled at her. “Did she?” Was there a bite in his voice? If there was, it wasn’t directed at Galina. “She’ll be fine here for a moment.”

“Go,” I told her. “You’ve done enough for me. I’m safe now.”

“Okay,” she said. She stood up and took Coyote’s hand when he held it out to her.

I didn’t watch where he took her. It was a private moment. Her private moment.

“Will she be okay?” I asked in a small voice when Coyote returned without her a long while later.

“Right as rain,” he told me. “She’s where she should have been now. Unstuck. I don’t know why people get stuck like that.”

“You sent me to Prague to free the spirit of this spring,” I told him.

“I sent your brother to Prague to free the spirit of this spring,” he told me. “Blame him for not getting the job done. I am impressed, though. I didn’t expect you to resurrect the whole golem. Do you know what could have happened if you hadn’t stopped it?” he asked. Then he threw himself backward on the ground, plucked a blade of grass, and stuck it between his white teeth. “It would have been glorious.”

I woke up as Elizaveta broke the magic that surrounded the cage. Adam oh-so-gently moved her aside, then ripped the door off. His arms closed around me, so tight I could barely breathe.

Coyote’s voice spoke in my ear. “Tell him to find you some clothes before you catch your death.”

I ignored him.

—

A FULL TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER, I WOKE UP NAKED in sheets that felt like silk and with the smell of my mate all around me. I sat up and rubbed my face, careful of the cheek that was sore. The shower was running.

Libor had offered sleeping space in his bakery, but we’d gone to a hotel. Adam had wanted me alone, and I wasn’t arguing.

For the first time in forever, I wasn’t exhausted and alone.

I walked naked into the bathroom. The shower was clear glass, and Adam had his back to me. I leaned against the doorframe and smiled.

“You going to watch my butt all day, or are you going to join me?” asked my mate.

“What if I had said I was going to watch your butt all day?” I asked curiously as I opened the door and stepped into the hot water.

“I’ve been considering belly-dancing lessons,” he told me in a serious voice. His arms were tight around me, and he pulled me hard into him. “It would have given you something to watch. But I’m not sure if I could hold my head up around other Alpha werewolves if I did.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, the cells of my body both soothed and energized by the touch of his skin. “I know how much you worry about what other Alpha werewolves might think of you.”

We made love under the water. He kissed my bruises and I kissed the healing slice over his shoulder. We said the kinds of things that wouldn’t make any sense to anyone else. And when he was buried inside of me, his breath rough and his skin hot, that’s when I knew I was home.

—

WE FLEW OUT OF PRAGUE THREE DAYS LATER. IT GAVE us time to do the diplomacy things that Adam pretends he isn’t any good at. Bran stayed on the plane. With me safe, he didn’t want to risk anyone’s knowing he was there, because that would invite all sorts of random attacks of opportunity (Adam’s words). Libor knew but had, for his own reasons, decided to keep his own counsel. I found out later that Bran had coerced Zack into calling Libor to request that his father take good care of me. I also found out that Adam had done the same thing—all of this before Libor had met me in the garden and made me bargain with him. Coyote would like Libor.

Bonarata was charming, but I couldn’t forget or forgive him for Lenka. Honey stayed away from him, and I noticed that Libor kept Jitka and the other female werewolves in his pack away from the vampire, too.

Elizaveta was remaining in Europe, a guest of Bonarata’s, for a full month. He was paying her to remove his addiction to werewolf blood and to do all the things that Mary had once done for his seethe. He was going to try to hire her away from us, Adam said, but he hadn’t sounded worried. She would come home—a lot wealthier than when she’d left.

Marsilia had pursed her lips when Adam had told us what Elizaveta intended.

“It won’t work in the long run,” she said. “Addicts have to want to be clean. As long as Jacob thinks that it gives him more power, he won’t quit.”

When she spoke of Bonarata, she didn’t do it the way she used to. There had been so much energy wound up in her voice, but now that spring had worn down. He was someone she had once known well, but now was an acquaintance.

Bonarata was staying at Kocourek’s seethe, helping him rebuild. I didn’t think too hard about what that meant. Kocourek had pulled me aside and asked me not to tell anyone about how Mary had managed to create vampires so much faster.

“With her and the other vampires dead,” Kocourek said, “no one knows what she managed except for you, me, and my people. It is better that way, no?”

“Agreed,” I assured him. But part of me couldn’t help but think of that saying about how two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.