“No, ma’am,” said Warren. “Darryl is worried about that, but Adam says, and I reckon he’s right, that Marsilia will be pleased at having that little bit to throw at any other vampires who think to come here and challenge her like that one did a while back. Besides, we can handle the vampires. Stefan won’t move against you”—he didn’t say why not; Warren was one of the few who knew about the bond between Stefan and me—“and that leaves Marsilia herself, and Wulfe. The rest of them aren’t old or powerful enough to give Zack a fair fight.”

“So where is the problem?” I asked. “The Gray Lords?”

“Uniting the pack against the fae won’t be no trick.” Warren reached up to tip his cowboy hat—and rubbed his ear instead when he realized it was sitting on his knee because we were inside. Warren didn’t wear hats inside a building because it was rude. He was also perfectly capable of speaking with good grammar, he just didn’t always bother. “The fae are pretty good at making themselves unlikeable—excepting Zee and Tad.”

“Excepting Tad,” I said. “Zee can be as obnoxious as the best of them when he wants to be.” But I was still working through what he said—and I figured it out. “Oh holy wow. Oh wow. Oops.”

Warren smiled. “See, I knew you’d think of it when you got going. But if it helps, Adam thinks that pot was boiled when Darryl and Zack jumped in to face off with the troll.”

“Bran,” I said. “Bran is going to be livid.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“He just got things smoothed over from when Charles took out that monster in Arizona,” I said. Livid wasn’t even in the ballpark of what Bran was going to be.

“We figured he’d get the news when it broke on the national front—about twenty minutes ago.”

“National news,” I said.

He tipped his imaginary hat to me. “Yes, ma’am. One of our local reporters was close enough to get your declaration on camera, complete with fiery sigils lit up and down your walking staff.”

I sucked in a breath. This wasn’t my fault. At least, it wasn’t all my fault. It was the fault of the fae for letting a troll loose in my town.

There was no way we could have left that troll to the police. The troll’s appearance was outside my ability to affect—therefore this was not my fault. I felt guilty anyway.

“So what does Bran have to do with Adam’s sudden, knuckle-dragging declaration of protection?” I asked.

“Wait a moment,” Warren said. “He wrote it down because he was worried I might mess it up.” He lifted his hip off the chair and dug around in the back pocket of his jeans. “Here it is.” He handed me a three-by-five card that had seen better days. He’d folded it in half to stick it into his pocket—and Adam had bled on it. There was writing on both sides.

In small, neat engineers’ block lettering I read:

1. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time.

2. I cannot afford dissent in the pack over anything if we are to square off against Bran. If they are showing disrespect to my mate, they are not committed to me. They need to be loyal to me, that will matter to Bran.

3. The rest of the packs all over will now have to decide what they are going to do. If they don’t follow our example, they are going to appear weak. If they follow our example in this, in making our territories truly our territories, they will follow, will they or not, the other changes that have begun in our pack. For this to happen, we must be united.

4. Even if Bran eases off, the fae will not. I had a little talk with Zee. They want Aiden. They will not be gentle, and Aiden has done nothing to raise their ire, but that won’t save him from torture or worse. I’m not ready to turn someone over for torture just because it would be easier for me. So—here, too, we cannot afford for the pack to be divided.

I turned the card over. The writing on this side was different, more angular, larger, and the pen had dug into the surface of the card.

5. Most importantly. I love you. And I am done with standing by while my pack thinks it is acceptable to disrespect you. I am done.

After the last “done,” he’d written, “I’m sorry,” but it was crossed out. Evidently he wasn’t sorry.

Warren tapped the card. “The back side he wrote after we had to break his shoulder blade a second time. Apparently, all we did the first time was open a hairline fracture into a full break in the wrong place. Which is why we’d brought Zee down. He’s better with a hammer than any of us.”

I flinched. “He should have let me be there,” I said.

“He needed an excuse to be strong,” said Warren. “He was afraid that he couldn’t hold the illusion of strength if you were there.”

I tucked the card into a front pocket. “You win,” I said. “I won’t yell at him about his declaration. I wouldn’t have even if you hadn’t added that last bit.”

Warren wrapped his long-fingered hand around the back of my neck and pulled me over so he could kiss the top of my head. “Go ahead and yell at him,” he said. “He’s tough, he won’t mind. Just don’t leave, and he’ll be good.”

“I wouldn’t have left him over this,” I said, feeling insulted. Then I rubbed my face. “It’s just . . . Warren, I was raised with werewolves. I was raised among the wolves in the Marrok’s pack, where no one was allowed to say anything bad about Bran’s mate, Leah. Sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the night and use phrases I learned from Ben and aim them at her because now I can.”