I was going to have to come up with a rank for myself besides Alpha's mate. In the pack, I was just Mercy- but if ten more people called me the Alpha's mate, I was going to hit someone. It sounded like a chess move.

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.

I can't protect you from knowledge.

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.

That is the freakiest thing that ever happened to me.” I nodded toward the mess. “And if you knew my life, you’d realize just how freaky that is.

Not that I'd really been planning on keeping the attack secret; it had just been an option I'd wanted to keep open if I could.

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