want me to try shifting because the cast won’t make it through, and the bone’s too badly damaged to go without the cast.” Deacon’s frustration was obvious in his long, drawn-out sigh.
Adam nodded. “If you’ll give me some time later this afternoon, we might be able to speed things up.”
Logan stepped behind him midway up the long staircase. “Mik and AJ mentioned that. You’re saying you can make a bone knit faster? How?”
“Yep. I use a link, but with the body, not the mind. I actually go inside, to the source of the injury and repair it on site. It’s sort of telekinesis and mindtalking at the same time. I’m not really sure how I do it, but it seems to work. You’re welcome to piggyback and go with me.” He shrugged. “Maybe you can help me figure out just what the hell I’m doing.”
Logan stopped in his tracks and stared quizzically at Adam. “You’d do that? Show me how?”
“Of course I would. Hell, you’re a doctor…a healer, right? I’m a fuckin’ mechanic! You have no idea how much I’ve wished for more medical knowledge when I’m trying to put someone back together. It’s a lot more complicated than a valve job.”
Deacon broke in. “Do I have anything to say about this? It’s my leg…”
“No.”
Adam shot a quick look at Logan—they’d both answered Deacon at the same time. When Logan finally stopped laughing he slapped Adam on the back. Adam felt as if he’d passed some sort of test. “And you’re laughing why?” he asked, fighting back his own laughter.
“It finally makes sense, the way Tala says the Chanku healer ‘fixes things’.”
Pretending to grumble, Adam continued on up the stairs. “Well, that’s what I do. I fix things. Just ask Oliver.”
He left that line hanging and wondered if Logan would ask. He didn’t know of a single doctor who’d ever successfully replaced a missing pair of testicles on any man.
And he would put Deacon’s leg back together.
As he reached for the front door, a shiver raced along Adam’s spine, powerful enough to stop him in his tracks. He turned with his hand on the doorknob and glanced down the long driveway, toward the forest. The voices around him faded away as he studied the dark trees and listened to the uninterrupted chatter of birds. Nothing. Nothing at all out of the ordinary. He took a deep breath and shrugged off the uneasy feeling.
Then he opened the door and went inside the house.
Chapter 3
She jerked back from the eyepiece on the spotting scope. That was too damned close! Those brilliant amber eyes had gazed straight at the camouflaged blind for much too long a time for it to have been an accident. They’d appeared so close, magnified as they were through the lens, even though the man was over a quarter mile away.
Discovery meant almost certain death. Her father was proof of that. He’d learned their secrets and he’d died. They showed no mercy, but they were animals. All of them, predators.
Of course, what they couldn’t find, they couldn’t kill. She gazed at the forest around her, at the thick branches of the big blue spruce concealing her perch. Then she gave the scope a subtle twist of the lens and focused once more on the house.
“I’m going to help Oliver and Keisha get dinner on.” Eve leaned over the edge of the bed and gave Adam a kiss. Before he could respond, she pulled away. “Later,” she said, in her soft, southern drawl. “You distract me too easily.”
“I try.” He watched her go, and then crawled out of bed. By unspoken agreement, they’d all taken naps once their guests were settled. Of course, napping with Eve had nothing to do with sleep.
The past couple of hours had been absolutely magnificent. Feeling unusually mellow, Adam showered and threw on a pair of warm sweats. Temperatures had dropped the past few days. Fall was definitely in the air, but Anton intended to run tonight, which meant Adam needed to find Logan and Deacon.
They were both out on the back deck having a cold beer. Adam plopped down in one of the chairs next to Deacon. “Got a few minutes? I thought I’d take a look at your leg before the rest of them come wandering out here.”
Deacon nodded. “Logan talked to Oliver.”
“Ah. Good. What did he say?”
Logan shook his head. “What he said was fucking impossible. That you gave him a set of balls he’d never had. How?”
Adam shrugged. “That’s the problem. I really don’t know. I’m assuming he told you he’d been castrated when he was a child. I wanted him to be complete—a whole, intact man. Not for the sex, so much, but so he could shift. Once we linked I was able to help him become a wolf, and the wolf had balls. Luckily, they stayed when he shifted back.”
“Damned lucky. In fact it’s almost scary.” Deacon stared at his beer for a few moments. “I’d like for you to try and fix it, Adam. It kills me to watch everyone shift at night. They go off and leave me at the house and I feel like they’ve ripped something out of me.”
Logan frowned. “God, Deac…I’m sorry. You never said…”
Deacon shook his head. “Not your fault. There wasn’t anything anyone could do about it, but if Adam can help me heal faster…” He sighed. “It’s a compound fracture—I could be in this damned cast for four more weeks. I’m tired of waiting.”
“How’d you break it?” Adam tried to see beneath the cast. He felt the injury, a raw, only partially healed wound.
“Walking down a trail in the redwoods, looking up at a bird.” He glanced away and blushed. “I’m so tall…I’ve always been really clumsy. I fell into a ravine and caught my foot in some roots on the way down.”
“Ouch.” Adam shuddered. He’d picked up Deacon’s memories clearly enough to make his own leg hurt. “Logan, put your hands on mine and link with me. Can you get into my head?” Adam pressed his hands against Deacon’s cast, directly over the break.
“How’d you know exactly where it was broken?” Logan’s eyes locked with his. His palms were warm and solid when he covered Adam’s hands.
“I felt it.” Adam shrugged. It was never easy to explain what he did. “It just feels wrong right here.” He paused for a moment, searched for Logan, found him. “Okay…I’ve got you in my head.” He glanced at Deacon. “Hold really still now, and open your thoughts. I want to make sure I’m not hurting you.”
“Good idea,” Deacon muttered, but his barriers were down and his mind wide open.
There was so much pain in this kid. So much loneliness. Adam slipped away from the more intimate, personal memories, closed his eyes and pictured the open wound on the leg beneath the cast—the flesh beneath the wound, the veins and arteries feeding blood to the bone, and the bone itself. There was some infection in the broken skin where the bone had torn through, and the break in the bone was long and jagged. It reminded him of the shattered bones in Anton’s wolven body when he’d been shot by intruders last month.
Anton’s fall from the cliff had caused more damage than the bullet, and the repairs had taken everything Adam had. This was simple by comparison. He found the edges of bone and tied them tightly together, manipulating tissue, nerves, blood vessels, and bone on a cellular level until the separation between the two pieces was solid once again. In a way it reminded him of the jigsaw puzzles he’d loved as a kid, as piece after piece slipped into its proper spot. He removed all signs of infection where the bone had broken through the skin, and closed the wound with healthy tissues.
Logan remained a silent presence, hovering just on the fringes of Adam’s consciousness. Deacon hadn’t said a word. Adam wondered if the kid felt anything as the break in his leg healed. He stayed long enough to check the underlying bone,