How old is adam hauptman

Then he left, shutting the door to my bedroom as my doorbell rang the first time. It rang twice more before he opened the outside door and he wasn't being slow. I grabbed clothes and frantically tried to remember if we'd done the dishes from dinner. It was my turn. If it had been Samuel's turn I wouldn't have had to worry.

It was stupid. I knew that she could care less about the dishes -- but it gave me something to do other than panic. Adam was the Alpha werewolf in charge of the local pack. He was tough. He could be mean when he had to -- and he wouldn't stand a chance against my mom.

I pulled thing around so fast I wouldn't be surprised to discover I'd given myself a rug burn. Frustrated I stared at the my room. I had to have a clean shirt somewhere. I had just been wearing one -- but it had disappeared in my search for a bra. It was clean, or at least it didn't stink too badly. The oil smudge on the shoulder looked to be permanent. I took a deep breath and opened the door.

I had to duck around Adam, who was leaning against the door frame. I don't think that was something my mother needed to hear.

My mother is five foot nothing. She's only seventeen years older than me which means she's not yet fifty and looks thirty. She still can wear the belt buckles she won barrel racing on their original belts. She's usually blond -- I'm pretty sure it's her natural color -- but the shade changes from year to year.

This year it was strawberry gold. Her eyes are big and blue and innocent-looking, her nose slightly tip-tilted and her mouth full and round.

With strangers she sometimes plays a dumb blond, batting her eyelashes and speaking in a breathy voice that anyone who watched old movies would recognize from Some Like it Hot or Bus Stop. My mother has never, to my knowledge, changed her own flat tire. If the sharp anger in her voice hadn't been a cover for the bruised look in her eyes, I could have responded in kind.

Instead, I shrugged. After it happened. I stayed coyote for a couple of days. Guess what happened to me today. She looked me in the eyes and I think she saw more than I wanted her to.

I'd given myself all the self-pity time I would allow. Mom could cuddle her children like any of the best of parents, but I should have trusted her more. She knew all about the importance of standing on your own two feet. Her right hand was balled into a white-knuckled fist, but when she spoke, her voice was brisk. I knew better, but I also knew it would be later and private. She turned her angelic blue eyes on Adam. Adam had remained in his position against my bedroom doorframe, his body held a little more casually than usual.

I think he had been trying to give my mother the impression that he was at home here: someone who had authority to keep her out of my room. He lifted an eyebrow and showed not even a touch of the panic I'd heard in his voice earlier. He gave her one of his sudden smiles and I knew my mom had made yet another conquest: she's pretty cute when she scowls, and Adam didn't have many people gutsy enough to scowl at him.

I had a sudden revelation. I'd been making a tactical error for the past few years if I'd really wanted him to quit flirting with me. I should have smiled and smirked and batted my eyelashes at him. Obviously a woman snarling at him was something he enjoyed.

He was too busy looking at my mom's scowl to see mine. Mercy speaks of you often. I don't know what my mother would have said to that, doubtless something polite. But with a popping sound like eggs landing on a cement floor, something appeared between Mom and Adam, a foot or so above the carpet. It was a human-sized something, black and crunchy. It dropped to the floor, reeking of char, old blood and rotten corpses. I stared at it for too long, my eyes failing to find a pattern that agreed with what my nose told me.

Even knowing that only a few things could just appear in my living room without using the dooe couldn't make me acknowledge what it was. It was the green shirt, torn and stained, with the hind quarters of a familiar Great Dane still visible that forced me to admit that this black and shrunken thing was Stefan. I dropped to my knees beside him and reached out before snatching my hand back, afraid to damage him further. He was obviously dead, but since he was a vampire, that wasn't as hopeless a thing as it might have been.

I wasn't the only one who jumped when he grabbed my wrist. The skin on his hand was dry and crackled disconcertingly against my skin. Stefan has been my friend since the first day I moved here to the Tri-Cities. He is charming, funny and generous -- if given to miscalculations on how forgiving I might be about innocent people he killed trying to protect me.

It was still all I could do not to jerk away and rub away the feel of his brittle skin on my arm. And I had the horrible feeling that it was hurting him to hold onto me, that any moment his skin would crack and fall off. His eyes opened to slits, his irises crimson instead of brown. His mouth opened and shut twice without making any sound.

Then his hand tightened on mine until I couldn't have pulled free if I wanted to. He sucked in a breath of air so he could talk, he didn't do it quite right and I heard air hissing out of the side of his ribe where it had no business escaping from. It was rough and dry. Looking into his mad eyes, I thought his advice was worth taking -- too bad I wasn't going to be able to break free to follow it.

He was slow, but he had me and I wasn't a werewolf or vampire with supernatural strength to help myself out. I heard the distinctive clack of a bullet chambering, and a quick glance showed me my mother with a wicked-looking Glock out and pointed at Stefan.

It was pink and black -- trust my mom to have a Barbie gun, cute but deadly. Normally I wouldn't worry about someone shooting at Stefan, vampires not being that vulnerable to guns -- but he was in bad shape.

Adam grabbed Stefan's wrist and held it so instead of Stefan pulling me toward him, the vampire was slowly raising his own head off the floor. As he came closer to my arm, Stefan opened his mouth and scraps of burnt skin fell on my tan carpet. His fangs were white and lethal looking, and also a lot bigger than I remembered them being. Get it off! Instead I leaned over Stefan and put my head into Adam's shoulder.

It put my neck at risk, but the smell of werewolf and Adam helped mask the stench of what had been done to Stefan. If Stefan needed blood to survive, I'd donate to him. And, in an act of bravery that was completely in character, Adam put his wrist in front of Stefan's face. The vampire didn't appear to notice, still pulling himself up by his grip on my arm.

He wasn't breathing so he couldn't scent Adam -- and I don't think he0 was focusing any too well either. I should have tried to stop Adam -- I'd fed Stefan before without any ill effects that I knew of, and I was pretty sure that Stefan cared whether I lived or died. I wasn't so sure how he felt about Adam. They were all completely devoted to him. Don't get me wrong, he's a great guy for a vampire -- but I somehow doubted that those people, mostly women, could live together devoted to one man without some sort of vampire mesmerism at work.

And I'd sort of had my fill of magical compulsion for the year. Any protest I made to Adam would be an exercise in futility anyway. He was feeling especially protective of me right now -- and all I could do was stir up tempers, his, mine and my mother's.

Adam pressed his wrist against Stefan's mouth and the vampire paused his incremental closing of the distance between my arm and his fangs. He seemed confused for a moment -- then he drew air in through his nose. Stefan's teeth sank into Adam's wrist, his free hand shot up to grab Adam's arm, and his eyes closed -- all so fast it looked like the motion of a cheaply drawn cartoon.

Adam sucked in his breath, but I couldn't tell if it was because it hurt him, or because it felt good. When Stefan had fed from me, I'd been in pretty rough shape. I didn't remember much about it.

It was strangely intimate, Stefan held me as he drank from Adam's wrist and Adam leaned harder into me. Intimate with an audience. I turned my head to see that my mother still held her gun in a steady two handed grip, pointed at Stefan's head. Her face as calm as if she saw burnt bodies appear from nowhere, then rise from the dead to sink fangs on whoever was closest all the time, though I knew that wasn't true.

I'm not sure she'd ever even seen one of the werewolves in wolf form. I looked at Stefan, who was looking better though I still wouldn't have recognized him without my nose. Bullets, if they are silver, may work on werewolves, but I don't think any bullets do much to vampires. She tucked the Glock, hot, into the holster inside the waislin of the back of her jeans.

I wiggled my arm and Stefan released me and took a better grip on Adam. If you'll get my phone out for me and hit the speed dial I'll call for some more wolves, though. I doubt one feeding will be enough. With Mom watching, I behaved myself while I dug his phone out of the holder on his belt.

Instead of taking the time to sort through his contacts, I just punched in his house number and handed him the ringing phone. Whoever was outside was growing impatient. I was going to have a bruise on my forearm, but for now it wasn't too noticeable. I slipped past Mom and opened the door about six inches. The woman standing on the porch didn't look familiar. She was about my height and age.

Her dark hair had been striped with a lighter color or her light brown hair had been striped with a darker color.

She wore so much foundation that I could smell it over the perfume that a purely human nose find light and attractive. Her grooming was immaculate, like an expensive dog ready to go to the show -- or a very expensive call girl.

Not a person you'd expect to find on the porch of an old mobile home out in the boonies of Eastern Washington at night. If she hadn't said anything, I'd never have recognized her because my nose was full of perfume and she didn't look anything like the girl I'd gone to college with. Amber had been my college roommate Charla's best friend, they'd gone to high school together.

She'd been studying to be a veterinarian, but I'd heard she'd dropped out her first year in vet school. Mercy Athena Thompson Hauptman - Adam's relationship with Mercy evolves from adversarial neighbors to friends, to their current, mated, status. Aspen Creek Wiki Explore. The Series. Policy Staff Wrenlett Fandom Contact. Recent Blog Posts Forum. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Ben says you might run. If you do, I will find you and bring you back.

Every time you run, Mercy. I won't force you, but. No more excuses, Mercy. You are mine, and I am keeping you. Thank you for forcing me to drink one last cup of fairy bug-juice so I could have use of both of my arms. Thank you for being there, for putting up with me. Thank you for making the tough calls, for giving me time.

Love hurts like that sometimes. But when I walked past him, he swatted my rump. Hard enough to sting. A warm, edgy presence right on the edge of my perception. When I opened my eyes, he was standing right in front of me. When he was finished, I was more than ready to head home. You should have said something.