E10 Blood Bound 2: Self-Care for the Preternatural

In this episode, Uncle Mike’s Book Club discusses chapters 4–5 of Blood Bound from the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs.

They discuss supernatural coping mechanisms; whether the Fae can listen to heavy metal like Iron Maiden (https://www.ironmaiden.com), Mötley Crüe (https://motley.com), and Led Zeppelin (https://www.ledzeppelin.com); comparing the vampire seethe court to various TV judges and discussing how vampire courts work; how strange Wulfe is and his similarities to Coach Beard from Ted Lasso (https://tv.apple.com/us/show/ted-lasso/umc.cmc.vtoh0mn0xn7t3c643xqonfzy); speculating about a DoorDash or Uber Eats service for vampires; a What We Do in the Shadows reference (“It’s not hygienic!”) (https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/what-we-do-in-the-shadows); the vampires’ “tell the truth chair,” how to speak “chair,” and Stefan and Mercy testifying while seated in it; “must acquit” references from the O.J. trial; Mercy’s amazing ability to think before she speaks; wrapping up vampire night court; Warren and Ben joining Stefan to hunt vampires; Mercy complaining about her bodyguards, which are apparently as hard to cancel as AOL in the early 2000s; and how much Mercy loves sparring at full speed with Adam.

We are a fan-based Mercy Thompson Universe (aka the Mercyverse) reread-along podcast. Just some friends who love Mercy Thompson (and a lot of other stuff) sharing fan theories, joking around, teasing each other, and making weird references to other fandoms and pop culture.

As always, there are potentially spoilers for every single book published in the Mercyverse: the short stories, the Mercy Thompson series, and the Alpha and Omega series (everything through Blind Date with a Werewolf, anyway). So if you aren’t caught up, fair warning.

Links:

* Subscribe to the Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2566095/episodes/18525659
* Podcast RSS feed: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2566095.rss
* Check out our for-now website: https://shewhowrenches.carrd.co
* Patricia Briggs’ official website with complete book list: https://www.patriciabriggs.com/books/
* Stories in timeline order (how they happen for Mercy): https://www.patriciabriggs.com/books/printabletimeline.html
* Follow us on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/shewhowrenches.bsky.social 

Recording Date: 2026-02-06


Chapters:
00:00:00 Intro
00:00:51 Recap Guy
00:06:13 Supernatural Coping Mechanisms
00:07:16 Night Court at the Vampire Seethe
00:12:33 We Meet Wulfe, the Creepy Teen-Looking Vampire
00:16:23 Vampire DoorDash
00:17:39 Back to the Vampire Court
00:25:42 Mercy Complains to Adam About Honey as a Bodyguard



YouTube version of this episode: https://youtu.be/C7O7ZYYMGhY

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:06

Welcome to She Who Wrenches, a Mercy Verse reread along podcast. I'm Brittany. I'm Eric. And I'm Kelly. Today we're mostly talking about blood bound, but everything through Blind Date with a Werewolf is fair game, including fair game. Spoiler howl.

SPEAKER_03 0:26

For what it's worth, I think mostly is doing an awful lot of work in that sentence. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

Mostly. In case you don't remember, this is the one where we first meet the creepy teen vampire witch slash wizard slash everything. Um eat that, Sabrina. And chase a demon riding vampire all around the mulberry bush. Today we're starting with chapter four.

SPEAKER_03 0:50

And now it's time for recap guy.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

So Mercy gets awakened by a phone call. She says, Stefan, it's 3 a.m. You must need a favor. He says, Mercy, I can't help it. I can go check out a new vampire. So Stefan arises and knocks on the door and goes, Mercy. And she goes, Who's there? And Stefan goes, You may come in, Stefan. And she goes, You may come in, Stefan, who? He goes, Thank you. Vampires always check thresholds with knock-knock jokes. Stefan is in his vampire suit and shows Mercy, Mercy, uh, her studded harness uh for the coyote shape. And Mercy's like, oh no, are we going to another SM furry convention? And she's like, fine, but I'm not going to call you Vlad the Impaler again. And then they leave in the rabbit in speeds of excess of 35 miles an hour, and they arrive at Motel 666, and Mercy smells fear on Stefan, and Stefan's like, oh, shit happens. Speaking of that, if I die, tell the mistress it was I that short sheeted her coffin.

SPEAKER_03 2:05

I want her to know it was me.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Yep. And so they knock on the door and Cory opens the door, uh, looking like an extra from the Tri-Cities Buyers Club, and invites him in and says, Don't worry about waking anybody, they're dead asleep, and giggles. Stefan and Corey do a game of the vampire dozens, and Corey's like, You got no soul, but you are a soldier. And Stefan's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, bat boy. And then Corey gets mad and goes, you know, it's just all in all, just another bed through the wall. Oh no. Corey tells Stefan to call him Rock Me Asmodeus or Urkel. And Stefan's like, no, I'm gonna call you a squib. Corey gets mad and pushes the vampire reset button on Stefan's forehead, then brings in the hotel worker and says, We're all gonna get made tonight.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Yeah. And Mercy tries to nope out but can't. Corey reminisces about the uh before times and what how he wants to make vampires great again. And Stefan's fang and claws come out and his eyes glow red and he puts on a Mava hat. Oh no. And Mercy's still just trying to nope out, and then she gets a little space and she can uh lunge and grabs Corey by the neck, grabs his throat, but it just tastes like clamato, and Corey uh plays the mattress with her and throws her up against a wall. Mercy wakes up and Stefan and Samuel are having an awkward silence contest, and Mercy tries to stop it, but realize coyotes can't talk. And then Stefan offers offers to take her out of the harness so she can shift, but only if they put on Motley Cruz girls, girls, girls. Wow. Oh, it gets worse. But wait, there's less. Okay, and then Stefan and Mercy go over the night's events and accuse each other of being as inaccurate as a recap guy. Then throw a bed through the fourth wall. Stefan's like, by the way, the same thing uh kind of happened with my bat boy Daniel. He doesn't remember a lot of stuff. And then, oh, look at the time. Do you have an unrealistic sized closet I can sleep in? Mercy's like, right this way in my third bedroom. No sweat. It also happens to be virtually empty. Because that's what mobile homes are known for. Space. Space.

SPEAKER_03 4:36

Especially the single wide. Yep. Mm-hmm. The spacious second story is what everyone loves about a single home.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Don't forget the basement.

SPEAKER_03 4:46

And that basement. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

So then Mercy goes and showers until the well runs dry. And then sits, has a peroxide sits bath, but still feels dirtier than a piece of toddler's peanut butter toast in a sawdust factory. I like that one.

SPEAKER_03 5:04

It doesn't redeem all the rest of them, but it does get you. Yeah, you do get points for that. Oh, that's good.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

And then she goes uh to work because she can't sleep with all the vampire and werewolf BS going on in the uh huge single wide. And then Z and Mercy talk about Thrall Demon Sweat Live, and Tom Black shows up asking not safe for work questions. And Mercy tells him he's fake news and like Dan, I'd rather not. Then Mercy gets enrolled in the werewolf protection program and stays at Warren's and has dinner there. Uh big dish of beef chow mein. See if Kelly gets that one. Then Ben wonders why Mercy doesn't like her just because he's an a-hole. And then the phone rings with a winning trip from Mercy and two of her closest bodyguards to the vampire seed. And that takes us up to now. If there are any listeners left.

SPEAKER_03 6:05

So hello, listeners. Hello and goodbye. It's been nice almost knowing you. Yeah, so they're gonna go to the seeth. We love a good seethe. Who among us hasn't spent an evening hanging out with the vamps?

SPEAKER_02 6:21

I don't we didn't talk about it before, but I did I did sort of like the touch that they have ways to try to simulate sunlight without actually letting sunlight through. And also it's night, so there wouldn't be any sunlight anyway.

SPEAKER_03 6:34

Every once in a while, there's like a casual mention of a coping mechanism. A thing that werewolves do, or a thing that that vampires do that is something from what their life was like before. Self-care for the preternatural. Every once in a while we get those little nuggets of, you know, treat yourself uh when you are supernatural. And uh I I appreciate them. I think they're kind of fun to I that's the kind of stuff that makes the world building work for me is those little casual mentions of the mural of the sunrise on the wall because nobody will ever see another one, you know, like the casual mention of the that is like super cool. So I enjoy those those little pieces. I think they're fun.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

So they go in and Bercy's joking about it's like a scary movie, um, which makes you kind of want to have somebody jump out right then, but apparently we didn't get a jump scare.

SPEAKER_03 7:26

I thought that too when I like when I listened to that. Every time it's like, this really feels like a scary movie, and I'm like, now here comes somebody gonna pop up out of the out of the shrubs, you know, out of the tumbleweed. So, ha ha, you know, but no.

SPEAKER_02 7:39

The little uh skeleton head and shoulders on on poles at Haunted Mansion that yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Okay, I had a thought that I need to derail the podcast with.

SPEAKER_03 7:50

I'm shocked. This here's my shock phase.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Faye, listen to heavy metal.

SPEAKER_02 7:57

I don't know how long of a derailment that joke needs to take.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

I mean, you know, Iron Maiden, Z can, but depends on the metal.

SPEAKER_03 8:08

There you go.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:09

Iron Maiden is off limits. Muttley craw, totally fine. Because you know they would pronounce it, is it Mutley Kra? Because they wouldn't understand ironic umlots because they put them in the band name because it looked neat, not because it was actually how you're supposed to say it.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, they're known for being extremely well read, so it's odd that they would have missed that.

SPEAKER_03 8:34

Maybe Z is also the only one who can listen to lead Zeppelin.

SPEAKER_02 8:37

Oh, yeah. I don't really discuss lead that much. Silver, iron. Yeah. I arsenic, even at one point, but I don't think we ever discussed lead. So then with the uh old lace.

unknown 8:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Arsenic and old lace.

SPEAKER_03 8:57

Well, I don't know. Obviously, Eric needs to write this down on the re in the official recap guy notebook so that we can ask this very important question the next time we talk to Patty. Patty, we have this burning question. The internet is desperate for an answer.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Patty's not gonna talk to me.

SPEAKER_03 9:19

Not after you ask her that. That's why you get to do it. I mean, not now, but maybe before. So, yeah, very much the uh this is the jump scare portion of the program. Psych. Um that's totally not happening. Uh now we get now we try to actually enter the enter the seeth.

SPEAKER_02 9:37

Uh, I don't remember anything that was that significant until we get to the chair.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Yeah. Like looks at the chair and feels like she like feels it like uh magic stuff.

SPEAKER_03 9:50

Yeah. Mercy and the odd couple rolling down the hallway. That's all we really know.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Yeah, Warren and Ben are flanking her.

SPEAKER_03 10:00

Now we get to the chair.

SPEAKER_02 10:01

Covered in old blood and has a thrum of magic.

SPEAKER_03 10:06

Weeks of magic. Uh, this is apparently uh the vampire's court. So Wapner rolls in, ignores everybody, um, has a seat. Judge Judy, I mean Judge Marcillia eventually makes her dramatic entrance. Uh we're just gonna add all the judges to this one, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Um Judge Reinhold.

SPEAKER_03 10:30

Also, the other thing that I thought was weird in this is like all these vampires show up to like sit in the bleachers. Was there a ticket system for where they're supposed to? Like, is it general admission?

SPEAKER_00 10:42

I have to say. Do vampires have jury duty?

SPEAKER_03 10:44

Right. How did they get here?

SPEAKER_00 10:47

Is this well and also it's night court?

unknown 10:50

I know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:52

Why can't I remember Harry's last name? I was gonna add Judge Harry, but I can't think of his last name on the show. Anderson? That was his name in life. I don't remember the judge's name. Yeah, I don't remember. But yeah, now I'm gonna have to go look it up so we can add that to the list. Um, but yeah, night court. We have so many, I have so many questions about this. I know there's no bailiff involved. Like, yeah, there's a there's a whole lot going on here that I really need to care about.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

Really need to be, because like, isn't just the master of the seeds, mistress in this case, like, aren't they just in charge?

SPEAKER_03 11:25

I mean, I don't know. I mean, we're in the we're in the US, we're in the the new world, so it's not like there's a Marok or a Maroc, either one of the vampires. There might be soon. Um we're not that far yet. Mar Marsilia comes in and uh is very excited about uh the new improved sampler platter that Mercy brought with her this time. While not actually named Sam, is like, oh good, you brought hors d'oeuvres. Um demands uh Stefan Stefan be um brought to the room. And also Daniel, whoever that is, and then we find out later, um, yeah, he was apparently a wizard hors d'oeuvre, and that's kind of the problem. Uh, we get a a a feeble attempt at objection that gets overruled. For some reason, everybody in the room starts giving Mercy the eye.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Yeah, I think it's I mean, I think it's one of those like creepy vampire things where like the person in charge can just make them all do stuff in unison and it's creepy. It's creepy. This scene also introduces Wolf, which is one of my favorite characters. We notice Mercy notice he's swaying. Swaying to her heartbeat.

SPEAKER_03 12:44

He's so yes, creepy AF, but super interesting because every time a plot brushes up against him, we get like a new layer of the supernatural onion. Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

Or at the very least, the wolf onion. I mean, he shows up for two seconds in uh in um the smoke bitten, and oh yeah, and he's like says, I don't want to die, and he's lying, and that's all we get. Like, oh.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:22

Okay. And even in this book, like when she later on in this book, when she she finds him and she's trying to find Andre, and he's like, Well, you could kill me if you wanted to. Like, like some hints of that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03 13:38

It's very much that, please don't throw me in the Briar Patch kind of uh vibe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's very much he's the coach beard of the Mercy Universe because every time you have another interaction with him, oh, he was an axe throwing champion, oh, he spent two years as this. Oh, he's in a prison record. Oh, like every time we meet Wolf, it's another, oh, you know, the time I spent, you know, honestly, at some point, I'm just really expecting a casual mention from him of, you know, oh, that stretch of time when I stood in for the Maroc in the 600s. Um, you know, and I just kept the seat warm because he was he he went to Hawaii for, you know, like a century and then came back. Like, I expect some like every time he talks, I'm like, what do we get this time? What's it gonna be? Because it's always something new.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Because he's wizard, uh, white witch, vampire. Yeah, the white witch was another one. That's a who knows he could even be Faye. We might learn later.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

No, there was like a like a touch of Faye. A tiny bit of Faye, yeah. Well, and now, like, what's he gonna be like after uh Mercy sort of freed him a little bit from Bona Rata?

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:01

We have no idea what he's gonna be like when we next see him because we managed to still not have seen him in the next book. For a while, yeah. Well, it's been a minute because we're waiting in real time for books to get written. But I think it was only one book we skipped over him.

SPEAKER_03 15:16

Well, and I don't think, yeah. I think there was only Winter Lost. Because it was like it was like Yeah, because the the other one is is uh Yeah Mercy and Mercy and the Vampire Named Wolf is like the whole book before that one. And then Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:33

And then Winter Lost and then next it's gonna be Alpha and Omega, so it's gonna feel because in our time it'll have been like four or five years by the time we potentially see him again.

SPEAKER_03 15:46

Yeah. So next time we get him, who knows what we're gonna hear him tell us? He's gonna sachet in and be like, oh yeah, me and Sherwood were married in the 1830s.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Wanna know how he lost his leg?

SPEAKER_03 16:01

Yeah, Sherwood's leg. I I told you to wait in the truck. You know, like who knows when he's gonna pop up. I was flow blood sugar is a terrible thing, guys. Yeah. I was hungry and he was delicious. The end, right? Yeah. Besides, I'm a leg man.

unknown 16:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:24

Speaking of sacrifice, here we are, sitting in front of the chair.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:30

So we were told to go retrieve Stefan. Stefan Stefan gets door dashed up to wherever the chair is.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

Like well, Daniel, especially, because he can't hardly walk. He's so starving. Do you do you think they use Duber Eats for that? Uh yeah, you order the food and then eat the driver.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:52

I mean, that seems like a solid business model. Who's not yeah, who's not doing door vamp right now, like in Tri-Cities? Like, whoever that is is gonna corner the market. That's just a license to print money. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. I can already picture the ad in the Tri-City Herald. Wanna work nights? Set your own schedule?

unknown 17:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

Yeah, or Stefan can work as a uh delivery. Yeah, because he can teleport. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:19

And get their but it drains them fast to take somebody else with him.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

But if you're taking your snack with you.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

Yeah, I guess. But do they share, or is that not hygienic? That's a good question. I guess I guess Andre had a bite of Daniel. So anyway.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

Anyway. So now we gotta get down to brass tacks and the chair. Ooh. Apparently Wolf built the chair too, and it's a palm reader.

SPEAKER_02 17:51

Oh yeah. Okay. So we do we're we're going to have Stefan go first in his testimonial and get lots of chair stuff, and and including Wolf being like, oh, it's true or it's not true, because he's apparently the lie detector.

SPEAKER_03 18:13

Because he's translating chair into vampire. Yeah. Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

I speak Bark a lounger.

SPEAKER_03 18:22

With that accent, though, it all sounds like Lazy Boy to me.

SPEAKER_02 18:25

Yeah. Anyway. Stefan's like, yeah, so I wanted to take Mercy with me to do this just in case, which is Marsilia's excuse to be like, hey everyone, in case you forget, Walker here. In case you get real hungry, Walker here.

SPEAKER_03 18:43

And apparently she really, really, really wants it not to be rabbit season, but to be walker season. Right. Yeah, yeah. I'm hunting walkers.

SPEAKER_02 18:54

So we get interrogation. Stefan's telling it in detail, but like what he remembers. And Mercy was like, ooh, this was grosser than I thought, and it was pretty gross.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

But doesn't well at the end, Wolf is like, well, that's stops it.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

Yeah, it's like, nah. Like in the middle. That's how he remembers it. Wait, this is what you remember, but you don't think it's true. And he's like, Well, yeah. Like, okay, keep telling what you remember that's totally not true. Okay, cool.

SPEAKER_03 19:21

It it turns a little bit into a I know that you know that I know that you know kind of a thing with like, this is what you remember, but not what you think, and da da da da. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

They have Daniel go back up, but he can't even do it until after he is force fed because he's been dying from guilt. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:41

Poor little Catholic Daniel. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:43

Yeah. And they're just like, well, how could you have gotten gas for your car if you were under the threat of bloodlust? So therefore, the car has gas, you must acquit. Yeah. I could not come up with a better rhyme than that.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Yeah, the gas don't fit.

SPEAKER_03 20:03

If the gas pump fit, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:06

So like, okay, Mercy, come on up. So Mercy takes a seat. Mercy gets the chair, gives, gives her version of the story to Judge Stone. I looked it up. And says, here's the deal. And I call shenanigans on everything else. So she puts her hands on these big old things. She's like, you know, this sucks. And man, that's a lot of magic. And boy, howdy, this is uncomfortable. And you know, gets both hands in there and is like, that's gonna leave a mark. So then she gets interrogated with like some of the same questions, like, here's what he said that is different. This is what I saw.

SPEAKER_02 20:49

Yeah, I thought it was interesting that she was like, I she found herself going into more detail than she intended, and you wonder how much of that is from the chair. And uh Bernard was like, hey, our some you can't take it both ways that some of our magics work and some of them don't, even though Walker.

SPEAKER_03 21:09

Um I also thought she went into more detail because of the chair because I sort of got the feeling that the same thing was happening to Stefan, that he wasn't wanting to go into all of the detail that he had and didn't seem able to stop himself.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Yeah, the chairs maybe pulling it out of him.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Yeah. I did I did enjoy the she was like, I'm fine, and they're like, that's not true. And so she like, I don't like this, but I'm gonna be okay in the end.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

And Marcelia tries to get her with a gotcha question. Would you would you hunt one of us punt us down?

SPEAKER_03 21:41

Two trains leave Chicago at the same time. No. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

She's like, Well, I that would be stupid. That would be Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:51

That's one thing about all of this from the get go that I always appreciate is that because and maybe it's just uh Because I have a long and storied history of answering something before I thought about it first. And usually my mouth has run away with me a little bit. So the fact that Mercy has the presence of mind in this mo in every moment that we've had with Mercy so far, but also in this exact moment with in a room full of known enemies, everybody knows that they know that I know that they know that they know that we all are not friends. And sitting in this magical chair and being buckled into it by each palm and being compelled to testify by all of this and worrying about Eb and Zeb that she brought with her, you know, uh brother Daryl, another brother Daryl, who are sitting in the back, like super tense about the whole thing. And like in the midst of all of that, goes, Well, that would be stupid. You know, something, you know, who would make a decision instead of just like, well, yeah, if you pissed me off enough, I sure would. Like, you know, um, like every moment where she stops and thinks about the thing or just doesn't say anything, uh, you know, I I'm I'm sort of in awe of all of that because I'm like, what how does how does what is that life like?

SPEAKER_00 23:21

She's like being like a fay there, lying with the truth.

SPEAKER_02 23:24

Yeah, yeah, exactly. That would be stupid. It would be stupid.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

The other thing, was it I think it was this book, where Wolf was like, oh, I can taste her truths strong and pungent or something like that. And I was like, I was like, What was this? Whoa. Yeah, that her truths were also like extra, extra. Yeah. So Marcelia's like, hey, okay, fine, go find him over apparently four weeks, but she couldn't just say four weeks, she had to say sedhts.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

We all know what a sed night is.

SPEAKER_02 24:01

Four weeks to find them, or otherwise we'll assume you're wrong. And he's like, Okay, I'll get Daniel to help me. Yeah. So the clock's a ticking. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

Mercy needs a little help uh getting off the chair, getting off getting her hands unstuck. It's so comfortable, I don't want to leave.

SPEAKER_02 24:18

Yeah, seriously. And then uh Warren and Ben are like, yeah, so we're in two. We're all gonna be a demon vampire hunting team, no buffy included.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

Yeah, we're uh the wolf pack vampire demon hunters.

SPEAKER_03 24:33

Yeah, I was gonna say, we're the type the TC demon hunters, the trice demon hunters, who are all and Stefan taking all of his combining all of his years of friendship and all of the time that he has spent with Mercy, tries to go, no, sweetie, the grown-ups would handle this. Which is another moment that I'm just like, really? Like, yeah, have you met your friend Mercy? Yeah, did you read the last book?

SPEAKER_02 25:02

Yeah. Well, he at least phrases it in the not the pat on the head, now dear, we've got this, but it was I could have gotten you killed. I can't let that happen again.

SPEAKER_03 25:12

Well, on the one hand, I appreciate the sentiment. On the other hand, I'm still like, yeah, Stefan, do you even read? I think she kind of is in that same boat. Like, I appreciate the sentiment, and thank you for trying. Here are some nice parting gifts because you have totally lost right now. You win a month's supply of rice aroney, let's hit the road.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

And you and your friends won't be uh turned into Capri sons on the way out by the sea.

SPEAKER_03 25:38

Yet. Maybe not tonight. Like it's a maybe not tonight.

SPEAKER_02 25:42

Okay. Then we cut to Mercy's like, hey, you've been giving me bad bodyguards, Adam, and I'm really sick of honey in particular.

SPEAKER_03 25:51

I think honey is really interesting too. I really I really like when we get more time with her and stuff as we get to know her better. She's one of the ones I like. As we get to know Mary Joel better, I'm a little more sympathetic, but I don't like her any better.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

She's not my favorite, but Yes.

SPEAKER_03 26:09

Certainly not my favorite. But I think Honey gets I think Honey is really interesting on a bunch of levels, like as we as we get to find out more about her. As we get more layers of that onion, it's very much a I think that she's really interesting. Like because of how much she loved Peter and because of how she evolves and her role in the pack evolves in the as we continue and all of that. I think that she's I think that she's a lot of fun, and I really appreciate the um sort of begrudging friendship that that we watch evolve over the series of these as well. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

Her relationship with honey improves while the other deteriorates like I mean Mary Joe's improves again later, but like Arielle's still a struggle. Whereas they kind of used to be okay. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 26:56

Yeah, it's it's it's up and down with her, and and uh we know why. She lives in Eugene. Yeah. Um so Mercy tries to tell Adam that uh she wants to cancel her bodyguard subscription, and he says, You can't do that over the phone. We have to do that in person.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:16

Thanks, AOL. Uh and she's like, No, and then the next day she's like, I give in, like two sentences later in the book. But she's like, Okay, I give up. But she had she had to like put up with another day before she was like, Okay, I guess not. But I I this sounds like their very first time sparring, which is interesting because now they do it all the time. She's like, Oh, I could go full speed. Yeah, it was kind of awesome.

SPEAKER_03 27:39

Yeah, I did. I liked that that moment of the oh, wait, I don't have to, you know, I don't have to pull anything, I don't have to pretend.

SPEAKER_02 27:47

So Yeah, and they try not to hurt each other still, but like they they don't have to slow down.

SPEAKER_03 27:52

But at speed, yeah. Yeah, which is probably why it's really fun because she spent she's has spent all those years, you know, suiting up with the normies, and you know, that's yeah, you know, as much as she likes it, it's not her idea of a really good time, because she's still gonna like sandbag a little, and this is there's no sandbag with Adam, which I think is part of why it's so much fun. And I think it's a huge point in his favor at this point. You know, she well. I mean, if I could do this all the time.

SPEAKER_02 28:20

Part of her complaint about honey is that she's afraid she's gonna lose Gabriel as like a helper, if because he's got a crush on her, and then his mom will like freak out and not let her work there. It turns out it's a totally different werewolf that she freaks out and not doesn't let him work there for her. I was gonna say she's right.

SPEAKER_03 28:35

There's a werewolf doing what? I am not letting my children anywhere near this. Uh just wasn't honey. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:42

And and this is the first indication of like, oh no, she she's a serious fighter, despite the pressed genes that you see her in. Like, she's a real good fighter. She has beaten Daryl a couple times. So Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:57

Which is which is fun. It's one this is that first layer of like, oh, you know, maybe there is maybe there is more to you than Yeah, and she's actually dominant. More than just a pretty face, right? So Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

She's like, well, Bran ordered for you to be watched night and day, so yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:15

Yeah. So that's what's happening. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:17

Uh even though he's not up in the daytime.

SPEAKER_03 29:20

Even then, so now we, you know, now Mercy's like, oh, great. So now I get to speak to your manager. That's fun.

SPEAKER_02 29:25

So I we're gonna have to wait, I think, to find out if anything scintillating happens in this dojo until next time, because we sort of gotta wrap up now.

SPEAKER_01 29:35

Yeah, we do.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

So on that uh scintillating cliffhanger. Yeah. Since we assume everybody's already read the books. Uh yeah, so we'll pick up next time part way in barely into chapter five. Thanks for joining us. Um farewell, Howl. How