Fine. I wouldn’t talk about my dead parents. About how I didn’t remember them. But if Casey thought that he was going to keep me from asking hard questions, he was wrong.
“What were you like, before?”
Okay, so that wasn’t exactly a hard question, but I needed to know.
“Different,” Chase said. “Quiet. Hard. Angry.”
“And now you’re …?”
“Angry, quiet, and hard?” he suggested with a quirk of his mouth that drew my eyes to a small crescent-shaped scar at one corner of his lips.
“Angry, quiet, and hard,” I repeated, a smile tugging at the edges of my own. “Because that’s so different.”
“Everything is.” He paused. “That night, when you came for me—”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry I, you know …”
“Wanted to eat me?” I suggested.
He nodded, and even that relatively benign motion was filled with eerie grace. I stared at his face, captured for a moment by the way the power of his wolf seemed to emanate from his skin. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn that he was glowing, but luminescence wasn’t a part of the werewolf package.
“You confused me,” Chase said. “You’re …”
“Different?” I suggested.
He nodded.
“It’s kind of ironic.” I tried to sound offhand. “You were raised by humans and now you’re a Were, and I was raised by Weres, but I’m human.”
“You’re Bryn,” he said, and the way he said my name made me think that in the past couple of months, he’d been indoctrinated into werewolf culture enough to know who and what I was. Little Orphan Annie. Oliver Twist. Bryn.
We were iconic, really.
“I want you to tell me what happened to you,” I said, half sure that the others would step in, that they’d stop us from talking about anything I really needed to hear.
“It’s really not that long of a story. I was working late, got off my shift, walked home in the dark, and this guy cornered me. One second he was a man, and the next, he wasn’t. I kind of lost it and grabbed a pipe, I tried to beat that thing off me, but …”
“Didn’t go so well?” I ventured to guess.
He nodded. “I got bit.”
This time, the words didn’t have the same effect on me. Maybe that was the point behind all of Callum’s training. He’d been systematically working the fear out of me. He’d said it was so I wouldn’t be scared of Chase, but I was starting to wonder if it was because there was a part of me that had been scared for way too long.
“Most people who get bitten die,” I said, willing Chase to look at my face and read in it the meaning that I couldn’t say out loud. “When Rabids attack, humans die. They don’t change. They just …”
Die, I finished silently.
Our eyes met, and every muscle in my body tensed, ever so slightly.
Like your parents?
I didn’t move. Didn’t bat an eye. Didn’t give any visual cue to the fact that Chase’s voice was in my head. I also didn’t respond to his question.
They told you not to talk about your parents, he said silently, but technically, we’re not talking.
He understood. Thank God, he understood. Out loud, I said something else. “How did he bite you?”
“Throat first. Then stomach. It’s hard to remember. Everything went dark after that. I think I managed to throw him off, but he kept coming back. First my arms, then my legs—”
“Enough,” Sora said, cutting Chase off.
He stopped speaking, and the air around us seemed to shift, weighed down by the power of Sora’s command. I looked from Sora to Chase and back again, and that was when I realized—he had to listen to them, too.
Obey. Obey. The pack was to be obeyed.
“I hear you like art,” Chase said, probably under orders to make small talk instead of talking about being systematically disemboweled.
I nodded. “I used to.”
I thought of my exchange with Ali that morning, of the bit of myself I’d hidden far away, and for a split second, it began to crack, and with it came the intensity with which I’d wanted to ask these questions, the incredible, undeniable need to see him.
“What did you like to do, when you were … human?” That wasn’t the question I wanted to be asking, but I could practically feel my pack-bond as a leash around my neck, choking me, pulling me back from asking the things I really wanted to know.
You can fight this, a tiny voice whispered in the back of my head. Not Chase’s. Mine.
Fight.
Fight
Trapped.
Fight.
But I didn’t. I slowed my breathing and pushed back the panicked haze that threatened to descend on my body the moment I realized just how tight my metaphorical leash really was. A low whimper caught in the back of my throat, and I waited for Chase’s answer. For more than small talk. For whatever Callum—through his henchmen—would actually allow me to hear.
“Before the attack, I liked cars, Yeats, and having a lock on my bedroom door.” Chase paused, and behind his wry, self-deprecating grin, I saw an echo of the whine still caught in my throat.
Out.
Out.
Out.
We wanted out.
Chase’s eyes pulsed amber, and without a word, Lance walked over and put a firm hand on each of his shoulders. Forced him off the chair and to his knees.
A high-pitched sound escaped my throat, and Sora laid a hand lightly on my shoulder. She didn’t push. She didn’t force a confrontation, but as I leaned forward, her grip tightened, pulling me gently back.
“Look at me.” Lance growled the words, and on the floor, Chase responded. His body jerked once, twice, three times against Lance’s hold, and the smell of burning hair and men’s cologne filled the air. The smell wasn’t Chase. It wasn’t Stone River. It was something different, something foreign, and it was here.
One second I was sitting and the next, Sora had shoved me at Casey. “Get her out of here!”
But since the order hadn’t been directed to me, I didn’t have to obey, and Casey’s main concern seemed to be staring at Chase—staring and staring and daring him to come closer.
Pack. Not Pack. Pack. Not Pack. Pack.
The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. I’d never seen anything like it before. Callum had made Chase a part of the Stone River Pack, but every wolf in the room was reacting like he was a stranger.
A foreign wolf on our lands.
A threat.
Mine, I thought.
A moment ago, I’d been talking to Chase.
He’d been in my head.
Even now, I could feel each spasm of his body in the corresponding muscles in mine.
“Chase. Look at me.” This time, Lance’s voice was low and soothing, but I felt the command behind the words, felt shades of Callum—alpha—in Lance’s tone.
Look at him, I begged Chase silently, sure it would help, but uncertain why. Look at Lance.
He did, and slowly, the scent of foreign wolf receded, until the only thing in this room was us.
Me, Chase, Casey, Sora, and Lance.
Pack.
“What just happened here?” I recovered my voice before the others found theirs. If I’d been paying attention, I might have noticed just how close to the edge Callum’s guards were.
How close they’d come to Shifting themselves.
“He’s in my head.” Chase’s voice was soft. Too soft. Any other girl wouldn’t have been able to make out the form of his words.
“Callum. The wolf. Both of them.”
It wasn’t Callum’s wolf that had flooded the room with a foreign scent, and it wasn’t Callum who’d put the haunted expression—empty and clear—in Chase’s eyes.
It was the Rabid.
If a Mark connected you to a werewolf, what did a full-blown attack do? There wouldn’t have been a ceremony, but …
“When the Rabid attacked you, did you fee
l it?” As far as stupid questions went, this one ranked pretty high, and I struggled to make myself clearer. “Did you feel it here?” I closed my fist and touched it gently to my chest. Casey still had a hold on my shoulder; otherwise, I might have moved and gone to Chase, who was still kneeling on the floor, to place my hand over his heart.
“I felt it everywhere,” Chase said, his simple words cutting into me like a knife to the stomach. “Sometimes, I still do.”
“I think that’s enough for today,” Sora said, and beside me, I felt Casey stiffen, his head dropping even as his spine snapped back. Sora had told him to get me out of there. He hadn’t.
Dominance lash-backs. They were enough to give a girl fits.
“Bryn, outside. Now.” Sora’s words took on the hollow tone of an order issued at half strength, and I got the sense that the kid mitts were more for Chase’s benefit than for mine. On the floor, Lance still had his hands on Chase’s arms, but instead of holding him down, he appeared to be holding the younger wolf up. Just looking at him, I felt Chase’s exhaustion, felt his muscles liquefy as the battle in his head subsided.
“I’m sorry.” I hadn’t planned on apologizing, but as Sora’s words compelled me toward the door, the apology came out of my mouth anyway. Chase had been in control. He’d been Callum’s. And something I’d said had ruined that.
“No sorry.” Chase’s voice was liquid, too, just like his muscles, fluid and flowing, one word running into the next as he closed his eyes. “Never sorry.”
I was almost to the door by then, and the urge to go back, to go to him, was overpowering.
Obey. Obey. Obey.
If I wanted to see Chase again, I had to obey now, and Sora had told me to leave. Slowly, I brought my hand up to the doorknob.
Bryn? Chase’s voice was a whisper in my mind, and the sensation sent a single chill up my spine.
Yes?
You asked what I liked, before. He paused, and the silence tickled my mind, the chill in my spine climbing its way to the hairs on the back of my neck. Before, I loved cars, Yeats, having a bedroom that locked from the inside, and you.
His words exploded in my brain, and if Casey hadn’t had a hold on me, I would have stumbled.
You didn’t even know me then. The part of me that still thought like a human would have rolled my human eyes at Chase’s declaration that he’d known me long before we’d ever met, but my pack-sense wouldn’t let me. Because deep down, Chase was Pack. He and I were the same, and there were situations in which you couldn’t expect a wolf—Were or otherwise—to understand the concept of time.
Glancing back over my shoulder, I opened the door and stepped outside, directly into Callum. I wasn’t sure when he’d gone out, or how much he’d been listening, only that he was waiting for me. Callum closed his arms around me, pulled me tight to his body, and held me the way Lance had held Chase—like I needed his support to stay vertical. Until I fell into his grasp, I hadn’t realized just how close I’d followed Chase to the edge of something dangerous and scary.
I loved cars, Yeats, having a bedroom that locked from the inside, and you.
How willing I was, already, to go back.
“You did a good job,” Callum told me.
Alpha, my pack-sense said in return.
Callum, I thought. But there was a part of my mind that was thinking something else. Thinking about someone else.
Chase.
“You’re all right. You’re safe. You’ll see him again.” Callum’s voice was gruff, but to me, his words sounded like a lullaby, and my legs shook, threatening to turn to jelly beneath me.
Chase wasn’t in control. Not fully. Not yet. And the man who’d done this to him, the monster who’d changed him, was still lurking in the recesses of his mind, the same way that each and every member of our pack was in the corners of mine.
“You’re all right. You’re safe. You’ll see him again.”
Alpha. Callum. Guardian. Pack.
The unspoken words all told me the exact same thing—Chase would be okay. Callum wouldn’t give up the fight, wouldn’t let the Rabid take one of ours. Alpha meant safety. Callum was safe—and so long as I kept up my end of the agreement, followed his orders, didn’t run back to Chase and close the space between us, so was I.
CHAPTER TWELVE
FOR WEEKS AFTERWARD, THOUGHTS OF CHASE dogged my every step. It didn’t matter what I was doing—running with Callum, sparring with Sora or Lance—Chase was always there, his blue eyes flecked with the incomprehensible. I saw him lying in the cage, the way he had that first night. I saw him on his knees, held down by Lance’s stone-hard fists. I saw him the way he must have looked walking home from work on the day the Rabid systematically tore him to shreds.
He’d been human once.
He should have died.
And each time I imagined him, thought about seeing him again, I was reminded of the fact that I should have died, too. Jagged, uneven bits of that long-ago night worked their way into my consciousness, and like the pieces of a puzzle, I assembled them.
Someone had knocked on my parents’ door. I’d run to answer, but hadn’t. I’d stepped back. Mommy had rushed past me.
I’d stepped back again.
Blood. Splattering.
There were still pieces missing. I couldn’t remember what my father had looked like. I couldn’t remember the length of my mother’s white dress. All I could remember was the man who’d turned into a gray wolf, the white star on his forehead, the blood.
Running.
Hiding.
Air hot in my throat. Burning my lungs. Panic.
I remembered pressing back farther and farther in the cabinet under the sink. I remembered the Bad Man’s words.
Quiet. I remembered being so quiet, and then—nothing, but a red haze. An instinct.
Blood.
Beside me, Devon looked up from his paper and tilted his head to one side.
You okay? I read the words in his expression, felt them in the pull of his pack-bond at mine, but I didn’t actually hear his voice in my mind. I hadn’t heard anyone’s, not even Callum’s.
Not since Chase.
Not that I’d heard Chase, either. I’d resisted the urge to go looking for him, to close my eyes and sort my way through the mass of interconnected psychic bonds that was Stone River until I found him.
I was being a good little pack daughter, doing everything Callum asked me to. I’d been biding my time, until he’d allow me to see Chase again.
Blood. Splattering. Burnt hair and men’s cologne.
It was all messed up in my mind—Chase and the Rabid who’d turned him, Callum and the Rabid he’d killed the night the rest of my family had died. Stone River. Foreign wolves.
Running and losing myself to the overwhelming, indescribable force of us.
I’m fine. I sent Devon the message in feelings, not words, but the set of his jaw—not a single, easy grin in sight—told me that he didn’t believe me. I made my best effort at a smile, and with a look that told me that Devon had absolutely no respect for my nonexistent acting chops and that we would be talking about this later, he turned his attention back to his own desk, and I did the same.
Failing my algebra final would probably be ill-advised.
May had come and gone too quickly, and the sheet of paper on my desk was the only thing standing between me and summer. Standing between me and Chase, who’d been working with Callum to force the taint of the Rabid out of his head.
Tomorrow, Bryn. Right after school.
That was the sum total of what Callum had said to me the day before, but it was all I’d needed to hear, and if Chase had been on my mind these past weeks, he was in it now.
Before, I loved cars, Yeats, having a bedroom that locked from the inside, and you.
Whether it was my bond with the pack or the fact that he was the first boy to ever haunt my dreams, I couldn’t say, but as the days passed and I didn’t see him, I started to feel more and more like Chas
e’s words were true. Like I’d always known him.
Like we were the same.
Which was ridiculous and silly and less than no help when it came to graphing the equation for y = sin x.
Forcing all other thoughts out of my mind, I worked my way through the exam. I willed the numbers to make sense. I matched the sheer force of my will against the power of partial credit, and I forced it to submit.
I forced it to cave.
I dominated that test, the way I couldn’t dominate anything or anyone else.
Tomorrow, Bryn. Right after school.
Those five words were all it had taken for Callum to transform from the man who’d promised Ali he’d take care of me to the one who made no guarantees about my safety if I took a single step out of line.
I was Pack and I’d act like it.
I’d submit.
If my last visit had been any indication, the pack wouldn’t let me get too close to Chase. Wouldn’t risk my asking questions the answers to which they either didn’t want him to give or didn’t want me to know.
Maybe both.
I knew my Rabid was coming. I knew he was bad. I was trapped and I was scared and I ran. Hid.
Was that what it had been like for Chase?
Was that what it would always be like for me?
“Five minutes,” our teacher announced from the front of the room, and then, just to clarify the point, he wrote the number 5 in a big loopy scrawl on the chalkboard. On my right, Devon had already started checking his answers. On my left, Jeff of the motorcycle incident had simply given up, opting instead for staring at the sweet, quiet girl who’d dumped him not long after he’d given her my pen.
I stopped writing with forty-five seconds to spare, and even though I didn’t have time to double-check my calculations, I couldn’t shake the sense that I’d aced it. I certainly should have. On late, sleepless nights, the memory of the Big Bad Wolf waiting for me in dreams, there’d been nothing to do but study algebra and think of Chase.
He’d grown up in the foster-care system.
He’d been angry for as long as he could remember.
He appreciated the power of privacy—or had before he’d turned.
He was a living, walking impossibility.
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