And he was mine.
Pack. Not Pack. Pack. Not Pack.
“Time’s up!”
The teacher sounded way too perky for someone who typically took pleasure in our dismay, but given the fact that his summer vacation started the second that ours did, I didn’t suppose I could blame him. Once upon a time, summer had meant running around barefoot with Devon and a visit from the only female werewolf anywhere near our age. I could feel it in my bones that this summer was going to be different.
I wasn’t ready.
As the teacher came by to collect my exam, I had a single moment of insanity, during which I fought the urge to hold on to my paper. If I didn’t turn in the test, it wasn’t really summer yet.
If it wasn’t summer, I wasn’t going to see Chase again.
And if I didn’t see Chase again, I wouldn’t have to worry about what he might say. What I might find out. What I might remember.
What I might do.
“Ms. Clare?”
The teacher sounded so befuddled that I loosened my grip on the exam and let him have it. Beside me, Devon grinned.
“Did you pass?” he asked, as we gathered our bags and headed for the door.
I didn’t respond.
“Come on, Bryn—my summer plans are just as subject to your state of groundedness as yours are. Did you pass?”
With my luck, Dev’s summer plans probably involved attempting to organize a werewolf theater festival. I shuddered to think of the number of roles I’d have to play when the surplus of males in the pack refused to don curly blonde wigs and play girls in the tradition of the original Shakespearean plays.
“I passed,” I said. “And for the record, I haven’t agreed to any of your so-called plans yet.”
With Devon, things were easy. Besides Ali, he was the only one I could look at without thinking of the rest of the pack.
“You don’t have to go, you know,” Devon said, his voice uncharacteristically understated. “If you decide you don’t want to, if you’d—for instance—rather hitch a ride into Denver and have a night on the town such as only I can show you …”
My look stopped Devon mid-sentence.
“Sorry. It’s just … you smell like him.” Devon said the words lightly, but a muscle in his jaw tensed. “You haven’t seen him in weeks, you didn’t touch him, and you still smell like him.”
That was news to me. Self-consciously, I sniffed at my own arm, and a couple of town girls glanced at me and snickered. They probably thought I was checking myself for BO.
“I don’t smell anything,” I told Devon, ignoring the townies.
Devon didn’t reply—he just twirled his pen around his fingers like a tiny, ink-filled baton. “Come on,” he tried again. “You. Me. Netflix.”
He was every bit as bad as Ali, pulling me back from the edge just before I dove headfirst into the abyss below.
Screw the townies, I thought, and giving them a real show, I butted my head gently against Devon’s chest, and he rested his chin on the top of my skull.
“You know I’m going,” I said, speaking directly into his shoulder.
He sighed, once quietly and once with the melodrama I’d come to expect from him. “Yes. I know. Nobody puts Baby in the corner, et cetera, et cetera, blah, blah.”
The fact that he could attach not one but two “blah”s on the end of a Dirty Dancing quote conveyed the true depths of his sour mood.
“I’ll be fine.”
Devon didn’t reply.
“Chase wouldn’t hurt me.” Even if Chase lost it, even if Callum and the Rabid were duking it out for dominance in his head, if I’d gotten under Chase’s skin half as much as he’d gotten under mine, I’d be fine.
Devon said his next words so quietly that I almost didn’t catch them. “It’s not Chase I’m worried about.”
I tried to make him repeat himself, but he wouldn’t, and that, more than anything, told me that the person Devon was worried about wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Chase.
It was Callum.
“You can’t honestly be worried about that,” I told Dev, but even as the words left my mouth, I sensed his wolf stirring.
Females were to be protected, but the alpha was to be obeyed.
“Callum would never hurt me.” That had been my litany since the moment he’d rescued me from under the sink. Crooned to me. Talked to me. Banished the haze.
“If you break your permissions, he won’t have a choice.”
I jabbed my fist into Devon’s stomach hard enough to knock the air out of a normal boy. He didn’t respond at all.
“I’m not going to break the conditions,” I said. “I didn’t last time. I’m not stupid.”
That statement was met with rather insulting silence.
“I followed instructions last time, didn’t I?”
More silence, and then, finally, Devon broke into a song from Annie.
“‘Hard Knock Life,’” I said. “Seriously?”
Devon shrugged, but I noticed that he didn’t step away from me, like his wolf thought that if they just stayed close enough to me, I’d be okay.
“Trust me, Dev. I’ll be fine.”
My words must have sounded like truth, because he backed off, but in the depths of my brain, I wondered if the future would make a liar out of me. Because the last time I saw Chase, I wasn’t fine. I didn’t break permissions. I didn’t force Callum’s hand.
Chase hadn’t laid a finger on me.
But I hadn’t been fine.
Come out, come out, wherever you are, little one. No sense in hiding from the Big Bad Wolf. I’ll always find you in the end. …
The only way I was going to be fine—now or ever—was when I knew exactly what had happened to Chase, and knew that it wasn’t going to happen to anyone else.
Ever.
Again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU WOULD PRETEND FOR A SINGLE second that you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen!”
“Alison—”
“Don’t you ‘Alison’ me, Callum. You want to talk conditions, what were my conditions?”
“Ali—”
I recognized the voices from twenty yards away: Ali, Callum, and Casey. They were yelling so loudly that they didn’t even seem to be aware of my approach, which was really something, because I wasn’t making any attempt to mask the sound of my footsteps, and Callum and Casey should have heard me coming from a mile off.
“This is between me and Callum, Casey. If you can’t back me up, keep your mouth closed.”
Ali’s voice lowered in volume, and I gulped on Casey’s behalf. If she’d been using that tone with me, I would have turned tail and run, no questions asked.
“I don’t know why I even—”
A low, unidentifiable sound, issued from Callum’s throat, stopped Casey’s words in their tracks. I wasn’t sure if Callum had growled in warning or in threat, but either way, Casey didn’t finish what was probably an entirely inadvisable sentence.
I don’t know why I even bother?
I don’t know why I even try?
I don’t know why I even act like there’s the smallest chance you might listen to me?
It didn’t matter. Even I could tell that Ali wasn’t in the mood to hear any of the above. She was challenging Callum. Casey was trying to get her to back off. Our house had somehow become Dominance Issue Central, and I had a sinking suspicion that it was my fault.
Casey was mad at Ali. Ali was furious with Callum. And Callum was talking in low, even tones, like he couldn’t have forced both of them to their knees in under a second if he’d taken it in his head to do so.
This wasn’t good.
I stopped walking. I stopped breathing. I didn’t move.
“I left my family behind. I left my friends. I never contacted any of them again. I kept the pack’s secrets, and what did you give me in return?” This wasn’t a rhetorical question. Ali was waiting for an answer, and Callum replied, his voice gentle,
like he was reprimanding a child instead of facing down the rage of a mama bear. “I gave you Bryn.”
“She’s mine, Callum. Not yours. Not the pack’s. She’s my daughter, and you swore to me that when it came to her safety, my word would be law, so whatever you know, whatever you’ve seen—”
And then, there was silence, so abrupt that I wondered for a second if I’d lost consciousness or gone spontaneously deaf in both ears.
“You might as well come in,” Callum called, disabusing me of that notion. His voice was dry, like he should have known I’d be hovering at the perimeter of their argument, marking every word. “This concerns you.”
I heard Ali mutter something under her breath but couldn’t make out what. Slowly, deliberately, I made my way to the house, taking my time with each step, not sure I wanted to see the looks on any of their faces.
I was right to worry.
Ali looked like Ali, Callum like Callum, and Casey looked like he wanted to kill me.
Like any of this was my fault. For once, I hadn’t done anything. Yet.
“How were your finals?” Ali asked, breaking the silence with a question that sounded so normal that I wondered for an instant if I’d imagined their yelling a moment before.
A glance at Casey out the side of my eye told me that I hadn’t.
“Finals went well,” I said, keeping my back to the wall, an instinct that I couldn’t shake, even though we were all family here. “I’m pretty sure I aced algebra.”
I felt Callum smile beside me, but when I looked over at him, his face was neutral, calm. The face of the alpha, taking care of pack business.
My hands flitted to the waist of my jeans, needing a reminder—a physical reminder—that even when he was alpha, he was still Callum. Even when it came to pack business, I was still his.
“Is this about my seeing Chase again?” I asked. I was facing Callum, but Ali was the one who answered my words.
“You don’t have to go. You don’t have to do this.”
First Devon and now Ali. What did they know that I didn’t?
“Nothing,” Ali said, and I wondered if my thoughts were always apparent on my face. “I don’t know anything that you don’t, Bryn, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that this could get ugly.”
“Chase won’t hurt me.”
Ali glanced at Callum, and Devon’s words floated back to me—It’s not Chase I’m worried about.
Callum won’t hurt me, either, I thought, but I didn’t broadcast the words. The fact that I had to say or think them at all was mind-boggling. I’d approached Callum as a member of his pack, and his actions and mine were equally bound by our agreement. I knew better than to break faith with our entire pack, and I had more inhibition than they were giving me credit for.
Tempting fate was one thing; baiting Pack Justice was entirely another.
“Are you ready?” Callum asked me, ignoring Ali. The look in his eyes told me that he knew me better than she did. He didn’t question, even for a second, the possibility that I’d back down.
“He’s just a boy,” I said out loud. Just a boy with a Rabid in his head, who claims he loved me before we ever met. “I’m ready.”
Ali sighed, and the sound was unnatural, like her lungs were being deflated, the air sucked out of them by some external force.
“Take care of her, Casey,” Ali said, and I couldn’t tell if her words were an order or a plea. “Please.”
Casey nodded, but not for the first time, I wondered if he’d fully bargained on me when he’d married Ali.
“I’ll take care with her, Alison. You have my word.” Callum’s words should have been comforting, but as an expert at obfuscation myself, I couldn’t help but notice what he hadn’t said. He hadn’t said that he’d take care of me. He’d said he’d take care with me, and I knew better than to think that those two things were the same.
Casey, Callum, and I walked toward Callum’s house in silence. Sora and Lance joined us halfway there.
“You know he’s not just a boy,” I said, feeling the need to explain myself to someone in Ali’s absence.
“I know,” Callum replied, and I wondered if he meant for me to hear the slight echo of sadness in his tone.
This visit had nothing to do with Chase being a boy and me being a girl. It had nothing to do with the way he dogged my dreams and haunted my field of vision every time I blinked.
This was about the Rabid.
It was about me.
By the time we got to Callum’s house, I’d stopped trying to explain myself.
“Casey, Sora, and Lance are dominant. Your pack-bond remains open. You’re not to touch him.” With those words, Callum disappeared, and I wondered again why it was that he couldn’t or wouldn’t stay to watch my interaction with Chase.
“Hello.”
Speak of the devil. There was depth to that one word. Even just the sound of Chase’s voice made me think of the full moon, silvery and larger than life.
“Hello,” I replied, feeling human and small. Someday, I’d run with him, the way I had with the rest of the pack. Not today.
Within seconds, the two of us were positioned just as we had been the last time, me on the sofa, Chase on a nearby chair. He smiled, and in the curves of his lips, I could almost see his wolf: dark fur, light eyes.
“Same rules as last time,” Sora said, her impeccably controlled voice breaking into my mind.
No touching.
No talking about my family or the way they’d died.
No asking Chase about the method with which another Rabid had torn him limb from limb.
“How are you?” I asked, feeling even more muzzled than I had the last time I’d been in his presence.
“Good,” Chase replied. I’ve got control, he added silently. Nobody in my thoughts but me. Most of the time.
His voice was clearer in my mind than anyone else’s had ever been, and I knew I wasn’t imagining that there was more than a pack-bond between us. I didn’t feel him in my hip, in Callum’s Mark.
I felt him in my stomach and in my lungs. I breathed him in and out and saw him in my mind, in memories he’d had no part of the first time around.
“I had finals today,” I said. The words were insufficient and irrelevant, but as they exited my mouth, my guards relaxed. They didn’t mind me talking to Chase the boy. They just wanted me to stay away from his wolf. Away from the night of its birth, bloody and cruel.
“I don’t miss finals,” Chase said. “Come to think of it, I don’t really miss people, either.”
“You don’t miss being human?” I asked. It was one thing to watch the Weres lose their human selves on the day of the full moon, to watch the wolf slowly taking hold of Callum’s body, or Devon’s, but it was another thing altogether to imagine going from being what I was to the thing that Chase was now.
It could have been me. The thought broadsided me. Chase sat on his chair like a lion lounging on the savannah. Like a wolf, sprawled across wet forest ground. His limbs dangled off the side. His eyes took in everything, flitting between my body and that of my guards.
It could have been me.
“I don’t miss being human.” Chase paused, the human holding back words that his wolf wanted him to say. “I miss you.”
The air between us turned to static, and I felt his pull—magnetic and uncontrollable. On edge between human and not.
Concentrate, I told myself. I hadn’t come here to picture his life before he’d changed. I hadn’t come here to commune with his wolf or wonder if it was a feeling like this that had coerced generations of human females to leave their families for a chance at dying while giving birth to werewolf pups.
I’m not that kind of girl, I told Chase silently.
He shrugged, and I wondered if he even knew what I was talking about, if he had even the vaguest measure of the power calling to my body from his.
“Callum said not to touch you,” Chase remarked. “You don’t smell like meat anym
ore.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of either of those observations, but I saw other things in the blue of his eyes: control that hadn’t been there the last time we met. And loneliness, the kind that had no business existing in the middle of a werewolf pack.
“What happened to the wolf who attacked you?” Every time I wanted to ask him a question about the attack, I asked him about his life instead, and now that I wanted to tell him that he wasn’t alone, the other questions slipped easily off my tongue.
“He ran off.”
“Is he dead?” I addressed this question to my guards. “Did we hunt him down?”
Sora’s response came almost immediately. “You don’t need to concern yourself with that, Bryn.”
That wasn’t an answer. It was an order. They were ordering me not to concern myself with the Rabid—the reason I’d come here to Chase in the first place.
“I call him Prancer.” Chase saved me from complete and utter frustration. At least he had the ability and force of will to stay on topic.
“You call the werewolf who attacked you, almost killed you, and Changed you Prancer?” I asked.
“I had to stop being scared sometime. Give the boogeyman a name, and he goes away.” Chase shrugged and then continued on in my head. Callum taught me how to keep him out of my mind, but you can’t change the memories. I sleep, and he’s there. When I dream, he’s got me exactly where he wants me, and there’s not a blessed thing I can do about it. But then I wake up, and he’s Prancer. He can’t control my thoughts. He can’t make me scared. Not without my permission.
“Is Chase talking to you?” Sora asked me. “Silently?”
I wasn’t sure how she could tell. Maybe she read it in my change in posture, as my body shifted itself toward him, all of its own accord. Maybe she saw it in my face, or felt it through the pack-bond. In any case, I didn’t want to answer the question, but Sora pushed at me, coming forward and placing her hands on my knees, leaning over me in a way that made me lean back.
She was dominant. It wasn’t just a word. It wasn’t just a concept. It was real, and at the moment, I couldn’t have lied to her if I’d wanted to, agreement or no. “Yes.”
“He shouldn’t be able to do that,” Casey said, startled. “Not yet.”
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