Katie was a wrestler, but Alex—I knew instinctively—wanted to run.
I wanted to run.
But I couldn’t. Not yet. Alpha. Alpha. Alpha, my pack-sense was telling me, and in unison, Katie, Alex, Dev, and I turned to Callum, who threw back his head and howled, a long, joyous noise that the others echoed.
That I echoed in my high, clear human voice.
And then we ran. Furry bodies all around me, bumping into me, weaving in and out of my legs, and I just jumped over them. I cried out to them. I sang and screamed and tried to outrun them, and even though I stood about as good a chance as one of the babies, they let me. Gray and gold and brown and white and black and every shade in between: the pack was a blur of colors, and even though I couldn’t help but pick up on their awareness of my pale, patchy, furless skin, it didn’t matter. Not to me and not to them.
Any one of them—save perhaps for the twins—could have killed me in a heartbeat. They could have broken my bones, snapped my neck, opened my jugular. They could have eaten me, destroyed me, torn apart my remains.
But they didn’t. And the call of my connection to them was so strong that I didn’t even think about the other wolves I’d seen in my lifetime: men Shifting into monsters, jaws snapping at human throats.
Instead, I thought of the wind in my face and the smell and taste of the forest, the feel of it under my brothers’ paws.
The pack was safe.
The pack was together.
The pack was mine.
CHAPTER NINE
THE NEXT DAY, I WOKE UP AN HOUR BEFORE MY alarm went off with a cramp in my calf, leaves in my hair, and a strange substance that I desperately hoped was dirt under my fingernails. It took me a moment to remember, and then the night before came back to me like a dream. I’d felt powerful. Invincible. Safe.
And totally and completely unlike myself.
It was scary how easy it was to get lost to the pack-mentality. How right it felt to belong, despite the fact that belonging wasn’t something I’d ever needed before. At school, I didn’t really mind the way the other girls turned up their noses at me. I’d never really bothered much more with the fact that most of the pack tended to view me as Other, too. Unless they sensed an outside threat, I was Callum’s pet and Devon’s friend, not one of them, and that was fine.
But last night, I’d been something different. And even now, lying in my bed in Ali’s house, I could feel them—each and every member of the pack: Devon curled at the bottom of his bed; Marcus prowling through his house with clenched fists and fist-shaped holes in his walls; Katie and Alex still asleep. Casey was …
Casey was in bed with Ali. And that was where I drew the line. Because, eww.
This whole pack-bond thing was kind of out of control. Especially if I followed the logic of my current situation to completion, because that told me that as much as I was in their heads, they were in mine.
Stupid werewolves.
Still in bed, Bryn?
Callum’s voice was in my head, not surprising given the fact that he’d practically been there before I’d opened up to the others.
Are you reading my mind? I asked him point-blank, ignoring his question and the fact that I was probably due to start training any minute.
Your thoughts are your own, m’dear. Your emotions, physical movements, location, and instincts are another matter.
My instinct was to tell him that he blew. Trusting that he’d pick up on that little psychic tidbit, I rolled out of bed and stumbled to my closet, unsteady and wobbly on my feet. I felt like I’d run a marathon. Through a vat of cement. With weights on my legs.
The night before, I’d been too drunk on power to listen to any objections my body might have had about the pace I’d kept. Today, however, each and every complaint was registering loud and clear.
We’ll start with a morning run, I think. You’ve a bit of time before the school day starts.
I was sure that it wasn’t just my imagination. There was some self-satisfied amusement in Callum’s mind-voice. Didn’t he realize it was Monday morning and that being up at this hour was almost certainly a crime against God and man? I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to project my thoughts back to him in words—for all I knew, that might be an alpha-only skill, but I thought I’d give it a try.
Sadist.
His response came to me in colors and feelings, rather than words, but I got the message clear enough. He was laughing at me. Chuckling, in a fond kind of way.
I pushed at him—not to close off the bond but to shove him out of my head, or as far to the corners of it as he would go. He stayed for a moment, his presence taking over so much of my mind that I couldn’t move. After making his point, he retreated.
Stupid werewolves and their stupid dominance maneuvers. It was bad enough dealing with them every day when it came to external conflict. The last thing I needed was people marking territory inside my head.
Without even thinking about it, I sent Callum an image of a dog hiking his leg at a fire hydrant. And then one of a rebel flag from the Revolutionary War.
Callum didn’t respond in my head, but I knew he’d gotten the message, because he met me at the front door, and the first thing he said, with a single arch of his eyebrow, was, “Don’t tread on you?”
“More like ‘don’t metaphorically pee on my brainwaves,’ but it’s the same sentiment, really.”
“Vulgarity does not become you, Bryn.”
“Are you going to lecture, or are we going to run?”
He sighed, and I didn’t need a bond with the pack to see that he was thinking that I had always, always been a difficult child. And then, just in case that point wasn’t clear, he verbalized it. “You have always, always been a difficult child.”
I smiled sweetly. “I try.”
He jerked his head to the side and I nodded, and together, the two of us took off jogging. We followed the path for about a half mile, and then Callum veered off into the woods and jacked up his pace. I worked to keep up with him, even once we’d finished a five-mile loop and he started us back through again.
“Not bad for an old man,” I told him, even though I was winded and knew he could continue on like this indefinitely.
“Brat,” he returned, his tone completely conversational.
It had been a long time since the two of us had spent time like this: one on one, without him swooping in to lecture me about something or make some grand declaration about my life and future in his territory. When I was really little, we’d done this a lot more. He’d taught me to fight. Every day, we went running, and when I’d wipe out at the end, he’d carried me on his back. And then I got older, and the times like this one had been fewer and further between. He’d taken a step back. Left me to Ali. Spent most of his time on pack business that I had no part in.
I didn’t want to admit that it hurt that I’d had to open up the bond to bring that Callum back to me. Was this even real? If he spent time with me because we were more connected now, or because of the conditions he’d set down, did it mean anything? Or was I just another chore, the alpha doing his duty by the pack, bratty little human girl and all?
“I can finish this up on my own,” I told him. “I’ve been doing my own training for years.”
“And you’ve been slacking. You only push yourself so far, Bryn.”
I got a feeling that he wasn’t talking just about physical training. With the semester more than halfway done, I still had a B-plus in algebra when it wouldn’t have taken much effort on my part to get an A. I was close to Devon but didn’t bother with any of my other age-mates. If the “Tree of Life” wanted to look like a fire hydrant, I was willing to revisit the issue.
“If you start talking about college and life choices, I’m out of here,” I promised him. “And if you have something else to do and somewhere else to be, don’t let me keep you from it.”
I got a vibe from him then—a twinge in my pack-sense that felt like being pricked with a lukewarm needle.
“I’m here and you’ll deal with me, Bronwyn.”
I took his words as an indication that a warm pinprick meant that he was feeling rather testy.
“Fine,” I said.
“Fine.”
As Calllum and I fell into silence, the voices at the edge of my mind—whirring, whispering ghosts of a something—made themselves heard more clearly. The constant barrage of emotions, filtered through the bond and blurred like words shouted from the bottom of a swimming pool, exhausted me as much as the paces that Herr Callum was jollily putting me through.
Focus, I told myself. Focus on the here and the now. Focus on why you’re doing this.
I focused on Chase.
It was funny. I’d only seen him once, and I couldn’t even picture his human face with any kind of certainty, but his wolf form and his voice were as clear in my memory as they would have been if I’d seen and heard them the second before.
I got bit.
I got bit.
I got bit.
That was why I was doing this. I needed to know what had happened to Chase, and I needed to know what was being done about it.
I opened my mouth to ask Callum point-blank if there was a Rabid in his territory—where Chase had been attacked and who they thought had attacked him, but just as I was about to let loose with the inquisition, a third set of tracks joined ours.
Lance.
Through the bond, he felt solid and heavy, and there was the faintest whiff of vanilla and cedar in his scent.
“Hey, Lance,” I said.
Lance, of course, said nothing.
“Sorry about ditching you a couple of months ago,” I said, intent on getting a response out of him.
Nothing. Nada. He just kept pace with me and Callum, without ever saying a word. The air between us felt almost as empty, but there was just a hint of something. It was either disapproval or amusement. Or possibly both.
Look at Lance, with actual emotions, I thought. And then it occurred to me that there was some chance he could hear me.
Can Lance hear my thoughts? I asked Callum silently.
He can feel them, same as I can, but fainter. Unless you want him to hear you. Most pups have trouble speaking mind-to-mind in human form, but you seem to be rather proficient. I attribute it to your stubborn nature.
“And stubbornness is my folly,” I said out loud, snickering at my own joke, which Callum and Lance clearly did not get.
After a small eternity, in which I made a few more comments that made equally little sense to my companions and in which Callum chided me on my form not once, not twice, but three times—you’re slipping, Bronwyn Alessia. Stay on the balls of your feet—Lance, Callum, and I came to a halt at the Crescent.
I bent over, hands on my knees, breathing hard. Maybe I was out of shape. Or maybe twelve miles was an inhuman (not to mention inhumane) distance to force someone to run. Either way, I wasn’t in the best shape for a fight. Not that Callum or Lance paid much attention to my obvious pain.
“Now,” Callum said, and Lance came at me, a wall of muscle and bulk. He wasn’t as graceful as Callum, but he was lighter on his feet than a man his size had any right to be, and unlike me, he hadn’t just abused both of his lungs in the cruelest of fashions.
Rather than move in the direction of his blow, diffusing its effectiveness, I followed my instincts and dropped to the ground entirely, his ham-shaped first missing me by a hairbreadth.
In a fight, gravity can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. With the odds stacked against me, I had to play nice with the elements. Unfortunately, dropping to the ground put me in a sensitive position, and as Lance bent toward me—probably dead set on picking me up and throwing me like a discus—my weight wasn’t balanced enough across my body to give me any kind of flexibility in how to respond. From my crouched position, I could only go forward. And going forward meant going into Lance, which was something like driving a pickup into a steel wall.
So instead, I went through Lance. More specifically, I dove in between his legs. It would have been a beautiful move, too, but at the last second, I felt his feet snap together, snaring mine and leaving me entirely vulnerable.
“Bryn, to your feet. Lance, again.”
At Callum’s commands, Lance released me, and without a moment’s pause, he came for me again, exactly the same as he had the first time. The predictability of his move gave me a fraction longer to think about my response, but thinking at all was a mistake, and he caught me in the shoulder.
Use the bond, Callum told me. Feel his movements before they get there. Don’t think. Just do.
“Again,” he said out loud.
This time, I managed to dodge Lance’s fist, and when he brought his other leg back around mine, I jumped and then caught the fist he sent flying toward my face, intent on turning the momentum against him. Which would have worked beautifully if I’d been a Were. But I wasn’t, and instead, the effort of stopping his fist put some major pain on my palm.
Don’t let the bond convince you that you’re one of us, Bryn. You’re human, no matter how like a Were you feel.
“Again.”
Time after time, Lance threw blows at me, and I dodged them, playing to my strengths. I was fast, I was light, and I wasn’t afraid of playing dirty. I was small and flexible and—as Lance muttered at one point—completely insane. The bond let me predict his movements, but it did little for letting him track mine, because even I didn’t know what I was going to do next.
“Again.”
I was really beginning to hate that word. At this rate, I wouldn’t even get to shower before my first class. Impatient, I decided not to wait for Lance to come to me this time. I broke the first rule of Fighting with Werewolves 101. I attacked. And then, my common sense came back to me, and in the microsecond it took Lance to recover from an unexpected blow to a very sensitive region, I turned tail and ran, and I was up a tree before he managed to get ahold of me again.
“Good,” Callum said. I wonder if he noticed that I’d picked a taller tree this time. No way was Lance getting me off this branch with a well-aimed tackle. I waited for Callum to instruct us to begin again, but the word never came, and Lance looked up at me and smiled—or came as close to smiling as he ever did.
Then he nodded to Callum—a solemn half bow—and ran back off into the forest.
Callum looked up at me. “You’d best be getting to school. We’ll run again tonight,” he said. “And tomorrow, you’ll fight Sora.”
“When can I see Chase?” I asked.
“When you’re ready.”
“When will I be ready?”
“That remains to be seen.”
“Do the words straight answer mean nothing to you?”
“Enough,” Callum said, in his “This is the Final Word” voice of authority. I half-expected the bond between us to shake with the alpha-ness of it all, but it didn’t. It was almost as if this tone—which I associated with Callum putting his foot down in the most intractable way possible—had nothing to do with Callum being the leader of our pack, and everything to do with him being Callum and me being me.
“There was nothing in my permissions about not asking questions,” I told him, feeling rather secure in my perch.
“And there was nothing in your request about ending your grounding,” Callum countered.
I narrowed my eyes. “That’s Ali’s decision, not yours.”
Callum didn’t reply, and it occurred to me that the expression on Ali’s face when she’d reamed me out about my illegal adventure into Callum’s basement had looked disturbingly similar to the look on the alpha’s face now.
Okay, so maybe it had been a joint decision. And maybe the conditions of my permissions weren’t the only card that Callum had in his deck to hold over my head.
“Breakfast?” I asked, half as a peace offering and half to see if he’d take me up on the offer, or if he’d have other, more pressing pack business to deal with. “I could swing
time for a Pop Tart if I skip out on my shower.”
A human probably would have found the notion disgusting, but Callum wasn’t human, and Weres didn’t much care about sweat. “You’d have more time to shower if you could knock yourself down from that seven-minute mile.” Callum’s lips turned up in a subtle, lupine smile and then he inclined his head slightly, accepting my invitation for breakfast. I let myself wonder, just for a second, if he was here for more than just training me. If I wasn’t the only one who remembered how much time the two of us had spent together when I was little.
“Are you coming, or do you intend to spend the entire day in a tree?”
The corners of his lips quirked upward, and I answered his question and his amusement by diving out of the tree, straight into his body, taking us both down to the ground.
Bit.
Bit.
I got bit.
I reminded myself that this was what my training was about. It wasn’t about Callum and me. It wasn’t about the pack—there, still, in the corners of my mind. It was about Chase. Chase and the Rabid, questions and answers. That was what mattered.
“You’re getting slow,” I told Callum.
He threw me back to my feet and was on his own an instant later, but his words belied the ease of that motion. “And you, little one, are getting big.”
CHAPTER TEN
THEY SAY NOT TO BRING A KNIFE TO A GUNFIGHT. Extend the logic, and it’s probably not much of a stretch to say that you shouldn’t be relying on basic self-defense and martial-arts moves in an altercation with a werewolf. You should be bringing knives. And guns. And as much silver as you can physically carry.
Not all of the Weres I knew were allergic to silver—Devon wasn’t—but the old myths about silver bullets weren’t completely off base, either. Bullets had the potential to cause major problems, because accelerated healing increased the likelihood of a werewolf healing around a bullet, and having a piece of metal firmly embedded in one’s innards had a way of leading to malfunctions. Beyond that, a good 80 to 90 percent of Weres were allergic to silver, the same way that most humans had a bad reaction to poison ivy. At best, it caused a rash and discomfort. At worst, if the silver got into their bloodstream, it could kill them. In any case, unless you were fighting a silver-immune wolf, like Devon, it ended up evening the playing field a little. They could kill you in an instant; you might, if you got lucky, be able to inflict some damage on them.
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