I ran my fingertips over the worn felt of the pool table and met his eyes as if they held no more significance to me than a speck on the wind. He returned my stare, his face as blank as mine.
Alpha. Alpha. Alpha.
The familiar call of my pack took on a different tone in my head. I was alpha, Shay was alpha, and there was a subtle suggestion in the air all around us, a whisper in my ear, telling me that there was only ever meant to be one. Werewolves weren’t meant for politics. Shay and I weren’t meant to be exchanging words.
“I appreciate your hospitality.”
My only clue that Shay was feeling the undercurrent, same as I was, was the way that even as he was coating his words with sugar, his chest rose and fell at a quicker pace. It was all too easy to imagine him in wolf form, breathing jaggedly over my corpse.
Alpha. Alpha. Alpha.
Shay brought his gaze to meet mine. I felt him let go of his hold on the instinct to dominate, and I let go of mine.
I imagined my eyes boring twin holes in Shay’s body. I stared at him, and I smiled, because from the moment he’d engaged in this little staring contest, there was a way in which he’d already lost. Every second I held Shay’s gaze, every moment that I was able to stare back at him—the way very few werewolves probably ever had—was an insult.
I was human. I was a girl, and I was mocking him.
“How do you like that?” Devon said.
Shay turned toward the sound of his brother’s voice, and a rush of adrenaline flooded my body like water bursting through the holes in a dam.
Shay had looked away first.
Logically, I knew he’d been distracted, but no amount of logic could override the bodily sensation that I’d won something, that I was more. At the very least, I hadn’t lost—and even a draw felt like a win against a werewolf as powerful as Shay.
With a glint in his eyes, Shay took a step toward Devon, each of them a distorted reflection of the other. Dev was a fraction taller. Shay was broader through the shoulders. They had the same cheekbones, the same jaw, but while Devon’s features were in constant flux and motion, Shay’s face had an unnatural stillness to it, like he was incapable of smiling or frowning or displaying real human emotion of any kind.
“How do I like what?” Shay asked in a tone that would have been more appropriate for talking to a toddler. He was wasting his breath. Dev was the only werewolf in existence with a fondness for the Metropolitan Ballet—he’d been immune to all forms of mockery for years.
“Knowing that you looked away first,” Devon clarified with a pointed grin. “How do you like that?”
Shay didn’t answer Devon. Instead, he turned slowly back to me, and though I could sense an animal rage building inside him, his tone never changed.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t reconsider a trade?”
I didn’t catch Shay’s exact meaning until he elaborated.
“You keep the runt. I’ll take my brother.”
Devon? Shay wanted Devon?
I hadn’t been expecting that. To my left, Devon managed to force his features into a mildly bemused expression, but not before I saw the flicker of hunger and violence cross his face.
If I sent Devon with Shay, there was no way things would end without bloodshed. As much as I wanted to believe that Devon could take his brother, I wasn’t sure of it. I had doubts, and I told myself that was the reason I was going to say no.
It had nothing to do with the fact that sending Devon with Shay would mean losing him. It had nothing to do with the way that losing Dev would feel like cutting off a part of my soul.
“No.”
“No trade?” Shay repeated. “Pity. A wager, then? Or should Lucas and I just be on our way?”
He said Lucas’s name in a cold and careless way, and I tried not to think of the bruises, the scars, the haunted eyes too timid to look me straight in mine.
“What kind of wager did you have in mind?” I asked evenly.
Shay met my eyes. “Before we talk wagers, show me the boy. I assume you’re keeping him close by? He’s a bit of a runner and more than a bit of a coward. I’d hate for you to wager something dear only to find out that the prize you were after had drowned himself like a kitten.”
“He’s close,” I said, not wanting to call Lucas out, because I couldn’t trust myself to look at his face the moment he saw Shay and still do what was best for my pack.
“Define ‘close,’” Shay said, his tone demanding an answer I wasn’t willing to give. The silence that stretched between us was charged, and I could feel the need to challenge him rising again.
“Here.” The word came from the vicinity of the kitchen, where I’d told Lucas to wait, but he wasn’t the one who said it. Maddy stalked into the dining room, looking like some kind of Valkyrie come to gather the souls of the dead. There were dark circles under her gray eyes, and her lips were swollen.
Freshly kissed.
“Lucas is here.” Maddy’s voice was quiet, but there was something regal about the set of her chin, and I knew, maybe even before she did, what she was going to say next. “If you let him stay here, I’ll go with you.”
Her words felt like lightning going off in my brain. She knew what she was saying. She knew what it would mean. She wasn’t asking permission.
She was sure.
“No.” I didn’t raise my voice, but Maddy’s pack-bond pulled her closer to me, forced her head down. “Not going to happen, Maddy.”
“Making the decision for her, are you? And here I thought you weren’t that kind of alpha.” The emphasis Shay put on the phrase told me that he’d been watching us more closely than I’d realized.
“I’m whatever kind of alpha I need to be.” Saying the words made them true, and suddenly, I knew that I could do whatever was necessary to protect my pack.
“Bring me the boy.” Shay issued the words like an order, like he had a right to come here to my territory and demand anything. I moved forward, my steps slow and even, my hands loose by my sides. I walked up to him—right up to him—stood on my tiptoes, and blew in his face. It was a childish, human insult meant to emphasize that Shay was being insulted by just that: a human. A child.
For a moment, I thought he was going to hit me. I hoped that he would, because if Shay attacked me based on little more than an insult, my pack would be justified in fighting back. But instead of hitting me, Shay moved in a flash toward Maddy. Our entire pack flew into motion, but almost too late, I realized that Shay wasn’t going after Maddy.
He was going after Lucas, who’d come to stand by Maddy’s side, and there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop him.
Shay caught the smaller boy roughly by the neck and pulled him out from behind Maddy. I knew the second before Maddy leapt for Shay that she’d lost it, but it was too late for me to pull her back through the bond. Luckily, Lake was close enough and fast enough that she was able to take Maddy down before she could lay a finger on Shay.
“Maddy. Madison. Mads.” Lake had her pinned, but Maddy wouldn’t stop struggling against her hold, writhing on the ground like someone was shooting electric shocks through her body with the voltage set to high. A sound like thunder and the cracking of wood brought my eyes back to Shay, just in time to see Lucas go down.
Standing over Lucas’s prone body, Shay brought his eyes up to mine. I’d pushed him to the edge, hoping to goad him into attacking me, and instead, he’d turned on the only person here that he could, by Pack Law, beat to a broken, bloody pulp.
This is your fault, Shay’s eyes told me. The boy. The coven. The bloodshed.
It was all for me, and for a split second, there was something in Shay’s eyes that made me wonder if hatred was all he felt when he looked at my face.
“Bryn—” Lucas managed to choke out my name before Shay’s foot connected solidly with his ribs, popping the bones like bubble wrap.
Shay was going to kill him. Right there, right in front of us, with Maddy watching and Lake holding her down.
>
“Touch him again, and I won’t even think about your wager.” My voice was so steady it surprised me, and I could hear a hint of Callum in my words. “Damaged goods.”
Shay took a single step away from Lucas, but before he did, he leaned down and whispered something in the younger boy’s ear. “Stay.”
It was a direct command from Lucas’s alpha—one he’d be physically unable to disobey.
“Now that that’s taken care of, would the alpha of the Cedar Ridge Pack rather choose the game we’re betting on or the stakes?” Shay asked, his pupils dilated with an appetite I recognized all too well.
Violence. He wanted to hurt me. He wanted to hurt all of us.
“The game or the stakes?” I repeated.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that Shay had offered me a choice, but I was. He wanted to be able to say that this had been a fair wager, aboveboard, completely legitimate. He didn’t want anyone to be able to say that he’d strong-armed me into doing this.
He wanted me complicit.
“Game or stakes,” Shay confirmed. “One of us sets the stakes—that would be what we’re betting and, specifically, what you’re willing to lose if I win, since we’ve already established that my side of the bet is”—he waved his hand in Lucas’s direction—“that.”
He paused, just long enough for Maddy, still pinned to the ground, to start fighting against Lake’s hold again. “Whoever doesn’t set the stakes gets to choose the game on which we’ll lay them.”
I had only a few precious seconds to decide whether I’d rather choose the game we were betting on, or what I was willing to give Shay if I lost. It was a lose-lose situation. If I let Shay chose the game, he’d choose something I’d never have a chance of winning. If I let him choose the stakes, he could demand I put my entire pack up for grabs.
“If I choose the stakes, what’s to stop me from betting a napkin?”
“Good point,” Shay said. “Let’s say that whatever you put up as your half of the wager has to be a person. A wolf for a wolf. If you set the stakes, you get to choose which wolf. If you choose the game we’re betting on, the choice of prize is mine.”
I wasn’t sure whether he meant them to or not, but as Shay spoke, his eyes lingered on Lake’s body, and a lump rose in my throat. For years, she’d been the only eligible female of the species in our entire world. Living under Callum’s protection, she’d been safe. Off-limits. Forbidden.
When we’d discovered the Rabid’s pack of Changed werewolves—seven girls among them, all of whom were now Cedar Ridge—I’d thought there might be safety in numbers, but Lake had been the ultimate prize for too long, and now she didn’t have Callum to protect her.
All she had was me.
No, I thought, the word rising up from my gut. I couldn’t do it. Not to Lake, not to Mitch, not to Callum and everything he’d raised me to be.
I’m sorry, Maddy, I said, sending the words to her across the bond, feeling her heart break like it was my own. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Lucas, couldn’t rid my mind of the sound of popping bones.
“Choose the game, Bryn.” Lake said the words out loud, even though she could have passed them quietly from her mind to mine. She eased herself off Maddy’s body and stood up.
She wanted Shay to know she wasn’t afraid.
She was a liar.
She must have seen the refusal on my face, because she repeated the words she’d said out loud silently, for my ears only. Choose the game, Bryn. Let him choose the stakes.
I narrowed my eyes. Lake, I’m not going to let him force me to bet you.
Lake didn’t even blink. Sure you are. You’re going to bet me, and you’re going to bet on me, and we’re going to win.
I glanced from Lake to the pool table, from the table to Lucas, and from Lucas to Maddy, who had eyes only for him. The floor was smeared with blood.
I can do this, Bryn, Lake said. I’ve done it a million times before with a million other Weres.
Lake had been hustling pool since she was ten. I was pretty sure she hadn’t lost since she was twelve.
I’ve never asked you for anything, Lake said, the intensity of her voice pushing out every other thought in my head. Not since we were kids, and I’m asking you now, as your friend, as Maddy’s friend, to let me do this.
Without thinking about it, I glanced over at Dev, but there was no counsel in his eyes, only violence, anguish.
“Do we have a bet?” Shay asked, his own face an emotionless mask.
Lake caught my gaze and held it, and after a long moment, I nodded.
“Choose your stakes,” I said roughly. “The game is pool.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
LAKE DIDN’T SO MUCH AS LOOK AT SHAY AS SHE walked over to the pool table and chose her cue. She just ran her hands over the length of the wood and murmured something under her breath. I could see her lips moving but couldn’t make out the words, and I wondered if she was talking to the cue, the way she sometimes did her guns, or if the words were just another part of the performance she was putting on for Shay’s sake.
On Thanksgiving Day, I’d watched Lake teaching a bunch of twelve-year-olds how to hustle pool. She’d told them that the trick was to look completely helpless so your opponent would underestimate you. Now my friend’s entire future was riding on her ability to put her money where her mouth was and practice what she preached.
Lake could do this. She could.
I wanted to believe it. I wanted to tell myself that Lake really was that good, and that I wouldn’t have been any kind of friend at all if I’d kept her from trying, but I couldn’t, because despite everything we’d been through together, despite what she and the others had done for me the night before, I couldn’t shake the feeling building up inside me, the one that said that I was supposed to be protecting her.
“Take me instead.” My voice was low and guttural—a foreign thing in my own throat.
“Excuse me?” Shay raised one eyebrow, and for a single second, he looked so much like Devon that it hurt to look at him.
“The game hasn’t started yet. You can still change the stakes.” I ignored the low rumble of the others inside my head.
I ignored Chase, who’d gone ashen beside me, the unreadable look on his face masking the flash of horror and denial I could feel through the bond.
“Are you suggesting that if I win, you’ll abdicate the rule of your pack to your second-in-command and willingly transfer into mine?” Shay sounded vaguely amused. I thought of everything he could do to me, everything he would do to me, and then I nodded, unwilling to let myself feel even the smallest bit of fear.
Unwilling to let him smell it.
“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”
Devon could take care of the pack once I was gone, he could be their alpha, and I could put my life on the line to save Lake.
Shay’s face hardened, amusement morphing into something darker. I recognized the emotion from places in my memory I didn’t want to go. The blood, the screams, my human parents. The smell of mildew and bleach as I backed myself farther and farther under the kitchen sink. Even dead, the Rabid still haunted my dreams, and I knew that Shay wanted that. He wanted me to cower, wanted to wear my blood and taste my human screams.
“You think highly of yourself,” he said, his eyes pulsing with bloodlust, and the muscles in his jaw tense with the effort it took to fight it back. “But at the end of the day, you’re human. You’re frail, you’re weak, you’re breakable. You’re meat. This one …” Shay turned to look at Lake, and through the bond, I felt her conflicting desires to lash out and shrink back from his gaze. “This one is strong.”
Shay didn’t come right out and say that Lake would make a good incubator for his future children, but he might as well have, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t shake the image of Lake running, running, running and never getting far enough away.
Bryn, if we lose, I’m going with her. Dev met my eyes from across the room
as the silent words passed from his mind to mine. If I’d been capable of feeling anything other than the animal need to answer Shay’s innuendos with fury and blood, I might have taken a moment to consider what it would mean to lose Devon and Lake at the same time.
What it meant that he would leave me to go with her.
Instead, I gritted my teeth and nodded. If we lose, Dev, I want you to go.
Shay flicked his eyes from Devon’s to mine, unable to hear our words, but aware that something had passed unspoken between us.
“So the stakes aren’t changing.” Lake tossed her hair over one shoulder and twirled the pool cue absentmindedly in her hand. “Now that we’ve got that over with, you want to break, Shay, or should I?”
Lake threw out the challenge, looking cocky and young and like the type of person who would rush into a bet like this one without thinking things through, but I knew better. Her bravado was a familiar mask, a special brand of fearlessness that she could put on at the drop of a hat.
She was smart. She was strong. She could do this. I repeated that to myself over and over again.
“You can break.” Shay walked past her and picked up the longest pool cue, twirling it lightly. “I spent most of the fifties in pool halls. If I broke, you’d never even get the chance to shoot.”
Shay might as well have taken a page out of Caroline’s book and pronounced himself incapable of missing a shot.
Unperturbed, Lake racked up the balls and walked the perimeter of the table, her hips swinging with forced carelessness, her eyes registering every angle, every contour, every ball. She placed the cue ball just to the left of the table’s center and leaned over, lining up her first shot. Numbness worked its way up my body, inch by inch.
Lake relaxed her grip on her stick.
Shay smiled.
And then she took her first shot.
The cue ball ricocheted off its target, and the rest shot outward, like an explosion had gone off at their core.
I felt, rather than saw, the first ball drop into one of the center pockets, and I forced myself to breathe.
There were too many of us in this room. There was too much riding on this moment, and it went against every instinct I had—as an alpha, as their friend, as a person who knew what it meant to fight for survival every second of every day—to just stand there, watching and willing Lake to sink one ball after another after another.
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