“The babies,” Callum said, relishing the word, “are healthy. I believe they’ve expressed an interest in meeting their sister.”
Twins? Ali was fine, and she’d had twins? It was almost enough to banish the blood-red haze that I could feel coloring every thought in my head. Almost, but not quite, because somewhere in my mind, I could still hear those three little words.
I got bit.
And each time I heard them, it killed me a little. But more than that, it also made me wonder, because there wasn’t a wolf in Callum’s pack who would attack a teenage boy. There wasn’t a wolf in any of the North American packs who would have done such a thing, and I knew what that meant. I knew what it meant better than anyone.
Somewhere in our territory, there was a Rabid.
CHAPTER SIX
“THERE ARE BAD PEOPLE IN THE WORLD: MURDERERS and psychopaths and telemarketers who won’t take no for an answer.” I kept my voice soft as I spoke and—for the benefit of my audience—made a real effort at ditching my protective layer of sarcasm. “Sometimes, bad people do really evil things, and good people get hurt. Even kids.”
My listeners hung on to my every word with round, wide eyes.
“Humans call their monsters sociopaths. We call ours Rabids.”
Baby #1 (also known as Kaitlin or Katie or, if she was in a mood, Kate) signified her acceptance of my older sisterly wisdom by blowing a spit bubble of mammoth proportions. Baby #2 made what appeared to be a real effort at putting his left foot in his mouth. Reflexively, I reached my hand out and tickled his sole before catching his foot in my hand.
Alex (also known as Alexander, Little Guy, Big Guy, and Spot) wrinkled his baby brow.
“Got your foot,” I told him loftily. Alex wriggled. Clearly, he was unsure what to make of this development.
“Messing with the minds of the next generation again, Bryn? For shame!” Devon’s voice took me off guard. The twins, on the other hand, didn’t seem at all surprised to see him. Even at the ripe old age of six weeks, their senses were better than mine. I would have sworn that they knew it, too, based on their little baby smirks.
“It’s not like I have much else to do,” I said. “Grounded, remember?” Winter had given way to early spring, and I was still under house arrest for my “antics” the day the twins were born.
Devon sat down next to me and started playing with Kaitlin’s feet.
“I seem to recall this grounding that you speak of,” he said. “Remind me again—is this the grounding that kept you from going with me to see the delightfully horrendous film adaptation of my seventh-favorite Broadway musical, or the grounding that came about because you almost got yourself killed? And didn’t bother to bring me along? Hmmmmm?”
Devon loved playing the martyr almost as much as he adored cheesy movie musicals, and my being housebound was almost as bad for him as it was for me. Our age-mates in the pack (or “the Philistines,” as Dev sometimes referred to them) couldn’t quite grasp the appeal inherent in most of the things that Devon enjoyed.
“How many times do I have to say I’m sorry?” I huffed, finally releasing my hold on Alex’s captive foot. I smiled at the way he joyfully flailed like there was no tomorrow once it was free.
“How many more times do you have to apologize?” Devon asked, pretending to ponder the question deeply. “At least thrice more, I should think,” he said, slipping into a distinctively rhythmic pattern of speech that made me think that a reenactment of his seventh-favorite musical might just be forthcoming (again). Instead, though, he turned his gaze to Kaitlin and without even looking at me, he said, “You could have been killed, Bryn.”
The way he was looking at Katie and the words he’d said reminded me that even though Devon was Dev, he was still a Were. He still had an innate desire to protect what he loved and to guard his females with his life. Without another word, he gently moved his hand up to Kaitlin’s head and gently stroked her downy-soft hair. Katie blew another spit bubble, completely unaffected by the nearly rapturous awe on Devon’s face. She was already used to getting that reaction from Weres, and when she was Katie and not the more tempestuous Kate, she reveled in it.
Just you wait, I told her silently. It’s all fun and games until they ground you until you’re thirty.
At this rate, Katie’s teen years were going to be a million times worse than mine, which was a scary thought in and of itself. No one but Callum and Ali had ever cherished me as much as the entire pack seemed to relish doting on Ali’s babies. Live twin births were rare in any pack, and Katie was only the second female born in Callum’s territory in the past hundred years. Something about the chemistry involved in werewolf conception made it impossible for girl embryos to survive the first trimester, unless they were half of a set of twins and had a brother to mask their presence in the womb. I was a little vague on the medical details, but from day one, it had been clear that the twins were special—and that Kaitlin had a very, very long road ahead of her.
Which is why it was my duty as her older sister to ease the way, and that meant disabusing my pack of the notion that girls (in this case, me) needed protection. Unfortunately, Devon was the closest thing I had to an ally, and even he would have throttled me if he knew that I was working on a plan to see Chase.
Chase.
Just thinking his name knocked the breath out of me, yanking me back to that night in Callum’s basement, as I’d watched Chase Shift, anchored in place by those three little words.
I got bit.
A grounding of epic proportions had not changed the fact that I had to see him again. On one level, I knew that it was a bad idea, knew that he was “unpredictable” and “not yet in control of his wolf” and that I would “find myself in a most unpleasant situation” if I “came within two miles of him.” I even recognized that Chase had all of the instincts and none of the discipline of a full-grown Were, and I’d lived in this world long enough to realize what that could mean. Callum had impressed upon me again and again that Chase was a danger to me—and that I could be just as dangerous to him.
He survived an attack that would have killed a full-grown man, Bryn, Callum had said, his face absolutely serious, his jaw set, but he isn’t out of the woods yet. If we can’t teach him control, or if he were to hurt a human before he learns, the Senate would have him put down.
The Senate. As in the combined force of each and every pack alpha on the North American continent. When they met, the Senate tried for democracy, but I knew that when Callum said they would put Chase down, what he really meant was that Callum wouldn’t use his power to stop them. He might even be the one to snap Chase’s neck himself. Callum had few weak points, but I was one of them. Senate or no Senate, he’d kill Chase if Chase hurt me.
That was the only reason I’d managed to stay away this long. Up to this point, I hadn’t even tried to break my house arrest, because the idea of something happening to Chase made me want to vomit up my internal organs.
He was, without exaggeration, the only person who could possibly understand what it meant to survive what I’d survived before my adoption into the pack. He was the only chance I might have to fill in the gaps in my memory of what had happened that night before Callum and his guard had saved me from the fate the rest of my family had met. I needed Chase, and I wanted to be near him, and some part of me couldn’t shake the feeling that it was mutual, and that I would be the one to save him from himself.
Nobody knew what it was like to be torn between what it meant to be human and what it meant to be Pack better than me.
A high-pitched yip tore me away from my thoughts. Katie, ever the adventurous twin, had taken my mental absence as an excuse to Change, and now, instead of watching two babies, I had in my charge one human infant (to all appearances at least) and one rambunctious, wiggling-all-over, feet-too-big-for-her-body, whining-to-be-let-out-of-her-crib pup.
“I take it nap time ended just before my fortuitous arrival?” Devon asked.
Deci
ding not to mention that nap time had been briefly followed by story time, I nodded. Even in just a few weeks’ time, Dev and I had started picking up on the differences between the twins: their idiosyncrasies, temperaments, and internal schedules. For example, without fail, when the twins woke up from their afternoon naps (or soon thereafter), Alex almost always needed to be changed, and Kaitlin, in contrast, needed to be Changed. She already loved her wolf form and would have spent all day as a puppy if Ali would let her.
Personally, I didn’t blame her. In human form, the twins were far more advanced than most newborns, but as wolves, they were already more like toddlers than babies. Once she Changed, Kaitlin could walk (or run) on all fours and stick her damp little puppy nose into everything.
From her crib, Katie yipped again, clearly impatient. Little sis wanted what she wanted when she wanted it.
“Good girl,” I crooned, scooping her up and setting her on the ground.
“Aren’t you supposed to be encouraging her to stay in human form?” Devon asked me. For once, his accent and the set of his impeccably groomed eyebrows were completely his own.
“Moi?” I said innocently. “And how am I supposed to do that, hmmmm?” I threw Devon’s own pet noise right back at him. “I seem to recall something about my being completely human and unable to control the forms of subordinate wolves.”
Trying to force my will on Katie would have gone against everything I fought for on a day-to-day basis—not to mention the fact that opening up my pack-bond enough to force something on either of the babies would have left me vulnerable to having someone else’s will forced on me. That was a can of worms that I wouldn’t open unless and until I had to.
Kaitlin, blissed out in puppy form, sniffed at my shoes and then sneezed.
“And also,” I added, “I like her better this way.”
Katie nosed at the carpet and then gave it a good chew. When it proved recalcitrant enough that she couldn’t pull it up, she growled.
“Who’s a fierce little girl?” I asked her. “Who’s going to kick butt and take names and help her big sister get into all kinds of trouble someday?”
Devon snorted. “Sometimes, I think the term bad influence was invented specifically with you in mind.”
Considering that he knew nothing of my deep-seated need to fight my way to Chase again, that was probably an understatement. Rather than say something that might give away my thoughts, I opted instead for a surefire distraction.
“Not it,” I said.
Dev cocked one eyebrow at me, a trick that it had taken him years to absolutely perfect.
I gestured toward Alex, wrinkling my nose ever-so-slightly. “Not it.” My nose wasn’t anywhere near as sensitive as anyone else’s in this room, but even I could sense something rotten in the state of Denmark.
Unlike me, Devon had an animal’s tolerance of what I referred to as “diaper commodities.” In addition to having superstrength, accelerated healing, awesome senses, and an extended life span, werewolves, I had recently discovered, were also pretty much immune to the horrors of poop.
Devon picked Alex up and sauntered over to the changing table. Alex made some vaguely unhappy sounds, but Devon banished them by singing what seemed to be a punk-rock version of “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Halfway through, he segued disturbingly smoothly into a number from Rent.
The music soothed me as much as it did the baby, and I turned my attention back to Kaitlin, who now appeared to be very conscientiously stalking my shoelaces. I smiled half a smile at her puppy antics, wondering what it would be like to be able to join her, to shed my human skin and the confines that went with it and just live in the moment as a wolf. What would I look like with four legs and fur—would I be light-colored like Katie, or a darker timber, like Dev?
I wondered if I’d be velvety black with ice-blue eyes, like Chase.
And then, I was there again, in that moment, watching his muscles tense and pull and send electric pulses through my body as he Changed. With equally little warning, I was elsewhere and another set of blue eyes glistened yellow as a large, gray wolf with a white star on his forehead leapt for the throat of a human man whose features had long been replaced by Callum’s in my memory.
Come out, come out, wherever you are, little one. No sense hiding from the Big Bad Wolf. I’ll always find you in the end.…
A hand on my shoulder made me jump.
You’ve got to stop doing this to yourself, Callum told me with his eyes, but out loud, he didn’t say anything to me at all—he just squeezed my shoulder once and turned his attention to Kaitlin.
“Ach, Katie-girl, what are we going to do with you?” His brown eyes soft and his mouth set with mock sternness, Callum scooped puppy-Kaitlin up in his arms. She lapped at his face and he bit back an indulgent smile. “If your mama sees you like this, she’ll not be pleased,” Callum said, before puffing out a breath that had my little sister sniffing like crazy.
Even without being a Were, I knew what Callum would smell like to her: safe and strong and home. He was the alpha, and in our world, that made him as close and important to Kaitlin as her own parents. As important as I hoped that I would be to her someday.
Eventually, Katie tired of the confines of Callum’s loving hold, and she began to whine and wiggle, angling for the floor.
“I know exactly how you feel,” I said under my breath.
Callum didn’t bat an eye at my complaint. “You,” he said to Katie, “need to change back to human form, and you”—he fixed his gaze on me—“my dearest, darling, and not-quite-grown little girl, need to trust that I have and have always had your best interest at heart.”
My future mini-me and I were equally incapable of resisting Callum’s orders. If Callum said to Change, Katie had to Change, whether she wanted to or not. For me, Callum had a different kind of pull. Years of shielding myself psychically from my bond with the pack may have dulled Callum’s supernatural influence over me, but he still had a human one, and I couldn’t deny the truth in his words. Callum didn’t want to see me hurt, and he had no qualms about acting to ensure my safety. He cared for me.
Callum reached out and ran a hand over my hair, the same way Devon had stroked Katie’s. Meanwhile, the little princess settled into her baby body enough to thrash her little baby arms, and she let out a shriek worthy of an opera-singing banshee. I had to give it to her, the kid knew how to scream with the best of them. I could almost hear the howl behind her unhappy cries.
Kaitlin—or Kate now, clearly—did not like being caged, not by orders she had to follow or by limbs that wouldn’t do what they were told and skin that stubbornly refused to feel even the least bit like fur.
“Her Royal Highness is displeased,” I told Callum, translating Baby Kate’s wails into words.
He shifted her in his arms and crooned and patted her bottom, speaking to her in a mix of languages I didn’t know and couldn’t understand beyond the fact that once upon a time, he’d probably said the same thing to me. Kate resisted being consoled, but soon the wails died to whimpers and the whimpers to the occasional sniff. Expertly, Callum got her into a fresh set of clothing, since Shifting had destroyed her Baby Gap bodysuit and booties. Already, the twins were wearing clothes made for much older infants, and Katie, with her penchant for spending time in an animal form that aged much more quickly than she did, was growing even faster than Alex.
I’d never realized how fast Weres grew when they were this small. We’d only had one or two live births since I’d been with the pack, and I’d never been up close and personal with those. I knew that Devon had always looked at least a couple of years older than I did, even though we were the same age, but the older we’d gotten, the more natural that difference had seemed. A six-week-old infant who looked like a six-month-old was much more bizarre than an almost-sixteen-year-old who could have passed for twenty. At this rate, Ali’s babies wouldn’t stay babies for long.
For some reason, that thought made me look at Callum again
, and I wondered if he realized that inside, I was changing even quicker than the twins were on the surface. I think he knew, the way he always did. The heavy sadness of his eyes as he looked back at me glowed with something akin to premonition. In Callum’s gaze, I saw the reflection of my own sudden self-awareness that I was barreling toward adulthood, and that the next words out of my mouth would be my first running leap in that direction.
A leap that even five minutes before, I would have fought tooth and nail against taking.
“I need to register a request for permissions,” I said, using the officially sanctioned language for approaching the alpha as one of his pack. This time, I needed to do things right. Callum, his expression completely masked, set Katie back down in her crib and nodded to Devon, who left the room.
My stomach flip-flopped with the fear that he would say no, but I made myself stand tall as he followed protocol to a T. “Your request has been registered. Define the terms of the permissions you seek.”
I was suddenly very aware of the fact that I was in the room with Callum the alpha, not Callum who scolded me about algebra. My heart started beating faster and my mind went again and again to the beast inside him and from there to the things that a wolf as strong as Callum could do, if you tempted his ire and he were so inclined.
“I need to see Chase,” I said, my voice quiet but firm. “I request permissions to have a supervised visit with him.” About then, I started losing my rather tenuous grip on the control I was aiming for. “I’ll do whatever you want, I’ll follow every rule you set down, but I need to see him.”
Callum looked at me and into me, his eyes steely and sharp. His poker face wavered for a split second when I voluntarily promised to follow the rules—a completely unprecedented event that would, in all likelihood, never happen again.
After roughly two and a half eternities, Callum finally nodded. “I’ll grant your request, with conditions to be set down by the next full moon.”
Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology Page 6