Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  “I’m willing to entertain the idea,” Shay replied, “if you’ll give me a little something in return.”

  “I’m not giving you any of my wolves.”

  “Pity,” Shay said. “I do think the boy actually believed you could save him, that you cared.”

  I didn’t rise to the bait, but knowing he was doing it on purpose didn’t take the sting out of his words. I wanted to help Lucas, and I couldn’t. If a loophole existed, I hadn’t found it.

  I’d lost.

  “I also hear you’ve got yourself into a sticky situation with a coven of psychics.” Shay reverted back to bad-cop form. “If you could be persuaded to part with one or two of your little ones, I might be able to help you with that, too.”

  “The answer is no.”

  “No, you won’t consider my offer, or no, you really don’t care about the safety and longevity of your pack?”

  I hated Shay—hated him more than I’d thought I could hate anyone.

  “I will not, under any circumstances, give you any of my wolves.” My voice echoed with more than my sixteen years of experience, and I wondered if this was what it felt like to issue a decree as an alpha, the kind of promise I couldn’t have broken even if I’d wanted to.

  “Well, if you’re not open to the idea of a trade, perhaps you’d prefer a wager?”

  I would have preferred Shay be abducted by aliens and vaporized at the molecular level—but if Shay was telling the truth, if the other alphas were backing his request for entry into my territory, I couldn’t imagine that they’d react well to my holding Lucas much longer.

  Across the room, Chase met my eyes, and I didn’t need the pack-bond to know what he was thinking.

  Sometimes, at the end of the day, you had to take care of yourself.

  “No wager?” Shay said, and I tore my eyes away from Chase’s. “In that case, bring Lucas to the border—unless you’d prefer to give me your permission to come collect him myself. There’s a thing or two I’d like to say to the boy, and I believe the psychics want a word as well.”

  While Shay blathered on, I used the bond to ask Devon to check my email. Dev confirmed everything Shay had told me and informed me that in the time that Shay and I had been talking, another alpha had replied, asking that I either permit Shay access to my territory or send Lucas back to Shay.

  That might not have sucker punched me the way it did but for the fact that the alpha was Callum.

  Time was running out. I had to make a decision, but the only thing I could think about was Callum, teaching me how to throw a knife. Callum, running a hand over my hair. Callum, trading away a portion of his territory to save Marcus, who hadn’t deserved it.

  I knew then that I couldn’t do the safe thing. I couldn’t hang Lucas out to dry, not if there was a chance—even a small one—that I could save him without endangering the rest of my pack.

  I knew what Callum would do, and I had to try.

  “Shay, you, and only you, have permission to come into my territory for exactly three hours.” The moment the words were out of my mouth, I could feel Devon on the other side of the bond, sending an email to the other alphas that said the same thing.

  The email was time-stamped. The clock was ticking.

  “Am I coming to retrieve my wolf, or am I coming to play you for him?”

  I wasn’t sure of the answer to that question, so I responded by hanging up the phone. If Shay was as close to the border as he’d claimed, he’d be here in a little over an hour, and I needed time to assess the situation.

  To decide.

  What do you expect me to do? I knew things were dire when I started having pretend conversations with Callum in my head. You sent that email. I did what you wanted me to do, what you would have done. What now?

  There was no answer—not from pretend Callum, and not from anyone else. As I sat there, the countdown already under way, I was sure of only one thing.

  If Shay and I wagered anything—and that was a big if—it would be on my terms. Not his.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I STOOD WITH MY BACK AGAINST THE POOL TABLE, one ankle crossed in front of the other, waiting. The restaurant was eerily quiet, and as I felt Shay drawing nearer, twin urges—one to shudder and one to growl—fought for dominance in my mind. All around me, my backup seemed to be fighting the same battle, but they faded into the woodwork, letting me take the lead.

  Before we could fight as a team, I had to meet Shay one-on-one, alpha to alpha.

  Foreign. Wolf.

  Threat.

  I was familiar enough with Shay’s type to know that he wanted me to feel him coming. He wanted me to feel his presence washing over my body like thick, syrupy oil. He wanted me to shudder, to growl, to make one wrong move after another after another.

  Shay wanted the advantage. Considering that we were on my land, surrounded by my wolves, that wasn’t going to happen. Shay could puff up his chest and leak pheromones until the cows came home, and I still wasn’t going to respond like he was a threat—even though all my instincts were telling me that he was. I wouldn’t let him get a rise out of me, wouldn’t let him see me scared. No shuddering. No growling. As the door to the Wayfarer opened, I didn’t bat an eye. I didn’t straighten to my full height. I just stayed there, leaning against the pool table, using the knife in my right hand to clean the fingernails on my left.

  “You look well.”

  Judging by Shay’s words, you would have thought the two of us were old friends, but I suspected that he meant them more as a complaint than anything else. For a fragile little human lotus blossom, I had an annoying habit of coming out of things unscathed. Shay probably would have preferred to see me in pieces.

  Glancing down at my fingernails, I took my time responding to his greeting. “It took you an hour and fifteen minutes to get here. Presumably, it will take you an hour and fifteen minutes to go back where you came from, which means that the permission I granted you to be here expires in half an hour.”

  I wasn’t going to let him get a rise out of me, but I didn’t have to sit there and exchange niceties, either.

  “Very well,” Shay replied, strolling through the room like he owned the place. “This shouldn’t take long.”

  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 lea
st, 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.