I’d wanted to help Lucas….
There was no room for emotion in my decision-making process. No wanting, no feeling, no anger, no grief.
“Okay,” Chase said softly, murmuring the words into my hair. “Okay, Bryn.”
He wasn’t pushing, wasn’t asking me to change, but I knew he wanted me to have choices that I would never have.
I couldn’t blame him for that—not when he was willing to give up his choices for me.
But it would have been nice, really nice, if being together hadn’t required that kind of sacrifice. If neither of us had known, in skin and bones and blood-deep certainty, that I would always come first for Chase, and the pack would always come first for me.
“Love you,” Chase whispered, and my lips found their way to his. I rose up on my knees and drove my fingers through his hair. I pulled his head closer, echoing his whisper. Kissing him. Loving him. Heat played on the surface of my skin and the bond between us flared until I could feel it as a physical thing.
Tomorrow, Shay would call a meeting of the Senate.
Tomorrow, I would leave.
Tomorrow, my emotions would go back in their box. I would strategize. I would stay strong in front of the rest of the alphas. I would win.
But today—today wasn’t tomorrow. And for this instant, this second, I could be a girl, just kissing a boy.
I could feel.
CHAPTER FIVE
“RISE AND SHINE.”
The voice that woke me the next morning was low and gruff—and male.
A man. In my bedroom. Unannounced.
My eyes flew open. My hand went for the knife I kept on my nightstand. Jed caught my wrist halfway there.
“What do you feel?” he asked me.
If he hadn’t been well over sixty, I would have shown him exactly how I felt. This was my space—mine—and my alpha instincts weren’t inclined to take any intrusion lying down. At the same time, there was another part of me that had reacted to his unexpected wake-up call—the Bryn who had grown up around werewolves, the Bryn who knew that most Weres were male, that they were bigger than humans and stronger than humans and fast enough to catch me if I ran.
I was an alpha now, but some lessons were hard to unlearn.
“Pissed,” I said finally, locking eyes with Jed. “I feel pissed.”
“What else?” Jed asked, but he must have seen some hint of danger in my expression, because he dropped my wrist and took a step back.
“More pissed?” I suggested.
“Before you were fully awake, before you processed who I was or what I was doing here, before you remembered who you were and what you’re capable of”—Jed kept walking backward, but his voice never wavered—“what did you feel?”
I hated that he was asking me to think about this, hated that even for a moment, even half-asleep, I’d felt …
Fear.
I could tell, just by looking at Jed, that he was waiting for me to say the word out loud. He’d be waiting a very long time. Even if I hadn’t been alpha, even if there hadn’t been an entire pack of people counting on me to be strong, I never would have admitted to that kind of weakness.
Fear was something you squashed, something you pushed down and hid and glossed over, because fear was like catnip to werewolves. They could smell it. They could taste it. It whetted their appetite for more—more fear, more of you.
In short: not good.
When I was a kid, Callum taught me how to hide my fear. But not feeling it? That was something I taught myself.
“You ever notice, right before you flash out, that the room gets really small?” The rhetorical question seemed harmless enough, but Jed wasn’t done yet. “Maybe you start to feel trapped. A trickle of sweat builds on the back of your neck. Your heart starts pounding faster, your mouth goes dry. What exactly would you call that, Bryn?”
“Adrenaline,” I replied.
Jed raised a brow.
“Panic.” I grudgingly let go of that word, because being anxious or frantic wasn’t the same thing as being scared. You could panic that you were going to sleep through your alarm or miss your flight or get caught making out with your boyfriend on the bathroom floor.
You could panic about a lot of things, and it didn’t taste like …
“Fear.” Jed said the word. I wondered if he expected me to flinch, but I didn’t. I didn’t even blink.
“Claustrophobia. Anxiety. Desperation,” I countered.
Jed did not seem impressed with my vocabulary. “Fear,” he said again, uncompromising. Certain.
Despite myself, I thought of the way I’d felt in the forest the day before, running and running and working myself into a frenzy. I’d run like something was chasing me. I’d told myself I would die if I stopped.
But had I ever really been scared?
Jed smiled. With the scars on his face, it looked more like a grimace, but his eyes were twinkling. “Downright ironic, isn’t it?” he asked me.
“What?” I asked, though I had a sinking suspicion what he was going to say next.
“It’s ironic,” Jed said again, “that if you want to be stronger, the first thing you’re going to have to learn is how to let yourself be weak.”
Half an hour later, I was sitting in the dirt outside the cabin Jed shared with Caroline, awaiting instructions he seemed in no particular hurry to give. Oblivious to—or ignoring—my impatience, Jed took a seat on the ground beside me and reclined back on the heels of his hands.
“My way,” he reminded me.
“Your way,” I repeated. I wasn’t overjoyed with the prospect of more dirt sitting—or with the way he’d woken me up that morning—but I would have made a deal with the devil himself to find a way to control the power inside me, to make it something more than a defense mechanism.
Someday, waiting for the other guy to attack might get me killed.
“You know how to get there,” Jed said finally, breaking what felt like a small eternity of silence. “Deep down, you know. You just ain’t admitted it to yourself yet.”
He wasn’t talking about pain or panic or running like someone was on your heels. The kind of trigger Jed was talking about was something I wanted no part of.
Something I’d spent my entire life training myself not to do.
“Think of the worst thing that ever happened to you,” Jed told me. “Think of a time when you were cornered and trapped and terrified.”
Was that really what it took to summon up my Resilience, to fall into that state where nothing mattered but surviving and protecting the people I loved?
Where I was a faster, better Bryn?
“Every bad thing that’s ever happened to you.” Jed was implacable. “Every moment of terror, every loss, every time you had no power, and someone else had it all. One by one by one, Bryn. That’s the way.”
I’d said I would do anything for my pack. I’d said I would do this Jed’s way. So I did.
I started with recent memories, moments I spent all of my time trying to forget.
The look in Lucas’s eyes—hungry and desperate and dark—when he’d challenged my right to rule. The knowledge that had flooded my body in that instant, that a Were—any Were—was physically capable of killing me dead.
Dread built up inside of me, like bile rising in my throat, but I pressed on and thought of another heart-in-throat moment: seeing Devon lying still on the ground, blood pouring from a bullet wound in his heart. I thought of Lake missing a shot in a fateful game of pool and pretending that she wasn’t terrified that losing might mean spending the rest of her life as the property of Shay.
In the here and now, I was sweating. I was cold. But I wasn’t done yet. Forcing my muscles to relax, I went further, deeper, the memories flashing before my eyes at rapid speed.
I saw a man with violet eyes threatening to burn me to death in my sleep. I couldn’t fight back, couldn’t move—
I felt myself waking up in a cabin belonging to the monster who’d killed my
parents, tied to a chair and wearing a frilly white dress designed for a little, little girl. The Rabid had touched me and cooed to me and backhanded me to the floor.
At the time, I hadn’t let myself be scared. Didn’t ever let myself be scared, but now …
I pictured myself standing still, as the members of Callum’s pack circled up around me. I pictured Sora, long and lean, her familiar face devoid of emotion. I pictured myself just standing there, heart pounding, knowing that if I fought back, I might die.
I remembered letting her break my ribs and bloody my lips, blacken my eyes and strip away every illusion I’d ever had that they were my family, that I was theirs.
“No.” I opened my eyes. I wasn’t going to do this. There was no sense in opening up old wounds when Shay would be calling a meeting of the Senate later today. This wasn’t the time for me to be feeling anything that might remind the other alphas of what I was.
Or, more to the point, of what I wasn’t.
“Sooner or later,” Jed said, opening his own eyes, “you get to the point where you know fear the way you know a lover. You know what it smells like. What it tastes like. How it feels.”
Listening to Jed use the words lover and taste in close proximity to each other was flat-out disturbing. His voice was dark and almost tender, and I just didn’t want to go there—on so many levels.
“You memorize that feeling, Bryn, and you build a place for it in your mind. You keep it under lock and key, and when you need to …” Jed’s pupils pulsed, and an instant later, he was behind me, his arm wrapped around my throat, crushing my windpipe and cutting off the flow of air.
“When you need to,” Jed repeated, “you let the dark things out.”
He dropped his hold on me before my own power could flare up, and then he took a step backward, his palms upturned, unthreatening. I took that to mean that the lesson was over. He’d made his point. I’d felt the power come over him, an instant before he’d rushed me—stronger, faster, and more sure of his movements than he would have been without it.
For a second, I let myself think of the way fear tasted—like sweat, like metal, like blood.
“It might take some practice, and it might take some time, but you’ll get there, sooner or later.” Jed ran one hand over the stubble on his chin. “Then again, what do I know? I’m just an old man.”
Yeah. And a saber-toothed tiger was just a kitty.
“Caroline!” Jed’s scarred face lit up as he said her name. Warily, I followed his gaze over my left shoulder. Sure enough, the Wayfarer’s resident assassin was standing there, her blue eyes narrowed at Jed, like she hadn’t expected him to clue me in to the fact that she was there.
“Going running?” Jed asked her.
Caroline nodded, her gaze—sharp and guarded—shifting over to me.
Jed cleared his throat. “What do you say, Bryn?” he said, suddenly sounding inept and awkward and old. “You feel like a run?”
I stared at him, trying to decide whether or not he was seriously suggesting that the two of us play running buddies, like we’d never wished each other dead.
“I can run by myself,” Caroline interjected. “In fact, I prefer it.” She sent Jed a mutinous look that told me he’d be hearing about this later.
Jed, however, was not easily deterred. “It will make Ali happy,” he said, playing his trump card. “Won’t it?”
I didn’t answer his facetious question. Instead, disgruntled, I turned to Caroline. “You’d better be able to keep up,” I told her.
She arched one blonde eyebrow at me. “Big words, wolf girl.”
She took off running. I took off after her, pushing down all of the memories my session with Jed had called up and banishing my gut reaction to them—the one that said if and when I let the dark things out, there was no guarantee I’d ever be able to put them back.
CHAPTER SIX
CAROLINE AND I DIDN’T SAY TWO WORDS TO EACH other on our run, but at least she kept up. By the time we’d finished and I’d made my way home, I wanted nothing more than to fall back into bed.
You! You! You! Not Pack, you. Want play? Want play?
The voice in my mind didn’t belong to someone who was deliberately trying to talk to me, and I certainly hadn’t gone looking for anyone else’s thoughts, but the littlest members of my pack could never quite contain themselves. Their thoughts—such as they were—were always at the surface of their minds, spilling through the pack-bond whenever I was in range.
Down. Up, down! You!
The content of Kaitlin’s thoughts told me that she was in wolf form, playing. Or, more specifically, play fighting. I didn’t realize until I opened the front door and walked into the living that the person she was playing with was Callum. He was sitting cross-legged on the carpet. Even that low to the ground, there was still a weight to his presence, a power I never would have noticed before I was an alpha myself.
A power that my baby sister—not quite a baby any longer—gave very little heed as she bobbed up and down on her front paws, lowering her head with a loopy, lupine grin. A second after I came into the room, she pounced on Callum’s feet.
He bobbed his own head and reached out to gently tussle her from one side to another.
You! You play! Katie was ecstatic. Out loud, she made a sound that could only be described as a baby growl, and I felt a sudden stab of loneliness—because I was Katie’s alpha, and she was playing with Callum, because he was Callum, and there was nothing playful between the two of us now.
Bryn? Katie whirled around, feeling my presence as safety and warmth. She came bounding over to my feet and immediately bit my sock, pulling me toward Callum.
No, Katie, I said softly. You go. You play.
She cocked her head to the side. Bryn play?
Later, I told her. Bryn play later.
Satisfied, Katie turned her attention back to Callum. In blatantly unstealthy fashion, she leapt toward him.
Out of habit, I scanned the room for Alex. Where one of Ali’s twins went, the other followed. I found him standing in the shadows, intently watching Katie, like a bodyguard keeping an eye on a particularly troublesome client. On the other side of the pack-bond, his mind was steeped in the sensation of togetherness and love and warmth, the way I felt when the pack went for a midnight run.
Alex was here, and Katie was here, and that was all either one of them needed to know that things were right in the world.
Crossing the room, I picked Alex up and settled him on my hip. He snuggled into me, but never stopped watching his twin doing her very best to coax Callum into a full-on wrestling match.
“Rrrrrrrrr.” Katie issued a particularly fierce baby growl. A few seconds later, my foster mother appeared in the doorway, and I crossed the room to stand beside her. Out of habit, I handed Alex off. Ali took him from me and slipped her free arm around my waist. It was an affectionate gesture, but it also sent a message. Callum might have been the one who’d asked Ali to raise me, but Ali was reminding him that I was her daughter and that she would never fully trust him again—not with me, not with Katie, not with Alex.
Not after what Callum had ordered Sora to do to me.
On Ali’s other side, her four-year-old shadow—who’d followed her into the room—got tired of waiting for the rest of us to acknowledge her presence.
“Katie,” Lily said loudly, “you come over here.” She narrowed her little green eyes. “You play with us.”
When Katie did not heed Lily’s “suggestion,” Lily walked right up to Callum and kicked him in the shin.
“Lily!” Ali sounded horrified—and horribly, horribly amused. For my part, I was stunned. Lily was all of four years old, and Callum was the most powerful werewolf on the continent. Play fighting with him was one thing, but an actual assault?
I waited to see how Callum would respond, but he just turned slightly, deferring the situation to me.
“Lily,” I said calmly. “Come here, please.” She seemed to be considering w
hether or not she could get another kick in first.
Now, I added silently.
She came. But she wasn’t happy about it, and as she raised her arms imperiously upward, I caught a hint of a smile tugging at the corners of Callum’s mouth.
I picked Lily up, wishing she were a tiny bit less sturdy.
“Sorry about that,” I told Callum. “She’s four.”
In most packs, children were a rarity—prized, protected, precious. There wasn’t a werewolf alive who would have retaliated against a pup—let alone a female one—no matter what she did, but it still probably wasn’t a good idea for Lily to get the impression that she could shin-kick werewolves ten times her size with impunity.
That could have gone badly, I told her.
Lily hunched her shoulders, ever so slightly. “What if I just kicked him a little bit?” she asked, not bothering to send the question through the pack-bond.
Beside me, Ali choked on laughter.
“You are not helping,” I told her.
She grinned. For all I knew, maybe she’d put Lily up to it.
No kicking someone who could eat you in two bites, I told Lily. Not even a little.
She furrowed her brow, and a flurry of thoughts crossed from her mind to mine, all of which could be summarized as follows:
I was her alpha—not Callum.
This was our home—not his.
And Katie should have been paying attention to her.
Luckily, for everyone involved, Katie got tired of play fighting and picked that exact moment to change back to human form. Naked as a jaybird, she gave Callum a toothy grin and streaked out of the room. With the little streaker’s twin still balanced on her hip, Ali took off after her. Ordering Lily to behave, I set her down, and she followed on their heels, leaving me alone with Callum.
There was so much unspoken in the air between us that I didn’t know where to start, or if I wanted to start at all. This was the first time it had been just Callum and me since he’d promised to end my human life.
“Ali said you went to see one of the psychics who lives here. A Resilient?” Callum was the one to break the silence. He did a good job of sounding politely curious, but I spoke Callumese well enough to know that polite was always a cover for something else.
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