Distance attacks weren’t working. Wilson had the body—me—held too tightly, and they couldn’t get in a shot. Lake cast her gun aside and grabbed a knife. If the long game wasn’t working, they’d bring this up close and personal.
But he was moving too quickly. Running faster than even they could. Chase roared and leaped off the perch from which he’d been shooting, his body changing from man to wolf in a second.
Faster this way. Faster. Save Bryn. Must save Bryn. Bryn-Bryn-Bryn—
The wolf’s thoughts were less clear than Chase’s, and his connection to Devon and Lake was making it difficult for them to stay in human form. All of them ran for Wilson, but in a moment of confusion and what looked to be an explosion of dust, he disapp—
Floating. Underwater. Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe. Have to make it to the surface have to—
End.
I woke up tied to a chair, with the taste of blood in my mouth. It took me a moment to figure out that it wasn’t mine. Wilson had been injured—badly—and he’d been holding me close.
I spat.
I didn’t want any part of him inside of me. But I did want his blood. More of it, anyway.
I looked down at my wrists, which—in addition to being bound—were naked. He’d taken my wrist guards. With a sinking heart, I closed my eyes and a quick survey of my body told me that the rest of my weapons had been removed, too.
And then, there were my clothes.
My bare arms and feet scared me and made me wonder if he’d stripped me of everything, but what little feeling I had left in my body—the ropes were tight—told me that I wasn’t naked.
But I wasn’t wearing my clothes, either.
He must have stripped me to search for weapons, and the clothes he’d put me in afterward weren’t mine. I was wearing a dress.
I hated dresses.
It was lacy and frilly, the kind of dress that a very little girl would wear for Easter Sunday, not the kind that should have come in my size.
“He has them made specially,” a voice said calmly. “It’s what he likes us to wear.”
I looked up at the source of the words. “Madison,” I said, and she flinched at the sound of her name. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I continued, keeping my voice low and gentle, which was ridiculous, considering the fact that I was an unarmed human tied to a chair and she was a weapon in and of herself. “I’m here to help. I just need you to untie me. I know what happened to you, I know what he did, and you—”
“He told me not to,” Madison said, her voice empty and dull in a way that made me wonder what had happened to the girl who liked the color orange and popping bubble wrap and macaroni and cheese. “He told me not to untie you, and we have to do what he says. He’s in our heads.” She paused and when she spoke again, her voice sounded even less like it was coming from a real person. It sounded robotic. Dead. “He just wants what’s best for us. He’s the alpha. He’s our Maker. He protects us.”
Callum had brought Chase into the Stone River Pack and taught him how to fight the Rabid in his head, but Madison had never had another alpha to protect her from Wilson. She couldn’t disobey him. Arguing with her wasn’t going to get me anywhere. “What exactly did he tell you?” If anyone knew how to maneuver around orders and dish out half-lies, it was me.
“He said, ‘Don’t untie her, don’t help her, make her pretty.’” Madison curled her arms around her waist, hugging herself and taking a step back from me. “He said it’s your birthday tonight.”
“That’s right, Madison. Tonight, Little Bryn will be reborn. She’ll be your sister. Exciting, isn’t it? If things had gone right the first time, she could have been the one teaching you the ropes.”
That voice. Gone was the pretense of being a harmless man. Though his words were friendly enough, the tone was sinister. Creepy.
Insane.
“Go tell the others to get ready,” he told the girl. “Our distraction will only keep her little friends in town for so long.” He paused, and the girl turned to hurry out of the room—like she was trying to escape hearing what she knew he was going to say next.
“When they get here, kill them. Tell the others. It’s an order.”
For a moment, a familiar expression settled over the other girl’s face, and I might have been looking at myself, or at Chase. She wanted to say no. She wanted to rebel. She hated him, but her wolf wouldn’t let her disobey, and in the back of her mind was the reminder—always present, never quiet—of the years and years and years of being told that he’d made her. Being taught again and again what happened to you when you tried to fight the impulse to obey.
And then she was gone.
Kill them. Tell the others. It’s an order.
I didn’t know how many others there were exactly, but I knew they had my friends outnumbered and that no one on my side of this little war would attack to kill—not when Wilson’s soldiers were his victims, too.
My brain rebelled against the idea that the Rabid had issued an order for his wolves to kill my friends, half because I didn’t want it to be true, and half because it didn’t make sense. I would have pegged this psycho for trying to bring Chase to heel and reclaim his mind, or making a stab at claiming Devon or Lake. Then again, as far as Wilson knew, Lake and Dev were still Callum’s. He could reasonably kill them for invading his territory, but trying to claim them as his own would be the equivalent of declaring werewolf war. The Senate might have voted to make this man a deal, but if the Rabid stole Callum’s wolves, it wouldn’t be a matter for the Senate. It would be a direct personal challenge, and Callum would be free to handle it however he wished. In other words, it would be suicide, and I was beginning to suspect that this psychopath was smarter than I’d given him credit for being.
Unsettled, I cast my own mind inward, looking for the others, for my pack. I had to warn them that Wilson’s wolves had orders to kill. Their voices crashed over my inner ears like a tsunami—she’s okay—Bryn awake—son of a—these people are—crazy—run—can’t hurt them—can’t Shift—they’re… human.
Great. The townspeople must have reacted to the gunfire and fighting, but somehow, Wilson had slipped away with me, leaving my friends to deal with the fallout.
“You must be wondering where your friends are,” Wilson said, pulling up another chair and sitting directly across from me, like we were going to have a nice chat over cookies and tea. “You see, after we made our little exit—dirt bombs do wonders for compromising werewolves visuals—your erstwhile protectors got a little caught up in town. People in Alpine Creek don’t like me, but they like outsiders even less. Especially the type who come in armed and start shooting up Main Street. I mostly keep to myself. Your friends, on the other hand, well, you can see why someone might think they were dangerous. I can only imagine that someone must have called the sheriff. He’s easily bribed, but unfortunately for you, he’s more of a shoot-first-demand-money-later type of guy.”
An image flashed into my mind. Devon, hands in the air, poised to make a run for it, men closing in from all sides.
“Don’t worry,” Wilson said. “The sheriff doesn’t shoot silver.”
I tried to send this information to the others, but their minds were too full. I couldn’t get in, couldn’t risk distracting them by pulling on our bond. Their problem right now was the humans of Alpine Creek. To come for me, they had to get away from a gun-happy small-town sheriff—and since it had been ingrained in each of us since childhood that Weres didn’t hunt humans—they were struggling.
“Good thing we got out of there when we did,” Wilson said, bringing one hand up to touch my cheek. I jerked back, and he smiled. “I imagine that’s something you know a little about. Escaping against all odds. Coming out of a fight without a scratch when you should be dead.”
He searched my eyes, and if I hadn’t already figured out that the children in this house were like me, it would have occurred to me then.
“A few of your Callum’s wolves trie
d to kill me once. You were there. I doubt you remember, but suffice it to say, I lived to hunt another day. Some people are just born survivors. They hang on, they get through, and they never give up. You’re one of them. So am I.”
He caught my chin and forced me to look up at and into him. At first, all I saw was his wolf, lurking below the surface, giddy with the anticipation of the hunt. But then, after a moment, I saw something else.
Felt something else—a flash of recognition. A twinge of familiarity.
We were the same.
“No,” I said out loud. “We are nothing alike.”
But it was still there. Something. There was no connection between us, but there was a pull: like to like, the same magnetism that had brought me to Chase in the basement.
“Werewolves and humans aren’t so different,” he said. “We share the vast majority of our DNA. Growing up in a pack, you probably haven’t been exposed to many humans with gifts, but they’re out there, and just like some of our human cousins are gifted, some werewolves are born with a little something extra as well.” He smiled. “Most of them become alphas, like your Callum.”
Callum, who had a knack for seeing the future. Just like Keely had a knack for getting people to open their mouths, and I had a knack for getting out of sticky situations. A knack, like this Rabid’s, for not ending up dead.
“But I don’t want to talk about Callum,” the Rabid said, unwilling to lose my attention in the middle of his grand reveal. “I want to talk about us. Do you have any idea how special you are? How rare?”
Did it matter? Did I care if I was one in ten thousand, or one in a million?
“I’m resilient,” I said. “I survive things that others wouldn’t. I bounce back. I’m hard to kill.”
“Is that all you think this is, Bryn? Do you really think that it’s just you? That you’re just so tough that you come out on top? Come now. Think. Tell me, haven’t you ever felt it, creeping up your spine? Whispering to you. Taking over your limbs, your sight, your fear, your rage …”
Wilson spoke about his survival instinct like it was a separate being. Like it was sacred. Like he wasn’t a madman reveling in violence so much as the avatar for something primal and cruel. “We’re chosen. Tell me you don’t feel it. Tell me you don’t sense it when you look at me, when you look at the boy that I sent you.”
Chase hadn’t escaped the Rabid. The Rabid had attacked him and left him bleeding on the pavement, knowing that he was leaving the carnage in Stone River territory and that Callum would clean up the mess. Knowing that sooner or later, if Chase was a part of Callum’s pack, the two of us would meet.
Chase hadn’t escaped the Rabid. The Rabid had sent him to me.
No. I wouldn’t let him taint what Chase and I had. I’d die first.
“I guess this explains how you find them,” I said, keeping my voice low and dull. “Your victims.”
“I find them the same way you would,” he said. “The same way you will, once you’re mine. Like to like. I’ve been waiting a long time for someone strong enough to help me, someone as special as I am.” He leaned forward and touched my hair. “You’re glorious as a human. So brave. So strong. I should thank Callum for that, I really should. As a Were, you’ll be a princess.” He sighed. “My princess.”
I shuddered and my throat burned, acid working its way from my stomach to my mouth. I fought the nausea as best I could. In my head, the others roared, and the connection between us pulsed, bright like lightning in my mind.
They’d escaped from the sheriff with only a bullet graze to Devon’s side that had already started to heal.
Hold on, hold on, hold on, they told me. We’re coming.
No, I replied. You don’t understand.
I begged them to come completely into me, to take my thoughts and knowledge as their own and to know what they were up against.
Not just a pack of werewolves. A pack of Resilient werewolves—capital R—who’d lose their minds the moment danger closed in. Of my other selves, only Chase had the same advantage. Devon was a purebred and Lake was a fighter, but their instincts to fight, to escape, to win weren’t any stronger than the average werewolf’s.
“They’re coming,” Wilson said out loud. “Your friends. I can feel them. I can smell them. They smell like anger. Like blood.”
“So do you.” I met his eyes, and I smiled. “You may be scrappy,” I said, intentionally using the word to demean everything he’d just told me, “but you’re still allergic to silver, aren’t you? You took a couple of bullets. I took a chunk out of your side. You have to be hurting right now.”
He slammed his arms into me, pushing my chair over backward. My head cracked into the back of the chair, and for a moment, I saw bright lights. Then everything cleared, and I saw him standing over me, his eyes beginning to yellow.
“I’m going to like Changing you,” he said. “And once I do, we’ll be bonded in a way you can’t even imagine. If you think your connection to Callum’s pack is strong, you’ve seen nothing. Normal pack-bonds don’t hold a candle to what we have. Normal obedience is nothing compared to what you owe your Maker.”
He’d had a hold on Chase, even after Callum had claimed Chase as part of the Stone River Pack. I was pretty sure I knew exactly how strong that made the bond between a Changed werewolf and the person who brought them over. Chase had broken his, with my help and with Callum’s; if this psycho brought me over, I’d have to do the same.
Instead of shaking me, Wilson’s words gave me valuable information. They told me that he didn’t know what I’d done to my pack-bond. He didn’t know that I’d re-carved it, connecting myself first and foremost to Chase. He didn’t know that I’d done the same thing with Devon and Lake. This Rabid thought he knew so much about being resilient, but all he knew was how to fight. Maim. Kill. He didn’t know how to see pack-bonds as a threat to his safety, how to attack them, how to escape.
He didn’t know that I’d done it before and that if he brought me over, I’d do it again.
He was the one who didn’t know the depths of what he was. What I was. What all of the kids outside were.
He was the one who didn’t know what he was messing with.
“Your friends are here,” Wilson told me. As if I didn’t already know. As if I hadn’t felt them coming. As if I couldn’t see out of their eyes—all of their eyes at once. Bleeding and bloody, they were armed to the hilt, and right now, they didn’t care about the fact that the rest of Wilson’s wolves were victims.
Anyone who stood between them and me was fair game.
No, I wanted to say, don’t hurt them. But how could I? How could I tie my pack’s hands behind their backs, when the wolves outside were bound to kill them?
Bound to obey.
“You see now,” Wilson said, straightening my chair. “You understand. We’re all powerful, but the power? It’s mine.”
Mine.
Mine.
Mine.
The words echoed in my mind, and in that second I knew exactly what to do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I’D THOUGHT IT MYSELF: WILSON DIDN’T KNOW what it really meant to be resilient. He didn’t know how to use it for anything but blood.
I did.
I closed my eyes and thought of Chase. I thought of Wilson. I thought of Madison, the grinning six-year-old, and Madison, the ghost of a girl who’d greeted me when I woke up. I thought of what it meant to be a survivor myself, and I cast my mind outward, looking for that in them. The power was twisted in Wilson. Ugly. Dark. And that darkness bled onto the others, tainted them.
Madison leapt, and Chase met her midair, their teeth snapping at each other’s throats. To their left, Lake took aim and fired at one of the other wolves—small but vicious. My friends and my kind clashed, and their directives pulsed in my head and my veins, until they were all I could hear.
Protect.
Protect.
Obey.
Obey.
Save B
ryn.
Kill them all.
I don’t know where the burst of strength came from, and I didn’t question it. I just shoved my arms outward, straining against the ropes, and they snapped, with the fury of a mother throwing a car off her baby boy. Like a wild thing—a whirl of energy and rage and pulse after pulse of something that I couldn’t name—I jumped out of the chair. But instead of going for Wilson’s throat, instead of killing him, I ran for the door.
My first order of business wasn’t payback. It was salvation, and right now there was so much at stake.
“Stop!” I yelled, issuing the word at top volume with both my mouth and my mind. The bond that connected me to Chase, Devon, and Lake crackled, and all three of them paused. Thrown—and affected by the charge of something in the air—their attackers paused, for just a second.
And then their directive was back.
Obey.
“No,” I screamed. “You don’t obey him. You obey me, and I said to stop.”
I reached for Wilson, for his bond with the others, and I pulled it toward me—pulled their hopes and fears and the people they’d been before he’d stolen that from them toward me—and it sent them as perfectly still as my friends.
“What are you doing?” Wilson growled, gripping me from behind. Slowly, the wolves—his wolves—turned from my friends to face him. A growl broke from Madison’s throat, followed directly by a whine.
She was confused. Who was the alpha here—Wilson or me?
“You think you can steal them? Make them yours?” Wilson asked, his gaze losing its focus, making him look unhinged.
“No,” I said. “I don’t want to make them mine. I want to make them theirs.”
You have a choice. The words flowed out of me, and into the wolves I was commanding—Devon, Lake, Chase, and all of the others. You can choose to obey, to submit, to let someone else make your decisions, or you can decide. You can decide who you want to be, who you want to be tied to. Who you trust.