Focus, I told myself. Focus on the here and the now. Focus on why you’re doing this
I focused on Chase.
It was funny. I’d only seen him once, and I couldn’t even picture his human face with any kind of certainty, but his wolf form and his voice were as clear in my memory as they would have been if I’d seen and heard them the second before.
I got bit.
I got bit.
I got bit.
That was why I was doing this. I needed to know what had happened to Chase, and I needed to know what was being done about it.
I opened my mouth to ask Callum point-blank if there was a Rabid in his territory—where Chase had been attacked and who they thought had attacked him, but just as I was about to let loose with the inquisition, a third set of tracks joined ours.
Lance.
Through the bond, he felt solid and heavy, and there was the faintest whiff of vanilla and cedar in his scent.
“Hey, Lance,” I said.
Lance, of course, said nothing.
“Sorry about ditching you a couple of months ago,” I said, intent on getting a response out of him.
Nothing. Nada. He just kept pace with me and Callum, without ever saying a word. The air between us felt almost as empty, but there was just a hint of something. It was either disapproval or amusement. Or possibly both.
Look at Lance, with actual emotions, I thought. And then it occurred to me that there was some chance he could hear me.
Can Lance hear my thoughts? I asked Callum silently.
He can feel them, same as I can, but fainter. Unless you want him to hear you. Most pups have trouble speaking mind-to-mind in human form, but you seem to be rather proficient. I attribute it to your stubborn nature.
“And stubbornness is my folly,” I said out loud, snickering at my own joke, which Callum and Lance clearly did not get.
After a small eternity, in which I made a few more comments that made equally little sense to my companions and in which Callum chided me on my form not once, not twice, but three times—you’re slipping, Bronwyn Alessia. Stay on the balls of your feet—Lance, Callum, and I came to a halt at the Crescent.
I bent over, hands on my knees, breathing hard. Maybe I was out of shape. Or maybe twelve miles was an inhuman (not to mention inhumane) distance to force someone to run. Either way, I wasn’t in the best shape for a fight. Not that Callum or Lance paid much attention to my obvious pain.
“Now,” Callum said, and Lance came at me, a wall of muscle and bulk. He wasn’t as graceful as Callum, but he was lighter on his feet than a man his size had any right to be, and unlike me, he hadn’t just abused both of his lungs in the cruelest of fashions.
Rather than move in the direction of his blow, diffusing its effectiveness, I followed my instincts and dropped to the ground entirely, his ham-shaped first missing me by a hairbreadth.
In a fight, gravity can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. With the odds stacked against me, I had to play nice with the elements. Unfortunately, dropping to the ground put me in a sensitive position, and as Lance bent toward me—probably dead set on picking me up and throwing me like a discus—my weight wasn’t balanced enough across my body to give me any kind of flexibility in how to respond. From my crouched position, I could only go forward. And going forward meant going into Lance, which was something like driving a pickup into a steel wall.
So instead, I went through Lance. More specifically, I dove in between his legs. It would have been a beautiful move, too, but at the last second, I felt his feet snap together, snaring mine and leaving me entirely vulnerable.
“Bryn, to your feet. Lance, again.”
At Callum’s commands, Lance released me, and without a moment’s pause, he came for me again, exactly the same as he had the first time. The predictability of his move gave me a fraction longer to think about my response, but thinking at all was a mistake, and he caught me in the shoulder.
Use the bond, Callum told me. Feel his movements before they get there. Don’t think. Just do.
“Again,” he said out loud.
This time, I managed to dodge Lance’s fist, and when he brought his other leg back around mine, I jumped and then caught the fist he sent flying toward my face, intent on turning the momentum against him. Which would have worked beautifully if I’d been a Were. But I wasn’t, and instead, the effort of stopping his fist put some major pain on my palm.
Don’t let the bond convince you that you’re one of us, Bryn. You’re human, no matter how like a Were you feel.
“Again.”
Time after time, Lance threw blows at me, and I dodged them, playing to my strengths. I was fast, I was light, and I wasn’t afraid of playing dirty. I was small and flexible and—as Lance muttered at one point—completely insane. The bond let me predict his movements, but it did little for letting him track mine, because even I didn’t know what I was going to do next.
“Again.”
I was really beginning to hate that word. At this rate, I wouldn’t even get to shower before my first class. Impatient, I decided not to wait for Lance to come to me this time. I broke the first rule of Fighting with Werewolves 101. I attacked. And then, my common sense came back to me, and in the microsecond it took Lance to recover from an unexpected blow to a very sensitive region, I turned tail and ran, and I was up a tree before he managed to get ahold of me again.
“Good,” Callum said. I wonder if he noticed that I’d picked a taller tree this time. No way was Lance getting me off this branch with a well-aimed tackle. I waited for Callum to instruct us to begin again, but the word never came, and Lance looked up at me and smiled—or came as close to smiling as he ever did.
Then he nodded to Callum—a solemn half bow—and ran back off into the forest.
Callum looked up at me. “You’d best be getting to school. We’ll run again tonight,” he said. “And tomorrow, you’ll fight Sora.”
“When can I see Chase?” I asked.
“When you’re ready.”
“When will I be ready?”
“That remains to be seen.”
“Do the words straight answer mean nothing to you?”
“Enough,” Callum said, in his “This is the Final Word” voice of authority. I half-expected the bond between us to shake with the alpha-ness of it all, but it didn’t. It was almost as if this tone—which I associated with Callum putting his foot down in the most intractable way possible—had nothing to do with Callum being the leader of our pack, and everything to do with him being Callum and me being me.
“There was nothing in my permissions about not asking questions,” I told him, feeling rather secure in my perch.
“And there was nothing in your request about ending your grounding,” Callum countered.
I narrowed my eyes. “That’s Ali’s decision, not yours.”
Callum didn’t reply, and it occurred to me that the expression on Ali’s face when she’d reamed me out about my illegal adventure into Callum’s basement had looked disturbingly similar to the look on the alpha’s face now.
Okay, so maybe it had been a joint decision. And maybe the conditions of my permissions weren’t the only card that Callum had in his deck to hold over my head.
“Breakfast?” I asked, half as a peace offering and half to see if he’d take me up on the offer, or if he’d have other, more pressing pack business to deal with. “I could swing time for a Pop Tart if I skip out on my shower.”
A human probably would have found the notion disgusting, but Callum wasn’t human, and Weres didn’t much care about sweat. “You’d have more time to shower if you could knock yourself down from that seven-minute mile.” Callum’s lips turned up in a subtle, lupine smile and then he inclined his head slightly, accepting my invitation for breakfast. I let myself wonder, just for a second, if he was here for more than just training me. If I wasn’t the only one who remembered how much time the two of us had spent together when I was little.
&nbs
p; “Are you coming, or do you intend to spend the entire day in a tree?”
The corners of his lips quirked upward, and I answered his question and his amusement by diving out of the tree, straight into his body, taking us both down to the ground.
Bit.
Bit.
I got bit.
I reminded myself that this was what my training was about. It wasn’t about Callum and me. It wasn’t about the pack—there, still, in the corners of my mind. It was about Chase. Chase and the Rabid, questions and answers. That was what mattered.
“You’re getting slow,” I told Callum.
He threw me back to my feet and was on his own an instant later, but his words belied the ease of that motion. “And you, little one, are getting big.”
CHAPTER TEN
THEY SAY NOT TO BRING A KNIFE TO A GUNFIGHT. Extend the logic, and it’s probably not much of a stretch to say that you shouldn’t be relying on basic self-defense and martial-arts moves in an altercation with a werewolf. You should be bringing knives. And guns. And as much silver as you can physically carry.
Not all of the Weres I knew were allergic to silver—Devon wasn’t—but the old myths about silver bullets weren’t completely off base, either. Bullets had the potential to cause major problems, because accelerated healing increased the likelihood of a werewolf healing around a bullet, and having a piece of metal firmly embedded in one’s innards had a way of leading to malfunctions. Beyond that, a good 80 to 90 percent of Weres were allergic to silver, the same way that most humans had a bad reaction to poison ivy. At best, it caused a rash and discomfort. At worst, if the silver got into their bloodstream, it could kill them. In any case, unless you were fighting a silver-immune wolf, like Devon, it ended up evening the playing field a little. They could kill you in an instant; you might, if you got lucky, be able to inflict some damage on them.
So I wasn’t overly surprised when, after weeks of sparring with a good dozen members of the pack, Callum changed up my training regime and gave me claws of my own. He’d taught me to throw knives around the same time I was learning to tie my shoes, so that was nothing new. My aim left a little to be desired—I could only hit a bull’s-eye about eight times in ten—but there was a decent amount of heat behind my throws, and if I could put enough distance between me and an opponent to make a long-range attack feasible, I stood a fighting chance of doing some damage—especially if the knife I was throwing happened to be made of silver.
Of course, werewolf communities didn’t exactly look kindly on humans who carried silver weapons, and Callum had made it clear from the time I hit my first bull’s-eye that unless I had very good reason to suspect that my life was in imminent danger, that particular alloy and any damage I might inflict with it were off-limits. Pack Law forbade werewolves from attacking humans, but humans who wielded silver weapons—or even carried them—were in a category of their own. The Senate was just as likely to put down a human intent on hunting Weres as vice versa.
So the fact that Callum had me practicing with knives and had actually mentioned the word gun in my presence was not altogether unexpected, but it was mildly disturbing nonetheless, because for the first time, I got the sense that he really did think that my life was in danger, or that it might be in the future.
Which, of course, made me wonder if there was something about Chase I didn’t know.
“All right, Devon. I want you to put Bryn in a choke hold.”
Those weren’t words I was particularly fond of hearing, but as Devon complied, Callum’s instructions to me proved even less welcome. “Bryn, I want you to break his hold and go in with the knife. You want to exact maximum damage in the short-term—disable him, but don’t inflict permanent injury.”
There wasn’t much I could do with a knife—silver or not—to permanently damage Dev, but still, there were two kinds of people in the world: people who liked making their best friends bleed and people who did not. I fell into the latter classification.
“It’s okay. Hurt me you will not, young Bronwyn.”
“You do a terrible Yoda, Dev.”
Even though the exchange between us was light and familiar, our bond to each other—and the rest of the pack—told me that neither one of us was comfortable with this. If the two of us had been inseparable before I’d opened my bond, there were times when I felt like we were practically the same person now. All of Callum’s wolves lurked in the recesses of my brain, their eyes tracking my movements wherever I went. But even as our age-mates pulled closer to me for the first time in memory, Devon stood as a barrier between us—a Slab of Werewolf, every bit as intimidating and significantly less silent than his dad.
Devon didn’t want to hurt me. His wolf gnashed its teeth at the very idea, and for a split second, my pack-sense surged, and it was almost like Devon’s beast was talking to me. Or something inside of me.
Females, it seemed to be saying, were supposed to be protected. Pups were to be cherished. The girl was his, and he did not want to be laying hands on her. He did not want to fight her.
Yeah, well, I’m not so hot at the idea of fighting you, either, I thought in Devon’s direction. His head flicked forward, and I wondered how clearly my words had come through. It was weird. I’d been talking to his wolf instincts, not his conscious mind, but both parts seemed to understand me just fine.
“Well, children?” Callum prodded.
Devon slumped slightly, in a show of submission, and then followed Callum’s directives to a T. He put one arm around my neck, and though he couldn’t have been using even a measure of full strength, his grip was like steel. Since I’d spent the better half of the past week being drilled on effective escape maneuvers, my body responded immediately, twisting my legs to the side and using the firmness of Devon’s grip to hold up my body as my right leg scissored up to kick him in the side of the face. His other arm went to grab my leg, but the movement gave me a window during which to butt my head into his elbow and flip out of his grasp.
Like lightning, I had a knife in each hand, and as Devon came at me—a blur of popped collars and freshly ironed designer jeans—I settled my arms into an X over my chest, with every intention of thrusting them outward in a V, slicing through his clothes and into his flesh.
But even the best-laid plans go astray.
Logically, I knew that Devon would heal—within an hour, if not minutes. Instinct was telling me to fight him, tooth and nail, claw and blade, with whatever it took to survive. But both logic and instinct lost out, as I caught sight of the label on Dev’s shirt.
He should have been moving fast enough that my measly human eyes couldn’t make out the brand.
He wasn’t.
So I dropped my knives and with the heel of my right hand smacked him on the forehead.
Callum was not pleased. “Bryn!”
“What? He was going half speed, if that, and you want me to knife him?”
“I want you to be able to defend yourself.”
“Against Devon?”
The question hung in the air in all of its ridiculousness. I didn’t need to defend myself against Devon. Or Sora. Or Lance. Or anyone else Callum had set me up against. I wasn’t even certain that I needed to be able to defend myself against Chase. He was just a boy. A new wolf. A Were who didn’t quite have control of his animal instincts. One who was working every day with Callum to tame them.
He wasn’t Attila the Freaking Werewolf Hun.
Callum’s forehead wrinkled—a sure sign of frustration—and he turned his attention to Devon. “Do you want her to live?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then hit her. Hard. Go after her full speed. Don’t hold back, because she needs to know not to.”
Devon nodded.
“That’s an order. Start again, both of you.”
My skin hummed and throbbed at the tone in Callum’s voice, and it echoed through each and every part of me. I shuddered, and then it was gone, but I could still feel the remnants of the order thro
ugh Devon via the bond.
Females were to be protected, but the alpha was to be obeyed.
Quite a quandary for Dev, who didn’t have the luxury of my humanity and my ability—bond or no bond—to make my own decisions even when Callum tried to force his will upon me.
Lips twitching spasmodically, Devon put me back in the hold, and I did the only thing I could think of to alleviate his guilt and put him in fighting mode for real. “Armani is for mama’s boys, and a movie doesn’t count as a real film if nothing gets blown up.”
You’re going down, Bronwyn. Them’s fighting words.
I was distracted for half a second by the sound of Devon’s voice in my mind, but as his grip tightened around my neck and the desire to breathe became paramount, something snapped inside of me.
Fight.
Fight.
Fight.
The burst of adrenaline came out of nowhere. It felt cold and calculated, but on some level I realized that my frenzied movements would have appeared feral to anyone observing them from outside of my body. I escaped Devon’s grasp, backpedaled, and before I had a knife in my left hand, my right was launching one directly at my attacker’s heart.
Dev moved quickly, kicking the blade out of the way, and then he was on top of me again. I twisted my left hand, driving the knife toward muscles in his chest and shoulders. He batted me off with an inhuman growl, and I fell to the ground. He pounced, overpowering me, bringing his teeth to my neck. I rolled back, pulling my feet tight to my chest and using them to push against his torso, but he didn’t move.
Trapped.
Blood.
Fight.
SURVIVE.
The world around me seemed to slow down with the strength of that command. The word—survive—pumped through my blood, burning me from the inside out like air held too long in lungs stretched past capacity. I saw nothing but a blood-red haze, granular and all-encompassing. One second, Devon was on top of me, and the next, I’d managed to dig my own teeth into his neck, which caused him to rear up, which let me stretch out far enough to grab my discarded knife, which—before I even knew what was happening—had gone straight for tendons I shouldn’t have even been able to reach.