“I did,” I replied, not offering any more than that. If Callum wanted to know what Jed and I had been doing, he could ask. Just like I could theoretically ask him why he’d waited so long to Change me—why he was still waiting—when every day I was human was a day my pack was more at risk than it would be if I were a Were. He’d told me, the day he’d made the promise, that I had some human time left and he didn’t want me wishing it away, but if there was one person in the world who should have understood that, human or not, my life wasn’t ever going to be normal, it was Callum. If anyone could understand that what I wanted, what I was scared of, who I loved didn’t matter—it was Callum.
“Why?” I asked him finally, not putting any more of the question into words than that.
“Because,” he replied, rising to his feet and heading for the door. “You need to be human for this.”
This?
In the kitchen, the phone rang. Callum tilted his head to the side. “Shay,” he said. “For you.”
I had no choice but to answer the phone. To ignore the oily condescension in Shay’s voice, the undertones, the fact that he’d tried to kill me—indirectly, of course—more than once. I stayed in control. I calmly told Shay that he could count on my presence at the Senate meeting. I said the words man-killer, rogue, and Rabid like they were nothing.
But Shay wasn’t the type to let things lie. “I’m looking forward to your, shall we say, insight,” he said. He wanted me to know that no matter how calm I sounded, he was aware that this issue was personal to me.
“I don’t know, Shay,” I replied, refusing to take his bait. “I’d bet you know more about the kind of wolf that kills humans than just about anyone.”
I could practically feel my words hit their target. Shay wasn’t a Rabid. He wasn’t out of control, he wasn’t an exposure risk, but he was a killer—and I deeply suspected that he’d killed more humans than anyone on the Senate knew. Humans who weren’t a threat to Shay’s pack or the species, more broadly.
Humans like Caroline’s father.
I doubted the Senate knew what Caroline and I had discovered—that Shay, unprovoked and in his right mind, had attacked and killed a psychic and exposed himself to the man’s coven, with the intent of inciting their hatred against other werewolves. That knowledge was a card in my hand, and I needed Shay to know that I wouldn’t hesitate to play it.
“I look forward to your arrival,” Shay said, his voice as calm as mine. Still, in the silence that followed, I could practically feel him on the other side of the line, his eyes pulsing with bloodlust, hating Callum, hating me.
I said good-bye and hung up the phone.
Fear, Jed’s voice suggested from somewhere in my memories, and for just a fraction of a second, I let myself smell it, taste it, feel it.
I let it usher in the red.
And then I let it go.
I turned back to the door, where Callum was standing. I wanted to ask him again why I had to stay human, when going to a Senate meeting in my current state was the equivalent of taunting a bull and drawing a big red target on my back.
But I didn’t. Callum wouldn’t have answered the question anyway, and I wasn’t in the mood to let him tell me no.
“You did well,” Callum said.
I accepted the compliment, but didn’t dwell on it.
“We should get ready to go,” I said, turning to leave. “We’ll want to arrive in Shay’s territory well before nightfall.”
I’d made it halfway out of the room before Callum spoke again. “I know you have questions. I know that you want to know why I haven’t Changed you yet.”
Those words stopped me in my tracks.
“There are limits to what we are, Bryn. Humans grow. They age, they change, and they learn.”
I didn’t make a sound, didn’t give any indication that I’d heard his words, though if he were listening for my breath, he might have realized it was caught in my throat.
“There are reasons, Bryn-girl,” Callum said finally. “And the only one you’ll be getting out of me is that, sometimes, it’s hard to teach an old wolf new tricks.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
HOURS—AND AN EXTENDED ROAD TRIP—LATER, I still hadn’t made any sense of Callum’s words.
WELCOME TO NORTH DAKOTA! The sign in front of me declared cheerfully. DISCOVER THE SPIRIT!
I glanced over at Devon. He held his hands artistically to the side and wiggled his fingers.
Jazz hands? I asked silently.
No, he corrected, jerking his head toward the sign. Spirit fingers.
I choked back a laugh. We were getting ready to cross into another pack’s territory, and my second-in-command was making spirit fingers. I couldn’t blame Dev for injecting some much-needed comic relief into the situation, especially since I
knew he’d spent the past few hours thinking about the member of Callum’s pack due to meet us here.
Sora. Callum’s second-in-command. Devon’s mother.
If Callum realized what the idea of seeing Sora again was doing to Devon, he gave no indication of it. Instead, he’d spent the drive here silent and still, his hands on the wheel and his gaze locked on to the road. I’d passed that same stretch of time playing Callum’s cryptic statements over and over again.
It’s hard to teach an old wolf new tricks. You need to be human for this.
This as in the things Jed was teaching me about being Resilient? Or this as in whatever was about to happen with Shay?
There are reasons, Callum had said. Reasons, plural, but he’d only given me one—not the whole story, never the whole story with him.
“After you, Bryn.” Callum’s voice brought me back to the task at hand. I glanced back up at the welcome sign and then stepped forward, out of Montana and across state lines. I expected to feel something as I crossed the border that separated Snake Bend territory from Cedar Ridge: an electric shock, a chill on the surface of my skin, nausea, power, something. But there was nothing, no indication that if it hadn’t been for the Senate meeting, if Shay hadn’t invited us into his territory, stepping over this invisible line would have been an act of war.
Shay wouldn’t have forgiven my trespassing the way I had forgiven Callum’s. He would have used it as an excuse to attack me. He would have killed me, and he would have enjoyed it.
“My turn.” Dev crossed to join me. He bumped his shoulder against mine, a gesture of comfort and solidarity as old as our friendship. His presence beside me calmed the thoughts in my head, slowed the beating of my heart, but as I glanced back over the border—at our land, our territory, our home, I felt a sliver of unease take root in my gut.
Leaving my pack behind felt wrong. Taking Devon with me felt worse. If I couldn’t be there to protect them, he should have been. Without the two of us, they were vulnerable, open to attack.
“They’re safe, Bryn,” Callum said, from the other side of the border. Even without any actual psychic connection between the two of us, he could still read me like a book.
“Are you sure?” I couldn’t help the question, because I had to be sure.
A change fell over Callum’s face. His pupils didn’t pulse, but looking at them was suddenly like staring into a bottomless cavern, knowing in the pit of your stomach that something was staring back.
“The day someone takes advantage of a Senate meeting,” Callum said, his voice a perfect match for the power in his eyes, “is the day there’s no Senate.”
This was Callum the alpha speaking. This, my pack-sense told me, was real power—unimaginable, ancient power. Twin instincts battled in my gut—one that wanted nothing more than to offer up my throat and one that wanted me to fight for what was mine, what Callum could have taken from me, from all of us, if he’d been a different man.
Then, as suddenly as the power had started spilling off Callum, it was gone, and he was just Callum again. The hint he’d shown us of his true power receded, and he strolled across the border looking unassuming and unaware.
Try unbelievable, I thought, but there was comfort to being reminded of who and what Callum really was.
Shay could be snide. He could gouge open old wounds and try to intimidate me, he could maneuver and manipulate and try to give me enough rope to hang myself—but I didn’t have to oblige, and at the end of the day, unless Shay wanted to face Callum one-on-one, he’d play by the rules.
If there was one thing in this world that Callum would go to war over, it was me.
“Looks like Shay has moved his pack closer to the border,” Callum commented, as he stepped forward. I followed, and a slight breeze caught my hair. As the three of us went farther and farther into Shay’s territory, my alpha senses were flooded with power.
“We’re not the first ones here,” I said.
Callum confirmed my observation. “Knowing Shay, we’re probably the last.”
Not so long ago, Callum had hinted that the other alphas were forming alliances. I doubted Shay inviting the rest of the Senate into his territory before us boded well. Werewolves weren’t designed for democracy. The instinct to dominate was always there, and the moment the Senate imploded, there would be blood.
“Callum.” Sora announced her presence—a courtesy meant more for my benefit than the others’. My senses were good, but hers were better, and outside of my own territory, my pack-sense didn’t react the same way to foreign wolves.
Here, we were the foreign ones.
That thought distracted me enough that I didn’t have to give Sora my full attention. I didn’t have to remember playing at her house, eating dinner at her table, sleeping doubled up with Devon in a tiny twin bed. I didn’t have to hear the sound of her fist plowing into my face or feel my ribs pop, all over again.
But beside me, Devon couldn’t think of anything else. He hadn’t seen or spoken to his mother since that day, and coming face-to-face with her now cut him deep. Without a word, I took a step sideways, until my shoulder was touching his,
a reminder that right here, right now, I was fine. I was solid, I was whole, and Sora wasn’t a threat to either of us.
In fact, next to Callum, she was probably the closest thing to an ally we had.
“Devon.” Sora met her son’s eyes, and I could practically see her wanting to reach out and touch his face. Luckily for her, she managed to restrain herself. “It’s good to see you, Dev.”
“Likewise,” Devon replied blithely, but I could tell by the way Sora’s nostrils flared that she smelled the lie.
Sora looked at me. “Bryn.”
I didn’t reply, unsure what I could say that wouldn’t just fan the flames. On some level, I knew it wasn’t logical to hold Sora responsible for something Callum had ordered her to do. It made no sense that I could ride in a car with him, but couldn’t stop the rush of emotion I felt just looking at her. Werewolves didn’t have a choice about obeying their alphas—not unless they were strong enough mentally to go alpha themselves. That was how I’d killed Lucas. I’d ordered him to die.
But Sora hadn’t even tried to fight Callum’s order. She hadn’t hesitated, hadn’t shown even a fraction of regret. Fair or not, it was her face I’d seen in my nightmares right after it had happened. No amount of conceptual understanding about the role that moment had played in setting up everything that had followed could change that. My body knew her. It knew what she had done to me, and “logic” didn’t stand a chance at overriding a thing like that.
For a few brief seconds after she said my name, I took Jed’s advice and let myself remember: the smell, the taste, the overwhelming darkness. Then I pushed it back behind lock and key, my jaw set, my mind empty.
“Hello, Sora.” It was easy to say—surprisingly so. I wasn’t that girl anymore, and I wasn’t afraid.
“You’ve seen Shay?” Callum asked. The idea that his second-in-command would have been to see Shay without him was nearly unthinkable, until I recalled the obvious: in addition to being Callum’s second, Sora was also Shay’s mother.
She’d given birth to him. She’d raised him, same as Dev.
“I have,” Sora replied. “And, no, I don’t have any idea what he’s up to, but there’s something. There always is.”
There wasn’t any particular condemnation in Sora’s voice, and it occurred to me that maybe I wasn’t the only reason Devon was no longer on speaking terms with his mother. Parental expectations could be killer, and Devon’s brother had transferred into the Snake Bend Pack and challenged its former alpha when he wasn’t all that much older than Dev was now.
The last time I’d spoken to Sora, she’d talked about Devon’s potential and what he was meant to be—none of which had anything to do with who Devon was. As a purebred werewolf—a rarity in our world, since female Weres were few and far between—Devon was bigger, stronger, and more dominant than most, and Callum had groomed him almost as much as he’d shaped me.
But Devon would never be Shay, and while I thanked God for that fact, I wasn’t entirely certain that Sora wouldn’t have preferred it if he were.
“We should go,” Callum said, stepping between Sora and Devon—between Sora and me. “Shay will have felt our arrival, and I wouldn’t put it past him to send out a welcome party.”
I wouldn’t put anything past Shay.
I’ll take dysfunctional families for five thousand, Alex. Devon’s voice was bright and sardonic in my mind.
I swallowed a laugh. Seriously, Dev, are you okay?
Peachy, Dev replied. You?
Almost of their own volition, my shoulders pushed themselves backward. My chin went out, and as a sense of detached calm flooded my body, I told Devon exactly what he wanted to hear.
I was ready for this. If Shay wanted to dance, I’d dance.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SHAY OBVIOUSLY HADN’T BEEN LIVING AT THIS END of his territory for long. The smell of his pack should have been thick in the air. The trees, the grass, the very earth should have absorbed it like soot or smog, but instead, I could make out only the scents of the wolves present. Devon, whose nose was infinitely better than mine, didn’t seem to be able to smell much more than that, at least according to what I could pick up through the bond.
Consider me an open book. Dev must have caught me looking at him, because he sent the message straight from his mind to mine. Mi casa es su casa. Mi nose es su nose.
Dev was the only wolf in my pack who could choose to completely block his mind from me. We both knew that was a good indication that someday, he might leave the Cedar Ridge Pack to rule his own, but tonight he was telling me—in his own oh-so-Devon way—that there weren’t going to be any barriers. I was at a distinct disadvantage, with my human nose and my human ears, in the company of men who had senses ten times as keen.
Devon—strong, solid, sensational Devon—would be my eyes and my ears and my nose.
You’re the best, Dev.
If we hadn’t been quickly approaching a variety of wolves from other packs, he might have preened. Instead, the expression on his face stayed carefully neutral.
To our left, Callum and Sora held back, allowing Dev and me to enter first. There were fifteen, maybe twenty men spread out on the field in front of Shay’s house, none close enough to touch another. Some were smiling politely. Some were playing human. But the two closest to us didn’t bother to mask what they were: the weight to their presence, the unearthly grace in the way they moved, the hint of fang in what a regular human girl might have mistaken for a grin.
Those weren’t grins, and these men weren’t our friends.
They’re from the Ash Mountain Pack, Devon told me silently, and I let his senses flood my mind. These men smelled like wild grass and charcoal and dirt. To another person, it might have been a pleasant enough smell, but to Devon—and by extension, to me—it was tinged with something rotten, something sour.
Not Pack. My pack-sense and subconscious were equally sure of that fact. The Ash Mountain alpha and his second-in-command were foreign. They had no allegiance to me
or mine. They were a threat.
“Hello, girl.” Of the two men, one looked vaguely familiar, and he was the one who spoke. The last time I’d seen him had been the day I’d become an alpha myself, but his tone left little doubt that he didn’t consider me his equal.
I schooled my features into an expression I’d seen on Callum’s face a hundred thousand times, one that gave away nothing to what lay underneath. I didn’t respond to the fact that the man had called me girl or the implicit little his sneer had tacked on to the front of that word. I didn’t avoid his gaze, but I didn’t force him into a staring contest, either.
If these men wanted to be condescending, I couldn’t stop them, but if they were looking for a response, they weren’t going to get one.
“Hello.” My lips quirked their way into a subtle smile. I may not have had Callum’s knack, but I knew these men. Not personally. Not by name. But I’d known plenty of men just like them, and it was a good bet that they had never, ever known a person like me.
“You remember Devon,” I said politely. Beside me, Devon inclined his head in greeting.
“Charmed, I’m sure,” he said, but I doubted anyone else caught the mischievous glint in his eye. The Ash Mountain alpha—and the others, spread out behind him—were too caught up assessing my best friend’s size, the way he’d filled out, the power that told them that someday—not too far in the future—he’d be a physical match for anyone here.
Suddenly, their collective gaze shifted from Devon and me to a place just over my left shoulder.
Callum.
He’d hung back, letting me make my own first impressions, letting the others see how Devon had grown, how effortlessly I commanded his loyalty, how I carried myself as their equal in every conceivable way—but from the moment Callum stepped out of the shadows, the other alphas only had eyes for him. Physically,