Cages. Lots and lots of cages. I recognized steel when I saw it, and reinforced titanium—metals that wouldn’t hurt a Were but couldn’t be easily snapped, either. The doors on Ali’s house were made of similar materials—added protection in case a wolf chanced to violate the mandate that made all humans off-limits as prey.
I walked down the basement stairs without even realizing I was moving, and my hand reached out completely of its own volition to touch the thick, tubular bars. The cages themselves were big—easily big enough to hold a hefty Were in either wolf or human form, with room for him to move and pace. The metal was cold under my hand, and something about it horrified me. I hated that Callum had given me a curfew. I couldn’t imagine a larger loss of freedom—not like this.
“You came.”
The voice took me by surprise, which just goes to show how out of it I was, since the whole reason I’d ventured into the forbidden basement was because I’d heard someone yelling.
I forced myself not to show that I’d been caught off guard, and responded without turning around. “I came.”
Twin instincts battled inside of me—one told me that I had to act as if I wasn’t concerned about my safety, because nothing whetted a Were’s appetite like human fear, but the other told me that turning your back on a wolf was never a good idea. After a few seconds had passed, I casually twisted, leaning my back against the cage I’d been touching, my eyes searching out the person I’d come down here to see.
A boy, about my age. Dark hair, light eyes, a few inches taller than me and built along lean, muscular lines. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and something about the way he lay in his cage looked completely natural—and feral beyond anything I’d seen in a very long time. The expression on his face, in contrast, was entirely human.
“I wasn’t even sure there was anyone up there,” he said, his eyes on mine. “I felt Marcus and Sora leave, but then I smelled you, and I heard … I heard things.”
I took a step forward, drawn toward him, this boy in the cage.
“You smell good,” he said. “Like meat.”
I immediately stopped moving forward. He sniffed the air again.
“Like Pack,” he said, tilting his head to the side, trying to understand how I could be human but smell more predator than prey.
“I am Pack,” I said. And you’re not, I added silently. “I’m Bryn.”
I expected him to recognize my name. Most Weres did—even those visiting from other territories. Even those in the grips of madness. It wasn’t often that a human child was adopted into a pack, let alone by the alpha himself, and the circumstances around my adoption made me even more of a minor celebrity among this boy’s kind.
“I’m Chase,” he said.
“Kind of an ironic name for a werewolf.” The observation slipped easily off my tongue. The boy didn’t blink. In fact, I was beginning to doubt that he’d blinked once since I’d come into the room. “Werewolves do a lot of chasing,” I explained. “And your name is Chase. Hee.”
Some people laugh in the face of danger. Some people run. In my lifetime, I’d done both, but this time, with Chase’s eyes on me, his posture more wolf than man, the best I could manage was a good old-fashioned babble.
“You’re not a Were.” There was a humming quality to Chase’s voice, a slight vibration that could have been a growl, but wasn’t. “You’re not a Were, but you’re Pack.”
“I’m human,” I said, “but I’m Callum’s.” I didn’t lay things out for him further. In most situations, Callum’s name alone was enough to protect me. Even though there were steel bars in between Chase and me, I couldn’t dismiss the sense that his wolf was close enough to the surface that I might need to be protected. It was odd, really, because despite the fact that it was his pain that had brought me down here, Chase seemed calm now—not agitated in a way that would have his wolf taking control of the human.
“Do you know where Callum is?” Chase asked, latching on to the fact that I’d spoken a familiar name. “He was supposed to let me out. He was supposed to be back by nightfall.”
“The sun hasn’t set yet,” I said. “It’s still early. And Callum’s not here, because he’s taking care of pack business.” No need to specify what that business was.
“It always feels like night to me,” Chase said, his voice oddly reflective considering the fact that his eyes were beginning to change, the pupils dilating and changing color. “Callum says that will pass. He says I’ve come a long way in just a month, that it takes most people in my situation years to shut out the night, to resist the call to run and hunt during the day.”
“And what exactly is your ‘situation’?” I asked Chase, drawn to him even though I could feel his Change coming on, and everything I’d ever been taught told me that now was the time to get out of Dodge.
“My situation?” Chase asked, arching his back in a spasmodic motion that didn’t match his casual tone at all. “I got bit.”
Those three words turned my feet to lead. I couldn’t move, couldn’t walk back up the basement stairs. All I could do was watch as his muscles leapt to life, the tension running up his body like a stadium full of fans doing the wave, each contraction triggering another, until I wasn’t staring at a boy.
I was staring at midnight-black wolf that easily weighed two hundred pounds. He had a few markings on his chest and paws, and his eyes flashed back and forth between pale blue and a dangerous yellow.
I shouldn’t be here.
Chase didn’t seem like a monster, but in this form, he could easily kill me without even meaning to. He’d said it himself: I smelled like Pack, but I also smelled like meat. Now that he’d Shifted, it was anyone’s guess as to which would matter more.
He’s in a cage, I reminded myself, but the words meant nothing to me, because I just couldn’t stop staring into his wild eyes and playing the last words he’d said before he Shifted, over and over again.
I got bit.
I got bit.
I got bit.
It was impossible. Werewolves were born that way. The condition was passed down from father to son, and very, very occasionally, daughter. Books and movies would have had me believe that any little scratch or bite could turn someone into a werewolf, but thousands of years of werewolf history said they were wrong. Unless it took place in the presence of the pack alpha and he forged a bond between biter and bitee, a nibble from a werewolf didn’t do jack. And even with Marks like mine and the wives’, the Mark didn’t turn the recipient into a werewolf. I was living proof of that.
I got bit.
It would take much more than a “bite” to turn someone from a human into a Were. It would take an all-out slaughter, and no one could survive an attack like that. No one. For that matter, there were very few werewolves far enough gone to provoke their alpha’s wrath by attacking a human and risking exposure in the first place. And yet …
I got bit.
In his cage, Chase stared at me, his eyes pulsing. A growl burst out of his throat, and he threw himself at me, slamming his wolf body into the side of the cage. I backpedaled toward the stairs and clambered up them.
I shouldn’t have gone down there.
Still, I couldn’t deny that I’d gotten what I’d been wanting: knowledge. I stepped over the threshold and shut the basement door behind me. My heart pounded as I bolted the door from the outside, my mind caught up in processing Chase’s words—what they meant for him, and what they meant for me.
I got bit.
It was a miracle he hadn’t died. He should have died.
Teeth tearing into flesh and back out of it. Blood splattering. Again and again, vicious, relentless, thorough. Blood-blood-blood-blood-blood—
“Oh, Bryn.”
And then Callum was there with me in the present, his arms held wide, and I fell into them, caught up in bits and pieces of memories that wouldn’t leave me alone now that Chase’s words had opened the floodgates.
“You just couldn’t stay away.”
There was no reproach in Callum’s voice. That would come later, I was sure. For now, he just held me, whispering to me in the old language, little comforts that I understood without knowing the meanings of the words.
“How’d you know?” I asked. How did he know that I was here? That I needed him? How had he always known? How had he known that day, when he’d been the one to pull me out from my hiding place as Sora and the rest of Callum’s men took down the rabid wolf who’d killed my family?
“Lance told me you’d gone, and I had a hunch.”
Hearing Lance’s name reminded me why I’d come here in search of answers in the first place. I’d needed to get away. “Ali?” I asked, the question coming out as a croak.
Blood-blood-blood-blood-blood …
I couldn’t do this again. I couldn’t lose Ali, too.
“She’s sleeping, but doing well. And I imagine she’ll be wanting to have a word or two with you when she wakes up, Bronwyn Alessia.”
Jaws closing around Daddy’s throat…
Callum forced me to look at his steady eyes and hear his words. “Ali’s fine, Bryn. I swore to you that she was going to be fine, and she is.”
“And the baby?” I asked, my stomach clenching with relief and with a deeper fear that wouldn’t let go until I saw Ali for myself.
“The babies,” Callum said, relishing the word, “are healthy. I believe they’ve expressed an interest in meeting their sister.”
Twins? Ali was fine, and she’d had twins? It was almost enough to banish the blood-red haze that I could feel coloring every thought in my head. Almost, but not quite, because somewhere in my mind, I could still hear those three little words.
I got bit.
And each time I heard them, it killed me a little. But more than that, it also made me wonder, because there wasn’t a wolf in Callum’s pack who would attack a teenage boy. There wasn’t a wolf in any of the North American packs who would have done such a thing, and I knew what that meant. I knew what it meant better than anyone.
Somewhere in our territory, there was a Rabid.
CHAPTER SIX
“THERE ARE BAD PEOPLE IN THE WORLD: MURDERERS and psychopaths and telemarketers who won’t take no for an answer.” I kept my voice soft as I spoke and—for the benefit of my audience—made a real effort at ditching my protective layer of sarcasm. “Sometimes, bad people do really evil things, and good people get hurt. Even kids.”
My listeners hung on to my every word with round, wide eyes.
“Humans call their monsters sociopaths. We call ours Rabids.”
Baby #1 (also known as Kaitlin or Katie or, if she was in a mood, Kate) signified her acceptance of my older sisterly wisdom by blowing a spit bubble of mammoth proportions. Baby #2 made what appeared to be a real effort at putting his left foot in his mouth. Reflexively, I reached my hand out and tickled his sole before catching his foot in my hand.
Alex (also known as Alexander, Little Guy, Big Guy, and Spot) wrinkled his baby brow.
“Got your foot,” I told him loftily. Alex wriggled. Clearly, he was unsure what to make of this development.
“Messing with the minds of the next generation again, Bryn? For shame!” Devon’s voice took me off guard. The twins, on the other hand, didn’t seem at all surprised to see him. Even at the ripe old age of six weeks, their senses were better than mine. I would have sworn that they knew it, too, based on their little baby smirks.
“It’s not like I have much else to do,” I said. “Grounded, remember?” Winter had given way to early spring, and I was still under house arrest for my “antics” the day the twins were born.
Devon sat down next to me and started playing with Kaitlin’s feet.
“I seem to recall this grounding that you speak of,” he said. “Remind me again—is this the grounding that kept you from going with me to see the delightfully horrendous film adaptation of my seventh-favorite Broadway musical, or the grounding that came about because you almost got yourself killed? And didn’t bother to bring me along? Hmmmmm?”
Devon loved playing the martyr almost as much as he adored cheesy movie musicals, and my being housebound was almost as bad for him as it was for me. Our age-mates in the pack (or “the Philistines,” as Dev sometimes referred to them) couldn’t quite grasp the appeal inherent in most of the things that Devon enjoyed.
“How many times do I have to say I’m sorry?” I huffed, finally releasing my hold on Alex’s captive foot. I smiled at the way he joyfully flailed like there was no tomorrow once it was free.
“How many more times do you have to apologize?” Devon asked, pretending to ponder the question deeply. “At least thrice more, I should think,” he said, slipping into a distinctively rhythmic pattern of speech that made me think that a reenactment of his seventh-favorite musical might just be forthcoming (again). Instead, though, he turned his gaze to Kaitlin and without even looking at me, he said, “You could have been killed, Bryn.”
The way he was looking at Katie and the words he’d said reminded me that even though Devon was Dev, he was still a Were. He still had an innate desire to protect what he loved and to guard his females with his life. Without another word, he gently moved his hand up to Kaitlin’s head and gently stroked her downy-soft hair. Katie blew another spit bubble, completely unaffected by the nearly rapturous awe on Devon’s face. She was already used to getting that reaction from Weres, and when she was Katie and not the more tempestuous Kate, she reveled in it.
Just you wait, I told her silently. It’s all fun and games until they ground you until you’re thirty.
At this rate, Katie’s teen years were going to be a million times worse than mine, which was a scary thought in and of itself. No one but Callum and Ali had ever cherished me as much as the entire pack seemed to relish doting on Ali’s babies. Live twin births were rare in any pack, and Katie was only the second female born in Callum’s territory in the past hundred years. Something about the chemistry involved in werewolf conception made it impossible for girl embryos to survive the first trimester, unless they were half of a set of twins and had a brother to mask their presence in the womb. I was a little vague on the medical details, but from day one, it had been clear that the twins were special—and that Kaitlin had a very, very long road ahead of her.
Which is why it was my duty as her older sister to ease the way, and that meant disabusing my pack of the notion that girls (in this case, me) needed protection. Unfortunately, Devon was the closest thing I had to an ally, and even he would have throttled me if he knew that I was working on a plan to see Chase.
Chase.
Just thinking his name knocked the breath out of me, yanking me back to that night in Callum’s basement, as I’d watched Chase Shift, anchored in place by those three little words.
I got bit.
A grounding of epic proportions had not changed the fact that I had to see him again. On one level, I knew that it was a bad idea, knew that he was “unpredictable” and “not yet in control of his wolf” and that I would “find myself in a most unpleasant situation” if I “came within two miles of him.” I even recognized that Chase had all of the instincts and none of the discipline of a full-grown Were, and I’d lived in this world long enough to realize what that could mean. Callum had impressed upon me again and again that Chase was a danger to me—and that I could be just as dangerous to him.
He survived an attack that would have killed a full-grown man, Bryn, Callum had said, his face absolutely serious, his jaw set, but he isn’t out of the woods yet. If we can’t teach him control, or if he were to hurt a human before he learns, the Senate would have him put down.
The Senate. As in the combined force of each and every pack alpha on the North American continent. When they met, the Senate tried for democracy, but I knew that when Callum said they would put Chase down, what he really meant was that Callum wouldn’t use his power to stop them. He might even be the one to snap Chase’s neck himself. Callum had few weak points, but I was one of
them. Senate or no Senate, he’d kill Chase if Chase hurt me.
That was the only reason I’d managed to stay away this long. Up to this point, I hadn’t even tried to break my house arrest, because the idea of something happening to Chase made me want to vomit up my internal organs.
He was, without exaggeration, the only person who could possibly understand what it meant to survive what I’d survived before my adoption into the pack. He was the only chance I might have to fill in the gaps in my memory of what had happened that night before Callum and his guard had saved me from the fate the rest of my family had met. I needed Chase, and I wanted to be near him, and some part of me couldn’t shake the feeling that it was mutual, and that I would be the one to save him from himself.
Nobody knew what it was like to be torn between what it meant to be human and what it meant to be Pack better than me.
A high-pitched yip tore me away from my thoughts. Katie, ever the adventurous twin, had taken my mental absence as an excuse to Change, and now, instead of watching two babies, I had in my charge one human infant (to all appearances at least) and one rambunctious, wiggling-all-over, feet-too-big-for-her-body, whining-to-be-let-out-of-her-crib pup.
“I take it nap time ended just before my fortuitous arrival?” Devon asked.
Deciding not to mention that nap time had been briefly followed by story time, I nodded. Even in just a few weeks’ time, Dev and I had started picking up on the differences between the twins: their idiosyncrasies, temperaments, and internal schedules. For example, without fail, when the twins woke up from their afternoon naps (or soon thereafter), Alex almost always needed to be changed, and Kaitlin, in contrast, needed to be Changed. She already loved her wolf form and would have spent all day as a puppy if Ali would let her.
Personally, I didn’t blame her. In human form, the twins were far more advanced than most newborns, but as wolves, they were already more like toddlers than babies. Once she Changed, Kaitlin could walk (or run) on all fours and stick her damp little puppy nose into everything.
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