Trial by Fire

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  A year earlier, I might have rolled my eyes at the gesture and been secretly pleased that he’d thought to give me anything at all.

  Now I was suspicious. Highly suspicious.

  What are you playing at, Callum?

  There was a part of me that expected a response to my silent question, even though my pack-sense no longer extended to Callum or any of the other members of the Stone River Pack. They were Stone River, I was Cedar Ridge, and we might as well all have been human when it came to feeling each other’s thoughts.

  Seriously, Callum. A miniature horse?

  I knew this wasn’t just a gift, the same way I knew that Casey was here as much for Ali as for the twins. Werewolves were creatures of habit, and if there was one thing I’d learned about Callum in a lifetime of growing up in his pack, it was that he never did anything without purpose.

  Easy there, Bryn-girl. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you.

  It was easy to imagine Callum saying those words, just like it was easy to imagine him whittling, the knife moving in a blur of motion, wood dust gathering on the backs of his fingers as they moved.

  “So,” I said out loud, turning the horse over in my hands, “the only question is why.”

  The horse was not very forthcoming with answers, so I tucked it into the front pocket of my jeans, annoyingly sure that someday this little gift of Callum’s would make perfect, crystalline sense and that I’d probably kick myself for not seeing the why sooner. Until then, I’d just have to be patient.

  I hated being patient.

  In search of a distraction, I went to look for Chase and found him sitting at the edge of the woods, almost out of sight from the restaurant and small cabins that dotted the rest of the Mitchells’ land.

  “You out here alone?” I asked Chase. “Don’t tell me Lake and Devon have scared you off already.”

  I was only half joking. Lake had a fondness for weaponry and a habit of treating firearms like they were pets. If you weren’t used to it, it could be downright disturbing.

  “I haven’t seen Lake,” Chase replied. “And Devon’s fine.”

  Of all the words I’d heard used to describe Devon Macalister, fine wasn’t a particularly common one. People either loved Dev or hated him; there wasn’t much in between.

  “Was it the kids, then? Ali swears Lily’s worse at three than she was at two.”

  Chase smiled and shook his head. “I just needed a minute,” he said. “Quiet.”

  It took me a moment to realize that Chase wasn’t talking about the kind of quiet you heard with your ears. The rest of the pack couldn’t sense one another as strongly as I could sense them, being alpha—but I remembered what it was like to have the whisper of a pack constantly pulling at the edges of your mind. For Chase, who spent so much of his time at the edges of our territory, the noise level here was probably deafening.

  “Quiet, huh?” I said, trying to remember what that was like.

  Chase reached up to take my hand and nodded, rubbing his thumb back and forth over the surface of my palm. Without meaning to, I saw a flash of his thoughts, saw that he could have shielded his mind against the others but had chosen not to, because that would have meant closing me out, too.

  I settled down on the ground next to him, matching his silence with my own. With Devon and Lake and even Maddy, I was always talking, joking, arguing, laughing, but with Chase, I didn’t have to say anything, didn’t even have to think it.

  Given everything I had to think about—Callum’s cryptic gift, Casey’s arrival, the feeling that my dream the night before hadn’t been just a dream—there was something calming about sitting there, just the two of us.

  Right up until it wasn’t.

  For someone with the size and build of an NFL linebacker, Devon was impressively light-footed, and he appeared above us without any forewarning, oblivious to—or possibly ignoring—the implication that if he’d arrived a few minutes later, he might have interrupted something else.

  “Who’s ready for some food?” he asked, all smiles. “Dare I hope Ali is making her scrumptious cranberry sauce of awesomeness?”

  I was on the verge of answering, but Chase beat me to it. “I could eat,” he said simply.

  I rolled my eyes. Chase was a werewolf, and he was a boy. He could always eat.

  “It’s Thanksgiving,” Chase said in his own defense. “I’ve heard that food is kind of a tradition.”

  A flash of something passed between us, and I knew that Thanksgiving really was something Chase had heard about but never experienced—at least not in a way he cared to remember.

  I added that to the list of things I knew about the boy independent of the wolf. From what I’d already gathered about Chase’s human life, being attacked by a rabid werewolf and waking up in a cage in Callum’s basement was pretty much the best thing ever to happen to him. My own childhood hadn’t exactly been sunshine and rainbows, but I didn’t push the issue—not with Devon standing right there, looking at the two of us and processing just how close my body was to Chase’s.

  The two of them were remarkably chill for werewolves. They didn’t play mind games with each other, and they never made me feel like property—but there was still only one of me and two of them, one of whom had been my best friend forever, and the other of whom made my heart beat faster, just by touching my hand.

  Awk-ward.

  “So,” I said, climbing to my feet and changing the subject ASAP, “I had a dream last night that someone tried to burn me alive, and I’m not entirely sure it was just a dream.”

  Devon stiffened. Chase’s pupils pulsed.

  Subject successfully changed.

  “Now, who’s ready to eat?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  AFTER—BUT ONLY PARTIALLY BECAUSE OF—THE bombshell I’d dropped on the boys, Thanksgiving dinner proved to be a tense state of affairs. Casey had to leave the table twice: once when Mitch’s hand brushed Ali’s as he reached for the salt, and once when Katie started bawling and Mitch was the one to reach out and distract the temperamental little miss from the indignity of being stuck in a high chair. As for Devon and Chase, they were acting even more high-strung than Ali’s ex.

  Apparently, my distraction had worked a little too well, leaving the two of them closing rank around me, like the Thanksgiving steak—a vaunted Were tradition—might leap off the table at any moment and attempt an assassination.

  It was just a dream, guys.

  I sent the words to the two of them through the bond, thankful that I’d mastered this part of being an alpha and didn’t have to worry about other members of our pack overhearing.

  I’m fine. I’m going to be fine, and if either of you move your chairs even a centimeter closer to me, you’re going to be picking stuffing out of your hair while trying to pry my foot out of your you-know-what.

  The humorless expression on my face sold that threat. I wasn’t some weak little human girl anymore. For that matter, I’d never been some weak little human girl. I was a survivor, I was their alpha, and I could take care of myself.

  “Ouch!” The cry escaped my mouth before I could stop it, and on either side of me, Chase and Devon leapt to their feet.

  “Problem?” Ali asked mildly, amusement dancing in the corners of her eyes. Given the whole Casey thing, I didn’t think she had call to be in such a good mood, but what did I know?

  “No problem,” I said darkly, rubbing my shin. “Somebody just accidentally kicked me under the table.” I narrowed my eyes at Lake, and she helped herself to another T-bone and smothered it in steak sauce.

  “Wasn’t an accident,” she said cheerfully.

  “Lake.” Mitch didn’t say more than his daughter’s name, and she rolled her eyes.

  “It’s not like I shot her.”

  There was a retort on the tip of my tongue, but I was pretty sure Lake had kicked me because she’d picked up on my saying things she couldn’t hear, and I really didn’t want to open up that topic of conversation to t
he table at large. The boys’ overprotective act was conspicuous enough as it was.

  Note to self: in the future, I need to be more careful about how I change the subject.

  I’ll tell you later, Lake, I said silently. Promise.

  Lake met my eyes and nodded, all thoughts of further under-the-table violence (hopefully) forgotten.

  I reached out to dish up seconds, and the door to the restaurant opened. Casey crossed the room and slid back into his seat, composure regained. Even though I’d gotten used to his presence, something shifted inside my body. I took a long drink of water and gave my pack-sense a chance to acclimate again, only this time, it didn’t.

  Foreign. Wolf.

  Through the heavy scent of homemade gravy and pies baking in the oven, I couldn’t even pick Casey’s scent out of the crowd’s, but what I was feeling now had nothing to do with the five senses and everything to do with my psychic bond to the Pack. The niggling sensation persisted, and the longer I waited for it to pass, the larger it got.

  Foreign. Wolf.

  That was when I realized that I wasn’t sensing Casey. It was something else. Someone else.

  Across the table, Mitch glanced toward the door, and then he looked at me.

  “Get the kids to the back,” he said.

  I turned immediately to Maddy, and with the quiet efficiency that had always made her a leader among the Rabid’s pint-sized victims, she ushered the others away from the table, even Lily, who let loose a comically high-pitched growl at the thought of being separated from her food.

  “Now, Lily.” I added my voice to Maddy’s, but my thoughts were on Mitch, who’d already started reaching for the gun he and Keely kept behind the counter.

  Ali didn’t ask what was happening. She didn’t have to. Within seconds, she had Katie in one arm and Alex in the other, and she met Casey’s eyes.

  “Are you staying or coming?” she asked him calmly.

  I could see the temptation of going with Ali warring with Casey’s lupine desire to prove himself—to Ali and to the rest of her pack.

  “This is Cedar Ridge business,” I told Casey quietly. “We’ve got it covered.”

  The dagger eyes Casey shot me in that moment made me realize that he hadn’t forgiven me for being the straw that broke his marriage’s back.

  He wouldn’t ever forgive me.

  Foreign. Wolf.

  Right now, I had bigger issues than Casey.

  “If I asked you to come with us, would you come?” It took me a second to figure out that Ali was addressing that question to me, not Casey.

  I didn’t answer.

  Ali started again. “If I told you to come, would you— You know what? Never mind, but if there’s a hair out of place on your head when I get back, be forewarned, I will kill you, alpha or not.”

  With those words, Ali followed Maddy and the rest of the younger kids back into the kitchen, out of sight and, hopefully, out of harm’s way. After a long moment, and another glare in my direction, Casey retreated, leaving only five of us to meet the coming threat.

  Devon, Lake, Mitch, Chase, and me.

  Foreign. Wolf.

  This time, the feeling was so strong that it brought me onto the balls of my feet. There was a foreign wolf on our territory. My territory. He’d come without permission, on an evening when the bar was closed. Teeth gnashed in the recesses of my brain, painting the walls of my mind red with blood as I realized the potential for this to end badly.

  Very badly.

  The werewolf Senate hadn’t been happy with the idea of a human alpha, and there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t think about the fact that I had something most male Weres wanted very, very badly.

  Maddy. Lake. Lily, Katie, Sloane, Ava, Sophie …

  Their names blended together in my mind, and the adrenaline pumping through my veins turned angry and cool. Most werewolves were male. Natural-born females, like Katie and Lake, survived to birth only because they’d been half of a set of twins, and most packs didn’t have more than a handful of females, period.

  Ours had nine, all of them young, none of them mated. As long-lived as werewolves were, most wouldn’t have batted an eye at the idea of taking possession of a female and waiting a decade or two for her to grow up.

  If I had to, I’d tear this intruder to shreds with my bare hands to keep our girls safe.

  “You even think of telling me to turn tail and hide, and I’ll laugh you out of Montana proper.” Lake’s words left no room for argument, but we both knew that if I wanted her to leave, I could make her leave. That was what it meant to be alpha.

  I met Lake’s eyes. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said. Alpha or not, forcing my will on someone else wasn’t what it meant to be me.

  An alien smell—snake oil and vinegar, feces and blood—permeated the thick wooden door, strong enough that even my human nose could make it out, and though none of the five of us moved, the shift in the room was unmistakable. My pack was ready to fight, and I was ready to let them—and to do what I could to back them up—but whoever the intruder was, he never crossed the threshold of the door.

  There was a loud thump outside, like a duffel bag being dropped onto cement, and then a high-pitched gargle—half choke, half whine—filled the air.

  Blood.

  The smell—and the meaning behind it—finally registered, and I pushed my way through my werewolf bodyguards until the only thing standing between me and the door was Mitch.

  “Someone’s hurt.” I said those two words like they were all that mattered. For a moment, I didn’t think Mitch was going to get out of the way or even open the door. He’d spent a long time living on the periphery of Callum’s pack, with Callum his alpha in name only. Mitch wasn’t used to taking orders, and even though he’d joined our pack shortly after Lake had, I wasn’t used to giving them to him.

  Please, Mitch. I met his eyes.

  With a slight nod and his gun at the ready, Mitch opened the door. I didn’t push him, didn’t rush it, but when Mitch knelt down next to a heap of bones and fur, I couldn’t hold back any longer. I was beside him in an instant—not within biting range, but close enough that I could make out every inch of this ravaged Were’s body.

  He looked like he’d been taken apart piece by piece and sewn back together—badly. He was stuck halfway between his human form and his animal one, and the patches of skin that weren’t covered with fur were angry and red, welts layered over bruises layered over burns.

  Why didn’t he finish Shifting?

  Bile rose in my throat with the question. Weres healed extremely quickly, but you couldn’t Shift and heal at the same time; it was like trying to eat while throwing up. That explained why the body in front of us was still battered to a pulp, but not why its owner had let himself be caught in the throes of Shifting for any extended period of time.

  Without meaning to, I moved my gaze to Chase. The expression on his face was completely impassive. Even I couldn’t read it, but I didn’t need to, because the last time I’d seen a Were caught between one form and another, Shifting back and forth with excruciating results, it was Chase. We’d been hunting the Rabid who’d Changed him into a Were, and the monster had turned the hunt back on us, infiltrating Chase’s head.

  “Is somebody doing this to him?” I kept my voice low, and it was almost drowned out by the heavy, tortured breaths coming from the porch. “Should I try to break off the connection?”

  That was what I’d done to free Chase from the Rabid. I’d gone into Chase’s head, taken the connection the Rabid had formed when he’d Changed him, and snapped it in two.

  If I had to, I could do it again.

  “No.” Mitch’s voice was sharper than I’d ever heard it. “This wolf isn’t yours, Bryn. Unless you’re wanting war, you’ll keep your little alpha nose out of his pack-bonds. Not all alphas are as forgiving as Callum when it comes to other people stealing their wolves.”

  I felt like Mitch had slapped me, like I was stupid and you
ng and completely incompetent as an alpha and a person.

  “Whose is he?” I asked quietly, trying to place the wolf’s scent but thrown off by the smell of blood and the mewling sound now making its way out of the creature’s monstrous hybrid mouth.

  Mitch didn’t reply; instead, he pointed to the creature’s neck. “There’s what’s keeping him from Shifting.”

  My eyes adjusted to the darkness on the porch, and I saw the object Mitch had referenced: a long, thin metal shaft that glowed in the light of the nearly full moon.

  Silver.

  “Dev?” I could have removed it myself, but impulsive or not, even I wasn’t stupid enough to think that my going that close to an injured Were was a good idea. Whoever he was, the mass of flesh and bones on our porch was out of his mind with pain, and pain had a habit of making Weres unpredictable.

  If Devon got bitten, he’d heal in a matter of moments. If I got bitten, I might never heal, and if I got bitten badly enough, I’d end up either dead or Changed—and neither one of those was a future I would particularly relish.

  Devon walked forward, and without waiting a beat, he knelt, closed a hand around the shaft, and pulled. Most werewolves were allergic to silver, but as in many areas of life, Devon was an exception. As he jerked the hated object out of the wound, the injured Were reared back, and I heard teeth snapping and the sound of flesh—though whose, I wasn’t sure—giving way.

  Chase came to my side, and I thought of that moment of quiet in the woods—how fragile it had been, how fleeting.

  Dev tossed the silver rod to one side. “We’ll want to pick that up,” he said, almost absentmindedly. “Wouldn’t want one of the kiddos to get ahold of it.”

  Our visitor’s body registered the silver’s removal. It shuddered and finally gave way to one form.

  Human form.

  If I’d been horrified before, I was sickened now. There wasn’t a piece of flesh that had been left untouched, and for a moment, I thought I might throw up or cry or both.

  The injured Were was a boy. Not a man, not a threat. A boy—maybe a year or so younger than me. All business, Mitch bent and hefted the boy into his arms, eliciting a high-pitched whine more lupine than not.