Trial by Fire

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  No matter how many times I said those words, I still couldn’t quite believe that was why Lucas had come all the way to the Wayfarer, a place that must have felt like enemy territory to his wolf, the same way he felt foreign to me. Bleeding and bloody, beaten within an inch of his life and unable to Shift, he’d limped and stumbled his way over mountains and through the forest and around God knew how many towns where he might have been spotted and shot—and he’d done all of that in the single-minded pursuit of one thing.

  Me.

  They say you help people. Callum’s Bryn.

  I struggled to keep my head up under the memory of Lucas’s words and the hope I’d seen in his otherwise dead eyes. I didn’t want to be anyone’s last hope any more than I wanted to be some kind of werewolf legend: the Little Human That Could.

  “What this kid is asking,” Chase said slowly, mulling over the words, “is it even possible?”

  After meeting with Lucas, I’d retreated to the forest to process his request. Chase had been waiting for me when I got there, and everything that had happened passed between us with a single touch. Devon and Lake had followed on my heels, and now, there we were, the four of us. I breathed in deeply through my nose, banishing Lucas’s scent with theirs and reminding myself that, alpha or not, I wasn’t in this alone.

  “People do transfer packs,” Devon said slowly. “It’s a coming-of-age thing.”

  I snorted. “Coming-of-age? Please, Dev. This isn’t Catcher in the Rye. Pack transfers happen when a wolf gets exiled from one pack and picked up by another, or after someone’s been peripheral for years. That’s how it happened when Mitch left Callum’s pack. That’s how it happened a hundred years ago when Shay transferred to Snake Bend. That’s how it works. It’s nature’s way of shaking up the gene pool—and it doesn’t happen like this.”

  I wasn’t telling Devon anything he didn’t know, but in a show of grace, he didn’t call me on it. I took that as a sign that he knew how uncomfortable I was with Lucas’s coming here, looking at me like I was different from the others, like I could be his savior. Being alpha was one thing with my own pack—we were young, and we were family, and I would have died for any of them, no questions asked. I needed to protect them, more than I needed water or air or any kind of human connection.

  But this?

  Lucas wasn’t a member of our pack. I didn’t know him, didn’t love him, couldn’t see inside his mind or feel his emotions as my own. I knew from experience—first with Callum’s pack and later with the Rabid—that I had the ability to rewire pack-bonds, breaking another alpha’s hold over a wolf and psychically instating my own, but I also knew that doing so wasn’t something the powers that be in our world would let me get away with a second time. Mitch had said it himself—not all alphas were as forgiving as Callum had been when I’d claimed Devon, Lake, and Chase.

  The same law that kept the other alphas from coming here and raiding our ranks for child brides forbade me from interfering with Lucas’s ties to Shay’s pack. I couldn’t just welcome him with open arms and say, “Hey, sorry your alpha has been torturing you on my account. Make yourself at home.”

  “Shay has to agree,” I said slowly, realizing even as I did that I might as well be saying something about hell freezing over or pigs taking flight. “For Lucas to transfer from Snake Bend to Cedar Ridge, Shay would have to agree.”

  Anything less could start a war—or worse, give the other alphas, Shay included, the justification they needed to take what was mine.

  I wanted to help Lucas. I did. The idea of sending him back to Shay, knowing what Shay would do to him for running away, made me want to vomit.

  But I couldn’t risk my pack’s safety for his.

  —Maddy—

  The part of me that was alpha felt her approaching, and I wondered how long she’d debated before joining the four of us in the woods. She was the newest recruit to our inner circle, and even though we were Pack, even though that made us family, I knew she was still getting used to trusting other people, to believing that they could care about her the way we did.

  Being raised by a psychopath will do that to you.

  “Hey, Mads.” Devon greeted her with a smile, and I knew he felt the same tug I did: to protect Maddy, to make her feel safe, to make sure she knew that on four legs or two, she belonged. Only this time, those mandates were in conflict with each other. Protecting Maddy meant telling her that everything was fine, that we would take care of this, that she didn’t need to worry about Snake Bend or Shay or the battered boy in Cabin 13. But doing that would put up a wall between her and the rest of us. It would be saying that Maddy was weak or broken, that because she’d been a victim, she’d never get to be anything else.

  I couldn’t do that any more than I could have stripped Lake of her weapons or demanded that Chase open up at the next run and tell the entire pack his human life story.

  “The boy is part of the Snake Bend Pack. His alpha has been abusing him, and he came here hoping we could help.” Hoping I could help, I corrected myself silently. “He wants to transfer packs, but Senate law says I need his alpha’s permission first.”

  Maddy absorbed this information in an instant, and something dark and animal settled over her gray eyes. When she spoke, her voice was absolutely calm, but there was something almost regal about it.

  Something deadly.

  “His alpha won’t give permission,” she said softly. “He’ll be furious that the boy got away, that he came here. He won’t like being outsmarted. Monsters like that don’t like knowing there’s a part of people that you can’t touch unless they let you.” Maddy shrugged, like her words weren’t important, like she wasn’t talking about herself every bit as much as she was talking about Lucas. “If you send this boy back, his alpha will kill him.”

  I wanted to tell Maddy that she was wrong, that Shay wouldn’t kill Lucas, that Pack Law wouldn’t allow it.

  Unfortunately, it did, and Shay would, and I knew, just looking at Maddy, that she wouldn’t understand how I could ever let that happen.

  I couldn’t.

  If things had gone differently, I might have grown up in Maddy’s place, attacked and raised by a killer who stripped away everything that made me a person, everything that made me me. The others knew me better and had known me longer, but Maddy and I were the most alike, the two of us separated only by winds of chance that had blown her one way and me the other.

  I couldn’t let Shay kill Lucas.

  If I didn’t do something to save this battered foreign boy, Maddy would never forgive me, and I would never, ever forgive myself.

  Alpha. Alpha. Alpha.

  The thrum of the bond at the gateway of my mind was a constant, incessant reminder that being alpha meant making tough decisions. It meant protecting my pack to the detriment of anything and everything else. I knew that. I accepted it, but I was human, too, and I hadn’t grown up under Callum’s tutelage for nothing.

  There was always a way around orders, a way to be the exception instead of the rule. I just needed to find it. I was going to find it.

  Even if it killed me.

  Chase arched one eyebrow at me, and Devon narrowed his eyes slightly. “Let the record show that I don’t trust the expression on your face right now. I know that expression, Bronwyn.”

  Lake smiled beatifically, ready and willing to misbehave. “So do I.”

  When it came to the ins and outs of werewolf politics, my resources were severely limited. Of the members of our pack, fourteen had been the taught the ways of the world by a Rabid, two were infants, two had spent their lives as peripherals, one had been a werewolf for less than a year, and the remaining three were Devon, Ali, and me.

  Long story short: it wasn’t like I had a werewolf Yoda to show me the ropes. My best bet in our pack was probably Mitch, and if he had information he wanted to share, he would have already given it to me. Ali probably knew more about werewolves than any human on the planet, but somehow, I didn’t think app
roaching my legal guardian and saying, “Hey, I need to find a loophole so I can steal another alpha’s werewolf and give him even more reason to want me dead,” would go over terribly well.

  That left me with exactly two options: Google and Callum. Since I didn’t think a random internet search was going to reveal even a fraction of what I needed to know, I went back to the cabin I shared with Ali and the twins, and sequestered myself in my bedroom to make a call.

  Convincing myself to dial the number was harder than it should have been. The part of me that was alpha objected to the idea of bringing another pack into this, and the part of me that had once considered Callum like family balked at the idea of hearing his voice.

  There were things—more of them than I wanted to admit—that were easier to forget when Callum stayed in his territory and I stayed in mine.

  Flopping down on my bed, I reached for my nightstand and picked up the carving he’d sent me. I still had no idea what it was supposed to mean, but I was positive that it did mean something, and that if and when I called Callum, nothing I had to say would surprise him in the least.

  I’d spent my entire life growing up under Callum’s watch without realizing that he had a psychic knack. Sometimes it felt like everyone but me had known that Callum saw flashes of the future and made a routine practice of nudging it in one direction or another. He was fallible. He wasn’t omniscient—but he’d probably known that I was going to call him before the option had even occurred to me, and if I chickened out, he’d probably know that, too.

  Screw that.

  My fingers were dialing before my mind had processed the decision to do so, and my breath caught in my throat with the first ring. I pictured Callum’s house and saw the landline ringing over and over again.

  Maybe I should have called his cell.

  The moment that thought crossed my mind, someone picked up the phone, and a smooth, even voice said hello.

  Not Callum’s.

  The voice was female, and even if I hadn’t recognized it, the process of elimination would have told me that it was Sora—the only female Were in Callum’s pack now that Katie and Lake were in mine. Unfortunately, Sora was also Devon’s mother, which meant that she was Shay’s mother. I was going to go out on a limb and guess she probably wasn’t the best person to ask about how to legally steal a wolf out from under the monstrous product of her loins.

  Ew. I so did not want to be thinking about Devon’s mother’s loins.

  “Hello?” Sora repeated for what was probably the third or fourth time.

  “It’s me.” I’d spent as much time at Devon’s house as my own growing up, so I took it for granted that Sora would know who the me in question was.

  “Bryn.” There was a faint trace of a smile in Sora’s voice, and I pulled my knees tight to my chest, surprised at how short a mental hop it was from hearing her say my name to thinking about the last time I’d seen her.

  I could almost hear my ribs popping, feel my mouth bleeding as she came at me again and again.

  I tried to force myself out of the memory. When I’d broken faith with Callum’s pack and he’d ordered me beaten, Sora was the one who had carried out the sentence. I knew now that the entire ordeal had been part of a larger plan, one that had led me to the founding of the Cedar Ridge Pack, but that didn’t make me hate Sora for it any less.

  “Did you want something, Bryn?” Sora’s voice was unbothered and calm, and I wondered if she’d thought, even for a second, about asking me about Devon.

  “I need to talk to Callum,” I replied tersely. “Is he around?”

  “He’s otherwise occupied at the moment.”

  I recognized the half-truth for what it was. For all I knew, Callum was “otherwise occupied” with watching Sora talk to me.

  “You might as well just say he doesn’t want to talk to me,” I said dryly. “It’s not going to hurt my tender feelings. This is business.”

  Sora snorted. “Some of us have manners.”

  “Yeah,” I replied, “and some of us are alphas, so if the Stone River big guy can’t spare the time to talk to the head of Cedar Ridge, just say so.”

  The silence on the other end of the line was deafening. I counted to ten in my head and wondered if Sora was doing the same.

  “The Stone River alpha can’t officially advise the Cedar Ridge alpha on matters of inter-pack relations,” she said finally, her words clipped and precise. “Were the Stone River alpha to do so, the remainder of the Senate might interpret that as evidence of a political alliance and might therefore feel compelled to make alliances of their own. The Stone River alpha would prefer to avoid such complications.”

  I huffed and blew a strand of hair out of my face. “In other words, Callum can’t help me.”

  “Officially.”

  I translated Sora’s reply to mean that Callum could and would help me unofficially. The trick would be figuring out how exactly a thing like that might work.

  “You’re not an alpha,” I said slowly, and this time, I wasn’t throwing the words in Sora’s face. “So technically, if you were to give me advice, it would be …”

  “Unofficial?” Sora suggested.

  “Exactly.”

  Now the reason that Sora was answering the phone at Callum’s house was perfectly clear. Callum couldn’t tell me what to do, but he could send me cryptic homemade gifts and arrange for another knowledgeable source to answer his phone when I happened to call.

  It was unfortunate that the knowledgeable source in question was related to the alpha I had in my sights.

  “What has Callum told you about why I’m calling?” I asked, wondering how much Sora knew—and, for that matter, how much of what was happening now Callum had foreseen.

  “Callum said you might have some questions, and that since my son is now in your pack, if I wanted to answer them for Devon’s sake, that decision was up to me.”

  To the best of my knowledge, Devon hadn’t spoken a word to Sora since she’d carried out Callum’s sentence against me. He’d left their pack and hadn’t been home since. Maybe Sora figured this was the least she could do for Dev, and if not mentioning Shay prevented her loyalties from being split …

  Well, I wasn’t above telling half-truths myself.

  “I need to know if there’s a way for a Were to transfer into another pack against his alpha’s will.”

  “Both alphas have to sign off on all transfers.” Sora’s answer was immediate—and not at all what I wanted to hear. “The first alpha relinquishes his hold over the wolf, who then becomes a lone wolf, and the lone wolf can then be claimed by another alpha, with or against his will.”

  “What if the first alpha is abusive?” I asked, knowing even as I did that it was a wasted question. Sora had broken my ribs at Callum’s request, and she was my best friend’s mother. Words like abuse didn’t have the same kind of meaning to people with animal instincts. “What if he’s doing horrible things to his pack for no reason other than that he can?”

  That question was a little more precise, but still, it didn’t get me the answer I wanted.

  “What one alpha does with his pack is not another alpha’s business,” Sora said. “However …” She trailed off after a moment. “Callum has been known, on occasion, to make it in another alpha’s best interest to cut ties with a particular wolf.”

  “Well, that’s nice and vague.”

  Sora didn’t respond, but I could picture the expression on her angular features almost exactly. It was an expression that said, It’s a miracle nobody has strangled you yet, you obnoxious human child. Since Sora was trying to help me, I attempted to dial the attitude back a notch.

  “So you’re saying that if I want another alpha to sign off on letting one of his wolves go, I should …”

  “Give him something he wants more than he wants to keep the wolf.” Sora paused, and I sensed her debating whether she should continue talking. “Before you were born, Callum’s territory used to include the northern part of
Oklahoma. He gave it up in exchange for Marcus.”

  “Marcus?” I couldn’t help the incredulous tone in my voice. Marcus was a greasy, antisocial, horrific a-hole who’d hated me for as long as I could remember. I was pretty sure he hated everyone except for Callum, to whom he was unfailingly loyal.

  And now I knew why.

  “That’s all I’m willing to tell you, Bryn. Just tread carefully here.”

  “Is that the nice way of telling me not to do anything stupid?”

  Sora let out a sharp bark of laughter. “That’s the nice way of saying that if you misstep and put yourself in danger, I know Devon will follow you, right to the brink of hell. He may hate me now, but we’ve got the next thousand years to get past that, and I’d prefer you not get him killed before he has a chance to become what he’s meant to be.”

  I was going to reply, but before I could, I heard a click, and then the other side of the line went dead. Sora had hung up on me, and I was no closer to finding a loophole than I’d been before I called.

  Great. Just great.

  To save Lucas, I’d have to give Shay something he wanted more than a punching bag, and without even asking, I knew what he’d want in return.

  A female Were.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE NEXT MORNING, I WOKE UP WITH A FEELING of dread in my stomach and an unnatural heat playing across the surface of my skin. The smell of smoke was a ghost in my memory, and though I didn’t remember the details of the dream I’d just had, a sense of déjà vu, hazy and ominous, seemed to cloud the rest of my thoughts.

  A night plagued by nightmares I couldn’t quite remember had done little to shed light on my current predicament. In an ideal world, I would have woken up knowing exactly what to do and how to read between the lines of what Sora had told me to derive a solution that didn’t involve either turning Lucas back over to Shay or brokering some kind of deal with him and trading one wolf for another.

  This, however, wasn’t an ideal world, and no matter how hard I tried to think of an answer, I had nothing.

  At this point, the best I could do was stall. Until Shay contacted me, asking if Lucas was staying at the Wayfarer, I was under no obligation to tell him, and Shay couldn’t come here to get Lucas unless I gave him permission. With any luck, distance would have strained Lucas’s bond with the Snake Bend Pack enough that his alpha wouldn’t be able to pinpoint his exact location, and by the time Shay figured out where Lucas had gotten off to—assuming Lucas had been straight with us about how he’d gotten here in the first place—I’d have managed to think of a way to play the Snake Bend Alpha, the same way Callum had been expertly playing all of us for years.