Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  I hated the idea of waiting even a second longer than I had to, but I wasn’t about to argue or look a gift wolf in the mouth.

  “Thank you,” I said, bowing my head, the way I’d seen other Weres do in the past. Callum stepped forward and pulled me into a hug, running his hand over my hair again, the same way he had when I was four and looking for solace after skinning my knees. At that moment, part of me didn’t want to see Chase, because I didn’t want to remember anything outside of the here and now, where I was safe and loved and part of something bigger than myself.

  But another part of me knew that wasn’t an option, not for me, because there were bad people in the world who did bad things, even to kids, and I wasn’t the type who could stand by and pretend that there weren’t.

  If there was a Rabid in our territory, I needed to know.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE NEXT FULL MOON WAS A SUNDAY IN MID-APRIL. Even though it felt like I’d been waiting forever, when the big day finally arrived, a thin cord of dread looped itself around my neck like a hangman’s noose. Growing up, I used to fake the stomach flu on the day before a full moon. I’d retch and moan and concoct secret mixtures of just the right texture to throw into the toilet in order to make it sound as if I was blowing chunky chunks. Ali was never fooled, but sometimes she’d let me stay home from school anyway. I always thought that it bothered her, too—watching them lose bits and pieces of their human façades as the day wore on. I’d seen Weres Shift hundreds of times, but it was different when the moon was full. Even in their human forms, they exuded unnatural energy, adrenaline and hormones battling inside their body to determine whether they’d turn into a lover or a fighter. They oscillated from one end of the spectrum to the other, snapping and snuggling and just generally driving any humans in the near vicinity crazy with the unpredictable bipolarity of it all.

  For them, moonlust was a natural high.

  For me, it was a hum. A high-pitched, disturbing hum of power, and the creepy, crawly feeling of someone watching me from the shadows. In fact, Callum had probably decided to make me wait until the full moon to hear the conditions of my visit with Chase because he’d hoped that I’d withdraw the request rather than venture directly into the belly of the beast on my least favorite day of the month.

  But even with the noose tightening moment by moment and my stomach flipping itself inside out, I wasn’t backing down. There would be no fake chunk-blowing today.

  “Can I make you something for breakfast?” Ali pulled a kitchen chair away from the table, her subtle way of telling me that I would be eating breakfast whether I wanted to or not. I considered arguing, because my stomach was knotted up enough that the idea of jamming food down into it seemed ill-advised, but the expression on her face told me that she’d probably been up late with the twins, and that she’d waste no time putting the fear of God (and sleep-deprived mothers) into me if I balked.

  “Cereal?” I asked.

  Two minutes later, like magic, a bowl of cereal appeared in front of me on the table, and Ali took a seat, her eagle eyes watching as I swirled my spoon around in the bowl before taking a bite.

  “Callum said you asked for permissions,” Ali said, her casual tone belied by the fact that she’d known for weeks and hadn’t mentioned it until now. “To see the new boy. Chase.”

  I shrugged and took another bite of cereal, my stomach clenching in protest.

  “You’ve never played by their rules before,” Ali continued on, leaning over and snagging a marshmallow out of my bowl and popping it into her mouth. “You don’t ask permissions, you don’t acknowledge dominance, and by the time you were in kindergarten, you’d clamped down on your end of the bond so hard that I thought you’d break it.”

  She made another grab for my cereal, and I pushed the bowl toward her. “Knock yourself out,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”

  Ali pushed the bowl back my way and tilted her head toward mine. “Eat.”

  I ate. She watched, and finally, I realized that she was waiting for me to say something.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “I want to understand why it is that the girl who has never met a rule she hasn’t broken would voluntarily agree to give the local patriarch the power to set her limits in absolute stone.”

  “Patriarch? Puh-lease. It’s Callum.”

  “Your words, not mine. And you’re dodging the question.”

  The thing about asking permissions was that it required Callum to interact with me officially. I’d taken away his option of phrasing orders as requests, and I’d appealed to him as part of the pack, not as me. It had been a huge gamble, because if he’d turned down my permissions, and I’d gone to see Chase anyway, I’d have broken Pack Law and opened myself up to Pack Justice.

  But Callum hadn’t turned me down. He’d accepted my request, and whatever conditions he laid down today, I’d abide by them.

  “I needed to see Chase, and this was the only way.” I turned my head away from Ali but snuck a peek back at her out of the corner of my eye. “I couldn’t have gotten anywhere near Callum’s house on my own, not after last time. At least this way, I’ll get to see him.”

  The visit would be supervised, and it would happen on Callum’s terms, whatever those were, but by the time it was over, I’d have answers. Or possibly more questions.

  I’d have something, and that was infinitely more than what I had now.

  “Why this boy, Bryn? Why do you need to see someone who would just as soon eat your calf as look you in the eye? What could he possibly have to offer?”

  Whoa. Ali was sounding suspiciously anti-Chase. Ali wasn’t anti-anybody. I said as much out loud, and she shrugged.

  “Casey doesn’t trust him.”

  “Casey doesn’t trust anyone,” I replied. “He’s paranoid like that. I mean, come on, he’s a werewolf who installed a nanny cam in his kids’ room.” I pointed my spoon at Ali for emphasis. “A nanny cam.”

  Like anyone would hurt Kaitlin or Alex. The worst Casey had to worry about was me telling them things they wouldn’t understand until they’d been verbal for at least a couple of years, and I knew (a) where the nanny cam was, and (b) how to disable it. Fatherhood had turned Ali’s husband into a suburban soccer mom.

  “Forget about Casey and promise me you’ll be careful, Bryn. Callum isn’t Callum when he’s the alpha, and there isn’t a single one of them that isn’t dangerous.”

  This was our family she was talking about. Callum. Devon. Casey, Sora, and Lance. My age-mates. The twins.

  “I’ll be careful.”

  From the look Ali gave me, it was almost like she didn’t believe me. How insulting.

  “I can be careful,” I said, somewhat disgruntled.

  “Bryn, when you were six years old, you tried to bungee jump off a jungle gym by connecting the straps of your overalls to the bars with your shoelaces. Caution has never been your strong suit.”

  “And yet, I always seem to come out of it without a scratch.” I smiled winningly. Ali gave me a look.

  “You’re a survivor,” she allowed grudgingly. “And you’ve been lucky. That doesn’t mean you have to press your luck.”

  I answered Ali’s pointed stare with one of my own. “You worry too much.”

  “I’m your mother. It’s my job.”

  From upstairs, a noise somewhere between an ambulance siren and a banshee’s howl announced that at least one of the twins was awake for the day. For a few seconds, Ali remained seated, looking at me, and then she sighed. “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid,” she said as she stood up and took my empty cereal bowl over to the sink.

  “I promise I won’t do anything stupid,” I said. “I know what I’m doing.” Kind of. “I have to do this, Ali. And I’m trying really hard to do it right.”

  Ali nodded and, as she walked back by me to head upstairs, pressed a single kiss to my part. “You do what you have to do, Bryn. Just come home in one piece.”

 
; Those words were less than comforting, and for the briefest of instants, I considered giving up. Withdrawing my request. Falling prey to Ali’s and Callum’s best-laid plans to convince me that this wasn’t the path down which I wanted to tread.

  And then I cursed under my breath, stood up, and thanked my lucky stars that Ali didn’t have super-hearing. The twins, on the other hand, had probably heard my epithet but wouldn’t know what it meant or the fact that I wasn’t allowed to say it. And hopefully, they wouldn’t say it themselves, because it would make a poor entry in their baby books under “baby’s first word.”

  “I’m going out, Ali. I’ll be home …,” I started to say that I’d be home soon, but in reality, I had no idea when I’d be home, because I had no idea what Callum would ask of me in return for the permission to see Chase. It could take all day, all night, all week …

  And whatever it was, whatever he asked me for, I knew I’d say yes.

  I met Callum halfway between Ali’s house and his, in an area of the forest where the trees thinned out and the ground leveled off in a semicircle. Tonight, the Crescent would be filled, our pack’s numbers spilling into the forest proper. Callum’s house was where the pack conducted its human business. Here, they were wolves, and I avoided this patch of land the same way I eschewed dominance scuffles, disapproving lectures, and werewolves like Marcus who would rather see me dead than claimed by their alpha.

  “Bryn.” Callum greeted me with a single word and a slight smile. And then, without warning, he attacked. In a blur of motion, he was upon me, his leg snaking out to kick mine out from underneath me. Stunned, I moved entirely on instinct, twisting to angle my shoulder to the ground.

  If you’re going to fall, it’s generally a good idea to control the way you do it. Using my own momentum, I rolled out of the fall, and instead of sprawling out on the forest floor, I bounced to my feet, my hands in loose fists, pulled tight to my chest. Automatically, I scanned the surrounding area for weapons. Holes into which I could trick my enemy into falling. Rocks that I might be able to crack a skull with. Sticks wide enough that I could channel Buffy and do the stake-through-the-heart routine, which was guaranteed to irritate a Were, but might also slow them down enough for me to get to higher ground.

  Safer ground.

  All of this happened in a fraction of a second—a half moment, or not even that. If I’d been thinking rationally, I would have realized that werewolf or not, official business or not, this was Callum, and I might have guessed that he was attacking me for a reason. I might have noticed that though he was going full speed, he’d pulled back to quarter strength, or less.

  But I didn’t.

  When a human fights a Were, she doesn’t have the luxury of thinking things through. You’re stuck in slow motion against an enemy who moves so quickly that your eyes can barely follow the movement. You don’t have time to think. You don’t even have time to react. You have to anticipate. You have to be ready. You have to react to the things your opponent hasn’t done yet, but will.

  And you have to be lucky.

  You’ve been very lucky, Bryn. That doesn’t mean you have to press your luck.

  Ali might have seen things differently, but at the moment, I would have sworn that I wasn’t pressing anything. It was pressing me.

  Callum feinted left, but I was already moving the other direction and backward, and when his hand reached out to knock me to the ground, I’d already jumped. His blow threw me off center, but I managed to catch the limb I’d been aiming for anyway, and swung myself—slightly lopsided—up to stand on the branch.

  As fast and strong and darn-near-invincible as they seem, werewolves aren’t much for climbing trees. Their bones are denser than humans, and they don’t have preternatural balance to go along with their stealth. Callum wasn’t quite six feet tall, but he was muscular, male, and much heavier than I was, and there was no way this tree would support his weight.

  For that matter, I had no guarantees that it would support mine for much longer, but beggars really couldn’t be choosers. And mid-morning snacks can’t afford to be finicky about the methods with which they attempt to avoid being eaten.

  “You’re getting faster,” Callum said, “but you need to be more aware of your surroundings.” And with those words, he shot into another blur of motion, running up onto a nearby stone and catapulting himself off it.

  Incoming werewolf, zeroing in on me like a missile. Not a good thing. Not a good thing at—

  “Ooomph.” Callum tackled me off my perch. I braced myself for contact with the ground, but at the last second, he twisted, putting his body in between mine and the ground, cushioning my fall.

  Thankful for the reprieve, I nonetheless elbowed him in the gut, somersaulted forward and out of his grasp, and threw a rock at his head before I even realized I’d armed myself.

  He caught the rock and smiled. “Good girl.”

  The tension melted off his body, and his posture changed utterly, a signal meant to tell me that this portion of our little meet and greet was over.

  “Forgive me if I’m skeptical,” I said, and like magic, I had more rocks in each of my hands.

  “The only way I wouldn’t forgive you is if you weren’t,” he said, and moving with a speed that fell more into the realm of impressively human than typically Were, he managed to disarm me completely, and he chucked me under the chin.

  “You’re a strong, smart girl, Bryn, but it’s not enough. You’ve been slacking on your training.”

  If by “slacking,” he meant “up at dawn every day for my entire life going through katas and self-defense moves and running like I’m prepping for a triathalon.”

  “If you want to see the boy, you’ll have to do better.”

  And there it was: the first condition. I wondered if Callum’s attack had been a test, if there was anything I could have done that might have convinced him that I was ready to see Chase now, or if he was just using my unusual willingness to comply with his wishes as an excuse to achieve a cog in some master plan. If the next condition involved me acing algebra, I was going to be very suspicious.

  “I’ll do whatever I need to do.” I gave Callum a look that I hoped conveyed “you know I mean it,” with shades of “don’t toy with me.”

  “You’ll see Chase once you’ve convinced me that you can defend yourself from him should things get out of hand. Until then, I’ll expect you to double your normal training regimen, and I want you sparring with partners of my choice on a regular basis.”

  The idea of fighting someone who wasn’t Callum didn’t sit well with me. I would have been lying if I said that I’d never fought anyone else—I had, on occasion, handed touchy, grabby humans their butts on a variety of platters, but I was too smart to go around fighting Weres.

  Besides Callum, there were only a few that I’d tangled with physically, even as practice, and I tried not to think about what it would be like fighting someone who I trusted less than Callum.

  “Consider it done,” I said out loud. “What else?”

  We weren’t exactly using the formal language of permissions and conditions, but we were both on edge—Callum because sparring under the influence of moonlust was no walk in the park, and me because being sparred with by a werewolf under the influence of moonlust sent a cold chill down the length of my spine.

  Come out, come out, wherever you are.…

  “In addition to increasing your training regimen, I have four conditions for the permissions you seek.” Callum transitioned to alpha-speak, and I could feel the formality of it building a barrier between us.

  “I’m prepared to hear your conditions, Alpha.”

  My words, every bit as formal as his, solidified the wall that held us apart, and if this hadn’t been so important to me, that would have forced me to crumble. Losing Callum, even for a second, was worse than any condition he could possibly lay down.

  Or at least, that’s what I thought at the time.

  “Once I deem you ready for
your visitation or visitations—the number and times of which will be set in accordance with me—I’ll select three members of the pack to accompany you and serve as chaperones.”

  Chaperones … or bodyguards? It was so like Callum to insist that I kill myself preparing for defensive maneuvers that he had no intention of ever allowing me to make.

  “You will not see Chase with fewer than three members of the pack present, and during the course of your visitation, you will yield to their dominance on all matters.”

  Dominance. I hated the word. I hated everything it represented, and in that moment, I hated Callum for forcing it on me. The idea of letting three random Weres tell me what to do, of submitting to them in all things without an argument, made me consider blowing real chunky chunks right there on the spot.

  “You’re selecting the members of the pack to whom I have to submit,” I said, restating his words as my own.

  Callum didn’t reply to the question in my voice, or say anything to assuage my reluctance. Instead, he just stood there, looking at me from the other side of that invisible wall.

  “I agree to this condition, Alpha,” I said, forcing the words out of my mouth.

  “My next condition …,” Callum started to say, and then he looked at me, for real. “You’re not going to like this one, Bryn-girl.”

  Uh-oh. Being Bryn-girl was a magnitude worse than being Bronwyn. When I was Bronwyn, I was in trouble, but I was only Bryn-girl when Callum was cushioning an otherwise deadly blow. The last time he’d called me that, someone in the pack had accidentally eaten an injured rabbit I’d nursed back to health.

  I waited for Callum to elaborate, refusing to let him know the effect his words had on me.

  “For the duration of the permissions,” Callum said—and I took that to mean from the moment I started in on the extra training until my last visit with Chase was complete—“you’ll acknowledge the pack. The bond,” he clarified.

  My adoption into the pack—though Callum had taken steps to make it legal in the human world—was more than just words on a sheet of paper. I smelled like Pack. I lived like Pack. And, if I had let myself, I would have felt like Pack. I would have been bonded to them the way they were bonded to each other—supernaturally, psychically, instinctually.