Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  Lake snorted. “Do I look not okay to you?”

  She didn’t look the way she had the other night, as we’d lain in my bed, listening to foreign alphas passing through.

  “You look fine.”

  “I am fine.”

  I nodded. There would be plenty of time for me to play werewolf Dr. Phil later. Right now, Lake and I needed a ride. Preferably one with GPS. “Ready to commit a felony?” I asked her.

  She met that statement with the most serene of smiles. “It’s not grand theft auto if the vehicle in question belongs to your father. And b-t-w, if anyone asks you what’s in that box, I’d advise you to say, ‘Feminine supplies.’ ”

  The box was large and heavy, and there was a distinct clanging sound as I carried it. “As in tampons?”

  “Keely’s not going to ask questions. Ali’s busy with the twins, and everyone else around here is male. Tampons scare the bejeezus out of them, my dad included, but if the person who asks is a Were, they’d smell the lie. Hence, feminine supplies.”

  “Because we’re females, and they’re our supplies?” I guessed.

  “No. Because weapons are feminine.” Lake gave me an insulted look. “Why do you think I named my gun Matilda?”

  All things considered, I was kind of surprised that Lake was planning on going into this battle without her double-barrel.

  “Matilda maims,” Lake explained when I asked her. “She doesn’t kill.”

  “Enough said,” I replied, because after what the Rabid had done to Chase this afternoon, after what he’d done to the little girl named Madison, after everything he’d taken away from me, starting with my parents and ending with my faith in Callum, this S.O.B. was dead.

  The distance between Montana and Wyoming went by disturbingly quickly with Lake behind the wheel, and as the two of us reached our destination, I registered the fact that we’d arrived in record time and absorbed what little sightseeing the Rabid’s town had to offer.

  Alpine Creek was bordered by a river on one side and the ugly, jagged edge of a mountain on the other. Even a human wouldn’t have been surprised to hear it called No-Man’s-Land, and as Lake drove our pilfered vehicle down Main Street, toward the town’s single stoplight, déjà vu hit me like a blow to the chest.

  Macon’s Hardware.

  Barren street corners.

  A dirt path snaking past the town’s lone restaurant, leading into the woods.

  I’d seen these things from inside the head of a monster, and at the end of that dirt path, buried miles into the woods, there was a cabin. The monster lived there. His name was Wilson. I was willing to bet that if the townspeople knew about him at all, they weren’t sure whether that name was his first or his last.

  I didn’t care.

  “Bryn?” Lake’s voice cracked my thoughts open, and reality trickled in. She’d stopped the car in front of a rundown house whose owner appeared to have declared it to be some kind of motel. I took in a long, ragged breath.

  Did the Rabid already know we were here? Could he smell us? Could he feel us coming from miles away? Was this a mistake?

  “We should get a room.” I tried not to let the questions show on my face or in my voice. “Chase will be here soon. We’ll need someplace to strategize.”

  Under other circumstances, I might have spent a good chunk of time wondering what it would be like to see Chase again. For as long as I’d known him, other people had been tearing us apart. But right now, I didn’t have time to ponder the way my blood turned thin and hot in my veins just thinking about him. I didn’t have time for the repetition, with each beat of my heart, of an all-too-familiar word: Mine. Mine. Mine.

  Right now, I couldn’t be Chase’s first and the pack’s second. My first allegiance was—and had to be—to what we’d come here to do.

  Lake and I paid for a room in cash, and I pushed down the growing sensation that as Chase got closer and closer, I was riding a roller coaster climbing steadily to its highest peak, the anticipation of the world dropping out from underneath me to a screaming, hand-waving, heart-thumping freefall, the moment Chase and I met eyes. I didn’t have time for that, any of that. I was within ten miles of the man who’d killed my family. The one who’d broken Chase and laughed at the breaking.

  That man needed to die.

  That thought in the forefront of my mind—and probably Lake’s, too—we passed the time waiting for Devon and Chase by settling into our room: one twin bed, no window, no air-conditioning. To Lake’s credit, she didn’t say a word about my silence, or the volley of emotions that must have been crisscrossing my face as minutes turned into hours. She just took out two knives and started sharpening them against each other, the rhythmic ching-ching-ching of metal on metal providing a fitting sound track to my own violent thoughts.

  The Rabid’s death wouldn’t be bloody. Revenge was a luxury for those who had the upper hand, and we didn’t. There were more of us, but Wilson was older. He might not have known we were coming yet, but he’d sense Lake, Devon, and Chase the second they got within a mile of his little cabin in the woods. Mulling our disadvantage over in my mind, I detached from the instincts that told me that this man needed to be torn limb from limb. Werewolves were all about the instincts. The one advantage I might have in this game was that I wasn’t a Were.

  When I had to, I could think like a human.

  I didn’t need to see my parents’ murderer torn limb from limb. All I needed was to put a silver bullet through his forehead and a matching set in his heart and lungs.

  I was so caught up in weaving in and out of the situation’s logic that I almost didn’t recognize the feel of the world turning upside down, my stomach flipping inside out, every hair on my body standing slightly on end, like I’d found myself in the center of an electrical storm.

  “Chase.” The moment Chase opened the door to our motel room, I said his name, because from the second I saw him, it was the only sound my mouth agreed to produce.

  “Bryn.” His voice was deep and thicker than I remembered. He seemed to have recovered, as much as anyone could, from what the Rabid had done to him before.

  I was wrong, I thought, as I crossed the room to kill the space between us, needing to assure myself that, yes, he really was okay—that, no, my brilliant plan hadn’t broken him past the point of repair. Seeing him was nothing like the downward swing of a roller coaster. It felt like having my soul pulled out of my nose.

  It hurt.

  His arms wrapped around me, and I turned my head to the side and pressed my face into one of them, assuring myself that he was solid and real. That the Rabid hadn’t destroyed him. That I hadn’t failed him in a way that he never would have failed me.

  “Oh, I see how it is. Baby finds her Johnny Castle, and all of a sudden, she forgets about the small matter of her BFF?”

  There was only one person in the world who could deliver that line with a straight face. Until I’d heard his voice, I hadn’t realized just how much I’d missed it.

  “Devon!”

  Chase stiffened as Dev’s name left my lips, and Devon beamed at me, doing a good impression of someone who hadn’t been bristling a moment before, when I’d buried myself in Chase’s arms.

  “In the flesh,” Devon said. “When you call, Miss Bronwyn, I answer. Always.” It was a testament to the gravity of the moment that he didn’t treat everyone present to an impromptu performance of “Ain’t No Mountain.” Lest Devon decide the situation did call for some tunes, I pushed on.

  “You probably shouldn’t have come,” I told him. When I’d told Chase to go to Devon for help, I hadn’t thought through the full extent of what it would mean. Two male Weres, both of whom had some claim to a single girl, in one car for hours on end. If Chase had been born a werewolf, or if Devon and I had ever been more than friends, they probably wouldn’t have both made it to Wyoming in one piece. And even if the four of us did survive the next few hours and the Rabid in the woods, Devon would still have to deal with the fact that he�
��d left Ark Valley without permission to come assist me in blowing a Senate mandate to smithereens.

  “Do you have any idea what Callum’s going to do to you when he finds out you came here?” I asked Devon, cursing myself for involving him in this and for not being able to think far enough ahead to realize what it would mean.

  Devon’s eyes flashed at my question, like he knew what I was thinking and resented the very idea of being left behind. Again. “Yes, Bryn, I think I have a pretty good idea of what Callum might do to someone who disobeys the pack.”

  So much passed between the two of us unspoken then. The fact that he’d probably seen the aftermath of my own punishment, while I’d been unconscious. The fact that his mother had been the one to dispense the so-called justice. The way Devon had been furious at me for putting myself in danger by going to see Chase in the first place. The fact that long before I’d been Chase’s, I’d been Dev’s.

  Which led me right back to the problem at hand. “You’re Pack, Dev. You’re not a peripheral, you’re not otherwise connected—you’re one of Callum’s wolves. Callum could kill us for this, but it’ll be worse for you.”

  Callum’s pack could do more than kill Devon. He was so deeply connected to them that if Callum decreed it, they could use the bond to twist him. They could rip out his mind with their anger. They could make him want to die.

  For a moment, Devon said nothing, and then, he ran one hand over his gelled hair and pulled his perfectly groomed eyebrows down into a scowl. “The first time I saw you, you were covered in blood. I heard Callum tell my dad that it must have been from your mother, because by the time the Rabid got to your father, you’d retreated under the sink. You were red and shaking and it was the first time in my entire life that I felt the kind of fear from a human being that an animal sends out just before they die.” Devon looked at me. “And then, you looked at me, and even though I was only five years old, I knew that what had been done to you was the worst thing I would ever see. I knew that I would never, ever let someone do that to you again.”

  Because this was my fight, this was his fight. I didn’t have a right to deny him that. Not when I’d left for Montana without a word. Not when I’d broken every promise I’d ever made him to take care of myself.

  My throat tightened. Chase put a hand on my shoulder. Devon didn’t react to the gesture, reminding me that when the situation called for it, he was (a) a first-rate actor and (b) capable of showing restraint. I’d brought Devon here, just like I’d brought Lake, when without me, they would have been fine. They would have been safe.

  Fifteen different images hit my mind at once: Sora and the ugly face of Pack Justice; Ali locking up Chase so Callum wouldn’t have a reason to tear him apart; Lake curled into a ball on my bedroom floor; Mitch telling me that some Weres got funny around females. The madman in the woods.

  God, what if he got hold of Lake? What if I couldn’t stop him? What if Callum tore Devon to pieces, just for helping me? What if Devon’s own mother was the one to deliver the blows?

  I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t take knowing that as much as Lake and Devon had done everything in their power to protect me, always, I couldn’t do the same thing for them. Because I was human. Weak. Stupid.

  Trapped.

  This time, I welcomed the feeling of claustrophobia, remembering that the last time I’d felt it, Chase had cut his bond with the Rabid. The last time I’d let this feeling take control of my own actions, I’d rewired my bond with Chase.

  Could you do it again? The question Lake had asked me once was drowned out by the panic, the suffocation—the need—not to survive but to protect.

  I brought my hand up to Chase’s, and the bond between us pulsed and throbbed. With no warning, I became acutely aware of each of our connections to Devon and Lake, and theirs to us.

  Mine.

  Ours.

  Mine.

  I could feel Chase’s determination, his willingness to follow wherever I led. I felt my love for Devon in shades of silver, and his for me, equally bright and bittersweet. Mine for Lake. Lake’s for Devon.

  And Chase’s for me.

  I felt it coming, the way some people could smell rain in the air—a low, uncontrollable rush of power—and I knew. Our bonds to Callum’s pack, to Callum, pulled us back away from one another. They pulled us down and kept us there, drowning, leashed. Inside, I roared, and I saw myself taking the bonds in my teeth, my very human teeth, and ripping through them, the way Chase had torn himself away from the Rabid.

  Trapped. Escape. Survive.

  Protect.

  Beside me, Chase growled, and I felt him, felt Us, Chase-Wolf-Bryn. As we threw everything we had at Devon and Lake and took everything they had in return.

  Ours, Chase thought, adding his will to mine, because he knew—he knew I loved them. He knew what it was like to be helpless and completely unable to protect those you loved.

  Ours, I replied. Something exploded between the four of us: a wave of knowing. A realignment of the earth. And then, for a moment, there was silence.

  Lake was the first to recover. “Huh. You know, I really don’t think other people can do that, Bryn. If it was even remotely possible, my dad would’ve found a way to pull some mojo a long time ago.”

  Impossibility. These days, it was my strong suit.

  “What just happened here?” Devon asked, still sounding dazed.

  I cleared my throat. “I … well, Chase and I … we … ummm … we redid your pack-bond,” I said, hoping Dev wouldn’t be mad.

  Can you hear me? I asked silently.

  Devon nodded. Like my own thoughts. Your voice—it isn’t coming from outside of me, it’s not coming through an external connection. It’s coming from inside my head.

  “Rewiring bonds … it’s this thing,” I said out loud, “that Chase and I do.” This thing we did that, when I’d done it last, had brought Callum’s entire pack barreling down on us.

  Lake, playing it cool, pushed back the feeling of awe that I could feel from her end of our connection. “There’re four of us. Does that mean we qualify as a pack now? Because if we do, we need to think of a seriously killer name for ourselves.” Devon opened his mouth and Lake cut him off. “No allusions to musicals, Broadway boy.”

  “The lady doth offend my ears,” Devon said. “Begone, foul witch!”

  Lake snorted. “I’ve missed you, too, Dev.”

  I barely registered the interaction between the two of them, because I was stuck on what Lake had said about Chase and I being able to do something that nobody else could do.

  On an unconscious level, I’d assumed that what I’d done with my pack-bond, I’d been able to do because I was human and Pack, connected, but different. I’d spent years manipulating my own bond, protecting my mind from Callum’s pack. And maybe I’d made Chase different, too, or maybe being a turned werewolf instead of a born one had something to do with it. But maybe not. Maybe what it really boiled down to was what I’d known from the moment I first saw him, sprawled in a cage.

  Chase and I were the same.

  Enough with the philosophizing. Lake’s voice. Inside my head—and somehow, it didn’t sound the way it did when she spoke out loud. It was quiet. Unassuming in tone, if not in words. Not timid, but understated and cautious.

  Vulnerable.

  Focus, Lake told me, and I could feel her taking a step back from my mind, folding herself inward and concentrating—to the extent that she could—on hiding from me the things that I didn’t normally see.

  I nodded and took the reins. “Rabid. Here, in Alpine Creek. There’s a cabin in the woods. We’ll only have one shot.”

  Chase pulled me close to him, and I wondered if he’d even realized he’d done it. And then I realized that my hand was on the top of his hipbone, but somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to remove it as I continued speaking to my friends. My pack.

  “The last time I messed with someone’s pack-bond, it set off a psychic flare that brought th
e entire pack straight to us.” I paused, letting my words take hold, my grip on Chase tightening. “If what Chase and I just did has the same effect, we’re working under a time limit here, so let’s move. Lake and I are set for an attack. I have a plan. Boys, it’s hunting season. Weapon up.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  NOBODY LIKED MY PLAN.

  “You want us to split up?” Chase asked, his brow wrinkling in obvious bewilderment.

  Lake echoed the sentiment, her voice flat. “Why would we split up? There’s four of us and one of him.” After a brief moment’s pause, she amended her head count to better reflect our real odds. “Three and a half of us, one of him.”

  Three and a half, as in three werewolves, one human. I narrowed my eyes. “For your sake, Lake, I’m going to pretend that Devon is the half.”

  Dev, unquestionably the strongest person in this room, just shrugged and let me keep my delusions. “It’s because of my petite stature,” he said. All 6′4″ of him.

  My sensibilities halfway appeased, I turned my attention back to the crux of Lake’s point. “Yes, we have stronger numbers, but we have no idea how old this guy is! Do any of you think for a second that the four of us together could take Callum?”

  The fact that Callum was still my point of reference and would probably always be the standard to which all others compared was less than comforting.

  “We can take him.” Chase said the words quietly, but an echo of them, silent and whispered from his mind to mine, lingered in my thoughts. “Not Callum. Prancer. The four of us together, I think we could take him.”

  I paused for a single moment before thrusting that idea into the guillotine and dropping the blade. “And how many of us would make it out of that kind of confrontation alive?”

  I felt their collective hackles go up all around me. For better or worse, this was our pack now. We couldn’t afford to lose each other. I’d die if anything happened to a single one of them.