Most werewolves had at least one werewolf parent, but my pack—aside from Devon and Lake and a few others—was different. I was human, and the others had been at one point, too. The only difference was that they’d been bitten, and I hadn’t.
Most humans didn’t have what it took to survive a major werewolf attack, but those of us who did had one thing in common—a knack for survival.
We called it Resilience.
I’d spent most of my life as the underdog (no pun intended), so supernaturally good survival instincts had come in handy more than once—and I was fairly certain they would again. Or at least, I hoped they would.
Soon.
Images from my dream—eyes watching me, flaming fingertips, waving hello—flashed like lightning through my brain, leaving an impression in their wake that I couldn’t quite shake, but I did my best to keep them from bleeding out to the rest of the pack. Leaving Lake to her lecturing, I pushed the front door open and was greeted by a chilly breeze and a feeling of wrongness that I recognized all too well: the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard, the smell of black pepper and rotting leaves.
My back arched, and the only thing that saved me from growling was that I wasn’t actually a Were.
Wolf. Foreign wolf.
My pack-sense went into overdrive, as it always did when a strange werewolf stepped foot onto Cedar Ridge land. Territory was everything to people like us, and though we allowed peripheral males from other packs to cross through our slice of Montana on a semi-regular basis, my reaction to their presence was always, for the first few seconds at least, completely visceral. Instinctively, my eyes scanned the grass lot, looking for the intruder in question, and the moment they landed on a familiar form, my pack-sense relaxed, and my stomach tightened with nausea and guilt.
“Casey.” I greeted him with a nod, giving no visible indication of weakness. I’d been taught to hide my emotions by the master, and even though my temper had a tendency to get away from me, I could have written the book on pretending to be okay when a major part of you wasn’t.
“Bryn.” Casey returned my nod but didn’t quite meet my gaze. Within my own pack, everything seemed so natural, but interacting with people from other packs—older male people in particular—was a jarring reminder of my alpha status. I was sixteen, female, and human and had at one point been this man’s subordinate.
The only thing that made his deference now more awkward was the fact that a lifetime ago, he’d been married to Ali.
If it hadn’t been for me, he still would be.
“Ali’s back in the kitchen,” I said, trying not to let my mind go back to the night less than a year ago when Casey had stood by and watched me being ceremonially beaten for breaking faith with Callum’s pack. That Ali’s then-husband had done nothing to stop it was something my foster mother would never, even for a moment, forget. “She and Mitch are working on getting dinner rolling. The twins are around here somewhere—you know how it is.”
Babies were prized in any pack, and Katie and Alex had no end of teen and preteen admirers anxious to pull babysitting duty whenever Ali needed a break.
“I know how it is, Bryn.”
Before Ali had left Casey, the twins had been the darlings of Callum’s pack. Now even their father was relegated to the occasional holiday visit, which reminded me …
“Ali didn’t say you were coming.” I met Casey’s eyes, and he glanced away.
“It’s Thanksgiving,” he said with a shrug that looked—to my eyes—almost like a challenge. “My family is here.”
Werewolf law dictated that Casey’s ability to visit Cedar Ridge lands depended on my consent, but given that I was a large part of the reason he’d lost Ali—and the twins—I wasn’t about to bring Pack politics into this.
“Kitchen’s right through the back. You can go surprise Ali and Mitch yourself.”
Casey’s jaw clenched when I said Mitch’s name, and I kicked myself for inadvertently baiting him. Werewolves tended to be possessive of their females, and one very human divorce hadn’t managed to convince Casey’s inner wolf that Ali wasn’t his anymore.
Luckily, however, I had no illusions whatsoever about Ali being incapable of taking care of herself. She had even less tolerance for dominance maneuvers than I did, and if there was something going on between her and Mitch, I doubted she’d think it was Casey’s business any more than she thought it was mine.
“Good luck.”
My words caught Casey off guard, and for a moment, he looked like he might actually smile. Instead, he held out a small package wrapped in brown paper.
“From Callum,” he said. “For you.”
I took the package and pushed down the urge to tear immediately through the paper, the way I’d opened Callum’s gifts when I was little. Things were different now, and this was a token from one alpha to another. The situation called for a little dignity.
The second Casey stepped inside the Wayfarer and the door shut behind him, I ripped through the paper, shredding it to reveal a small green box underneath. Since I seriously doubted Callum had sent me a box, I dropped the paper and began gently tugging the lid off the top of the package to reveal …
A teeny, tiny stallion?
Carved from dark cherry wood, it bore the mark of Callum’s craftsmanship: smooth, even strokes of a carving knife he’d carried in his pocket for as long as I could remember. As an artist, I favored materials lifted from the recycling bin or stolen off bulletin boards around town. Callum carved wood, and apparently, he’d carved this piece for me.
I turned the box upside down, and the horse, no bigger across than the width of my hand, fell out into my palm. There was no note, no explanation—just a little wooden horse that, for whatever reason, Callum had sent to me.
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 the 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 th
at 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.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology Page 34
