Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  Consider me an open book. Dev must have caught me looking at him, because he sent the message straight from his mind to mine. Mi casa es su casa. Mi nose es su nose.

  Dev was the only wolf in my pack who could choose to completely block his mind from me. We both knew that was a good indication that someday, he might leave the Cedar Ridge Pack to rule his own, but tonight he was telling me—in his own oh-so-Devon way—that there weren’t going to be any barriers. I was at a distinct disadvantage, with my human nose and my human ears, in the company of men who had senses ten times as keen.

  Devon—strong, solid, sensational Devon—would be my eyes and my ears and my nose.

  You’re the best, Dev.

  If we hadn’t been quickly approaching a variety of wolves from other packs, he might have preened. Instead, the expression on his face stayed carefully neutral.

  To our left, Callum and Sora held back, allowing Dev and me to enter first. There were fifteen, maybe twenty men spread out on the field in front of Shay’s house, none close enough to touch another. Some were smiling politely. Some were playing human. But the two closest to us didn’t bother to mask what they were: the weight to their presence, the unearthly grace in the way they moved, the hint of fang in what a regular human girl might have mistaken for a grin.

  Those weren’t grins, and these men weren’t our friends.

  They’re from the Ash Mountain Pack, Devon told me silently, and I let his senses flood my mind. These men smelled like wild grass and charcoal and dirt. To another person, it might have been a pleasant enough smell, but to Devon—and by extension, to me—it was tinged with something rotten, something sour.

  Not Pack. My pack-sense and subconscious were equally sure of that fact. The Ash Mountain alpha and his second-in-command were foreign. They had no allegiance to me or mine. They were a threat.

  “Hello, girl.” Of the two men, one looked vaguely familiar, and he was the one who spoke. The last time I’d seen him had been the day I’d become an alpha myself, but his tone left little doubt that he didn’t consider me his equal.

  I schooled my features into an expression I’d seen on Callum’s face a hundred thousand times, one that gave away nothing to what lay underneath. I didn’t respond to the fact that the man had called me girl or the implicit little his sneer had tacked on to the front of that word. I didn’t avoid his gaze, but I didn’t force him into a staring contest, either.

  If these men wanted to be condescending, I couldn’t stop them, but if they were looking for a response, they weren’t going to get one.

  “Hello.” My lips quirked their way into a subtle smile. I may not have had Callum’s knack, but I knew these men. Not personally. Not by name. But I’d known plenty of men just like them, and it was a good bet that they had never, ever known a person like me.

  “You remember Devon,” I said politely. Beside me, Devon inclined his head in greeting.

  “Charmed, I’m sure,” he said, but I doubted anyone else caught the mischievous glint in his eye. The Ash Mountain alpha—and the others, spread out behind him—were too caught up assessing my best friend’s size, the way he’d filled out, the power that told them that someday—not too far in the future—he’d be a physical match for anyone here.

  Suddenly, their collective gaze shifted from Devon and me to a place just over my left shoulder.

  Callum.

  He’d hung back, letting me make my own first impressions, letting the others see how Devon had grown, how effortlessly I commanded his loyalty, how I carried myself as their equal in every conceivable way—but from the moment Callum stepped out of the shadows, the other alphas only had eyes for him. Physically, Callum wasn’t the most imposing man here, and he made no move to make himself seem bigger. He didn’t puff up his chest. He didn’t raise his chin. His face was relaxed. His arms hung loose by his side.

  “Hello, William,” he said, greeting the Ash Mountain alpha and then letting his gaze roam out to the rest of them, standing there watching us.

  Watching him.

  “Callum,” the alpha who’d been taking measure of my mettle returned, his eyes narrowed, his chin jutting out.

  “You’ll want to be careful of your new neighbors,” Callum said, meeting the other man’s eyes. “They enjoy hunting and don’t pay much mind to property lines.”

  I realized, belatedly, that Callum was talking about human neighbors, and that the words were meant as a friendly warning about a future the Ash Mountain Pack would most likely wish to avoid.

  “I’ll take that under advisement,” William replied, his even voice at odds with the tension suddenly visible in his neck.

  Callum didn’t wait for a thank-you. He wasn’t expecting one, and he didn’t act like anything extraordinary had just passed between the two of them, because to Callum, it wasn’t extraordinary. Seeing the different ways the future could play out was as natural to him as breathing—but to everyone else present, Callum’s casual words were a reminder and a warning.

  Whatever they did, whatever they had planned, whatever they even thought of doing—he’d know it.

  “Glad to see you made it.”

  Shay’s voice was louder than it needed to be, surrounded by people with enhanced senses, but as he strode through the crowd, toward Callum—and me—I got the impression that wasn’t an accident. This was his rodeo, and he wasn’t ceding the spotlight to Callum.

  And they say I’m melodramatic, Dev commented, with a mental roll of his eyes. Despite the levity in his words, I could feel a change in my friend as Shay approached—like every muscle in Devon’s body was hardening to stone.

  Like his heart was hardening, too.

  “Little brother.” Shay came to a stop directly in front of Devon, and I realized that Devon had grown since the last time I’d seen the two of them next to each other.

  He wasn’t exactly the “little” brother anymore.

  Devon didn’t reply to Shay’s greeting. Instead, he turned his head slightly, deferring to me and declaring for everyone present that I was his alpha and not the other way around.

  I was probably the only person present who realized that Devon’s deferral had less to do with forcing Shay to acknowledge my status, and more to do with the fact that there was something inside Devon that he couldn’t afford to let out. He wasn’t about to engage Shay, because right here, right now, with adrenaline high and the collective power of the alphas in the air, Devon had a fragile hold on the desire to introduce his fists to Shay’s jaw.

  As wild and feral and vicious as the undercurrent of power all around us was, violence wasn’t an option. The men in the Senate had chosen to play by certain rules, and Devon knew them as well as I did.

  Within a given pack, a person could challenge the alpha for dominance, but inter-pack aggression wasn’t allowed. Unless Shay transgressed first, Dev couldn’t take a swing at him—not without bringing the wrath of the Senate down on our entire pack. That was the reason Shay couldn’t kill me outright.

  The reason he’d sent other people—first the psychics and then Lucas—to do his dirty work.

  “Hello, Shay.” I stepped in between Devon and his brother. “Long time no see.”

  The glint in Shay’s eyes told me beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had never expected me to survive Lucas’s challenge. He’d known I would accept the abused boy into my pack, and that as a member of my pack, Lucas would be able to do what Shay could not.

  Challenge me.

  I was a human, and Lucas was a Were. In a fight to the death, I shouldn’t have stood a chance. And yet, there I was. Alive. Shay had to have been wondering how.

  Maybe they all were.

  “Bryn.” From the way Shay said it, you would have thought it was a dirty word. “So glad you could make it.”

  Like I’d had any other option. This was just Shay’s way of suggesting that my attendance here was a farce—that I wasn’t really an alpha and didn’t have the right to stand side by side with these men.

/>   “Oh, Shay,” I said, like he was a child, one I had some level of fondness for. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

  A muscle in Shay’s jaw tensed. I could get under his skin just as easily as he could get under mine.

  “You said there was a problem that needed to be addressed, Shay.” Callum’s voice carried, even when he made no attempt whatsoever to make it do so. “Perhaps we should head inside to discuss?”

  Callum’s suggestion was every bit as pointed as my response to Shay’s taunts, a reminder to everyone present that the Snake Bend alpha wasn’t calling the shots, that, officially, all of the alphas were on even footing.

  And that, unofficially, it wasn’t even close.

  “Of course,” Shay said tightly, before turning his attention back to me. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave your protection out here, Bryn.”

  Referring to Devon as my protection was an insult, implying that I couldn’t protect myself.

  If Shay thought it was going to get a rise out of me, he was wrong. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m sure Devon can find some way to entertain himself.”

  Dev didn’t miss a beat. Towering over everyone else there and looking every inch the werewolf warrior, he nodded austerely. “I’ve been considering teaching myself to juggle.”

  Biting back a smile, I took the first step forward toward Shay’s house. Callum followed my lead, and a second later, all of the alphas were breaking off from their backup.

  Alpha. Alpha. Alpha. I felt the call, heard it in the air all around us. These men were dominant. They were strong. And each and every one of them was pushing down the animal instinct to fight the others, the whisper telling them—and me—that there was only ever meant to be one.

  Alpha.

  If the power was this overwhelming outside, it was going to be unbearable with the entire Senate crammed into a single room, but I wasn’t intimidated, wasn’t frightened.

  Something about this moment felt right. Like I belonged here. Like this was what I’d always been meant to do.

  The last thing I saw, as we filed into Shay’s house, was Devon and his mother watching us go, three feet between them, miles apart.

  Game on.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SHAY’S LIVING ROOM WAS OPEN AND LARGE, BUT where Callum’s house was made of stone and wood, Shay’s seemed to be all glass and steel: cold and sleek, with sharp edges everywhere you looked. Instead of arranging the furniture around a central hearth, the room boasted a larger-than-life conference table.

  In a show of restraint, Shay didn’t seat himself at the head of the table. No one did. But from the moment a screen descended from the ceiling, it was clear that this was the Shay Show. If the performance outside had been aimed at making me feel like I didn’t belong here, this room had been constructed to make the other alphas feel like artifacts of a different time—and to remind them that in the modern world, exposure wasn’t a minor threat. It couldn’t be quarantined or contained.

  “These images have already made their way to the internet.”

  Shay clicked through a series of crime scene photos, each more ghastly than the last.

  “Luckily, both local authorities and the person responsible for leaking these pictures seem to believe this is an isolated incident.”

  Shay paused, and in the space between his words, I could hear the beating of my own heart. The sound of it—and the picture on the screen, blood spread across white walls, like someone had been finger painting with it—made me dizzy, almost nauseous.

  “Local authorities are wrong.”

  This time, when Shay clicked over to the next slide, the images weren’t crime scene photos, but they were just as bloody. Just as gruesome.

  “These were taken last week, just outside of the southernmost portion of Snake Bend territory and just north of the Arkansas state line.”

  Years of geography lessons—the kind regular girls never had to take—came pouring back into my mind. The Snake Bend territory reached from North Dakota over to Minnesota, and then down through Iowa and most of Missouri. The Delta Hills Pack had most of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama—but there was an area between the southern tip of Snake Bend and the northern border of Delta Hills that didn’t officially belong to either pack.

  No-Man’s-Land.

  There were strips of land throughout the continent that fell to the same classification, places where geographical barriers and state lines didn’t line up, or where history might have divided up territories in a way at odds with the present.

  No-Man’s-Land was the only option for wolves who didn’t want to be associated with any pack—and sooner or later, most lone werewolves broke under the pressure of life alone and went Rabid.

  “We’re lucky that as of yet, Missouri and Wyoming officials are not talking to each other.”

  Was it my imagination, or did Shay’s gaze rest on me a second too long when he said Wyoming? That was where Cedar Ridge territory met up with Stone River. And in between the two, there was another slice of No-Man’s-Land.

  One I knew all too well.

  “You’re sure this is the work of a rabid Were?” the Ash Mountain alpha asked. “The Wyoming attack could have been a human, albeit a disturbed one. And Missouri—looking at the body, there’s no way to know that wasn’t an animal.”

  I couldn’t help staring at the photos, looking for differences. The victims were both decimated past all recognition. They had no faces, no extremities, no visible sign of having ever been a person with a name and a family and a future.

  These people were dissected and torn to pieces and devoured, and while an animal might have managed it in the backwoods of southern Missouri, the Wyoming crime scene was indoors. Someone had opened the door to the house, and—it appeared—closed it after they left, but there were clear teeth marks in some of the wounds.

  The jugular had been ripped out. The walls had been sprayed with blood, and then hands—human hands—had played in it.

  This wasn’t just a werewolf who had lost control. This was a monster who enjoyed the control he had over his victim, and whether or not the same person was responsible for the Missouri attack, there was a very good chance that whoever had killed the Wyoming victim was a Were.

  Anger bubbled up inside of me, overriding my earlier nausea. Wyoming was near the edge of my territory. This was a threat to my peripherals, my pack, and that someone had chosen to do this so close to the place where the last Rabid had set up camp with his own victims—the kids who now looked to me for protection as members of the Cedar Ridge Pack—felt like a slap in the face.

  Or possibly a warning.

  “I don’t see how this is a Senate matter.” The alpha from Luna Mesa had an almost musical voice and a calm about him that made me wonder exactly how old he was. “Two attacks is not a pandemic. Let the local alphas investigate and deal with the situation. I’d venture to guess that neither you nor Callum needs our interference, Shay.”

  The words reminded me of something I’d known, but forgotten: the Senate wasn’t called every time there was a Rabid. The reason Callum had called it the last time was because the man had been hunting across the country, in and out of different territories, for years. Plus he’d done something the others had thought next to impossible: created new Weres.

  But one murder in Wyoming and one in Missouri? As graphic as they were, as horrific, the Luna Mesa alpha was right. That shouldn’t have been a Senate affair. For a few moments, I thought that perhaps Shay was just trying to undermine Callum—and me. It even occurred to me that he might have sent someone to play Rabid in between our lands, but that didn’t explain why he was claiming that a similar attack had happened near his territory, or what he was hoping to gain by going public with this information now.

  Nothing could have prepared me for what Shay said next.

  “Believe me, Arturo. This is a Senate affair.” Shay took a seat, like the fight had drained out of him, but I knew better. The loo
k in his eyes told me he was about to deliver a lethal blow—though to who or what, I wasn’t sure.

  Beside me, Callum looked straight ahead, staring at a fixed point in the distance. His facial expression never changed, but my stomach plummeted, and my heartbeat became audible once more.

  Shay looked at me, only at me. “I have reason to believe that this Rabid is going to strike again. And I have reason to believe that she’s female.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE SILENCE FOLLOWING SHAY’S PROCLAMATION WAS deafening. The undercurrent of power in the room surged, unmistakable and violent. Muscles tensed. Pupils pulsed. The air, thick with unspoken emotion, was hot in my lungs. I felt like I might suffocate on the unbearable intensity of it all, and even though I’d known objectively that I was in a room full of people who weren’t human and didn’t live by human laws, the beasts inside them were much closer to the surface now.

  Close enough that if even one of them Shifted, I could easily find myself in a room full of wolves.

  “A female Rabid?” The alpha from Shadow Bluff—a man I knew only by reputation, one that said he had a habit of going through human wives like Kleenex—recovered first. “There’s no such thing.”

  Just like there wasn’t such a thing as a female alpha. Just like there was no such thing as a werewolf who was born human, but Changed.

  “You can’t honestly expect us to believe that a female is responsible for this.” That was from the Ash Mountain alpha—William. I didn’t know whether to be insulted or flattered that he didn’t think my sex was even remotely capable of committing this kind of violence.

  “I think females are capable of many things.” Shay let his eyes linger on my face, my body for a second too long. “Does anyone in this room doubt that my mother could kill? That she has killed?”