Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  There wasn’t an individual in the Senate who hadn’t taken a life—myself included. Sora had been around for centuries—at least—and she was one of the most dominant wolves in the Stone River Pack.

  There probably wasn’t much she wasn’t capable of.

  “You’re not suggesting that your mother is responsible for this.” The Luna Mesa alpha—the one who’d challenged Shay to prove that this Rabid was Senate business at all—was incredulous. Of all of them, he seemed the least taken in by Shay’s performance, the most skeptical.

  “My mother,” Shay said, glancing meaningfully at Callum, “is otherwise occupied. But this Rabid is female, and I think you’ll all agree that complicates things.”

  That was putting it mildly. The standard operating procedure with Rabids—with the exception of the one who’d managed to bargain with the Senate—was immediate execution, brutal and absolute. But there wasn’t a man in this room who would willingly kill a female werewolf. There were too few of them. Even with the addition of the six females in my pack who had been born human, there were fewer than two dozen female Weres in the country.

  I wasn’t sure Shay’s pack had even one.

  “What evidence do you have that our killer is female?” Callum asked. If he’d seen this turn of events coming, he gave no visible indication of it, but there was no surprise in his features, either.

  Shay leaned forward and delivered the answer to Callum’s question. “The police in Wyoming have a witness that puts a female between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one at the crime scene. No one knows where she came from or where she went, but there’s an indication that she may have been living in the woods.”

  A female werewolf. Living by herself. In the unclaimed land between Callum’s territory and my own.

  No.

  I didn’t want to give purchase to the thought. I didn’t want to consider that it might be possible. It wasn’t possible.

  “I trust that no one here is missing a female?”

  At Shay’s question, every single person in the room turned to look at me. More than a third of the female werewolves in the country were members of my pack, and if anyone else had been in possession of a female Were in that age range, they almost certainly would have kept her close to home.

  “I’m not missing any wolves,” I said firmly. I wasn’t. My pack only had twenty members, and each one was accounted for.

  But Maddy …

  Maddy wasn’t.

  “You have two peripheral females.” Shay played those words like a trump card. All eyes were on me, and this time, I didn’t just feel the power—I felt the animosity. The violent, animal rage that I had something they wanted. The suspicion that I might not be protecting that most valuable of resources.

  The Ash Meadow alpha, the alpha from Flint Creek, Shay—none of them would have let a female live on the edges of their territories. None of them would have given her that kind of freedom. Even Callum had probably only let Lake live in Montana when she was a part of his pack because her father lived there, too.

  “The Cedar Ridge Pack has two peripheral females,” I said, my voice steely and utterly unapologetic. “And I know exactly where they are. At all times. Always.”

  Not because they were female. Because they were Pack.

  “Phoebe and Sage haven’t been anywhere near Wyoming,” I said, allowing the others to smell the truth in my words. What I didn’t say was that Maddy could have been there, and I wouldn’t have known it. She’d broken off from the pack, and I’d willingly withdrawn my mind from hers. I had no idea where she was, or what she was doing, or if she was even okay. She certainly hadn’t been okay when she’d left. She’d been heartbroken and bowled over by grief and angry—at me, at Lucas, at herself.

  And I’d let her go.

  I couldn’t let myself think about that, couldn’t risk a tell working its way onto my face. Unless Shay specifically mentioned Maddy, I could answer his questions in a way that would smell true to the other alphas, without giving a hint to the fact that I knew more than I was letting on.

  I just had to bank on the likelihood that none of the others, Callum included, would ask if I’d withdrawn my claim to one of the females in my pack. I had to hope that none of the men in this room would consider that possibility, because they never would have entertained the idea themselves.

  Most alphas didn’t even like losing males. The larger a pack, the stronger the alpha, and werewolves weren’t naturally inclined to make themselves weak.

  “If you deny that one of your wolves is responsible,” Shay told me, lingering on the word if, “then we have to consider the possibility that Samuel Wilson may have Changed at least one additional female of whom we had no knowledge up to this point.”

  Samuel Wilson. I’d never even heard his first name before. In my mind, he’d always been “the Rabid,” the monster who had killed my parents and haunted my dreams. But now, we were dealing with another Rabid, and the monster from my nightmares had a name.

  “You think Wilson made another female Were?” the Flint Creek alpha asked, his eyes alight with hunger.

  “So it would seem,” Shay replied.

  I wanted to latch on to the possibility—wanted to ignore the reality that Maddy was missing, and a female had turned up in the middle of a murder investigation in a place she might well have gone. But I knew my pack. I’d been in their heads, and they’d lived with good old Samuel Wilson for years. He’d been power hungry, abusive, psychotic. He wouldn’t have let a female wander away from the fold any more than Shay would have.

  That meant that if there really was a female Rabid, in all likelihood, it wasn’t some unknown girl, who’d never had a pack. It was—

  No.

  I wasn’t going there. Not here. Not now.

  “And if there is a new Were out there on her own?” Callum met Shay’s eyes, and though there was nothing aggressive in the motion, I could see Shay actively fighting the urge to turn away.

  “If there’s another female,” Shay said, his voice a whisper that cut through the air like a snake through the bushes, “a lone female, then there’s a question of what’s to be done about it.”

  The Ash Mountain alpha was the first to catch on. “It goes without saying that we can’t kill her, Rabid or not. But if she’s out there, without a pack, it’s our duty to offer her protection and guidance.”

  I didn’t know which was more sickening—the way he said the words, or the expression on his face.

  “If there is a female Rabid in Wyoming, she’s between Callum’s territory and Bryn’s.” The Luna Mesa alpha was the first one to actually say my name at this little meeting, the first one to openly acknowledge that I had territory, that I was one of them.

  “Are you suggesting that we give this girl to Callum or Bryn?” Shay’s counter caused a rumble of discontent to pass through the room—audible and animalistic.

  Threat.

  It was there, in the air, and there was no mistaking the fact that it was aimed at me.

  “Shay’s right.”

  Those two words should never have exited Callum’s mouth. Under any circumstances. Ever. Silence fell on the room once more, and the sinister edge in the air receded, like a wave being pulled by the undertow back to sea.

  “There’s no reason that either Bryn or I should have special privilege here. If there’s a female, and if she’s unclaimed, Senate Law says that whoever gets to her first is free to claim her.” Callum leaned back in his seat, in a motion that looked almost human, but not quite. “Of course, Senate Law also says that neither Bryn nor I has to grant you access to our territories, and I’m sure you’ll understand, given the circumstances, if I’m reluctant to do so.”

  Callum wasn’t claiming special privilege. He wasn’t forcing his will on the rest of the Senate—but if this Rabid really was in Wyoming, even in No-Man’s-Land, there were only a few ways to get there.

  You could go through my territory.

  You could go throug
h Callum’s.

  Or you could go through a sliver of particularly rough terrain that belonged to Shadow Bluff.

  “We don’t know if she’s still in Wyoming,” Shay said, and I thought about the case in Missouri—the one that may have been the work of the same Rabid.

  If it was Maddy, what was she doing that close to Snake Bend territory? How had she gotten there, without passing through a hostile alpha’s land?

  Stop it, I told myself, hating that I could even think a thing like that. Angry or not, grief stricken or not, alone or not—Maddy couldn’t hurt another person.

  She wouldn’t kill someone.

  Would she?

  “It’s entirely possible that the Rabid we’re looking for is no longer in Wyoming,” Callum said, “just like it’s entirely possible that this whole thing is some kind of mistake, but I’m fairly certain, Shay, that if you thought there were a lone female anywhere near Snake Bend territory, this meeting would never have been called.”

  As subtle as the accusation was, it worked, and the rest of the alphas fixed their weighty stares on Shay. The Snake Bend alpha hadn’t called this meeting out of the goodness of his heart. He knew that this girl—if there really was a girl—wasn’t within his reach, and he was hoping to change that, hoping to mobilize the Senate in a way that might give him access to this femme fatale.

  “If this Rabid continues killing, if there’s a threat of exposure …” Shay let his words hang in the air.

  “This could become a Senate concern,” the Flint Creek alpha finished.

  If the risk of exposure was imminent, if the Senate felt that the local alpha or alphas weren’t sufficiently dealing with the threat a Rabid posed, if this girl killed again and the authorities connected another murder to either of the first two …

  Callum met my eyes across the table, and a wealth of understanding passed from his mind to mine. He would forbid the rest of the Senate entry to his land as an alpha, but if Shay could make a case that this girl was a real exposure risk, if the Senate voted to intervene, Callum would either have to cede to the vote or fight them all.

  A year and a half ago, I would have wondered why he bothered with democracy when he could have taken control of it all by force, but now I knew. Without the Senate, Callum would have had to kill Shay. And William. And anyone else dominant enough that they would refuse to submit.

  Sooner or later, Callum would have had to kill every man in this room. And if I wasn’t careful, he might have to kill me, too.

  “If this girl becomes a real problem,” Shay said, eyes glittering with a desire I didn’t want to understand, “I’d like to bring a motion that the Senate intervene.”

  They were voting on a future that I hoped would never come to pass—but it was one that most of the men in this room would welcome. Forget the risk of exposure. They wanted a loophole, a legal reason to demand equal access to the person responsible for the corpses on the screen.

  She’s not a person to them, I thought. She’s not even a monster.

  This Rabid was a prize.

  “The Flint Creek alpha votes in favor of this proposal.”

  “The Ash Mountain alpha votes in favor of this proposal.”

  “The Delta Hills alpha votes in favor of this proposal.”

  Callum and I voted against it, as did the Shadow Bluff alpha, who must have thought he stood a better chance at getting to the female through his land than he would if he—and every other alpha on the Senate—had leave to pass through ours. But as the rest of the votes came in, my stomach sank.

  “The Snake Bend alpha votes in favor of this proposal.” Shay was the last to vote. He smiled, a cat-eating-canary expression on his otherwise wolfish face. “Correct me if I’m wrong, gentlemen, but the proposal appears to have passed.”

  Even if I hadn’t been concerned with what Shay and the other alphas might do if they caught the girl in question—not Maddy, not Maddy, it couldn’t be Maddy—I couldn’t run the risk of what might happen if they were given carte blanche to cut through my territory. Even if the other alphas stuck to the edges of my land and gave the Wayfarer a wide berth, I didn’t trust the men in this room with the people closest to me.

  With the kids in my pack. With the girls.

  I locked eyes with Callum. If he’d seen this coming and hadn’t told me, we were going to be having words. But either way, the two of us were aligned on one point: we needed to find this female before she became a real exposure risk.

  Before the other alphas could invoke the vote that had just passed.

  Before this Rabid— not Maddy, not Maddy, please, God, don’t let it be Maddy—killed. Again.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “WE HAVE NO WAY OF KNOWING IT’S MADDY.”

  Devon had been waiting to say those words since the moment I’d clued him in to Shay’s big revelation, but he’d held off on even thinking them in my direction until we’d left the WELCOME TO NORTH DAKOTA! sign in our dust.

  According to Senate Law, the rest of us could have remained in Shay’s territory for another day, but I wasn’t the only one who’d wanted to get out of there, fast. The Shadow Bluff alpha had left the second the meeting had ended. Several others followed on his heels—probably to make arrangements for my worst-case scenario and their best. Callum had lingered long enough to exchange words with the Luna Mesa alpha, but I hadn’t been able to make out what they were saying or why it was important enough to delay what the two of us needed to be doing now.

  Finding Maddy. Or Not-Maddy. Or whoever this female was.

  It’s not Maddy, Devon had told me, over and over again, once we’d crossed state lines. You know her, Bryn, and I know her.

  No matter how many times Devon said the words to me silently, I needed to hear him say it out loud. So when Callum stopped for gas, the two of us made our excuses and slipped out of earshot.

  “We have no way of knowing it’s Maddy.” I repeated Devon’s words, willing myself to believe them and unable to keep from saying the words that came out my mouth next. “But we have no way of knowing it’s not.”

  The first time I’d ever seen Maddy, she was wearing a little-girl dress and speaking in a monotone. Her name was Madison, and she’d been the monster’s favorite: his favorite punching bag, his favorite creation, his favorite little girl.

  She was my age, and she’d already been through hell.

  Of all the kids that Samuel Wilson had Changed, Maddy was the first one to throw off the mental bonds he’d used to control them. She was the first one to believe me when I told her that being Resilient meant that you could make your own choices about who to follow and who not to.

  She was the one who’d chosen me. And after I’d killed Lucas, she’d chosen to leave.

  If you force me to stay, she said, from somewhere in my memory, I’ll hate you.

  I tried not to think of the pain she’d been in, tried not to think about the way she’d looked at Lucas and seen herself. Werewolves had a tendency to fall quickly, and Maddy had identified with Lucas, with the things he’d survived as a member of Shay’s pack.

  She’d loved him.

  “Maddy’s strong.” Devon’s voice broke into my thoughts. “She’s a survivor, Bryn, and she would kill herself before hurting another human being.”

  I believed that, too. I did. But there was a problem with Devon’s logic—Maddy wasn’t a human being. She was a werewolf. A lone werewolf, broken down and beaten and alone.

  Sooner or later, most lone wolves go Rabid. I kept a tight hold on the thought and didn’t let it travel from my mind to Devon’s.

  When Maddy had left, I’d worried that another alpha might find her and try to claim her, but I hadn’t thought about what it would be like for her, without the pack. I’d only thought of how horrible it was for us without her. She was a phantom limb, a missing piece, a yearning.…

  And she would have felt that—all of that tenfold.

  “You two coming?” Sora called out, and I met Devon’s eyes. If w
e could hear his mother, she could hear us. Good thing we’d been standing there for minutes in silence.

  “Explain to me again why you granted that woman permission to step foot on Cedar Ridge land.” Dev didn’t raise his voice, but he didn’t bother to lower it, either, and with werewolf hearing, there was no question that Sora would have heard it.

  “Because Callum is our ride, and he asked.”

  Devon rolled his eyes. “Oh, really?” he said. “Callum asked?”

  Actually, Callum had said it “might be a good idea” if Sora came with us. Personally, I’d thought it “might be a horrific idea,” but then I’d noticed the way the other alphas and their seconds were looking at her and the way she was looking at them, and for the first time, I thought of what it must have been like to be Sora: the only woman among all these men, for years.

  Then I said yes.

  “Not only did Callum ask,” I told Devon, “he said, ‘pretty please.’ ”

  Devon—and his nose—were unimpressed with that statement. “Liar.”

  “He said, ‘pretty please with a cherry on top,’ ” I continued. “And now that I said yes, we’re BFFs. He’s going to make me a friendship bracelet and everything.”

  Devon tweaked the end of my ponytail. “You are a horrible liar.”

  Maybe—but I was very good at distracting people, including Devon, who didn’t need to be ruminating on his relationship with Sora when we were all going to be stuck in the car together for another hour. Unfortunately, I wasn’t nearly as good at distracting myself as I was at distracting other people. As Devon and I made our way back to the car, my mind went again to the dark place, to the thoughts I couldn’t bear. If Jed had been there, he would have told me to let them in, so I did.

  Human bodies, torn limb from limb.

  Blood smeared against white walls.

  Maddy.

  Minutes went by, miles of travel, while I sat there, lost to images and possibilities and guilt.

  “Did you know?” I said finally. My voice was quiet, but I was certain werewolf hearing would pick up on the words just fine, and confident that Callum would understand that the question was for him. “You said there was a Rabid. You never said she was female.”