Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology (20 page)

I needed him to hold it together. I needed, I realized, for him to be safe, no matter what happened to me.

You can’t fight them
, I said.
No matter what they do to me, you can’t fight them
.

He whirled around to face me, zero space in between us. “Can’t I?”

“No.”

No
.

The two of us fought our own little dominance battle—Chase and his wolf on one side, me on the other, the bond between us heating up and bringing us closer in conflict than we’d been up to now.

I didn’t stop to think about what I was doing. I just stared him down. If I’d had a moment to think on it, I probably would have realized that challenging a Were was a bad idea, even if you wore his skin nearly as tightly as your own. The last time I’d seen Chase, Callum and the Rabid had been battling it out for control of Chase’s mind. Now he was mine, and I’d been Pack long enough—
Callum’s
long enough—to know that in my family, we protected what was ours.

“You have to promise me.” Silently, I set my will against his, intent on having my way on this one thing. This last thing. Out loud, though, I pleaded. And finally, either because of the desperation in my voice or the unmoving, uncompromising steel baring down upon him from my side of the bond, he nodded.

It cost him everything to make the promise, and his pain hit me like a physical blow. I wanted to curl up next to him, to be
closer to him, to make the pain go away. He wrapped his arms around me.

“This just figures,” Casey muttered. “Never had a boyfriend, never wanted one, forgets to even brush her hair unless Ali reminds her, and now, this. There’s just no in-between with you, is there?”

I was minutes away from being on the receiving end of terrifying and unquestionably physical retribution. Was now
really
the time for Casey to be complaining about my dating habits, or lack thereof?

But at the same time, he was right. There wasn’t an in-between for me. I lived at extremes. And maybe I’d die at them, too.

Right. Now.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

I was stupid, and I’d been betrayed, and I wasn’t at all sure which one was worse. I felt Callum come into the room behind me, and as he crossed it, I turned, averting my eyes to keep from looking straight at him. A second later I realized that I needn’t have bothered. It wasn’t like he was looking at me. His movements were stiff, his face unreadable. For what I could only assume was the first time in a thousand years, he looked old.

Callum said nothing to me. He just nodded at Sora, and she walked over and told Chase to move away from me.

He didn’t want to.

He wanted to stay.

To protect.

But he’d promised, and so he let go of me and I of him. “He’s safe?” I asked Sora, knowing deep down that Callum wouldn’t respond.

“Safer than you are,” Sora replied. “His disobedience was mild.”

Chase hadn’t reneged on a pact with our entire community. I had. Message received.

“What’s going to happen to me?” I didn’t want to be asking those words, but there they were.

Sora didn’t answer. She just dragged me from the house, out onto Callum’s front lawn. Callum followed, but didn’t step past the threshold of his door.

“Permissions were granted and conditions were set,” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Those conditions weren’t met. Justice demands blood.”

This from Callum. The closest thing to family I had, next to Ali. The man whose Mark I bore—and would always bear—on my flesh. The man who’d lied to me for years and years. The person who for the longest time I’d looked up to most in this world.

“However,” Callum said, and that provoked a hum of grumbles that settled when the alpha demanded silence. “However, the girl is human. Her body would not recover from that which she has rightly earned, and our justice—if it is to
be justice—cannot be blind. Sora will serve in my stead. She will extract our pound of flesh.”

I really, really hoped he was talking about a metaphorical pound. Ice-cold terror filled my veins, and from head to toe, I froze.

“But Sora will do so in human form, and only until the girl’s body gives out.”

Gives out?

Gives out how?

“And how will Sora know when it’s enough?” Ironically enough, that question—which was on the tip of my tongue, too—came from Marcus, his lips twisted into a colorless sneer. “Who is she to judge? The pack
will
be satisfied. This cannot be a slap on the wrist.” He paused and then added, “Alpha,” with what sounded like respect—probably to stave off a lesson in what challenging the alpha really meant.

“Sora will know,” Callum said, and that was all the warning I got. One moment, things were still being debated in the abstract, and the next, a circle had formed around me and Sora—
Devon’s mother, pack, protector
—had thrown me to the ground. I scrambled to my feet, but the next second, she came flying at me, a kick delivered to my chest. I flew backward, and there was a popping in my ears. It took me a second to recognize the sound as the cracking of my ribs.

I was lucky she hadn’t broken them in half. But somehow, I didn’t feel lucky. Again, I made my way to my feet, and again,
she was upon me. Instinct said to draw my knives, but even I had more sense than that. This was as much of a reprieve as Callum could give me. If I touched silver, I’d lose it.

I’d die.

And I owed Chase more than that. I heard him howling, as if from a great distance, and I knew that he’d lost the battle for control, that he’d Shifted and that it was the wolf and not the boy who was bound now by the promise he’d made me not to interfere.

I lost my tenuous grip on that fleeting thought when Sora backhanded me, strong enough to send me down again. She rained blows down upon me, and I could feel my eyes blackening, my lips swelling, my body hopeless under the barrage.

All of Callum’s training, and this was what I was reduced to. I couldn’t fight, couldn’t resist, couldn’t do anything but let her beat me.

Survive
.

The word was a whisper at the back of my throat, a ghost in my mind, maybe even an echo on the wind. I’d given into it before. I’d absorbed it, acted on it.

Survive
.

I don’t know how to survive this
, I thought. This was me losing my family. My friends. Every illusion of safety I’d ever had. Every promise I’d ever made myself that nobody would make me a victim again.

Survive
.

Sora moved to drive a deceptively dainty foot into my side again, but she must have misjudged my position, because she lost her footing and stalled, her elegant, angular face completely blank of emotion and strain. Before she could regain her balance and momentum, I scrambled backward and forced myself to my feet.

My face was wet, warm, and sticky, and I could taste the blood in my mouth. But even then, I knew that I could take much, much more. That this could go on. And on. And on.

When would the pack be satisfied?

How would Sora know when to stop?

Trapped. Fight. Blood. Run
.

I could feel the need building inside of me. Could feel the fury threatening to overwhelm my mind, take over my senses.

No
.

If I fought back, it would only be worse. I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t run. But I had to. My heart was pumping. My ribs were throbbing. There were no sinks to hide under, no strangers to save me.

Fight
.

I stood ramrod still. I didn’t move. I didn’t run. I just stood there, hurting, fighting off the haze and the need to taste blood myself.

The need to get out of there alive.

Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

I was. I was desperately afraid, and this time, the Big Bad
Wolf wasn’t Rabid. It was Sora. Her fist connected with my jaw. My head snapped back.

Danger. Fight. Blood. SURV—

No!
The word exploded in my brain, and with it came paralysis. It washed over my body, taking first my legs and then my torso, my arms, even my lips, until I couldn’t manage a single cry when Sora’s fist crashed into my face again.

I wouldn’t fight this.

I couldn’t.

My field of vision exploded, first into red, then into black, and then into nothing. Blessed nothing, and numbness, and as black faded to star-tinged gray, I crumpled to the ground.

Unconscious.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

F
LOATING IN
D
EAD
M
AN
’
S
C
REEK
, I
STARED UP AT
the night sky. The dark expanse and the bright stars took turns dominating my visual field, but the oscillation between inky blackness and white-hot light didn’t hurt my eyes, just like the water under and around me didn’t chill my skin
.

I didn’t even feel wet
.

It was quiet, and I was alone. Until I wasn’t
.

He wasn’t there with me physically, but I could feel him, next to me and inside of me, and in the distance, I imagined that I heard his wolf howling. For me
.

I closed my eyes, letting the sound rush over me, bringing with it chills and warmth and the unerring desire to howl back. Gone was the night sky, gone was the creek, and when I opened my eyes again, it took me a moment to realize that they weren’t my eyes
.

They were his
.

Ours
.

My vision was sharper now, and the tiny details of the world—each blade of grass, each hair on each head—were so vibrant that I couldn’t see the bigger picture. And then I heard him
.

Heard me
.

Heard us
.

Howling. Screaming. Fear-anger-desperation-NO
.

Saw the girl lying on the ground, and then realized that it was me. Blood pooled at her—my—mouth, and the scent was tantalizing. Terrifying
.

We needed to go to her. Our vision began to go, overwhelmed by something More
.

Rough hands grabbed our wolf body and hauled us backward, and even though we’d promised not to, we fought—not to injure the one who held us but to escape their grasp, to run to the girl, to curl our body around hers and will her to be well
.

A whimper escaped our throat. We needed to fight but had promised not to
.

“Chase.” Callum’s voice. Alpha voice. But it didn’t have the same effect it used to
.

Bryn.

“Shift back. Shift back, and you can go to her.”

The words somehow permeated our head, and for a moment, Chase and his wolf seemed to consider them, but the fury and fear radiating through their body was too feral to be contained by human skin
.

They wanted to kill
.

No
, I thought, and my voice sounded loud in my ears, loud in his. In ours
.

Bryn?
His voice was hesitant, his wolf whining
.

I’m here,
I said
. With you. I’m fine.

The body on the ground seemed to argue against that point, but my presence soothed Chase. As he calmed, his beast stilled, and for a split second, the three of us were in perfect harmony. His mind should have felt crowded with all of us there, but it didn’t
.

“Change,” Callum ordered again
.

The wolf in Chase was opposed to this idea, and I
wanted
to agree with him, to run away and enjoy being part of Them, not stuck in a human form that would never fit quite as well as this fur. But Chase refused to run, refused to turn tail on this fight, or to leave me—or even my body—behind
.

Am I dead?
I asked
.

The question sent a growl into Chase’s throat, and I was struck by the way it felt, by the way everything felt in this body that was Wolf
.

“She’s not dead,” Callum said, and Chase and I both paused, wondering if he’d read our mind. “Smell her. She’s just unconscious. Shift back, and you can go to her.”

Smelling. Pine needles and cinnamon. Bryn
.

Good. I was alive. Maybe I was dreaming. Maybe this was my dream
.

The pain of white-hot metal cutting through bone shook me from my musings, and a horrible crunching sound, like gravel under work boots, echoed through my—our—his—flesh
.

And that was when I realized that Chase was Changing back
.

In human form, he crouched down to the ground in a motion more befitting the animal than the man
.

Smelling. Seeing. Needing
.

Bryn.

Why don’t you put some clothes on first?
I suggested mildly. Now that we were human again, I found myself more clearly able to think. And also, a little uncomfortable with the fact that I was inside the mind of a naked boy who wasn’t human enough to realize that he was naked
.