Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology (54 page)

As an alpha, I was bound by those words, and in that moment, I didn’t have a single doubt about my ability to follow through on the threat. Maddy could probably take care of herself, but if Lucas wasn’t what he appeared to be, if he attacked her or tried to force his will on hers in any way, Shay would be taking home a body instead of a live wolf.

On the bed, Lucas lowered his head in a sign of submission, and even from a distance, I could see an angry red scar on the back of his neck. Its edges were jagged, like it had been carved into his flesh with a knife, and the shape—a four-pointed star
laid over a half circle—looked too deliberate to have been the product of anything but a steady hand.

How could Shay have done something like that? How could anyone?

Seeing Lucas sitting so close to Maddy made me imagine her in his shoes, and I knew without probing the edges of her mind that she was thinking the same thing, seeing herself—and the things she’d survived at the hands of the Rabid—in this boy.

“Unless you force me to act, I won’t turn you over until I have to.” I addressed Lucas, though he seemed to know that I was saying the words for Maddy’s benefit as much as his. “But right now, I don’t really have a plan, Lucas, so if you’ve got any ideas here, I’m all ears.”

Lucas retreated, pressing himself back and down into the mattress, and I cringed at the motion and the knowledge that I’d just established dominance over a person who had experience with only one kind of alpha.

“He doesn’t know anything.” Maddy lifted her chin and looked just over my left shoulder, a guarded, faraway gaze in her eyes. “They don’t want you to think. They don’t want you to believe it could be different.” She turned her face away from mine, but she didn’t look directly at Lucas, either. “It takes a while.”

I know, Maddy
, I told her silently.
I know
.

Out loud, I directed my words to the boy on the bed. “I’ll
give you as much time as I can, Lucas, but you need to know that I’m not magic. I’m not fearless. I can’t just pull a miracle out of my hat.”

“You’re Bryn.” Lucas lifted his head slightly. “That’s going to be enough.”

After a long moment’s consideration, I left Lucas under Maddy’s watchful eye, confident that, if nothing else, she wouldn’t let him slip off into the night unnoticed, leaving the rest of us to explain to the Senate exactly how I’d gone about losing a wolf that I’d already admitted to having, one who another alpha was within his rights to want back, once I’d dealt with the matter of trespassing in the first place.

Call me if you need me, Maddy
, I told her silently, not even realizing until after I gave the order that to her ears, my mind-voice vibrated with the kind of power most werewolves couldn’t deny.

I’ll call you if I need you, Bryn
, Maddy replied.
I always do
.

She trusted me, relied on me the way I’d once counted on Callum, before he’d taught me that sometimes things—and people—got caught in the crossfire of the greater good.

“Hey, you.” Chase had been expecting me, which was ironic, because even after I’d left Cabin 13 and started walking toward the woods, I hadn’t realized I was looking for him.

“Hey,” I replied, all too aware of the difference between the last time we’d had this conversation and now. There were times when it felt like Chase and I were the only two people in the world, when I was a girl and he was a boy and everything else just faded away.

This was not one of those times.

“I’m not sure there’s a way out of this.” I wouldn’t have been able to admit that to anyone but Chase, the same way he wouldn’t have wanted Devon to know that this year had been his first real Thanksgiving. “I can stall Shay, but eventually, unless I think of something else …”

The rest of that sentence, the very idea of sending Lucas back to Shay, was unthinkable.

What kind of person could do something like that?

What kind of alpha would I be if I refused and my pack got hurt as a result?

“You do what you have to do,” Chase said in a way that told me he’d crossed lines and seen the point of no return firsthand himself. “You can’t save everyone, Bryn. You do what you can, when you can. You try. But sometimes, at the end of the day, you just have to take care of yourself.”

I couldn’t help giving Chase an incredulous look. “Who said anything about taking care of myself?”

I was worried about Maddy, about Lucas, about the precedent I might set if I stepped on the wrong side of certain political lines. I was worried about the pack, about being the
kind of alpha that Callum was, and about
not
being that kind of alpha. The last thing on my mind was
me
.

Chase reached up and brushed a stray hair out of my face, his thumb tracing a gentle line from my cheekbone to my jaw. “I know,” he said, “but you can’t blame a guy for trying.”

The rest of his words flowed straight from his mind into mine.
Your job is watching out for the pack, Bryn. Let my job be watching out for you
.

He held up his palm, waiting for me to accept his offer. After a long moment, I mimicked the motion, pressing my hand against his. A jolt of energy ran up the length of my arm.

“If you want to watch out for me,” I said, as single-minded as a dog with a bone, “then help me find a way out of this that doesn’t involve sending Lucas back to Shay.”

Chase didn’t reply. He stared at me for several seconds, and then he gave in to the wolf inside. He leaned forward, rubbed his cheek against my neck—and turned to walk away.

“Where are you going?” I called after him, wanting to hear the answer from his lips, even though I could have pulled it from his mind.

Chase turned, his features caught in the light of the moon. He didn’t say anything, but suddenly, I knew.

Chase, who rarely spoke to the people in our own pack, was going to talk to Lucas.

To try to come up with a plan, find a way out of this.

For me.

Just before I went to bed that night, I got an email from Shay. He hadn’t CC’ed the other alphas this time, and reading over his message, I could hear the condescension dripping from his honeyed words. Underneath the condescension, I could sense something a thousand times worse.

Satisfaction.

Shay didn’t demand that I return Lucas immediately. He didn’t contradict my claim that I had the right to deal with a trespasser as I saw fit. Instead, he said, very politely, that he would be more than happy to retrieve Lucas as soon as I’d handled the situation to Cedar Ridge’s satisfaction, and then he signed off with a final line.

I feel it only fair to warn you—I’m not the only one with a vested interest in his whereabouts, and the others might not be quite so understanding
.

Others?
I thought, my heart dropping to my stomach.
What others?

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
HAT NIGHT
, I
DIDN
’
T SLEEP
. I
READ
S
HAY
’
S EMAIL A
half dozen times, paced the full length of my room, and read it a half dozen more. No matter how many ways I looked at it, I could only think of two possible interpretations.

Either Shay was lying to me, or Lucas was.

If Shay was lying, he was probably doing it just to get under my skin. Psychological warfare was the closest he could come to an assault, and if his objective had been to keep me up at night, turning the possibilities over and over again in my head, he’d succeeded.

I’m not the only one with a vested interest in his whereabouts …

Who else could possibly care where Shay’s whipping boy was? Since I hadn’t heard from any of the other alphas, all of whom had received my email admitting that Lucas was here, I doubted that any of them were the “others” Shay was referring to, and that left, what? One of the few lone wolves who weren’t associated with any pack? Lucas’s family, who—depending on
whether he’d been born Snake Bend or transferred in—might or might not be a part of Shay’s pack?

A Rabid?

None of the possibilities were good ones, and they all seemed far-fetched. If Lucas had family outside of Shay’s pack, he would have gone to them, not me, looking for salvation, and I couldn’t imagine that he’d done anything to attract the attention of someone who lived in No-Man’s-Land, between one alpha’s territory and the next.

Shay was probably just messing with me. There was nothing to keep a Were from lying in an email. For Lucas to mislead me, in person, with Maddy, Lake, Devon, Chase, or some combination thereof in the room, would have been significantly harder, given the werewolf ability to smell lies.

Then again, I knew the power of telling half-truths better than just about anyone. Lucas hadn’t said that anyone besides Shay was after him, but I hadn’t asked.

At three in the morning, unable to sleep or lie down or even sit still, I decided it was time to remedy that.

Ali was a light sleeper, but her hearing was completely human, and I used my hold over the twins to keep them in a nice, quiet, undisturbed sleep as I snuck out my window. After I’d made my escape, I ran to Cabin 13, eased open the door, and slipped inside before shutting it behind me and moving quickly through the front hall.

“Watching you try to be stealthy is just plain sad.”

Lake didn’t bother whispering, and the sudden sound of her voice took me off guard just enough that I felt a flash of irritation—at her for sneaking up on me and at myself for being so focused on my Lucas mission that I hadn’t heard or felt her coming at all.

“What are you doing here?” I snapped, keeping my voice low.

“Bryn, just about everyone in these parts has hearing like mine. Whispering isn’t going to do you a lick of good.” One second, Lake was sitting, and the next, she was on her feet beside me. I never even saw her stand up. “Luckily for you, my dad sleeps like the dead, and nobody else within range would bat an eye at you taking a midnight stroll that just happens to bring you up close and personal with the only werewolf in the state of Montana who wouldn’t die to keep you safe.”

“Did you follow me here?” I asked.

Lake shrugged. “The word
follow
seems to suggest you got here first.”

I rolled my eyes. “This isn’t a race, Lake.”

“If it was, I would’ve given you a head start. Now, you want to tell me why the alpha of the Cedar Ridge Pack is sneaking out windows and putting herself in a potentially dangerous situation without backup?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to remind Lake that she’d scoffed at the idea of Lucas being a threat, but I bit the retort back. Just because Lake thought
she
could take someone with
three paws tied behind her back didn’t mean that I’d stand a chance against him in a fair fight. The best I could hope for in a fight against a Were—any Were—was catching him off guard enough that I could take to higher ground and wait out the assault. With weapons, I might stand a chance at inflicting some damage, but I hadn’t exactly come here armed.