Raised by Wolves (30 page)

When I had to, I could think like a human.

I didn’t need to see my parents’ murderer torn limb from limb. All I needed was to put a silver bullet through his forehead and a matching set in his heart and lungs.

I was so caught up in weaving in and out of the situation’s logic that I almost didn’t recognize the feel of the world turning upside down, my stomach flipping inside out, every hair on my body standing slightly on end, like I’d found myself in the center of an electrical storm.

“Chase.” The moment Chase opened the door to our motel room, I said his name, because from the second I saw him, it was the only sound my mouth agreed to produce.

“Bryn.” His voice was deep and thicker than I remembered. He seemed to have recovered, as much as anyone could, from what the Rabid had done to him before.

I was wrong, I thought, as I crossed the room to kill the space between us, needing to assure myself that, yes, he really was okay—that, no, my brilliant plan hadn’t broken him past the point of repair. Seeing him was nothing like the downward swing of a roller coaster. It felt like having my soul pulled out of my nose.

It hurt.

His arms wrapped around me, and I turned my head to the side and pressed my face into one of them, assuring myself that he was solid and real. That the Rabid hadn’t destroyed him. That I hadn’t failed him in a way that he never would have failed me.

“Oh, I see how it is. Baby finds her Johnny Castle, and all of a sudden, she forgets about the small matter of her BFF?”

There was only one person in the world who could deliver that line with a straight face. Until I’d heard his voice, I hadn’t realized just how much I’d missed it.

“Devon!”

Chase stiffened as Dev’s name left my lips, and Devon beamed at me, doing a good impression of someone who hadn’t been bristling a moment before, when I’d buried myself in Chase’s arms.

“In the flesh,” Devon said. “When you call, Miss Bronwyn, I answer. Always.” It was a testament to the gravity of the moment that he didn’t treat everyone present to an impromptu performance of “Ain’t No Mountain.” Lest Devon decide the situation did call for some tunes, I pushed on.

“You probably shouldn’t have come,” I told him. When I’d told Chase to go to Devon for help, I hadn’t thought through the full extent of what it would mean. Two male Weres, both of whom had some claim to a single girl, in one car for hours on end. If Chase had been born a werewolf, or if Devon and I had ever been more than friends, they probably wouldn’t have both made it to Wyoming in one piece. And even if the four of us did survive the next few hours and the Rabid in the woods, Devon would still have to deal with the fact that he’d left Ark Valley without permission to come assist me in blowing a Senate mandate to smithereens.

“Do you have any idea what Callum’s going to do to you when he finds out you came here?” I asked Devon, cursing myself for involving him in this and for not being able to think far enough ahead to realize what it would mean.

Devon’s eyes flashed at my question, like he knew what I was thinking and resented the very idea of being left behind.

Again. “Yes, Bryn, I think I have a pretty good idea of what Callum might do to someone who disobeys the pack.”

So much passed between the two of us unspoken then. The fact that he’d probably seen the aftermath of my own punishment, while I’d been unconscious. The fact that his mother had been the one to dispense the so-called justice.

The way Devon had been furious at me for putting myself in danger by going to see Chase in the first place. The fact that long before I’d been Chase’s, I’d been Dev’s.

Which led me right back to the problem at hand. “You’re Pack, Dev. You’re not a peripheral, you’re not otherwise connected—you’re one of Callum’s wolves. Callum could kill us for this, but it’ll be worse for you.”

Callum’s pack could do more than kill Devon. He was so deeply connected to them that if Callum decreed it, they could use the bond to twist him. They could rip out his mind with their anger. They could make him want to die.

For a moment, Devon said nothing, and then, he ran one hand over his gelled hair and pulled his perfectly groomed eyebrows down into a scowl. “The first time I saw you, you were covered in blood. I heard Callum tell my dad that it must have been from your mother, because by the time the Rabid got to your father, you’d retreated under the sink.

You were red and shaking and it was the first time in my entire life that I felt the kind of fear from a human being that an animal sends out just before they die.” Devon looked at me. “And then, you looked at me, and even though I was only five years old, I knew that what had been done to you was the worst thing I would ever see. I knew that I would never, ever let someone do that to you again.”

Because this was my fight, this was his fight. I didn’t have a right to deny him that. Not when I’d left for Montana without a word. Not when I’d broken every promise I’d ever made him to take care of myself.

My throat tightened. Chase put a hand on my shoulder. Devon didn’t react to the gesture, reminding me that when the situation called for it, he was (a) a first-rate actor and (b) capable of showing restraint. I’d brought Devon here, just like I’d brought Lake, when without me, they would have been fine. They would have been safe.

Fifteen different images hit my mind at once: Sora and the ugly face of Pack Justice; Ali locking up Chase so Callum wouldn’t have a reason to tear him apart; Lake curled into a ball on my bedroom floor; Mitch telling me that some Weres got funny around females. The madman in the woods.

God, what if he got hold of Lake? What if I couldn’t stop him? What if Callum tore Devon to pieces, just for helping me?

What if Devon’s own mother was the one to deliver the blows?

I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t take knowing that as much as Lake and Devon had done everything in their power to protect me, always, I couldn’t do the same thing for them. Because I was human. Weak. Stupid.

Trapped.

This time, I welcomed the feeling of claustrophobia, remembering that the last time I’d felt it, Chase had cut his bond with the Rabid. The last time I’d let this feeling take control of my own actions, I’d rewired my bond with Chase.

Could you do it again? The question Lake had asked me once was drowned out by the panic, the suffocation—the need—not to survive but to protect.

I brought my hand up to Chase’s, and the bond between us pulsed and throbbed. With no warning, I became acutely aware of each of our connections to Devon and Lake, and theirs to us.

Mine.

Ours.

Mine.

I could feel Chase’s determination, his willingness to follow wherever I led. I felt my love for Devon in shades of silver, and his for me, equally bright and bittersweet. Mine for Lake. Lake’s for Devon.

And Chase’s for me.

I felt it coming, the way some people could smell rain in the air—a low, uncontrollable rush of power—and I knew. Our bonds to Callum’s pack, to Callum, pulled us back away from one another. They pulled us down and kept us there, drowning, leashed. Inside, I roared, and I saw myself taking the bonds in my teeth, my very human teeth, and ripping through them, the way Chase had torn himself away from the Rabid.

Trapped. Escape. Survive.

Protect.

Beside me, Chase growled, and I felt him, felt Us, Chase-Wolf-Bryn. As we threw everything we had at Devon and Lake and took everything they had in return.

Ours, Chase thought, adding his will to mine, because he knew—he knew I loved them. He knew what it was like to be helpless and completely unable to protect those you loved.

Ours, I replied. Something exploded between the four of us: a wave of knowing. A realignment of the earth. And then, for a moment, there was silence.

Lake was the first to recover. “Huh. You know, I really don’t think other people can do that, Bryn. If it was even remotely possible, my dad would’ve found a way to pull some mojo a long time ago.”

Impossibility. These days, it was my strong suit.

“What just happened here?” Devon asked, still sounding dazed.

I cleared my throat. “I … well, Chase and I … we … ummm … we redid your pack-bond,” I said, hoping Dev wouldn’t be mad.

Can you hear me? I asked silently.

Devon nodded. Like my own thoughts. Your voice—it isn’t coming from outside of me, it’s not coming through an external connection. It’s coming from inside my head.

“Rewiring bonds … it’s this thing,” I said out loud, “that Chase and I do.” This thing we did that, when I’d done it last, had brought Callum’s entire pack barreling down on us.

Lake, playing it cool, pushed back the feeling of awe that I could feel from her end of our connection. “There’re four of us. Does that mean we qualify as a pack now? Because if we do, we need to think of a seriously killer name for ourselves.” Devon opened his mouth and Lake cut him off. “No allusions to musicals, Broadway boy.”

“The lady doth offend my ears,” Devon said. “Begone, foul witch!”

Lake snorted. “I’ve missed you, too, Dev.”

I barely registered the interaction between the two of them, because I was stuck on what Lake had said about Chase and I being able to do something that nobody else could do.

On an unconscious level, I’d assumed that what I’d done with my pack-bond, I’d been able to do because I was human and Pack, connected, but different. I’d spent years manipulating my own bond, protecting my mind from Callum’s pack.

And maybe I’d made Chase different, too, or maybe being a turned werewolf instead of a born one had something to do with it. But maybe not. Maybe what it really boiled down to was what I’d known from the moment I first saw him, sprawled in a cage.

Chase and I were the same.

Enough with the philosophizing. Lake’s voice. Inside my head—and somehow, it didn’t sound the way it did when she spoke out loud. It was quiet. Unassuming in tone, if not in words. Not timid, but understated and cautious.

Vulnerable.

Focus, Lake told me, and I could feel her taking a step back from my mind, folding herself inward and concentrating—to the extent that she could—on hiding from me the things that I didn’t normally see.

I nodded and took the reins. “Rabid. Here, in Alpine Creek. There’s a cabin in the woods. We’ll only have one shot.”

Chase pulled me close to him, and I wondered if he’d even realized he’d done it. And then I realized that my hand was on the top of his hipbone, but somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to remove it as I continued speaking to my friends. My pack.

“The last time I messed with someone’s pack-bond, it set off a psychic flare that brought the entire pack straight to us.” I paused, letting my words take hold, my grip on Chase tightening. “If what Chase and I just did has the same effect, we’re working under a time limit here, so let’s move. Lake and I are set for an attack. I have a plan. Boys, it’s hunting season.

Weapon up.”

NOBODY LIKED MY PLAN.

“You want us to split up?” Chase asked, his brow wrinkling in obvious bewilderment.

Lake echoed the sentiment, her voice flat. “Why would we split up? There’s four of us and one of him.” After a brief moment’s pause, she amended her head count to better reflect our real odds. “Three and a half of us, one of him.”

Three and a half, as in three werewolves, one human. I narrowed my eyes. “For your sake, Lake, I’m going to pretend that Devon is the half.”

Dev, unquestionably the strongest person in this room, just shrugged and let me keep my delusions. “It’s because of my petite stature,” he said. All 6′ 4″ of him.

My sensibilities halfway appeased, I turned my attention back to the crux of Lake’s point. “Yes, we have stronger numbers, but we have no idea how old this guy is! Do any of you think for a second that the four of us together could take Callum?”

The fact that Callum was still my point of reference and would probably always be the standard to which all others compared was less than comforting.

“We can take him.” Chase said the words quietly, but an echo of them, silent and whispered from his mind to mine, lingered in my thoughts. “Not Callum. Prancer. The four of us together, I think we could take him.”

I paused for a single moment before thrusting that idea into the guillotine and dropping the blade. “And how many of us would make it out of that kind of confrontation alive?”

I felt their collective hackles go up all around me. For better or worse, this was our pack now. We couldn’t afford to lose each other. I’d die if anything happened to a single one of them.

“Our best chance to get out of this unscathed is to split up. One person goes in and plays sniper. The others rush in once the target is hit.”

I could see the logic worming its way into their thick skulls, and I pressed on. “If we all go, the Rabid will know it’s an attack. There’s no other reason three werewolves would show up unannounced in his woods. If one of us goes in and the others fall back, it won’t be considered as much of a threat.”

Lake ran a hand through her blonde hair, twisting her ponytail around her wrist. “He won’t expect us to be armed to the hilt.”

That was a near certainty. Lake was the only Were I’d ever met with a fondness for weapons. Weres rarely fought in human form, and with any luck, the Rabid wouldn’t be expecting a long-range attack. One werewolf killing another with a series of well-placed bullets would have seemed as absurd to most Weres as the idea of natural wolves settling dominance disputes with pistols at dawn.

“I’ll go,” Chase said quietly. “He won’t consider me a threat at all.”

It cost Chase to say those words, to know that they were true. To the Rabid, Chase would never be a real person, let alone one who deserved to be viewed with any kind of wariness or respect.