Trial by Fire (14 page)

Devon was still visible in the distance—well outside the range in which I could have hit him, but not so far gone that she didn’t stand a chance.

“Move,” she whispered. “Run.”

Hearing her words, despite the distance, he turned at a ninety-degree angle and began running in a line perpendicular to the one on which Lake, Caroline, and I stood. His pace and motions were erratic and unpredictable.

He was fast.

Caroline didn’t lose a moment. She didn’t pause to get a feel for the wind. She didn’t narrow her eyes. She just lifted her arm and turned her head to face me, and without even looking at Devon, she fired.

This was a mistake.

I knew that when I saw the look in Caroline’s eyes: certain and satisfied and a little bit sad, like there had never been any question in her mind that she would hit him, and like she wished, on a gut-deep level, that there was.

“You got him.” Lake tried very hard to keep the admiration out of her voice. “Right where it hurts—in the hair gel.”

Dev? I didn’t have the benefit of Lake’s eyesight, and I needed to know for myself that he was okay, that Caroline hadn’t missed her target by a fraction of an inch in the wrong direction.

I’m fine, Bryn. Not quite as pretty as I was a few seconds ago, but fine.

All things considered, he was taking it well, but for some reason, Caroline wasn’t.

I assessed her reaction. “Are you upset that you hit him, or upset that it was only his hair?”

Caroline’s eyes flashed. “I don’t get upset,” she said. “I don’t lose control.”

“That the difference between you and a werewolf?” I asked.

Caroline took a step forward, closing the space between us. “I’m nothing like you.” Even though her tone never changed, the way she spaced her words did, each one issued with the weight of an entire sentence. “Any of you.”

I caught her gaze and held it. “You hunt. Werewolves hunt. There’s a part of you that likes it. You’re a predator. You may not go furry on the full moon, but you’re not any more human than they are.”

“Maybe not.” That wasn’t the response I’d expected. “But if there weren’t people like you, the world wouldn’t need people like me. If I’m a monster, you made me that way.”

“Is this the collective ‘you’ we’re talking about here?” I asked, pushing her that much further, that much harder.

Caroline’s right hand lashed out, but unlike the woman who’d hit Ali the day before, she didn’t strike me. She brought her fingertips to the edge of the glove on her opposite hand, and she tugged.

There was a part of me that expected an explosion of power the second her skin hit the crisp winter air, but there was nothing: no sound, no smell, no foreboding sense of things to come.

And then I saw the scars. They were puckered and white, and they drew my eyes to the skin around them. The skin that was there.

The skin that wasn’t.

“Werewolf attack,” she said. “When I was seven.”

I shook my head. “Unless you’re hiding a lot more scars somewhere, you’re mistaken.”

Werewolves didn’t attack to maim. Under the Senate’s rule, they didn’t attack at all, and when a wolf went Rabid, he didn’t care about anything but the hunt. He certainly didn’t let a seven-year-old girl walk away after taking a single chunk out of her arm.

“I shot him, right between the eyes.”

“Were you shooting silver?” Lake asked quietly.

“No.” Caroline issued the word like it was a challenge. “But it was enough to slow him down. Enough for me to get away.” She pressed her lips together into a thin white line. “Not enough for my father to get away, too.”

Bullet or not, there wasn’t a werewolf on the planet who would let his prey get away with nothing more than a sizable love nip. When werewolves attacked, they attacked to kill—and the only people who didn’t die as a result were the kind who could survive things that normal people couldn’t.

Caroline wasn’t Resilient—I would have known in a heartbeat if she was, the way I’d known from the moment I’d seen Chase that we were the same, the way the Rabid—who’d been Resilient himself—had known exactly which kids could survive being Changed.

We just knew—and Caroline didn’t engender even a spark of that recognition.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Lake asked me.

I glanced away from Caroline, just for a second. “I’m thinking she got away because he let her.”

One second, I was standing and talking, and the next, I was on the ground, and Caroline’s foot was wedged under my chin, holding me down, pushing my head back.

There was a slight chance she was better at hand-to-hand than I’d given her credit for.

With Caroline’s foot bearing down on my trachea, I couldn’t breathe, but I didn’t panic. I didn’t fight her, and I managed to keep Devon and Lake from responding to the action.

“Nobody lets me do anything,” Caroline said, her eyes slits in an otherwise cherubic face. “I do what has to be done, and if that means shooting silver, to make sure that what I put down stays down, then that’s what it means.”

My lungs rebelled inside my chest, and I knew that the second things started going hazy, the familiar blood-red haze of my survival instinct wouldn’t be far behind. In a matter of seconds, Caroline would be the one on the floor, and I would have lost the only advantage that mattered right now: she was talking.

“Werewolves are animals. God made me a hunter. You do the math.” Having had her say, Caroline lifted her foot off my trachea, and I fought down the urge to put her in the dirt, to show her my mettle.

“Do we look like animals to you?” Devon asked, coming up behind me. With a sizable chunk of his hair now missing, he looked more like a disgruntled eighties pop star than an animal of any kind. “Whoever attacked you deserved the bullet, and if you’d been shooting silver, he would have deserved that, too, but unless the wolf in question was a pup at the time, it wasn’t Lucas. It wasn’t Lake. It wasn’t me.”

“Did they tell you that our pack is mostly kids?” Lake asked, looking Caroline straight in the eye. “Our age or younger. Some of them aren’t much older than you were when you got those.” Lake gestured to the scars on Caroline’s arm. “You attack us, and you’re no better than whatever took a bite out of you.”

“You’re not human.” Caroline’s voice went cold. If I hadn’t been watching for it, I might not have noticed the way her pupils surged, covering her irises like ink spreading slowly across a page. “I won’t feel bad for you—or for them.”

My eyes on hers, I climbed to my feet, wondering if she knew her feelings weren’t entirely her own. “I’m human,” I said softly.

Her pupils constricted.

“If you were really human, if there was any humanity left in you, then you would understand. They aren’t like us. They’ll never be like us.”

I wanted to tell her that there was no me and her, no us, but there was a part of me that didn’t want to know whether those words would smell like a lie.

A werewolf had killed my father, too.

I pushed down that thought. “If your coven is so convinced that werewolves are animals, then why would you make a deal with Shay?”

“Shay?” Caroline repeated.

“Lucas’s alpha.”

Either the words weren’t ringing a bell, or Caroline had an even better poker face than I’d given her credit for.

“Big guy, kind of looks like me?” Devon kept his tone casual, and my heart sank for him, for what it cost him to acknowledge any similarity to the brother he barely knew.

“Shay,” I said sharply, expounding so Devon didn’t have to. “The guy who gave Lucas to your coven? Sadistic, kind of smarmy? About yea tall?” I raised my hand over my head. “Probably asked you guys for something in exchange for loaning out his favorite punching bag?”

Caroline stopped looking at me like I was the enemy and started looking at me like I was insane. “No one gave us Lucas. We caught him. He doesn’t have a pack or an alpha. He’s on his own, and if he hasn’t killed yet, he would have eventually. Lone wolves always do.”

“Not always,” I countered, “and it’s a moot point, because Lucas isn’t a loner. Right after he showed up on our land, I got an email from his alpha, demanding him back.”

“This is the first we’ve heard about it,” Caroline said tersely.

“It’s the first you’ve heard about it,” I corrected. “But Lucas said Shay made some kind of deal with your mother, and whether or not the rest of the coven knows a thing about Shay, I can promise that he knows about you.”

Caroline didn’t reply. She just turned on her heel and left—but not before I caught sight of the darkness that spread across her eyes the moment I mentioned her mother.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I CONCLUDED THREE THINGS BASED ON OUR INTERaction with Caroline.

One: she hadn’t exaggerated her skill with weapons. She’d taken a chunk out of Devon’s voluminous hair—from a hundred yards away. That wasn’t the kind of shot a normal person could make. That was military-sniper-level good—with a crossbow.

Two: whatever deal her mother had made with Shay, Caroline—and quite possibly the rest of the coven—had been left completely in the dark. She genuinely believed that they’d captured Lucas, and just talking about werewolves sent enmity surging through her veins, deadly and cool.

The third thing, I said out loud, since it was the one that might have passed Devon’s and Lake’s attention. “Caroline’s mother is the coven’s empath. She’s good with emotions, she’s the leader, and she’s the one who programmed them to go full throttle on the hatred scale anytime werewolves come up.”

It was probably also safe to conclude that the empath was the one who’d given Bridget a psychic push to feel a rush of fear when she thought about Caroline, and that made me wonder.

What kind of mother wanted people to be afraid of her own kid?

“So what now, oh fearless leader?” Devon ran a hand through what was left of his hair.

“Now we figure out a way to get close to the person pulling the strings.” I exhaled slowly and worked out the logic of our situation as I spoke. “If the rest of the coven wanted to take on an entire werewolf pack, their leader wouldn’t have to amp up their desire to fight. And that means that if we can get close enough to said leader to knock her out of commission, we might be able to reason with the rest of them—especially if we can convince them that Caroline’s mother made some kind of deal with Shay.”

I hadn’t been around any of the other psychics enough to judge, but I was positive that Caroline would take that news—once she believed it—about as well as I’d taken finding out that Callum had spent most of my life lying to me about what had happened to the werewolf who killed my parents.

I knew what that kind of betrayal felt like. For that matter, I knew what it was like to remember, every single day, the look and sound and feel of a monster tearing everything you loved to shreds.

Next time Caroline mentioned that a werewolf had killed her father, I was going to have to tell her to join the club.

“How, pray tell, are we going to get anywhere near Caroline’s mother?” Devon cocked one eyebrow heavenward, and Lake mimicked his quizzical expression.

“I doubt she’s going to throw out the welcome mat, Bryn. The whole coven hates werewolves, and if Caroline’s any indication, they don’t play all that well with other humans, either.”

I thought back to what Ali had said about the coven she’d grown up in: that they’d moved from town to town, never staying in one place long enough for the ordinary humans to grow suspicious. Ali had been the odd one out, and when she’d gotten old enough, they’d left her like trash on the side of the road.

The only way to get into a coven was to be psychic yourself, and I said as much out loud.

“Keely could do it,” Lake said, chewing on her bottom lip before continuing. “Assuming my dad would let her.”

I wasn’t a fan of that idea. Keely had already put herself on the line for us once, getting answers from Lucas. If Shay came to call, she might have to do it again. I couldn’t ask her to waltz right into the lion’s den, too—especially when there was another option.

“Keely’s not the only one with a knack.” I waited for my meaning to register with the two of them, sure that they wouldn’t like where this was headed. “I’m Resilient. Some of the psychics have even seen me go into Survival at All Costs mode. If all it takes to join a coven is to be human and have some kind of supernatural ability, then technically, I meet the qualifications.”

My words were met with deafening silence, followed by the unmistakable sound of growling inside my head.

I knew they wouldn’t like where this was headed.

“If the coven wanted me dead, they would have already made their move.” I tried to keep my voice calm and even, willing my friends to push down their instincts and hear the very human logic of what I was saying. “Instead, they’ve been playing with me: stalking my dreams, letting me feel the heat. Literally.”

Most alphas wanted two things: territory and the power to protect it. I had to wonder if it was that different for psychics. Something had compelled Caroline’s mother to make a deal with Shay, and whatever that something was, she’d chosen to keep it a secret.

Just like she’d chosen to let Caroline do her dirty work.

Just like she’d chosen to make the others fear what Caroline could do.

When I’d asked Sora what I could do to save Lucas, she’d told me that the only way to get a wolf away from an alpha who didn’t want to let go was to give the alpha something he wanted more. Maybe the same logic applied to the coven, only instead of wanting females or territory or the kinds of things that mattered to Weres, their leader might be after something different.

Me.

The larger the pack and the more powerful its members, the stronger that pack’s alpha became. Given that Caroline’s mother seemed to have a way of manipulating people into doing what she wanted them to do, I had to assume that she’d welcome the chance to bring a powerful Resilient into the fold, especially if the Resilient in question had an entire werewolf pack at her beck and call.

If the coven could control me, they’d get my entire pack as a bonus. I doubted Caroline’s mother would be able to ignore the potential for that kind of payoff. At the same time, though, I wasn’t sure if I could take that kind of chance. Putting myself in the line of fire was one thing, but betting the entire pack’s safety on my ability to shake off psychic holds was risky.

Unfortunately, the only option that wasn’t risky involved sentencing a boy who’d come to me for protection to death.

There has to be a way to go in myself but minimize the risk to the pack, I thought fiercely, willing it to be true.

“Lake, should we perhaps lock Bryn in a closet?” Devon kept his tone light, but his eyes were deadly serious. “I’m thinking we should perhaps lock her in a closet.”

Lake tilted her head to one side, clearly considering the option. “You really think you can do this?” she asked me.

I didn’t bother tiptoeing around the truth. “I don’t know.”

Lake nodded, and for a second, she was the spitting image of her dad. “When you figure it out, I suspect you’ll let us know?”

That was Lake-ese for “deal me in or die a slow and painful death.” She wanted a promise that I wouldn’t run off behind their backs, that I wouldn’t do anything until I had a plan, and that once I had a plan, she and Dev would be the first to know.

“Bryn?” Dev parked the car, and his voice broke into my thoughts. The part of me that was alpha wanted to respond, to tell them both to back off, to take a lifetime of friendship and turn it into something else.

I ground my teeth and shook my head.

The three of us had always watched out for each other. Always. I wasn’t going to let what I was change that, change me. Our pack wasn’t like other packs. I wasn’t like other alphas.

That was it.

The idea came to me fully formed, like it had been in my head all along, and I just hadn’t unearthed it until now.

“Hey, Lake?”

She grinned. “Would I be right in thinking that you’ve got everything figured out?”

“Yup.”

“And you really think you can do this?”

“Yup.”

“By Jove,” Devon said, reading between the lines of my one-word answers, “I believe the lady has a plan.”

For the first time since Lucas had shown up at the Wayfarer, I really felt like I did.

This time, I was the last one to the clearing. The moon wasn’t full. The pack was sleeping, and those of us who weren’t hadn’t come here to run.

“Our pack isn’t like other packs.” My words appeared as wisps of white in the night air and echoed through the forest. The moon provided scant light, but even in the darkness, I could make out every detail of each of their faces.

Waiting.

Ready.

“We chose each other. When it counted, when the stakes were high, when no one else was there, you three had my back. You all gave up another life, another future, a hundred thousand things that might have been, and you did that for me, without even thinking, without questioning, without batting an eye.”

For a time, after I’d broken off my connection with Callum’s pack, but before we’d had our standoff with the Rabid, it had been just the four of us: Lake, Chase, Devon, and me. Later, there were others, and no matter where I went or what I did, the others’ names would always be etched into my soul, their well-being my first priority—but in the beginning, before we knew what it meant or what any of us were on the cusp of doing, there were four of us.

And there was no alpha.

“If something happens to me—tonight, tomorrow, five years from now, I know that you guys will take care of the others.” I met Dev’s eyes for a second and then closed mine. “You’d take care of each other.”

“Nothing is going to happen to you.” Devon was the one who said the words, but I felt the intensity with which he’d issued them emanating from all three. It should have been suffocating, but instead, it warmed me, held me, sent a charge racing along the surface of my skin.

The whites of Chase’s eyes caught the moonlight just so, and for a moment, I felt something animal and raw staring back at me.

I met his gaze head-on. I felt it down to the tips of my toes.

“Nothing is going to happen to me.” I repeated Devon’s words. “Because no matter what, the three of you would never let anything happen to me. It’s not supposed to work that way, because I’m the alpha, and that means that I’m supposed to be the one protecting you.”

My chest tightened, and the cold air cut into my lungs with each breath. I could sense their wolves, just below the surface. I could see the tension in their neck muscles and feel the adrenaline snaking its way from vein to vein.

“I’m not like other alphas.” The words slipped off my tongue almost as a confession, rather than a statement of pride, but I wasn’t here looking for absolution. I was here to make what I was—and what they were to me—work for us, instead of against us.

They wanted to protect me. They would always want to protect me, and admitting that I might need their help, that I might need to be protected, didn’t have to mean giving up the idea that I could keep the rest of the pack safe.

It just gave me another way to do it.

In the past six months, I’d learned that being alpha meant knowing everything about everyone. It meant that at any second on any day, I could tell you where every last member of my pack was, what they were doing, what they were feeling. I didn’t push them. I didn’t pry. But I was always there: in the things Chase would never tell another living person, in the way Maddy felt the first time she saw Lucas, in the quiet moments when Lake did nothing but run.

They could speak to me silently. I could make myself heard in their minds, but our pack-bond wasn’t exactly a two-way street. I was the alpha and they were my pack, and nature hadn’t designed werewolves to know their alpha the way he knew them.

She, I corrected myself silently. I wasn’t male. I wasn’t a werewolf, and there was nothing in the rule book to say that I couldn’t make it a two-way street.

I stepped forward, my head bowed—not in submission, but in something closer to prayer. I brought one hand to Lake’s cheek and another to Devon’s. I brushed the side of my face against Chase’s neck. I closed my eyes, and I let go.

For this moment, in this private midnight congress, I didn’t have to be alpha. I didn’t have to be the strong one. Chase had tried telling me that. So had Ali. For the first time, I could almost believe it—believe that I didn’t have to fight this battle alone.

I felt their breath on my skin. Heat leapt from their bodies to mine, and for all the perfect silence of the forest, the sounds inside my head rose.

I let out a ragged breath, pushing down the animal desire to howl. The scars on my hip bone felt like lines of liquid fire against my skin, but I didn’t fight it. I didn’t try to control the bond.

I let it control me.

I let them in.

I didn’t say anything to them. I let them see it for themselves: everything I thought, everything I felt. I let them sift through my mind, and with the part of me that was alpha screaming, I forced my body still, until the muscles in the back of my neck melted away, leaving my head lying on Chase’s shoulder, the way it had when he’d spent the night.

Devon nuzzled my right palm. Lake brought the tips of her fingers to touch my face. My mind and my body and every part of my being were so full of the three of them—what they were and what we were together—that there wasn’t room for anything else.

Anyone else.

Being alpha meant always being inside everyone else’s heads and never letting them inside yours, protecting the pack and never needing their protection—but it also meant that if the coven got inside my head, they’d have free access to everyone else’s.