Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
My logic in asking that question wasn’t so much a rationale as an instinct. Any human who’d been within five feet of a werewolf and known him for what he was had thought about it. What it would be like to Change. What it would take to trigger it.
Ribs popping. Head throbbing. Punch after punch after punch.
I forced the swell of fear down before Lake could smell it, before the peripheral in the back right corner could get a taste of me. Keely and I weren’t talking about a beating. I had no reason to be thinking about that. None. We weren’t talking about Marks or being bitten.
We were talking about slaughter.
“I asked about that,” Keely said. “When Mitch told me what he and Lake were and warned me that things could get rowdy here. He said he wouldn’t let a soul touch me, but even so, I asked what would happen if I got bitten or scratched—if I would change or just keel over. Never hurts to be informed.”
“Humans becoming Weres is supposed to be impossible,” I said, thinking that instead of celebrating birthdays, I should start marking my life by its impossibilities. One for a four-year-old escaping a Rabid. Two for being Marked by a thousand-year-old alpha. Three for closing my mind off to the pack so completely for so long. Four for a boy who should be dead.
Five for the way I’d claimed him above and beyond our allegiance to Callum’s pack. Six for the way Chase had come to me in my dreams.
“It’s not impossible,” Keely said, leaning forward on her elbows. “Just unlikely.”
Now that was interesting. In silent agreement with my assessment, Lake finally stopped pinching my thigh. “That so?” she asked Keely, her voice a low rumble that reminded me of her dad’s.
Keely nodded. “The way I’ve heard it, in the past thousand years, a human being changed has happened three or four times. Mostly, they just die. If anyone could figure out how to bring humans over without killing ’em dead, I suspect there’d be a lot more of you wolf-types than there are.”
There was power in numbers. The larger the pack, the more powerful the alpha.
I digested the information Keely had given me slowly. Chase’s situation wasn’t impossible. It was improbable. I filed that information away for future knowledge.
“You know anything about the other times it has happened?” I asked Keely, not really expecting an answer. She shook her head and then excused herself, as the Were I’d felt earlier came up to the bar.
“I thought you wanted to find out about the Rabid,” Lake said, dropping her voice to a whisper.
“I do,” I whispered back, “but Miss Keely over there wasn’t talking, and right now, our best lead on the Rabid is Chase.”
I had no idea where the Rabid was or what he was doing, but I did know that a part of him was in Chase’s head.
Burnt hair and men’s cologne.
Banishing the memory of the smell, I told Lake about the first time Callum had taken me to see Chase. About the way that, for a few moments, the Rabid’s claim to his prey had outweighed Callum’s. About the way I’d seen Chase in my dreams and followed him into his own enough to know that the Rabid was still playing games.
“Let me get this straight,” Lake said when I was done, leaning back on her bar stool in a position I would never have been able to manage. “You and the Stone River Pack alpha and El Rabido are fighting it out for dominance in lover boy’s head.”
There were so many things wrong with that sentence. The casual way she’d referred to the Rabid. The words—Stone River, Pack, alpha—that brought Callum’s image to my mind and made me wonder how long thinking of him would feel like pressing on a bruise, just to see if it still hurt. And then there was the fact that Lake had referred to Chase as “lover boy,” when really, he was just a boy. My boy.
Mine.
Mistaking my reaction for offense, Lake quickly added a second incomprehensible sentence onto her first. “Between Callum, the Rabid, and the infamous Bronwyn Clare, my money’s on you.”
Yeah. Right. The pain from my ribs, dull and aching, called the wisdom of that bet into question.
“Seriously, Bryn. You may be human, but I know you. You fight dirty.”
The vote of confidence made me smile, but the movement hurt my face, reminding me again that I wasn’t invincible.
I wasn’t even that hard to break.
“I’m going to go,” I said. “See how Ali’s doing. Get settled.”
Lake narrowed her eyes at me, trying to see past the surface of my words. I stared back at her, holding her gaze until she looked away. Realizing what I’d done—and what it would have meant in her wolf’s eyes—I offered up an olive branch.
“I’m not giving up, Lake. I’m just regrouping.”
I needed to think. I needed a plan, and as far as I was concerned, recon had just begun.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“ALI?” I WASN’T ENTIRELY SURE THAT I WAS IN THE right place, so I called out as I opened the front door. The word bounced off the walls, and even though everything about this cabin—three bedrooms scrunched side by side, a combined living and kitchen area twice as big as I was used to—screamed not home, it was the difference in echoes between this house and Ali’s that did me in.
Regrouping was one thing. Recon was good, and the Wayfarer wasn’t a bad place to do it. But this wasn’t home.
Thinking about Ark Valley made my mind go quiet, and my pack-sense surged. Chase came first, and I saw him running, the way Lake and I had earlier. I felt his stride in the muscles stretching down my own thighs and the urge to run, to be with him, almost devoured me whole.
Next, I felt the twins, two rooms over. Devon, Callum, and all of the other members of our pack were too far away for me to feel, except for Lake and her dad.
“Ali?” I called again, keeping my voice down this time, because my connection to the twins hummed with the low buzz of sleep. She didn’t reply, and I found all three of them sleeping on the same king-sized bed on a comforter that wasn’t ours. Alex was on his tummy, his tiny human hands buried in Kaitlin’s fur, and Ali’s entire body was curved around the two of them. The moment I walked into the room, Katie stirred.
She blinked. Once. Twice. Three times. And then she wriggled. Glancing at Ali, dead to the world, I walked quietly to the bed and picked Katie up. She burrowed into my body, like she thought she could carve out a puppy-sized space in my side.
“Hey there, baby girl,” I whispered.
Katie snuffed, and I realized she was smelling my breath. I wondered if I smelled like home, and if she could make out the faint scent of blood from my bruises.
Katie whined and then licked me.
“Shhhhh,” I told her, settling her puppy form in my arms. “Mama and Alex are sleeping.”
Katie stilled, and I brought my eyes back to Ali. She’d driven through the night to get us here. I doubted she’d slept much the three before that, when I’d been wafting in and out of consciousness.
“Mama’s tired,” I told Katie, my own stomach twisting. “Mama’s had a hard day.”
Week.
Month.
And me being me probably hadn’t made it any easier for her.
Katie, well and truly bored with my revelations, yawned, her puppy-mouth opening so wide that if she were in human form, she probably would have dislocated her jaw.
“Did you wake up just for me, baby?” I asked her. She snuggled into my side again, and I took the cue. Gingerly, I slid onto the edge of the bed. I propped myself up on a pillow and let Katie sprawl out on my stomach. She laid her nose just under my chin, let out of a whoof of puppy-fresh breath, and fell asleep. I curled toward Ali, careful not to squish Alex, willing the three of them to sleep well.
Willing all four of us to be okay.
Sleep came. The clearing. The forest. The smell of early autumn—but no Chase. I knelt down to the ground, and with the motion, I lost my awareness that this was a dream. That maybe Chase’s absence just meant that he wasn’t asleep. Instead, I dug two fingers into the d
I couldn’t smell him. I couldn’t smell anything. A sluggish worry wrapped its way slowly around the base of my spine, and like a snake, it slithered up my back, one vertebra at a time. I couldn’t smell anything. It was worse than being blindfolded, worse than small spaces, worse than opening my mouth to scream, knowing the sound would never make it from my throat.
I couldn’t smell.
I hugged my knees to my chest, unable to rise into a crouch, unable to ready my fists or reach for my blade. And then the world around me folded in on itself, like someone was making origami. Like I was a test paper and someone had crumpled me up and thrown me away.
And then the world was being uncrumpled, and the forest unfolded into something new.
Something small.
Something that smelled like wet cardboard and drain cleaner. I would have taken comfort in the fact that I could smell again but for the memories that combination brought with it.
Teeth ripping into flesh. Skin tearing like Velcro. Blood splattering. Again and again, vicious, relentless, thorough. Blood-blood-blood-blood-blood …
Jaws. Daddy. No! I wasn’t back there. This wasn’t real. I was big now. I was strong.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are, little one. No sense hiding from the Big Bad Wolf. I’ll always find you in the end.…”
Even though I was big now, even though I knew that this was impossible and that it wasn’t happening again, I couldn’t stop myself from walking through the old, familiar motions. I peeked out of my hiding space under the sink, saw the man.
I couldn’t smell him.
I saw him Change.
Star on his forehead. Gonna find me. Blood. Blood-blood-blood—
I closed my eyes, the same way I had when I was four. I closed them, but I could hear the monster breathing—right outside.
It was gonna get me. The Big Bad Wolf was gonna get me.
Wood cracked, splintering. It was the front door—the door the wolf had locked behind him, back when he had been a man. And in came others—so many others. A man with exactly three lines on his face: one from smiling, two from frowning.
Callum, the grown-up me realized, even as the four-year-old inside me watched, unable to move.
A woman with a sleek dark ponytail—Sora—dove across the room, tackling the Big Bad Wolf away from me.
“I’ve got you, Little One.” Hands reached in to grab me, but I didn’t resist. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
Blood-blood-blood-blood.
“Shut your eyes.”
I couldn’t follow Callum’s gentle command. Couldn’t then. Couldn’t now. The first time, I’d seen Sora change to wolf form and go for the Rabid’s throat. Then Callum had turned my head away. Only this time, he didn’t. He let me watch, and there was nothing to see.
No Big Bad Wolf.
No house.
Nothing but the forest, outside of Callum’s house. I turned back to face him in his arms, and he dropped me. I hit the ground hard, and Sora, still in human form, lashed out at me. She was too fast. I was too slow.
Bryn.
No. Not again. No-no-no-no—
Bryn. It wasn’t Callum in my head. It wasn’t the pack. It was Chase, and the moment I realized that, the world shifted on its axis, and I was back in the clearing, crouched down, smelling the dirt.
“Chase.” I said his name out loud, and in wolf form, he nuzzled me, pushing his head under my hand.
Chase.
He butted my chest with his nose, and I fell over back onto my butt. “Jerk,” I said.
He laughed, as much as any wolf could. Then, without any warning, he was human, and he was holding me. Rubbing his cheek against mine. Smelling my hair.
This time, I pushed him away, and he fell back. “Jerk,” he said.
I smiled. “It really is you,” I replied. “Isn’t it? It’s not just a dream.”
Chase snorted. “I wasn’t even asleep.” For a moment, he sounded human, but then his eyes began to yellow, and the diameter of his pupil doubled within a single beat of my heart. “You needed me,” he said, a deep vibrating hum in his voice. “I felt you. Protect.”
The last word didn’t sound human. It didn’t sound human at all. Chase had claimed me every bit as much as I’d turned my pack-bond to him, and what was an itch in the back of my mind when I was awake was all-encompassing now.
Chase wanted to protect me.
He had to protect me.
His wolf wanted out, wanted to smell me again. Make me okay.
“It was just a nightmare,” I said, my voice low and calming. “No interference. No Rabid in my brain. No Callum. Just me.”
I didn’t mention that my brain wasn’t the safest place to be these days. Without a word, Chase brought his hands up, ran them lightly over the bruises on my face, one by one.
“Scared,” he said.
It was easier to admit it here. I nodded.
“Angry,” he said, the wolf sneaking into his tone.
I nodded again.
“Sad.”
These were things that the wolf inside Chase understood. Simple things that a human wouldn’t have been able to diagnose with one-word sentences. Emotions were complicated for humans. They were complicated for me. But for Chase, liquid and feral and always a moment away from changing, they were simple.
I was scared and I was angry and I was sad, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about any of it.
Chase cocked his head to the side, and for a moment, I thought he would Change again, but instead, his body went abruptly still in a jerky, violent motion, like someone or something was holding him back. He dropped to his knees, then to his stomach, and as I reached for him, a foreign smell filled the air.
Burnt hair and men’s cologne.
The Rabid. I pulled Chase up, forced him into a kneeling position, and put my hands on his shoulders the way that Lance had when the Rabid had flooded Chase’s waking mind.
“Look at me, Chase. Look only at me.”
For a moment, it wasn’t Chase looking back from those eyes. His lips curled into an ugly smile, serpentine and sharp.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.…
No.
“Look at me, Chase. Look at me!” I forced myself into his mind, brought his eyes to mine with my strength of will. I let my mind flood every corner of his. And I saw the Rabid.
He couldn’t get to me.
Couldn’t get to Chase when he was awake.
Callum had put up walls. And it was even harder now. Now that the boy had changed.
Looking at Chase, I got a sense of the Rabid. I could almost see the floss-thin line that connected the two of them. Nothing like the wall of light shining out of my body, connecting every part of Chase to every part of me.
Chase was mine. And the Rabid didn’t even know it. Didn’t know that anyone who hurt Chase was dead.
Warmth. Safety. Home.
The smell of burnt hair receded as Chase buried his hands in my hair and mine found their way to his. I stared into his eyes as they faded back to blue, and in them, I saw a reflection of an image Chase had seen when the Rabid had taken over.
“Girl.” Chase said the word out loud.
A girl. My mental image of her was complete, the bond between Chase and me pulsing full force. Like we weren’t hundreds of miles apart. Like he was standing right there beside me. Like this was real.
“Girl,” I repeated. “Four years old, maybe five. Light hair. Gray eyes. Blood.”
Only this time, the girl wasn’t me, and she wasn’t covered in someone else’s blood. It was hers.
Girl.
There was a name on the tip of Chase’s tongue, on the tip of mine, but before I could say it, I felt a sharp pinch in my ear. And another in my toe. And then—
“Ow!” I sat up in bed. My heart was pounding. My throat was dry. Chase was nowhere to be seen.
“Pleasant dreams?” Ali asked.
Not exactly,
“What time is it?” I asked Ali.
“Morning.” For a moment, that was all she said, and then she looked back at me from the foot of the bed, where she was unpacking the twins’ onesies. “You slept through the night. We all did, even Nibbler One and Nibbler Two over there.”
Ali had slept. The twins had slept. What I’d done—at least the latter half of the night—wasn’t sleeping.
It wasn’t human, either.
“How are you feeling?” I could tell by Ali’s tone—forced casualness—that she expected me to jump down her throat for asking the question.
Scared. Angry. Sad, I thought. But all I said out loud was, “A little better, maybe.”
Ali wrinkled her forehead and cocked her head to the side. Clearly, she hadn’t prepared herself for me to be pleasant. After a moment, her eyes narrowed. “What exactly did you and Lake do yesterday?” she asked, like we might have held up a gas station and gone on a crime spree across the country, all in the span of just a few hours.
“We went to Mexico, had some tequila, eloped with a pair of drug smugglers, and took part-time jobs as exotic dancers. You know, same old, same old.”
Ali snorted.
“I’m torn on stripper names. It’s either going to be Lady Love or Wolfsbane Lane. Thoughts?”
Ali threw a onesie at me. “Brat.”
Considering I’d cost her a husband and her home, that was probably putting things lightly.
“Talking about it might help,” Ali said, seeing a tell on my face to the guilt sloshing around in my stomach. “You’re going to have to talk to someone eventually, Bryn.”
I thought back to the dream. Back to Chase. Back to the screaming girl and the name buried in my mind.
“I am talking to someone,” I said, making the executive decision that Ali didn’t need to know that the person I was talking to was a teenage werewolf haunted by the psychopath who’d murdered my birth parents. “And you’re right, it helps.”