Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
She does it all the time, I responded, sending the words from my mind to Mitch’s. And nobody’s figured it out yet.
People—even the kind who turned into wolves on occasion—expected bartenders to be good listeners. Keely just lived up to that expectation—and then some.
“Maybe some lemonade?” Lucas asked tentatively, and I tried to digest that the source of all of this trouble was the type of person who, when asked if he wanted something to drink, requested lemonade.
In Shay’s pack, Lucas had never stood a chance.
“Keely?” I called. She’d done a good job making herself scarce, but Keely was a smart woman, and I doubted she’d gone far. She probably knew as much about werewolf politics as I did, and she’d been the human equivalent of truth serum all her life—the moment Chase had taken the little ones out, Keely had to have known that her services might come in handy.
Sure enough, a few seconds after I’d bellowed, Keely sauntered out from the kitchen and leaned across the bar. “You rang?”
“Can we get some lemonades?”
“Sure thing, kiddo.” Keely spun glasses out from underneath the counter like a pro, and Devon cleared his throat.
“Don’t be stingy with the cherries, Keel,” he called back to her.
Obligingly, Keely put a cherry in each of the glasses. I knew for a fact that she could carry four at a time without breaking a sweat, but she opted for carrying one in each hand, a strategy that would allow her to make several trips past Lucas and back to the bar.
Anything happens to her, and we’ll be having words, Bryn. Mitch eyed me across the table, his expression deceptively mild. Lake’s dad might have been a part of my pack, but Keely and the rest of the folks at the Wayfarer were Mitch’s to take care of, the same way the rest of Cedar Ridge was mine.
I did not want to consider the possibility of “having words” with Mitch any more than I wanted to think about something happening to Keely—which meant that I had to play this just right.
“Here ya go,” Keely said, bending over to set one of the drinks in front of Lucas, brushing his arm as she did.
“Now that you’re all beveraged up, mind telling me how many of these humans are after you?” I timed my question perfectly and managed to keep my voice casual and wry.
Lucas never knew what hit him. “There were maybe ten of them total, maybe not even that many, but I don’t think I saw them all. Their leader was a woman named Valerie. She and Shay have some kind of agreement, I don’t know what exactly, but he did something for her, or she was going to do something for him, and I was just a part of the deal. There was something about a daughter, Valerie’s daughter, but I never saw her.”
The information was flowing freely now, but I didn’t have time to sort through the significance of what Lucas was saying. Keely went back to the bar for two more lemonades, and my next question made its way out of my mouth as she returned.
“How dangerous are they?”
“Very, and they’re not exactly fond of werewolves. Something happened a long time ago, and now … sometimes I think the only reason they didn’t kill me is because dead dogs don’t scream. If I’d stayed long enough, the novelty might have worn off, but it also might not have. I’m not sure if they’ll kill to get me back, but if the killing involves werewolves, they probably wouldn’t consider it murder any more than one of us would report a fight for dominance to the human police.”
Keely made her last trip to and from the bar: two more lemonades, one more question.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
It was a pretty broad question, but with Lucas’s apparent habit of hiding the truth until it blew up in his face, I had a feeling that the information I most needed to know was probably whatever he least wanted to tell me.
At first, he said nothing, but as Keely leaned over Lucas to pass Mitch a lemonade, the bottom of her arm touched Lucas’s shoulder, and his entire body seemed to relax. “I won’t go back,” he said, his tone conversational, with an iron edge buried layers underneath. “I’d die before going back to those people, and I’d kill myself before going back to Shay. I don’t care what I have to do. I really don’t, because I’m never going to let anyone do that to me again. When this is over, I’ll be six feet under or I’ll be free. For good.”
Having said his piece, Lucas went very quiet, but his words hung in the air, reinforcing what I’d already deeply suspected.
Sending Lucas back to Shay or giving in to Caroline’s ultimatum didn’t just mean turning my back on someone who needed my help. One way or another, it meant sentencing Lucas to death, because if the psychotic werewolf-torturers and megalomaniac alpha didn’t do him in, Lucas had as good as promised to kill himself.
Between Keely’s power and the Weres’ ability to smell lies, I had to assume that he was telling the truth.
CHAPTER TEN
THIS TIME, I WAS THE ONE WHO RETREATED TO THE forest—and away from the rest of the pack—to think, and Chase was the one who found me. He’d Shifted back to human form, and I could feel him taking in everything: the way I was standing, the tilt of my head.
“You look like you want to hit something,” he observed mildly. “A wall. Possibly a tree. Something hard.”
“Lucas is going to kill himself.” I didn’t sugarcoat it, but my voice didn’t exactly reflect the black hole of emotion churning in my gut, either. “If I can’t work something out, if we don’t protect him from this family and from Shay, he’s going to die.”
If Chase found what I was saying at all surprising, he certainly didn’t show it, and the only thing I felt through his end of the bond was a brief surge of dislike for Lucas, distrust, pity.
“Don’t,” I said sharply before he could say a word. “Don’t tell me this isn’t my problem. Don’t tell me it’s not my fault. There’s an answer to this, Chase, and if I don’t find it—if I can’t find it—then whatever happens to Lucas damn well is my fault.”
Chase didn’t argue, didn’t tell me to lower my voice.
“You want to hit something?” he said in an even tone. “Hit me.”
I was standing there, yelling at him, and all he did was meet my eyes, his face impassive. How many times had I seen that exact expression, that same control, on Callum’s face when I was growing up?
“Go on, Bryn.”
Go on, what? Hit him? Hurt him? He was Pack, and he was Chase. I would have died first. Wasn’t that the problem? The list of people I had to protect—the ones who mattered—it just kept getting bigger and bigger, and no matter what I did, someone was going to get hurt.
“Shay. Caroline. That guy in your dreams. They’re messing with you, Bryn. They’re baiting you, and they’re hurting you, and if you don’t let it out and take a swing at something, you’re going to explode. So let’s have it.” Chase motioned me forward. “I can take it. Promise.”
He grinned.
Without even thinking, I swung. Chase ducked, lightning quick and impossibly coordinated, and I swung again, my fist tearing through the air and just missing the side of his cheek.
Again.
And again.
And again.
I didn’t lay a hand on him. Not once, but I kept going until the pent-up fury inside me broke and gave way to something else.
I couldn’t fight Chase, couldn’t match a Were’s speed or strength, no matter how hard I tried, just like I couldn’t keep Archer or Caroline from entering my dreams and showing up at school. I couldn’t make Shay sorry for the things he’d done to Lucas, and I couldn’t snap my fingers and make being alpha any easier.
I was what I was. The situation was what it was. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t easy, and maybe Chase was right, and I couldn’t save everyone—but I could try. Because that was the kind of alpha—the kind of person—I was.
The pace of my swings slowed, and Chase caught my arms in his. He pulled me close, and I breathed in raggedly, laying my head against his chest, vulnerable, spent. For a few preci
I felt his wolf—animal instinct, undiluted and sure—as if it were my own.
“Thanks,” I said finally, pulling back just far enough that I could say the words to his face. “I needed that.”
And even though he had to have known, from that split second when we were more like one person than two, that I wasn’t backing off this, that I couldn’t just take care of myself, no matter how badly he wanted that for me, he nodded, his lips turning up subtly on the ends.
“Anytime.”
“Ali, I’m home!”
My words echoed through our cabin, and Ali called back that she was in the twins’ room. I took a deep breath and then followed the sound of her voice. Somehow, my ability to adopt a poker face when interrogating werewolves evaporated the moment it was just Ali and me, and I took a few seconds to try to wipe the evidence of the day’s events from my eyes, mouth, and brow.
What Ali didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her—and more to the point, what Ali didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me.
“Hey.” I poked my head into the twins’ room. For a split second, Ali held my eyes, and then she turned back to folding clothes into the dresser drawers.
“Mitch called.” Ali’s voice was muted. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking—or what, exactly, Lake’s dad had told her.
“Oh.”
“Yes,” Ali replied. “Oh.” She shut the drawer and then turned to leave the nursery, gesturing for me to follow.
I did.
When we got to the living room, I expected her to start lecturing, or to go into fierce-and-overprotective mode, but she didn’t. She just smoothed down my hair and wrapped one arm around me.
“We’ll get through this,” she said. “You shouldn’t have to be dealing with something like this, but you are, and you have to, and I can’t change that. I can’t make it go away.” Even though Ali’s voice was perfectly calm, I knew that saying those words was costing her. Ali had always protected me. She’d stood up to werewolves for me when I was too little to do it for myself. She’d given up a whole other life for me, twice: once when she’d left the human world to raise me in Callum’s pack, and later when she’d left her werewolf husband and her home in the Stone River Pack to keep me safe.
But now I had responsibilities of my own. I couldn’t stay out of this, even if I wanted to—not for Ali, not for Chase, not for anyone—and I loved her for knowing that and for not asking me to, even if a part of her felt like she’d failed me because at sixteen I had the weight of the world on my back.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said. Admitting that was nearly impossible, but this was Ali, and I couldn’t hold the words back. “No matter what I decide, someone gets hurt.”
Not emotionally hurt. Not kiss-it-and-make-it-all-better hurt. Dead.
“If we don’t help Lucas, he’s going to die, and if we do …” I searched Ali’s eyes. “Did Mitch tell you? About the … family of people with … knacks?”
“Psychics,” Ali corrected absentmindedly. “Humans with special abilities are called psychics.”
Somehow, the word psychic didn’t seem to do justice to the whole “burn you while you sleep” thing, but I didn’t see much point in arguing semantics.
“Okay, so there’s a family of psychics, and if we don’t hand Lucas over in the next seven days, I’m pretty sure they’re going to come after us, and even if we can take them, it won’t be pretty.”
There would be losses, and the idea of digging a hole in the forest and burying Devon or Lake or Chase—or, God forbid, one of the younger kids—was insurmountable.
“It’s an impossible choice, Bryn, and if you want me or Mitch to make it for you, if you want us to be the ones who make the call, and you just deliver it …” Ali tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and the casual gesture of affection almost brought me to my knees. “Say the word, Bryn. You have to do this, but you don’t have to do it alone.”
What kind of alpha was I that her offer tempted me? What kind of daughter was I that part of me would rather have Ali’s hands bloodied than my own?
“No,” I said softly. There was no getting out of this, no way to un-become what I was.
Ali sighed. “Color me shocked.”
“I have to do this, Ali. I’m the reason Lucas is here. I’m the reason Shay beat him down and gave him to a bunch of psychics to use as a pincushion. I’m the one the kids look to, and I’m the one who’s supposed to protect them.”
Ali folded her arms over her chest. “And who’s the one who’s supposed to protect you?”
That seemed to be a popular question lately.
“Who’s the parent?” she asked. “Who’s the wise and benevolent Cool Mom type?”
I cracked a smile—the first in what felt like forever. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
Ali pretended to be offended. “Are you trying to say that I’m not cool?”
“Fine. You’re cool. You’re the epitome of cool. Everyone wishes they could have mom hair just like yours.”
Ali hooked an arm around my neck. “I do not have mom hair,” she said, “and you don’t have to do this on your own. I know you—you’ll look for other choices. Ways to keep Lucas safe without endangering the pack. And I hope to God you find one, kiddo, but either way, deal me in. They’re my family, too, and you have no idea how dangerous some psychics can be.”
Between Caroline’s little demonstration at lunch and the fading burn on my skin, I was fairly certain I did have some idea of what we were dealing with, but I didn’t argue with Ali—mainly because my foster mother telling me that I didn’t know how dangerous people like this could be meant that for some reason, she did.
“You have experience with psychics?” I asked.
Ali pressed her lips together in a thin line and then wiped her hands on her jeans and nodded. “You could say that.”
Her words hung in the air between us, and Ali turned toward the kitchen. “If they lay a hand on you, I’ll kill them myself.”
“And how, exactly, are you going to take on a whole family of psychics?” I asked, aiming for a light, teasing tone and failing miserably.
Ali shrugged. “For you, I’d find a way, and technically, a group of psychics isn’t called a family.” Ali started walking toward the kitchen. “It’s called a coven.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THAT NIGHT, I SLATHERED MY SKIN WITH A THICK coat of aloe vera and slept with a fire extinguisher next to my bed. I might have been promised a seven-day cease-fire at lunch, but the psychics would have to forgive me if I was hesitant to take the word of a bunch of superpowered psychopaths who got their jollies from torturing teenage werewolves.
I think you’ll find us reasonable, Caroline had said.
“Yeah, right,” I muttered, turning over in bed. Despite the risks, I needed to get some rest. A sleep-deprived alpha was nobody’s friend.
Closing my eyes, I let my alpha-sense take over, reached out through the bond, and found the others. I let their thoughts and senses flood my own.
Alex. Lily. Katie. Mitch.
Devon, Maddy, Lake, and Chase.
The peripherals at the very edge of our territory. The rest of the kids at the Wayfarer.
We were safe. We were together. We were fine.
The dream started with Callum. He was standing in my old workshop—the one place in Stone River territory that I’d carved out as my own. Callum was watching something, a soft smile creasing a face that had never aged past thirty, relaxed, but leaking power all the same. I followed his gaze and saw myself standing there—a younger Bryn, though not by much, peeling dried glue off her fingertips as she stared with nearly comical concentration at the result of an afternoon’s work: a sculpture, maybe, or a mobile. What I was working on was fuzzy. It didn’t matter.
The look on Callum’s face did.
I
Like he didn’t want me to grow up, because things would change forever once I did.
As if he could hear my thoughts, the dream Callum turned to look at me—the real me, not the memory of the girl I’d been a year or two before. He moved his lips, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying, couldn’t make out the words or the familiar tone of his low and steady voice.
I wanted to so badly it hurt.
He took my shoulders gently in his hands, bent down to my level. I opened my mouth but could not say a word. Everything began to go dark and fuzzy, but I held on, fought to hear what he was saying, wished he could look at me like I was little, like I was his—just one more time. But Callum faded away, to darkness, to nothing, leaving me staring at my younger self, this dream Bryn so caught up in things that didn’t matter. She turned, saw me. She pointed.
She smiled.
I glanced down to see what she was smiling at, and that was when I realized—I was bleeding. There were three deep wounds in my side, parallel lines.
The Mark.
I watched in horror as the gashes spread across my torso, leaving me unable to move until the sound of clapping broke me from my stupor. Young Bryn faded away, the way Callum had, and a new form took shape on my workbench.
Archer.
“Bravo,” he said. “Encore, encore! The angst. The drama. The symbolism. You’re first-class entertainment, little Bryn.”
Little Bryn should have sounded like an improvement over mutt-lover, but it didn’t.
“What?” The trespasser smiled sardonically. “No she-wolf this time?”
I found myself looking for her, even though I didn’t want to. The dreamworld shifted on its axis, the workshop giving way all around me to the forest, the snow. My body rebelled against the sudden change, nausea taking me down to my knees. The snow was wet and cold under my fingertips.