Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Maybe I should have given him a real answer, but this was Devon. He couldn’t stand to see me in pain. I doubted he’d understand why I’d sought it out.
A twig snapped somewhere behind us—fair warning we were about to have company. If I’d been in a more charitable mood, I might have acknowledged the fact that “company” had probably stepped on the twig on purpose. I knew better than anyone if Caroline didn’t want to be heard, she wasn’t heard. She came out of nowhere and disappeared the same way. She was the ultimate hunter, a psychic with supernaturally good aim.
We weren’t really what one would call best buds.
“Heya, Caro,” Devon called, perfectly amiable. I didn’t understand how he could call her by a nickname. She’d been a part of the coven that had waged war against our pack. She’d made our people bleed—Devon included.
“Did Jed find you?” Caroline met my eyes and ignored Devon. Dev wasn’t the type to be ignored, but for some reason, he let Caroline get away with it.
If you asked me, Caroline got away with a lot.
“Jed found me,” I told her. I didn’t elaborate, and she didn’t seem to expect me to.
“In that case,” she said, turning back the way she came, “I guess there’s not really anything else for me to say.”
As she turned, I caught a glimmer of something in her eyes, and I couldn’t help but think of the way Ali looked, gritting her teeth and breathing through the worst life had to offer, the memories that cut her to the bone.
“Wait.”
Caroline paused. She waited. I didn’t know what else to say to her, didn’t want to be talking to her at all, but the resemblance to my foster mother, however fleeting, had reminded me that no matter what this girl had done, she was family. Ali’s family.
Her biological family.
“You should come by to see Ali more,” I said finally.
That was as close to an olive branch as I could come. Caroline lived with Jed: on our land, but not in the house I shared with Ali; privy to what the rest of us really were, but not a part of the pack. If I’d had my way, the girl who’d shot Devon and—whether she’d meant to or not, whether she’d had a choice in the matter or not—helped kill one of our own would have been living in another hemisphere. But Ali cared about her. She wanted a relationship with her, and I couldn’t be the one to screw that up.
Family mattered to Ali the way Pack did to me.
Family. Pack. That combination of words made me think of another person who should have been standing here, but wasn’t. A person whose absence I couldn’t blame on Caroline in any way, shape, or form.
Maddy.
Maddy, who’d been one of us. Maddy, who’d loved an angry, broken boy.
Maddy, who’d left, because I’d killed the boy she loved.
For a moment, Caroline actually met my eyes, and I wondered if she played Eric’s death over and over again in her head, the way I obsessed over Lucas’s. I wondered if she felt even an ounce of my guilt, if she sat up nights, staring at the ceiling.
Caroline broke eye contact first. She turned on her heels and left without snapping a single twig.
What happened last winter wasn’t her fault, Bryn, Devon told me silently, for maybe the thousandth time. Caroline never stood a chance against her mother’s mind-control mojo. You know that.
Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t, but my pack should have had twenty-two people, and it didn’t. Eric should have been starting his sophomore year in college, and he wasn’t.
Your mother never had a choice when Callum ordered her to beat the crap out of me, I retorted. But I don’t see you rushing out to mend bridges with her.
That was a low blow, and I knew it. Growing up, Devon and I had both been a part of the same pack—Callum’s. Devon’s mother was the second-in-command, and the moment Sora had laid hands on me, she’d changed everything—for me, for Ali, for her son.
Suffice it to say, Devon was much less willing to forgive and forget when the person who ended up hurt was me.
For a second after I snapped at him, I thought Devon might turn around and leave me standing there by myself, but he didn’t. He put an arm around my shoulder and pulled me close.
“Come on, brown-eyed girl,” he said. “Let’s get you some food.”
I’d never done a thing in my life to deserve Devon. I probably never would.
We passed the restaurant on the way back to my cabin, and Lake—who’d heard us coming—shot out the front door like a jackrabbit. Or a werewolf under the influence of too many Pixy Stix—take your pick.
“Got room for one more?” she asked. Dev inclined his head in a gentlemanly fashion, and Lake was on my other side in an instant, her arm flung around my shoulder, just like Devon’s.
Pack. Pack. Pack.
Physical contact sent my pack-sense into overdrive, and my body was flooded with the feeling that this was how it was meant to be. We were together. We were safe. I could feel their wolves, feel the emotion rising up inside of them, the same way it did in me.
And then I felt something else.
Foreign. Wolf.
Devon and Lake went absolutely still, and I knew they’d felt it, too. Each of the twelve packs in North America had its own territory. The last time a foreign wolf had crossed into ours without permission, things had gone badly.
Very badly.
Foreign. Wolf.
Dev stepped in front of me, his jaw granite-hard. Lake’s upper lip curled, and I could physically see the growl working its way up her throat.
And that was when I felt it—a tremor in my pack-sense, horror and recognition that whoever had come here without seeking my permission first wasn’t just a wolf from another pack.
Wasn’t just a threat.
Our visitor—whoever he was—was an alpha.
CHAPTER THREE
ALPHAS DIDN’T INVADE EACH OTHER’S TERRITORIES. They didn’t take each other’s wolves. The Wayfarer was mine. The people who lived here, my pack—they were mine. The hairs rose like hackles on the back of my neck, and a sense of foreboding washed over me, one that said there was only one reason for another alpha to come here unannounced.
Our visitor wanted something: my head on a platter, a harem of underage females to add to his ranks—it didn’t matter. Either way, if another alpha had broken Senate Law to come here, there was nothing saying he wouldn’t take what he wanted by force.
Suddenly, running barefoot through the woods until my feet were bloody and my muscles weak didn’t seem like such a good idea. I’d been set on preparing myself for the next confrontation, but I’d assumed that the other alphas would continue playing by the rules.
That if Devon’s brother, Shay, wanted to kill me, he’d do it with cunning and subterfuge, staying just this side of the Senate strictures on inter-pack relations.
“If it’s him,” Devon said calmly, “he’s dead.”
If Shay had come into our territory without permission, Devon could attack him without fear of reprisal from the rest of the Senate. He could Shift and go for his brother’s throat, and the connection between the two of us told me that he wanted to.
That he was on the verge of losing control.
“Wait,” I said softly. I wanted Shay dead as much as the next girl, but the Snake Bend alpha had a couple of centuries on Devon and the same solid build. I needed a plan. I needed to think.
“Bryn.” The sound of Ali calling my name from just around the bend turned my blood to ice. Besides me, she was the only human in our pack, and she didn’t have a knack to fall back on. If Shay had her, if any of the other alphas had her—
“It’s okay.” Ali’s words barely penetrated my brain. “Take a deep breath.”
I couldn’t take a deep breath. I couldn’t even breathe.
Foreign. Wolf. Alpha.
“It’s not Shay,” Ali called. “It’s Callum.”
Hearing Callum’s name did something to me. My eyes stung, and my insides went liquid and warm. I would
Callum was the alpha who’d brought me into the werewolf world. He’d saved me from a rabid werewolf when I was four years old. He’d raised me. He’d protected me. He’d hurt me. And the last time I’d seen him, he’d promised that he would do the unthinkable.
My mind went immediately to places I didn’t want it to go—to memories of the rabid wolf who’d killed my parents, to the sound of their blood splattering against an off-white wall. Werewolf attacks were vicious. Brutal. And unless you had a knack for survival, they didn’t end with the wolf’s prey turning into a Were.
They ended with the wolf’s prey dead.
To Change me, Callum would have to rip me to pieces. He’d have to take me to the brink of death and hope my Resilience would pull me back. I told myself that I wanted this. That I was ready. That I’d been ready for seven long months.
I steeled myself against fear and took a mental hatchet to my reservations. I’d said I would do anything for my pack, and I meant it. I’d die for them. I’d Change for them.
I’d say good-bye to my human life forever.
A gust of wind snapped me out of my thoughts and beside me, Devon and Lake—oblivious to my train of thought—visibly relaxed, their noses confirming what Ali had said. Like me, Lake and Dev had once been a part of Callum’s pack. Intellectually, they might not have trusted him, but instinctually, they did. He’d been their rock, their protector, their alpha for too long for them not to.
Even though I was their alpha now.
As Devon and Lake dropped back and let me take the lead, I realized that knowing Callum was the trespasser didn’t completely calm my senses. He’d still come here without permission, and I couldn’t push down the part of my brain that said this was a challenge.
He’d challenged me.
Alpha. Alpha. Alpha.
The closer I got to Ali and Callum, the stronger the feeling was—alphas weren’t meant to coexist. By definition, there could only be one: one in a given territory, one total, if it weren’t for the precarious democracy in the werewolf Senate, which kept each of us in our own little worlds.
Alpha. Alpha. Alpha.
I had to do something, had to fight, had to protect what was mine—
I didn’t actively try to call up my Resilience. I didn’t have to. One second, I was fine, and the next, I could feel myself slipping, feel an alien power taking over my body, driven entirely by instinct and self-preservation.
“Bryn.” This time, Callum was the one who spoke my name, and it played in my mind in stereo, pushing back the haze, as I remembered the hundred thousand times he’d said it when I was a kid.
I looked at him—through the anger and fear and the heady call of letting everything go red again—and I met his eyes. I didn’t mean to. I knew his wolf would see it as a direct challenge, and I made it a rule not to get into any staring competitions I couldn’t win. But to my surprise, Callum only met my gaze for a second, before flicking his eyes downward and rounding his neck.
Submission.
He stood there, the man who’d made me what I was, a thousand-year-old werewolf with more power than the rest of the Senate combined, and he bowed his head toward me.
Relief washed over my body, then confusion, then awe. My skin thrummed with the power of what had passed between us, and slowly, Callum raised his eyes to meet mine once more. There was no challenge there, only understanding—of everything I was feeling, of everything I was.
On good days, I liked to think that was why he’d agreed to Change me. Because he still cared about me. Because he knew as well as I did that, sooner or later, being human would get me killed.
“The alpha of the Stone River Pack apologizes for this intrusion. I’ll accept any sanctions you see fit.”
The idea of applying any kind of sanction to someone who had grounded me more times than I could count was just bizarre.
To Callum’s left, Ali rolled her eyes. She had no use for werewolf politics, and Callum wasn’t exactly on her list of favorite people.
“The alpha of the Cedar Ridge Pack accepts your apology,” I told Callum formally. “No sanctions necessary.”
I didn’t always trust Callum. I knew he had an agenda, that his own knack—an ability to see possible futures—lent itself to manipulating the rest of us a little too well. Callum kept secrets, and he played God, and every time I thought I had him figured out, he threw me for a loop.
But I trusted that he wouldn’t have come here without a reason—a good one.
Knowing that, my mind jumped immediately to the promise he’d made me, the unthinkable thing I’d asked him to do—Teeth snapping. Muscles tearing. Skin and tendons and gristle. Minced, like meat—I couldn’t stop picturing what it would be like to be attacked by a Were, couldn’t keep from seeing the people I’d once called Mommy and Daddy reduced to carnage.
But there was no turning back now.
Callum had told me he would Change me. He’d made me wait. And now he was here. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to do the math.
“Tomorrow morning,” Callum said, his voice breaking into my thoughts, “Shay Macalister is going to call a meeting of the Senate.”
That wasn’t what I’d expected him to say. In retrospect, math had never been my strong suit.
“Since Shay is the one calling the meeting, the rest of the alphas will be expected to go to him.”
As far as I knew, the Senate normally met in Callum’s territory, at Callum’s house.
Callum shrugged in response to my unasked question. “Normally,” he said, “I’m the one who calls the meetings.”
Most of the other alphas probably would have been happy to stay in their own territories and forget that Callum existed altogether. For that matter, they’d probably have been happy if I didn’t exist. The last time I’d been in a room with the entire Senate was the day I became an alpha myself. None of them—save for Callum—had seen it coming. None of them had been pleased.
More than one alpha would have enjoyed bathing in my blood.
“The Senate is meeting,” I said slowly, “and I have to go.”
I was an alpha. The Senate was composed of the alphas of all of the North American packs. Eleven dominant werewolves and me. In one room.
This could not possibly be good.
“What does Shay want?” I asked. Beside me, Devon stiffened at the mere mention of his brother’s name.
“Shay wants what Shay always wants,” Callum replied calmly, his voice washing over us, understated and warm. “Trouble. Power. Females. Take your pick.”
“So this is a power play?” I asked. “Shay’s calling the Senate just because he can?”
I could tell by the look on Callum’s face that the answer to that question was no. Shay had a reason for calling the Senate—but Callum wasn’t sure I was ready to hear it.
“Tell me.”
Callum’s lips quirked upward at my no-nonsense tone, more like his than either one of us would have cared to admit. After another long pause, he answered my question. “Whatever Shay’s going to tell us at this meeting, there are bodies involved. Human bodies.”
Those words hit me like a physical blow. Callum must have known the effect this would have on me, the memories his words would drudge up.
Human lives would never be mere collateral damage to me, but the last time the Senate had met, they’d voted to make a deal with the psychopathic werewolf who’d killed my parents, a monster who had been hunting and killing human children—and Changing Resilient ones into werewolves—for years. If Shay was concerned about a few dead bodies, it wasn’t because he recognized a value to human life. It was because the Senate’s highest priority was keeping the human world from finding out that werewolves existed.
That was the reason werewolves didn’t attack humans.
That was the reason a Were who hunted without authorization was normally
I met Callum’s eyes, and this time, neither one of us looked away. I knew then what he wasn’t saying, why he’d risked trespassing on my territory to give me warning that Shay was about to call.
“It’s happening again,” I said, my mind going back to the last time, to a werewolf who hunted humans and the things that he had done to my family, to the kids in my pack, to Chase, and to me. “Shay isn’t calling the Senate as some kind of power play.” The words stuck in my throat, but I pushed them out. “He’s calling this meeting because there’s a Rabid.”
CHAPTER FOUR
HOURS LATER, WHEN I CREPT INTO THE BATHROOM and shut the door behind me, a sense of overwhelming relief flooded my body. Around the others—around Callum—I had to be strong. Showing weakness to a member of another pack was not an option, and I couldn’t afford to let my feelings about this development infect the rest of my own pack, either. Devon would be accompanying me to the Senate meeting as my second-in-command. Coming face-to-face with Shay, knowing his brother wanted me dead—that would be hard enough for Dev. He didn’t need my emotional baggage making it any worse.
Besides, with werewolves, control was the name of the game.
Never flinch.
Never show your anger.
Never let them see you cry.
It was disgustingly easy for me to shove my emotions into a box in the back of my mind, to slip into alpha mode and mimic Callum’s facial expressions, his posture. But now, with the bathroom door standing in between me and the others, I could finally let myself breathe. I could remember.
I could feel.
Flipping on the shower, I let the sound of water beating against marble drown out my jagged breathing. I slid slowly to the floor, a mess by every sense of the word. My hair was tangled and matted to my forehead. My feet were streaked with dirt, my earlier wounds ugly and scabbed. Beneath my year-round suntan, my face was pale, and when I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror, my lips were pressed into a thin and colorless line.
For a few seconds, I thought I might actually cry. That was so unlike me, I wasn’t sure how to respond. Bronwyn Alessia St. Vincent Clare didn’t get sad. She got mad. Or better, she got even.