Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
I realized suddenly how Callum and I must have sounded, talking about Sora like she had no stake in this. I wondered if this was what being alpha would ultimately turn me into—a person who was so used to making hard decisions that she assumed every one that came along was hers to make.
“Bryn.” The voice on the other side of the line wasn’t Callum’s, not anymore.
“Sora.” For the first time, saying her name didn’t take me back to the night when she’d beaten me. I didn’t see her driving her fist into my rib cage. I saw her the million times before that, taking care of me like I was her own.
I saw Devon—the way she looked at him, the way that, once upon a time, he’d looked at her.
“You’re sure the killer is my brother?” Sora sounded younger than I’d ever heard her—like Lake when she’d realized that Griffin was here, that he was real.
I thought of the bodies, the blood, the breath on my neck. “I’m sure,” I told her.
Sora didn’t hesitate. She didn’t stutter, she didn’t even breathe. “If the only way to stop him is to kill me, then you kill me.” She paused, and I could picture her sharp features settling into a mask, every bit as unreadable as Callum’s. “I’d prefer not to have to kill myself.”
But she would—that was what she was telling me. If one of us didn’t kill her, Sora would kill herself. She’d die to stop her brother.
“I’ll meet you at the border,” she said. “Three hours.”
That didn’t give her much time to say good-bye—to Callum, to her husband, to Dev.
“Sora—” I wasn’t sure what to say, but it didn’t matter. The line was dead.
She’d already hung up.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE WEREWOLVES IN THE ROOM WERE SILENT—they’d heard every word Sora, Callum, and I had said. They knew what was coming. Jed and Caroline were another story.
Chase told them, so I didn’t have to. He was brief, to the point, and calm, but inside, I could hear him howling—not for Sora or Devon or all the things that might never be.
For me.
I could feel him thinking about what this would do to me. On the other side of the pack-bond, he was thinking about the future: about years and years of being alpha chipping away at everything else I was. About everything I would have to give up and everything I’d already given up.
If it wasn’t one thing, it would be another, year after year, for as long as I lived—Lucas had just been the beginning. Lucas had been the easy part, and that had almost killed me.
This was Devon’s mother.
I stopped listening to Chase’s thoughts, because I didn’t want to know where they would lead. This was hard enough without knowing that Devon, Callum, and I weren’t the only ones who would pay the cost—that as long as Chase was with me, whatever hurt me would hurt him, too.
“She wants you to kill her.” Caroline’s voice was as calm as Chase’s, but there was an edge to it, brittle and sharp.
“She doesn’t want to kill herself,” I corrected, easing myself off the bed and ignoring the constant throbbing in my shoulder. “She shouldn’t have to.”
Neither should you. Chase’s words bled their way into my mind despite the barrier I’d thrown up. I met his eyes and then shook my head.
Not now.
I couldn’t do this with him now.
“Griff?” Lake’s voice broke into our silent exchange, and I whipped my gaze around to Griffin. His jaw was clenched, his eyes glittering with equal parts concentration and rage. Of the duo, Lake was taller. She was the one with a temper, but in that moment, Griffin looked dangerous—freckles, light lashes, and all.
“He’s here,” he said. “I can feel him. He’s trying—”
Griff’s eyes narrowed. His mouth settled into a thin line, then his upper lip pulled backward to reveal gleaming white canines.
“Not gonna happen,” he said through clenched teeth, sounding so much like Lake that I would have known they were twins, even if I were a total stranger.
Griffin glimmered—there was no other word for it. His skin became paler, almost incandescent. His hands curled into fists. His eyes gleamed with unnatural light—and then, just as suddenly as the change had fallen over him, it was gone.
“I take it you won?” Lake asked, arching one eyebrow.
Griffin nodded. “For now.”
“He’ll keep trying.” Maddy had been silent since I got off the phone, but when she spoke, it was with utter certainty. “It’s all about control with him. He hates losing, but he’s patient. He’ll try again and again and again, and you have no guarantee that you’ll get to Sora before he gets to you.”
I saw where this was going, even if the others did not. Maddy and I were too much alike, and in her shoes, I knew exactly what I would have done.
“You have a plan,” I said.
She nodded. “You only need a few hours. Maybe Griffin can hold him off that long, and maybe he can’t, but I know I can.”
“You can what?” Chase said, his brow furrowed, his blue eyes dark.
“I can keep him busy,” Maddy said. “Distract him.”
The others were slowly realizing what I’d known from the moment Maddy had spoken up—she wanted to do what I’d done earlier: run and entice the monster into chasing her.
Play bait.
“He’s spent months following me around, playing with me, killing for me. If I leave, if I’m alone, there’s a good chance he’ll follow.”
The predator in Wilson might get bored with Maddy eventually, but we didn’t need her to distract him forever—just until Sora was dead.
Just until I killed her.
“I’ll go back to the mountain,” Maddy promised, “back to the cave. Griffin will go with you, in case Wilson tries to manifest, but with any luck, he’ll take the easy way out.”
Take the easy target, I corrected silently. Maddy was deaf to my thoughts, but they must have been painted on my face, because she nodded anyway.
“You can’t go out there alone.” Griffin was the one who said it, but we were all thinking it.
“I have to go alone,” Maddy corrected. “If anyone goes with me, that’s who he’ll go after. He’d kill you—any of you—just to make me watch.”
I didn’t want to let Maddy do this. Every instinct in my body rebelled against the idea of letting her go off by herself again.
“You didn’t let me,” Maddy said, as if I’d said the words out loud. “You didn’t let me go. You didn’t let me do anything, Bryn. It wasn’t your decision then, and it’s not now.”
You can’t make me stay.
I felt the words in the set of her chin, the spark in her eyes. Part of being Resilient was being resistant to the kinds of mental bonds that normal Weres were helpless against. If it had been Lake who was dead set on a suicide mission, I could have used the pack-bond to stop her. I could have forced the issue. If she’d left the pack, I could have bound her to me, against her will. I could have made her obey.
But I wouldn’t have—just like I couldn’t fight Maddy on this, if this was what she wanted.
Sometimes, being willing to die for those you loved wasn’t enough—it was harder, tenfold, to let them make that kind of sacrifice for you.
“What about the baby?” Lake, apparently, wasn’t above fighting dirty—not that this was news to anyone in the room. “If Wilson follows you and there’s no one else there to attack, if you’re alone, what’s going to keep him from going after you? Or her?”
Maddy wavered, but a moment later, her jaw was set, her gray eyes clear. “He won’t hurt me, because he won’t risk something happening to her.”
We didn’t know exactly what had happened during that full moon three months ago, but neither did our ghostly opponent. The one sure bet was that it had something to do with Maddy’s unborn child. If the baby had brought the Shadows back, Wilson wouldn’t risk hurting her—not if there was even a slight chance it might undo what had been done.
But what else—other than theories—did we have?
“I’ll be careful,” Maddy said. “I’ll stay away from people. I’ll be fine.”
It seemed wrong that we’d spent so much time looking for her, and now she was walking away. It seemed wrong to stand by and watch it happen, but there were some battles that even I couldn’t fight.
“If something happens to you,” I said—and didn’t get any further than that.
“The other alphas won’t be looking for me,” Maddy replied. “Callum said they won’t be able to enact the vote. I’ll stay off the grid. I can handle the Shadow. I’ll be fine.”
“Will you come back?” The question came from Jed, his voice worn and ragged, and I realized that none of the rest of us had wanted to ask it, because we were scared to know the answer.
We’d gone into this with the goal of bringing Maddy home. The fact that she wasn’t rabid—and was pregnant—made the desire to do so a million times stronger, a million times worse.
Maddy looked at each of us in turn. “I don’t know,” she said, giving us what honesty she could.
She didn’t know if she was coming back—now or ever. She didn’t know if she was ready, didn’t know if things could ever be the same.
This might be good-bye, then, I realized. Maddy might leave here and disappear, the way she had before. Her plan could backfire. She could die. Even if she didn’t, we might never see each other again.
And there was nothing I could do about it—nothing any of us could do about it.
I walked forward and wrapped my good arm around her. She wrapped both around me, and for a moment, I could hear her heartbeat, feel the baby shifting position restlessly in her womb.
Good-bye.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
WE GOT TO THE BORDER BETWEEN CEDAR RIDGE AND Stone River with twenty minutes to spare on Sora’s timetable. Griffin was still holding strong, and I could tell by the worry lines that had taken up residence around the corner of his mouth that the constant onslaught had subsided.
The killer had taken the bait.
I said a quick and silent prayer that wherever Maddy was, she was well, and then turned my attention to what we’d come here to do.
What I was going to have to do.
Werewolves were difficult to kill. Purebreds, like Devon and Shay, could survive anything short of decapitation, having their hearts ripped out, or being literally torn to pieces. I wasn’t sure whether Sora’s mother had been a werewolf or not, but even if she hadn’t been, killing Sora wouldn’t just be a matter of pulling a trigger.
Not if we wanted to make sure she stayed dead.
Dead.
Don’t, I told myself. Don’t think it. Don’t picture it. Don’t picture Dev.
“Silver,” Lake said, nodding toward the weapons she’d packed us. “And you have your knife.”
Since the challenge, I hadn’t gone anywhere without it.
“I’ll do it.” Caroline crossed the border to stand on the Wyoming side—something that neither Lake nor I could do, without invitation.
“You’ll do what?” I asked, jarred by the sudden reminder that Caroline wasn’t one of us and wondering how I’d gotten to the point where any part of me thought that she was.
“I’ll kill her.” Caroline was holding a knife in her own hand, and she ran her thumb over the tip of the blade, so lightly that it didn’t draw blood. “That’s what I am. A killer.”
I could tell by the tone in her voice that those were someone else’s words, ones she’d heard often enough to believe them.
“It’s what I do, Bryn. It’s what I am. You know that.”
At one point, I would have believed what she was saying, but now?
“You have a knack for hunting,” I said. “That doesn’t make you a killer.”
“I shot Eric. The others killed him, but I shot him, and now he’s dead.”
If you’d told me a week ago that I would be arguing with her about this, I never would have believed it, but she’d weathered the events of the past three days with me. She’d fought by my side.
If she was a killer, so was I.
“You know Sora,” Caroline said finally. “I don’t. It will hurt you. It won’t hurt me. Nothing hurts me.”
“Liar.” Lake beat me to the punch. “Just breathing hurts you so bad, you want to beat the snot out of something.”
Eloquent was Lake.
“I can do it,” Caroline insisted.
I nodded. “You could,” I said, “but I’m not asking you to.”
I owed it to Sora to see this through. To do what she’d asked of me—what Callum couldn’t do.
There has to be another way. I couldn’t push down the part of my brain that was desperate for that to be true. I wished I could believe that wanting a solution, wanting it so badly it hurt, was enough to make it so that one could be found.
But it wasn’t enough, and there wasn’t another solution—and even if there were, we didn’t have the luxury of time to find it.
I don’t want to Change. That thought came fast and vicious, and this time, I didn’t have the mental wherewithal to fight it back. I don’t want to be a werewolf. I don’t want to live forever, having to make these decisions over and over again. I don’t want to stay young and watch Ali and Keely and Caroline grow old and die.
I don’t want to kill my best friend’s mom.
I didn’t want this.
I didn’t want any of it.
I’d already lost Maddy. I couldn’t take losing Devon, too. He was my rock, my friend, my constant from the time I was four years old, and this—this unspeakable thing I had to do—it would always be there between us.
I’d lose him and lose that much more of myself.
I felt Sora approach before I saw her. Her dark hair was pulled into a low, loose ponytail. She was wearing a black tank top and jeans. Her feet were bare.
Without my having to ask it of them, Lake and Caroline fell back. I was standing on one side of the border, Sora was standing on the other. For the longest time, we looked at each other, neither one of us speaking.
“Tell Devon,” Sora said finally, “that he’s the only thing I ever did right.”
I fought the urge to hunch over, to weather the words like an actual blow, because Devon would never get to hear them for himself; because one of the last things his mother would ever hear him say was a complaint that they’d even had to ride in the same car.
“He’s strong, and he’s smart, and I know that he is going to do great things.” A soft, sad smile worked its way onto Sora’s thin lips. “He’ll do what has to be done in a way that I never could.”
I wondered if she was talking about her failure to kill her twin, or about Shay. I wondered if it even mattered, when death was just around the bend.
“I’ll tell him,” I said, my own voice shaking. Sora reached across the border and caught me by the chin. She angled my face upward, my eyes toward hers.
“You’re it for him,” she told me. “You always have been.”
I didn’t pull out of her grasp. I felt it, all the way to my toes.
“Hurting you,” she said, after a moment’s pause, “hurt me.”
Those words nearly undid me—because she’d never acknowledged what had passed between us, never given any hint that ripping my world apart had been anything more than a chore.
“I want you to promise me something.” Sora reached back and pulled her ponytail over to one side, baring her neck on the other. The knife in my hand felt heavy.
Too heavy.
“What?” I asked, my mouth cotton dry, my palms sweating.
“Don’t let things end between you and Callum the way they’re ending for Devon and me. Whatever Callum does, whatever he sees or doesn’t see, says or doe
She looked over my shoulder, at the setting sun.
“You’ve always mattered.”
To Callum? To her? To Devon? She didn’t elaborate. Instead, she reached down and took the knife from my right hand and placed it in my left.
“Start with a gun.”
A moment later, I had one in my hand. Was it hers? Mine? I wasn’t sure. I felt like I was moving through a fog. Sora wrapped her hand around mine and brought the gun to rest on the side of her head, where neck met skull. She angled the barrel upward.
“Put a bullet here,” she said, and then she nodded to the knife. “Then cut out my heart.”
My hand shook. My eyes stung with tears. I tried to blink them away, but they built behind my eyelids until I couldn’t see—I couldn’t see her face, couldn’t see her waiting, ready and willing to die.
“You can do this,” Sora whispered. “You have to.”
I hurt for Dev. I hurt for me. I hurt, and I hurt, and I hurt—and I had to kill her.
“Bryn.” The voice came from behind me, but I didn’t recognize it. Chase? Griffin? Jed?
I didn’t know. I didn’t care, because I was standing there with a gun, and Sora was waiting. The trigger was cool against my finger. My injured shoulder was screaming with the effort it took to hold the gun.
Do it, I thought.
“He’s back, Bryn. He’s coming.”
So the voice was Griffin’s, then. There was tension in it, and exhaustion. The monster was here and ready to play. Maddy’s distraction had only worked so long.
Do it.
“Bryn.” Sora’s voice was gentle, but unwavering. If I didn’t kill her, she’d take care of the job herself, and I owed her more than that.
I owed her this.
“Okay,” I said, a sob caught in my throat. “Okay.”
Beside me, Griff stepped into view, a visual reminder that we were running out of time, a ghostly countdown clock to the next attack. He trembled. His eyes took on an odd, otherworldly light.