And Ali was the only family Caroline had left.
“Sora, get in the car.”
That was the first time in a very long time that I’d heard Callum give someone a direct order. A glimmer of surprise passed over Sora’s face, but a second later, it was gone, and she turned to follow Callum’s instruction.
Caroline tracked Sora’s motion and took her eyes off Callum for half a second, but that was half a second too long. In a flash, both weapons were on the ground, and he was holding her very still, from behind.
“Devon’s right,” he said, a hint of an accent creeping into his words. “Shooting werewolves is a thing best done from a distance.”
He leaned forward then, and whispered something into the back of Caroline’s hair, something I couldn’t hear that actually cracked the veneer of ice in the hunter’s eyes. For a second, Caroline looked well and truly shaken. Vulnerable. Pissed.
Then Callum let her go. He turned and pressed a kiss to my forehead before beginning the walk back to his car. Halfway there, he paused and glanced out at the forest, at a large black wolf, keeping its distance, standing guard.
Chase.
I knew the moment I saw him standing there that the past day had been difficult for him. Shifted, his thoughts came to me as a mishmash of images and emotions, but I picked up on the fact that he’d stayed in wolf form the entire time I was gone. He hadn’t said a word to any of the others, hadn’t even seen them.
But now I was back, and so was he.
Callum glanced from Chase to me, taking in the way my body had oriented itself naturally toward the wolf in the distance, the way that even as Callum assessed us, Chase walked slowly toward me, pulled in like a planet orbiting the sun.
“I’m sorry,” Callum said.
I couldn’t tell which one of us he was talking to.
“Sorry for what?” I asked.
Callum gave me a look so tender, so familiar that I could feel tears burning in my eyes. “For something that might happen and might not.”
I opened my mouth to ask another question, but the look on his face changed, his eyes narrowing and his eyebrows lifting in warning.
I knew Callum’s This Subject Is Closed look better than anyone. I’d been raised on that look.
I’d never liked it.
“Find Maddy, Bryn.” Callum turned back to his car, walking to join Sora in the front seat, continuing to talk as he did. “Before this is over, it’s going to get bloody, and the longer she’s out there alone, the worse it’s going to be.”
A few seconds later, he was gone, and Devon, Caroline, and I were standing in front of the restaurant in silence, Chase in wolf form at my side.
“Who was that?” Caroline said finally.
Devon glanced at the weapons on the ground and groaned. “Trust me, Caro. You don’t want to know.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WORD TRAVELS FAST IN WEREWOLF PACKS. WITHIN THE hour, six of us sat around a circular table in the back room of the Wayfarer restaurant. Chase had Shifted back to human form; Devon had changed into a fresh and crisply ironed shirt. Lake was playing with empty bullet casings, rolling them around her fingertips in a motion halfway between juggling and twirling a baton. That just left Ali—who was sitting perfectly still, her hair pulled into a messy ponytail at the base of her neck and her hazel eyes unreadable—and Lake’s dad, who was probably the only person at this table who had any personal experience in either Senate politics or tracking down Rabids.
“Here’s what you need to know.”
I laid the facts out for the others quickly and efficiently. I didn’t stumble over Maddy’s name, didn’t let myself care or feel or hurt in any way.
Fact: there had been a murder near our territory that looked to be the work of a rabid werewolf.
Fact: a young girl fitting Maddy’s description had been seen near the scene.
Fact: Callum had as good as said that she was involved in this up to her eyeballs.
Fact: if there was another attack, Shay and the rest of the alphas would use that as justification to come after Maddy themselves.
“We can’t let that happen,” I said. “I’ll leave in the morning,
head over to the site of the last murder. Lake and Chase are coming with me, but Devon’s going to stay here.” I flicked my eyes over to Lake’s dad. “Mitch, I’d appreciate it if you did the same.”
I could have made it an order, but Mitch had known me since I was a kid, and he and Ali were what I’d call close. If I was going to convince my foster mother that this was a good idea, I’d need his support, not just compliance.
“It might not be a bad idea to pull in the peripherals,” Mitch commented, which I took to mean something along the lines of why, yes, Bryn, I would be happy to stay here and help look after the pack in your absence. “They’ll be more at risk on the edges of the territory than they would be here.”
“And,” Devon added, “as feisty as the tween brigade is, it couldn’t hurt to have a few more werewolves in residence who are at least close to full grown.”
The majority of the members of our pack were between the ages of nine and thirteen. Despite the fact that I’d only been fifteen myself the first time I faced down the Senate, I couldn’t help feeling the others were just kids, that they should get to stay that way as long as possible.
“They shouldn’t know,” I said, making eye contact with each person at the table, one after another. “You can tell the peripherals that we’re going after Maddy, but the younger kids don’t need to where I’m going, or why.”
They didn’t need to know that a girl they’d looked up to and loved and missed like crazy might have become a monster.
I didn’t need to know that.
Chase’s hand worked its way into my palm, and he wove his fingers in between mine. I gripped his hand, pushing back the memory of the crime scene photos and the image my brain had
conjured of Maddy in wolf form, tearing out the victim’s throat.
“And if you get caught?” That was the first time Ali had actually spoken. “You can’t exactly tell the local sheriff that he doesn’t need to worry about tracking down this killer because you’ve got it under control. Three teenagers milling around a murder scene isn’t exactly what I’d call inconspicuous, Bryn, and no matter what you are in the werewolf world, out there, you’re just a kid.”
I hated that Ali was playing the voice of reason and hated that she was right. Most of all, though, I hated that she acted like I didn’t know the human world, like being part of the pack, heart and soul, had cost me my humanity already.