Since I hadn’t heard word one from the werewolf who’d promised to Change me into one myself, that left only one option. I had a psychic knack. I had power. I just didn’t know how to use it.
Yet.
“Seems to me, a girl like you could think of better uses for quiet time than running around and getting her feet all cut up.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but Jed preempted the words.
“Seems to me, you could have asked someone.”
“For help,” I clarified, since Jed was a man of few words. “Asked someone for help.”
There were days when I relied on the rest of the pack as much as they relied on me, and days when the concept of help seemed as foreign as the idea that most girls my age were just starting to look at colleges. Being an alpha was impossible and lonely and bigger than anything my human half might have wanted.
“I don’t need help,” I said softly, willing that to be true.
Jed rolled his eyes heavenward. “I’m not suggesting you go belly-up and ask your Weres for pointers,” he said. “I’d wager the ability works differently once there’s another set of animal instincts at play.”
Like Jed and me, many of the wolves in my pack were Resilient. At one point in time, they’d been human.
Just like I was.
Just like I wouldn’t be anymore, once Callum made good on his promise to Change me.
In the distance, I heard a rumble of thunder. Looking up, I noticed the blue sky turning a dark and ominous gray.
“How’d you know it was going to rain?” I asked Jed.
He snorted. “I’ve broken just about every bone in my body at one point or another, Bryn. I can feel a storm coming from a mile away.”
Jed’s body was covered in scars. I’d gotten so used to seeing them that I barely noticed anymore, but his words reminded me he’d had a lifetime of experience coming out on top of fights he had no business winning.
If anyone understood that a few scratches were a small price to pay for what I was seeking, it was Jed.
“You’ll help me?”
Jed nodded, gazing out at the horizon, looking oddly at peace as it started to rain. “I’ll help you,” he said. “But we’ll do it my way.”
I was going to go out on a limb and guess that his way did not involve putting myself through hell in hopes of convincing my body I was under attack.
“Fine by me.”
Jed gave me a look that said he thought I was constitutionally incapable of doing things any way but my own. Once upon a time, that might have been true, but now I’d do whatever it took to keep my pack safe. To be the kind of alpha they deserved and make sure that what had happened last winter never, ever happened again.
With nothing more than a nod in my direction, Jed began walking back toward shelter, but I just sat there, letting the rain beat against my body and thinking about a broken boy with hungry eyes.
A boy I’d invited into my pack.
A boy who’d tried to kill me.
A boy I’d killed.
Bone-tired and sopping wet, I went home.
CHAPTER TWO
THE CLOSER I GOT TO THE WAYFARER, THE MORE aware I was of the rest of the pack, and the more aware they were of me. Being alpha meant that the others didn’t have an all-access pass to my mind, the way I did to theirs, but even without the benefits of the pack-bond, my friends knew me well enough to know that a quiet Bryn meant Trouble with a capital T.
I wasn’t altogether surprised to find someone waiting for me at the clearing.
“Halt! Who goes there?”
If ever a werewolf had mastered the art of yelling from the diaphragm, it was Dev. Like a knight guarding a princess’s tower, he put his hands on his hips and threw his head back haughtily.
I could so feel a Monty Python impression coming on.
“’Tis I,” I yelled back, playing along. “Queen Bryn.”
With any luck, I could distract my best friend—and second-in-command—enough that he wouldn’t pay much attention to the fact that I looked like I’d been mud wresting—and lost.
“Queen?” Devon repeated, looking down his nose at me. Since he was six foot five, he had a long way to look. “Thou dost not look like a queen.”
I rolled my eyes, but amended my previous statement. “’Tis I. Peasant Bryn.”
Dev’s lips twitched, but he didn’t crack a smile, which was not a good sign. That Peasant Bryn line was comedy gold.
“You okay?” he asked, dropping the accent and searching my face for the answer.
“I’m fine,” I told him. “I just went for a run.”
To a werewolf’s nose, those words would have smelled true. I was fine—as fine as I could be, given everything that had happened in the past two years.
“You want to tell me why you’re not wearing any shoes?” Devon asked, quirking one eyebrow to ridiculous heights.
“Not really,” I replied. “Peasant Bryn is a girl of few words.”
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.