My words were met with deafening silence, followed by the unmistakable sound of growling inside my head.
I knew they wouldn’t like where this was headed.
“If the coven wanted me dead, they would have already made their move.” I tried to keep my voice calm and even, willing my friends to push down their instincts and hear the very human logic of what I was saying. “Instead, they’ve been playing with me: stalking my dreams, letting me feel the heat. Literally.”
Most alphas wanted two things: territory and the power to protect it. I had to wonder if it was that different for psychics. Something had compelled Caroline’s mother to make a deal with Shay, and whatever that something was, she’d chosen to keep it a secret.
Just like she’d chosen to let Caroline do her dirty work.
Just like she’d chosen to make the others fear what Caroline could do.
When I’d asked Sora what I could do to save Lucas, she’d told me that the only way to get a wolf away from an alpha who didn’t want to let go was to give the alpha something he wanted more. Maybe the same logic applied to the coven, only instead of wanting females or territory or the kinds of things that mattered to Weres, their leader might be after something different.
Me.
The larger the pack and the more powerful its members, the stronger that pack’s alpha became. Given that Caroline’s mother seemed to have a way of manipulating people into doing what she wanted them to do, I had to assume that she’d welcome the chance to bring a powerful Resilient into the fold, especially if the Resilient in question had an entire werewolf pack at her beck and call.
If the coven could control me, they’d get my entire pack as a bonus. I doubted Caroline’s mother would be able to ignore the potential for that kind of payoff. At the same time, though, I wasn’t sure if I could take that kind of chance. Putting myself in the line of fire was one thing, but betting the entire pack’s safety on my ability to shake off psychic holds was risky.
Unfortunately, the only option that wasn’t risky involved sentencing a boy who’d come to me for protection to death.
There has to be a way to go in myself but minimize the risk to the pack, I thought fiercely, willing it to be true.
“Lake, should we perhaps lock Bryn in a closet?” Devon kept his tone light, but his eyes were deadly serious. “I’m thinking we should perhaps lock her in a closet.”
Lake tilted her head to one side, clearly considering the option. “You really think you can do this?” she asked me.
I didn’t bother tiptoeing around the truth. “I don’t know.”
Lake nodded, and for a second, she was the spitting image of her dad. “When you figure it out, I suspect you’ll let us know?”
That was Lake-ese for “deal me in or die a slow and painful death.” She wanted a promise that I wouldn’t run off behind their backs, that I wouldn’t do anything until I had a plan, and that once I had a plan, she and Dev would be the first to know.
“Bryn?” Dev parked the car, and his voice broke into my thoughts. The part of me that was alpha wanted to respond, to tell them both to back off, to take a lifetime of friendship and turn it into something else.
I ground my teeth and shook my head.
The three of us had always watched out for each other. Always. I wasn’t going to let what I was change that, change me. Our pack wasn’t like other packs. I wasn’t like other alphas.
That was it.
The idea came to me fully formed, like it had been in my head all along, and I just hadn’t unearthed it until now.
“Hey, Lake?”
She grinned. “Would I be right in thinking that you’ve got everything figured out?”
“Yup.”
“And you really think you can do this?”
“Yup.”
“By Jove,” Devon said, reading between the lines of my one-word answers, “I believe the lady has a plan.”
For the first time since Lucas had shown up at the Wayfarer, I really felt like I did.
This time, I was the last one to the clearing. The moon wasn’t full. The pack was sleeping, and those of us who weren’t hadn’t come here to run.
“Our pack isn’t like other packs.” My words appeared as wisps of white in the night air and echoed through the forest. The moon provided scant light, but even in the darkness, I could make out every detail of each of their faces.
Waiting.
Ready.
“We chose each other. When it counted, when the stakes were high, when no one else was there, you three had my back. You all gave up another life, another future, a hundred thousand things that might have been, and you did that for me, without even thinking, without questioning, without batting an eye.”
For a time, after I’d broken off my connection with Callum’s pack, but before we’d had our standoff with the Rabid, it had been just the four of us: Lake, Chase, Devon, and me. Later, there were others, and no matter where I went or what I did, the others’ names would always be etched into my soul, their well-being my first priority—but in the beginning, before we knew what it meant or what any of us were on the cusp of doing, there were four of us.
And there was no alpha.
“If something happens to me—tonight, tomorrow, five years from now, I know that you guys will take care of the others.” I met Dev’s eyes for a second and then closed mine. “You’d take care of each other.”
“Nothing is going to happen to you.” Devon was the one who said the words, but I felt the intensity with which he’d issued them emanating from all three. It should have been suffocating, but instead, it warmed me, held me, sent a charge racing along the surface of my skin.
The whites of Chase’s eyes caught the moonlight just so, and for a moment, I felt something animal and raw staring back at me.
I met his gaze head-on. I felt it down to the tips of my toes.
“Nothing is going to happen to me.” I repeated Devon’s words. “Because no matter what, the three of you would never let anything happen to me. It’s not supposed to work that way, because I’m the alpha, and that means that I’m supposed to be the one protecting you.”
My chest tightened, and the cold air cut into my lungs with each breath. I could sense their wolves, just below the surface. I could see the tension in their neck muscles and feel the adrenaline snaking its way from vein to vein.
“I’m not like other alphas.” The words slipped off my tongue almost as a confession, rather than a statement of pride, but I wasn’t here looking for absolution. I was here to make what I was—and what they were to me—work for us, instead of against us.