In the time it took for them to reach a consensus, they’d be easy targets.
Sitting ducks.
Open.
“Senate Law forbids taking another alpha’s wolf,” I said slowly. “But if there’s no alpha, then technically, there isn’t a pack.”
If the psychics killed me, if they killed Devon, there would be an opening, however brief, for someone else to come rushing in.
I thought of Shay’s wolves, lined up and down the edge of our border. Waiting.
“Dev can’t fight,” I said, coming to a conclusion that crept under my skin and hung in the air all around me. “If I fight, Devon can’t, and I have to fight.”
Callum didn’t respond, but he didn’t have to. I was the alpha, and an alpha couldn’t run and hide, couldn’t send the pack off to fight, die on their own. The pack needed me there, the same way the peripherals had needed to see me when they’d arrived at the Wayfarer, the same way the others looked to me for the signal to run on the full moon.
“In the end,” Callum said, his voice soft, gentle, “it all comes back to you. You protect them, you love them, you live for them, and someday, you die. That’s what it means, Bryn-girl, to be what we are. It’s lonely. It’s impossible. It’s all-consuming.”
It is what it is.
Callum didn’t say it. Neither did I. But it was there, between us. And it was true.
“Okay,” I said, fighting for acceptance the way a drowning man tries for air. “Devon can’t fight. I can’t risk sending the kids away, because someone could intercept them before they get to you. During the actual confrontation, the coven will be gunning for me, and they’ll be under orders from Shay not to kill any of the female Weres.”
Granted, Callum hadn’t said any of that. He’d just sat there, on the other end of the line, asking questions and letting me come to it on my own.
“Now I just need a plan for neutralizing the coven as quickly as possible,” I said. “Any idea if taking out their leader will free up the others’ minds?”
Callum didn’t respond.
“Callum? Words of wisdom? Cryptic hints? Anything?”
Nothing. No answer. Silence.
And that was when I realized he’d already hung up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
AS I STALKED OUT OF THE HOUSE AND BACK TOWARD the restaurant, my mind jumped from one thought to another, a never-ending medley of the things Callum had said, the promised confrontation with the psychics, and Jed’s suggestion that the only way to stop Valerie was to kill her. I thought of the carving Callum had sent me, and remembered all the times growing up that I’d seen him with a piece of wood in his hands. I remembered “borrowing” his knife when I was eight, trying to carve something myself. If Ali had been the one to catch me unsupervised with the sharp object, she would have freaked, but Callum had just sat down behind me and pulled me onto his lap. He’d put his hands over mine, guiding them, ready to catch the blade if it slipped.
Was that why he’d sent it to me? To let me know that even now, he was doing the same thing? Or was the message really that he couldn’t do that anymore, that this time, if the knife slipped, I’d bleed?
Hurt.
Die.
“You okay?” Chase fell into step with me, and I felt his presence the way I always did, in my flesh and bones: a flash of similarity, a desire for the space between us to disappear.
This time, I kept my distance.
“Lucas is healing. He seems a little more … present now. Maddy’s with him.” Chase paused, and I could feel him debating whether to continue. “He’s asking for you.”
Getting out of Snake Bend had been only half of Lucas’s goal; he’d said from the beginning that he wanted to be a part of our pack, and now, with Shay out of the way, there was nothing to keep me from giving Lucas his wish.
Except, of course, for the fact that the psychics might pick any moment to descend.
“It can wait,” Chase said, and even though I’d been thinking more or less the same thing, coming from him, it chafed—maybe because I couldn’t help remembering that he’d used that same soft, quiet tone to tell me that even if we lost Lake, it would be okay.
It wouldn’t have been okay. And neither would I.
“Shay wants the females alive.” I changed the subject—out loud and in my head. “That’s the good news.”
“You’ll make the girls our first line of defense, then.” After my one-sided conversation with Callum, Chase actually answering me made for a pleasant change of pace. “If Maddy, Lake, Phoebe, and Sage take the perimeter, then the psychics will have to work their way back to the rest of us with less than lethal force. It’s a good plan, Bryn. It buys the rest of us some time.”
“Not all of us.”
“The bad news?” Chase guessed.
I nodded. “I’m going to ask Dev not to fight.”
I expected Chase to ask why. He didn’t.
“He won’t say yes.” Chase didn’t—wouldn’t—look at me, but even from this angle, I could see that his expression had gone carefully neutral.
“Devon won’t be happy about it,” I corrected. “But he’ll do it.”
Maybe that was the difference between Chase and Dev. Neither one of them wanted to see me hurt. They both would have died for me, the same way I would have died for them. They felt an animal need to protect me, and always had—but at the end of the day, Dev felt that way about other things, too. He would have gone to Shay’s pack to protect Lake. He’d stand down on this fight for the good of the pack.
“Dev will do it,” I said, taking a page from Chase’s book and staring straight ahead. “But you wouldn’t.”
“Bryn,” Chase said, reaching for my arm, his touch light against my skin.
“Would it even matter,” I asked him, feeling that touch to my core, “if I told you it was what I wanted? If it was what needed to happen for us to know that the pack was going to come out of this okay?”
To his credit, Chase didn’t hesitate before he answered. He didn’t sugarcoat it. He didn’t tell me what I wanted to hear. “No.”
“Well,” I said roughly, “then I guess it’s a good thing I’m not asking you.”
Chase’s hand tightened, ever so slightly, his touch turning to a hold. He stopped walking, and I turned to face him.
“If it came down to me or the pack,” Chase said, his face giving away nothing, his mind calm and cool on the other end of the bond, “what would you choose?”