But last night, I’d been something different. And even now, lying in my bed in Ali’s house, I could feel them—each and every member of the pack: Devon curled at the bottom of his bed; Marcus prowling through his house with clenched fists and fist-shaped holes in his walls; Katie and Alex still asleep. Casey was …
Casey was in bed with Ali. And that was where I drew the line. Because, eww.
This whole pack-bond thing was kind of out of control. Especially if I followed the logic of my current situation to completion, because that told me that as much as I was in their heads, they were in mine.
Stupid werewolves.
Still in bed, Bryn?
Callum’s voice was in my head, not surprising given the fact that he’d practically been there before I’d opened up to the others.
Are you reading my mind? I asked him point-blank, ignoring his question and the fact that I was probably due to start training any minute.
Your thoughts are your own, m’dear. Your emotions, physical movements, location, and instincts are another matter.
My instinct was to tell him that he blew. Trusting that he’d pick up on that little psychic tidbit, I rolled out of bed and stumbled to my closet, unsteady and wobbly on my feet. I felt like I’d run a marathon. Through a vat of cement. With weights on my legs.
The night before, I’d been too drunk on power to listen to any objections my body might have had about the pace I’d kept. Today, however, each and every complaint was registering loud and clear.
We’ll start with a morning run, I think. You’ve a bit of time before the school day starts.
I was sure that it wasn’t just my imagination. There was some self-satisfied amusement in Callum’s mind-voice. Didn’t he realize it was Monday morning and that being up at this hour was almost certainly a crime against God and man? I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to project my thoughts back to him in words—for all I knew, that might be an alpha-only skill, but I thought I’d give it a try.
Sadist.
His response came to me in colors and feelings, rather than words, but I got the message clear enough. He was laughing at me. Chuckling, in a fond kind of way.
I pushed at him—not to close off the bond but to shove him out of my head, or as far to the corners of it as he would go. He stayed for a moment, his presence taking over so much of my mind that I couldn’t move. After making his point, he retreated.
Stupid werewolves and their stupid dominance maneuvers. It was bad enough dealing with them every day when it came to external conflict. The last thing I needed was people marking territory inside my head.
Without even thinking about it, I sent Callum an image of a dog hiking his leg at a fire hydrant. And then one of a rebel flag from the Revolutionary War.
Callum didn’t respond in my head, but I knew he’d gotten the message, because he met me at the front door, and the first thing he said, with a single arch of his eyebrow, was, “Don’t tread on you?”
“More like ‘don’t metaphorically pee on my brainwaves,’ but it’s the same sentiment, really.”
“Vulgarity does not become you, Bryn.”
“Are you going to lecture, or are we going to run?”
He sighed, and I didn’t need a bond with the pack to see that he was thinking that I had always, always been a difficult child. And then, just in case that point wasn’t clear, he verbalized it. “You have always, always been a difficult child.”
I smiled sweetly. “I try.”
He jerked his head to the side and I nodded, and together, the two of us took off jogging. We followed the path for about a half mile, and then Callum veered off into the woods and jacked up his pace. I worked to keep up with him, even once we’d finished a five-mile loop and he started us back through again.
“Not bad for an old man,” I told him, even though I was winded and knew he could continue on like this indefinitely.
“Brat,” he returned, his tone completely conversational.
It had been a long time since the two of us had spent time like this: one on one, without him swooping in to lecture me about something or make some grand declaration about my life and future in his territory. When I was really little, we’d done this a lot more. He’d taught me to fight. Every day, we went running, and when I’d wipe out at the end, he’d carried me on his back. And then I got older, and the times like this one had been fewer and further between. He’d taken a step back. Left me to Ali. Spent most of his time on pack business that I had no part in.
I didn’t want to admit that it hurt that I’d had to open up the bond to bring that Callum back to me. Was this even real? If he spent time with me because we were more connected now, or because of the conditions he’d set down, did it mean anything? Or was I just another chore, the alpha doing his duty by the pack, bratty little human girl and all?
“I can finish this up on my own,” I told him. “I’ve been doing my own training for years.”
“And you’ve been slacking. You only push yourself so far, Bryn.”
I got a feeling that he wasn’t talking just about physical training. With the semester more than halfway done, I still had a B-plus in algebra when it wouldn’t have taken much effort on my part to get an A. I was close to Devon but didn’t bother with any of my other age-mates. If the “Tree of Life” wanted to look like a fire hydrant, I was willing to revisit the issue.
“If you start talking about college and life choices, I’m out of here,” I promised him. “And if you have something else to do and somewhere else to be, don’t let me keep you from it.”
I got a vibe from him then—a twinge in my pack-sense that felt like being pricked with a lukewarm needle.
“I’m here and you’ll deal with me, Bronwyn.”
I took his words as an indication that a warm pinprick meant that he was feeling rather testy.
“Fine,” I said.
“Fine.”
As Calllum and I fell into silence, the voices at the edge of my mind—whirring, whispering ghosts of a something—made themselves heard more clearly. The constant barrage of emotions, filtered through the bond and blurred like words shouted from the bottom of a swimming pool, exhausted me as much as the paces that Herr Callum was jollily putting me through.
Focus, I told myself. Focus on the here and the now. Focus on why you’re doing this
I focused on Chase.
It was funny. I’d only seen him once, and I couldn’t even picture his human face with any kind of certainty, but his wolf form and his voice were as clear in my memory as they would have been if I’d seen and heard them the second before.