“I’m fine.”
She crossed the room and hauled me up in front of a mirror. “Tell me again that you’re fine.”
The unforgiving surface of the mirror told me in no uncertain terms that although the bruises on my face were beginning to yellow and fade, I still looked like I’d been tie-dyed in a vat of black, blue, green, and corpse-colored paint.
“Ali, I’ll be okay,” I said, trying to convince her to take a step back and think about this. “It could have been so much worse.”
She snorted. “If you think you’re making a convincing case for staying, you’re mistaken. Just listen to yourself, Bryn. ‘It could have been worse.’ Who’s to say that it won’t be in the future?” She paused. “Do you think I want that for you? For Katie and Alex?”
Katie and Alex.
Up until now, I’d been dazed and stressing. Now, I was panicked. “They won’t let you take the twins. The pack, they’ll never let Katie go. You’ve seen the way they—”
“Oh, rest assured, I’m dealing with the pack.” The tone in Ali’s voice left very little doubt in my mind that when she said “the pack,” she meant “Callum.”
Callum, who’d given me to her in the first place.
Callum, who’d ordered my punishment.
Callum, who hadn’t looked at me or said a word to me since I’d touched Chase.
“It’s not Callum’s fault,” I said, wanting desperately to believe it. “Ali, he took care with me. He gave me the only chance that he—”
“I am not having this conversation with you, Bryn. I’m just not. I can’t.” She ran a hand through her hair, and for a moment, she looked very young. “The fact that you don’t hate him for this breaks my heart. And if we weren’t leaving because of what they’d done to you, we’d be leaving because the pack has twisted you enough to make you think that it’s okay for someone to treat you that way. It’s not, and we are. Leaving.”
There was no arguing with her. I would have had better luck convincing Devon to don knockoffs.
With gentle hands, Ali took hold of my waist, careful of my tender body, and she pulled me close, burying her face in my hair. Her shoulders shook, and I realized that she was crying. Sobbing. Clinging to me in a way that made me think she’d never let me go.
“You didn’t wake up,” she said. “I waited, Bryn, and I waited, but you didn’t wake up.”
“I didn’t mean to,” I whispered. I didn’t mean to do any of this. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.
This was my fault. Mine.
Without warning, Ali let go of me and straightened back up. She wiped the tears off her own face and then off mine with the same gentle, brisk motion, and then she walked over to my bookshelf, picked up the box there, and turned to leave.
“Be ready to go in an hour.”
An hour. How could a person get ready to leave their entire life behind in one hour? I sat back down on my bed, not even caring about the way my bruises protested and the pain radiated outward from them like liquid spilling over the edges of a pool.
Devon. I had to call Devon.
And Chase.
Chase.
All of a sudden, the air around me felt very warm and the room felt very small. My breath caught in my throat and my stomach dropped, like someone had unlatched a trapdoor in my intestines.
If Ali followed through with this, if we left, I’d lose him.
Bryn?
His voice in my head calmed me, even as my rational self blathered on that the last thing I should have been worrying about when my entire life was being ripped out from underneath me was a boy I’d seen exactly twice.
I’m here, I replied silently. I’m awake. And Ali’s going to take me away.
Chase didn’t reply immediately, and for a moment, I was terrified that he had gone. But then, slowly, images began to make their way from his consciousness to mine. They danced at the edges of my mind, and like a butterfly, every time I tried to latch on to one, it flew away.
He took it away.
My mouth set in a firm line, I pictured the bond between us and pulled. Growing up, I’d never been a match in strength for the other kids in the pack, but I could hold my own at tug-of-war based on the fact that I never let go. Once I got a grip on that rope, if someone wanted to get it back from me, they would have had to pry it out of my limp, dead arms. Even once they’d pulled me across the line, I didn’t stop fighting.
Chase never stood a chance.
The images flashed into my mind, and I managed to hold on to them long enough for a concrete picture to form in my brain.
Bars.
Steel.
Cage, I realized. They’d caged him. My lip curled upward with fury. Didn’t they realize how awful it was, to be trapped there? I could feel him pacing back and forth.
He wanted out.
I won’t let them do this to you. I’ll—
Nothing, he said back. If I can get out, I will.
A long pause.
They’ll let me out when you’re gone.
Understanding washed over me, and relief. They weren’t punishing him. He wasn’t trapped because he’d disobeyed. He was there because I was leaving, and for whatever reason, they didn’t want him trying to stop me.
Another vague image, a half-completed thought he didn’t want me to hear—
“Ali.” I said her name out loud, and things became very, very clear. Ali had asked them to cage Chase, and they’d agreed. If I’d been in my right mind, I might have wondered what exactly Ali had been forced to sacrifice to get them to grant her request—not to mention permission to leave—in return. But I was too angry to think about anything other than the fact that despite Ali’s ranting and raving about the way the pack had treated me, they were treating Chase like an animal on her bequest.
I couldn’t let her do this. I wouldn’t. In fact, I wouldn’t let her do any of this. I wouldn’t leave. I wouldn’t step foot in that car, and she couldn’t make me. It was going to be a cold day in July before I let her do this to me. To him.
To herself and to Casey. To the twins.
She wasn’t doing this.
End of story. Finit.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I’D TELL YOU THAT YOU CAN’T STAY MAD AT ME forever, but I have a feeling you’d take that as a challenge.”
Exactly two hours after I’d sworn that Ali would drag me kicking and screaming to the car over my own dead body, I was sitting shotgun, alive and not bloody in the least. I’d been giving her the silent treatment for the past hundred miles—not that it was doing any good.