Lake smiled, slow and sure, a look that meant she was getting ready to either flirt or attack. I braced myself for either or both.
“You’re just sour because I beat the tar out of you at pool.” Lake smiled, tossed her hair over her shoulder, and in a motion too quick for me to track, whipped out her shotgun, aiming it squarely at the foreign wolf’s nose.
“I thought you said it paid to have friends,” I reminded her.
Lake didn’t blink. “It does. If Tom and I weren’t friends, he might be trying to prove that he’s the stronger wolf, and I might be making the reverse argument with the help of my gun.”
He blinked twice and then laughed, but didn’t sound entirely comfortable. There was an edge in Lake’s voice, one that told him to take her threat seriously. He was male, he was bigger, and he was probably stronger—but she was armed.
I really hoped this wasn’t going to degenerate into a dominance squabble, though in retrospect, it was probably too much to hope that I’d left that behind.
As if sensing my thoughts, the foreign wolf turned his attention to me. “You’re Callum’s Bryn,” he said shortly.
I met his gaze. I refused to look away. I managed not to think about Sora. I managed not to think about the fact that if he wanted to, this man could squash me in a second.
“I used to be,” I replied.
“Hey, buddy. Eyes on me.” Lake was the protective type and the jealous type. I wasn’t sure which had her forcing the foreigner’s eyes back to hers. If he challenged anyone, her posture seemed to be saying, it would be her.
Personally, I wouldn’t have laid money on his odds.
“The alphas have been called,” he said after a long moment, never moving, never taking his gaze from hers. “Stands to reason some of them will be passing through on their way to Callum’s.”
Lake didn’t blink. She didn’t move. She also didn’t cock the trigger of her gun, and her “friend” took that as encouragement. “I thought you’d want to know.”
Lake didn’t reply, but after a long moment, she put down the gun, her suntanned face going ashen white.
“Why’s the Senate going to Ark Valley?” I asked, even though I deeply suspected we had the answer spread out on the table in front of us, marked with Xs and stars.
“Callum called ’em,” the Were replied, taking his eyes from Lake to look back at me.
I tossed my ponytail over my shoulder. I knew how to do this. If you needed answers, you had to stand your ground.
I could do this.
“And why did Callum call ’em?” I asked.
The Were shrugged. Keely took that moment to refill my coffee, and as her shoulder brushed the man’s, he shrugged again and started talking. “Who knows? With the old man, chances are as good as they aren’t that it’s for something that hasn’t even happened yet.”
The old man. Even among his own kind, Callum was older than most. Stronger, too. But the last part of that sentence …
“Why would he call a meeting about something that hasn’t happened yet?”
The man shrugged, like it was becoming a compulsion. “Because he knows it will.”
I still wasn’t following. Fortunately, someone was.
“Are you saying Callum’s psychic?” Keely asked quietly, sounding a measure less incredulous than I felt when I heard the question. Alphas were connected to their packs. They saw through eyes that weren’t their own. They were strong.
But they weren’t psychic.
“I’m not saying a thing,” the Were said as if he couldn’t figure out how exactly he’d managed to say as much as he already had. “But, yeah. You don’t get to be Callum’s age or have a pack that big without an edge.”
Keely set my coffee cup back down and then moved on to the next table, and the Were stopped talking. His forehead wrinkled as he took in the full sight of our table. “What are you two doing anyway?” he asked.
I expected Lake to reply, but she didn’t. She’d gone ashen at the announcement about the alphas and hadn’t yet recovered.
“We’re plotting world domination,” I said, covering for her, wondering what was wrong, even as my own mind was muddled with possibilities I’d never considered. About Callum. About Ali’s assertion that Callum had known what my permissions would lead to, long before he’d ever granted them. “It takes more planning than one might think.”
Werewolves could smell lies, but most of them were significantly dicier on the subject of sarcasm.
“I should go.” Lake rushed the words into each other, and then, in a blur, she was gone, shotgun and all. The moment she left, I became aware of how close this foreign wolf was to me, how awful he smelled, how jarring his presence was to my pack-sense.
I didn’t show it. I just sat there, and after four seconds, or five, and one hard look from Keely, he backed slowly away. I reached for my coffee cup and didn’t notice until I picked it up that my hand was trembling. I reached out my other hand, steadying the cup, and then I brought it slowly to my lips, digesting what I’d just heard.
The alphas were coming. The Senate had been called.
Callum may or may not have been psychic.
And Lake was nowhere to be seen.
CHAPTER TWENTY
GOING AFTER LAKE WAS EASIER SAID THAN DONE. I dropped our stuff back at Cabin 4, where my family and I were staying, and then I tried to figure out which of the other houses dotting the horizon was hers. Based on the number of them on the property, Mitch was either an impressive businessman or really bad about picking up strays. At some point, the Wayfarer appeared to have evolved from a restaurant/bar to some kind of inn.
Or possibly a halfway house.
None of which told me where Lake was, or why she’d run off in the first place. Either I’d missed something in her interaction with the wolf named Tom—and I didn’t think I had—or she was upset about the Senate meeting. Or what Tom had said about Callum.
Or both.
Until I knew what had upset her and why, I couldn’t judge whether it would be better to give her space or hunt her down, keep her out of trouble or get into some with her. Looking for her gave me an excuse not to think about the bombshells Tom had dropped.
Tracking had never been my strong suit, but I knew enough to start where I’d lost track of my prey to begin with. The dirt path up to the restaurant was well trod, and I wouldn’t have been able to pick out Lake’s tracks were it not for the fact that most of the other patrons of this fine establishment followed the trinity of instructions on the front door: No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service.