Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology (43 page)

I nodded. “Consider it known,” I said. “And for the record—everything I did? I’d do it again. And if it ever comes down to the safety of my pack versus the safety of yours …”

Callum smiled. “Consider it known.”

There was something about the expression on his face that made me suspicious, made me wonder if it was starting already. If he knew something that I didn’t.

“It’s not going to come down to the safety of my pack versus the safety of yours, is it?” I asked. “At least not immediately. There’ll be other threats. Outside threats. The other alphas, maybe. Or something worse.” I paused. He said nothing, and I knew without asking that I couldn’t push my way back into his head no matter how hard I tried.

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“The future’s always changing, Bryn.” That was it. That was all he gave me. I wanted to scream, but I didn’t. He was an alpha. So was I. Things were different. I couldn’t just bait him into giving me an answer.

I’d have to wait it out.

“You really are the most impossible man I’ve ever met,” I told him. He flopped down beside me on the grass and
brushed his grizzly cheek against mine. “And you are, without question, the most troublesome and irksome child I’ve ever had the displeasure of knowing.”

Callum and I had been family once. We bore each other’s Marks still. I savored this moment, because deep down, I knew that I wasn’t a little girl anymore, that I wasn’t his
anything
anymore, and that for as long as I was alpha of my pack and he was alpha of his, we would never just be Callum and Bryn again.

Mine
.

Mine
.

Mine
.

I belonged to my own pack now, and they belonged to me—Devon and Lake and Chase, Maddy and Lily and the rest of the Resilients, most of whom weren’t even into their teens. A random and rather twisted thought occurred to me, and I smiled.

“What are you smiling about, Bronwyn Alessia?”

I shrugged. “It’s just that I was raised by wolves, and now in a twisted way, with all the kids around here, I’m raising them. Ironic, huh?”

Callum snorted. “Bryn, m’dear, if there’s any justice in this world, they’ll be nothing but trouble.”

I groaned. Knowing my luck—and
theirs
—they probably would.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Before this book had a title, I referred to it simply as “love book,” because it was written for the sheer love of storytelling, and I owe an incredible debt to those who helped bring it into print. At the top of that list are my agent, Elizabeth Harding, who believed in this book from day one, and my editor, Regina Griffin, whose editorial input and passion for this project both challenged and thrilled me. I’m also thankful to the rest of my Egmont and Curtis Brown families—Mary Albi, Elizabeth Law, Alison Weiss, Nico Medina, Greg Ferguson, Rob Guzman, Doug Pocock, Holly Frederick, Dave Barbor, and Ginger Clark.

The single biggest blessing in my life as a writer has been the incredible and constant support of my writing friends, who really are my people (or, to put things in werewolf terminology, my pack). Melissa Marr, Ally Carter, and Sarah Cross keep me sane and make me smile, and I’m also grateful to Team Castle, for recharging my writerly batteries when I needed it most, and Bob, who’s always there for a late-night email.

Finally, thanks go to my family and friends for putting
up with my total absorption into this project. Thanks to my mom, who’s always been my first reader; my dad, for providing valuable weapons expertise for some of the later scenes; my brother, Justin, who taught me everything I know about overprotective alpha males (Just kidding! Kind of.); and my sister-in-law, Allison, who does an excellent job at curtailing aforementioned brother’s protective instincts. I love you all!

EGMONT
We bring stories to life

First published by Egmont USA, 2012
443 Park Avenue South, Suite 806
New York, NY 10016

Copyright © Jennifer Lynn Barnes, 2012
All rights reserved

www.egmontusa.com
www.jenniferlynnbarnes.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

eISBN: 978-1-60684-475-5

v3.1

T
HERE
’
S AN EARTHQUAKE INSIDE OF ME
. I’
M BREAKING
, and it feels like heaven. It hurts like hell
.

When I was little, Shifting was about as taxing as doing the hokey-pokey. I’d take off running, this skinny, little blonde kid with eyes too big for her face and knees that stayed suntanned year-round. Mid-stride, I’d leap, leaving the ground on two legs and landing on four, as natural as breathing, as simple as that.

Back then, my twin brother and I spent as much time as pups as we did as kids. Afterwards, when Griffin was gone—as suddenly and irrevocably as if he’d never been there at all—there were times when nothing but Shifting made sense, when the only way I could stop missing him was to keep moving, keep Changing, girl one minute and wolf the next.

Shifting was easy when everything else was hard.

Bones snapping. Skin tearing. The movement throws my skull back with vicious, brutal force
.

When I turned thirteen, my body started to change. My legs
grew longer, my muscles stretching like taffy and hardening into steel. My fur lost that spiky softness that was just made for rolling around in wet grass. The roundness fell off my face. I grew into my paws. The boob fairy came and blessed me heartily.

And somewhere along the way, Shifting stopped being the hokey-pokey.

Light explodes inside my head. It hurts—everything hurts—agony, sweet—and then finally
, finally
I’m Her
.

The first moment after the Shift was sensory overload. My ears flicked forward, and my nose twitched. I could smell everything, smell it so strongly that scents leapt to life as tastes on my tongue. I felt like I could inhale the world and swallow it whole.

I wanted it all.

For the first time in days, I wasn’t thinking about putting a bullet through someone’s beer, just to teach him some manners. I wasn’t thinking about the way peripherals from other packs looked at me like I was some kind of mixture between a Playboy Bunny and the Holy Grail.

My thoughts were simple, pure. I
felt
them: a pang in my stomach, adrenaline rushing into my veins, dirt—silky and soft—beneath the pads of my feet. I could smell a deer in the distance, and I knew if I could catch it, it was mine.

Unable to hold myself back any longer, I charged after the smell, the taste, the
possibility
, and somewhere in the recesses of my mind, my human half whispered three little words.

Happy birthday, Lake
.

Nothing said sweet sixteen like a hunt.

Coming out of wolf form hurt as much as Shifting had in the first place, and there was a part of me that welcomed the pain.

Feel it. Feel it. Feel it
.

At least I was feeling something, other than sorry for myself. At least I still could. At least when I was hurting, I couldn’t ache.

For several seconds after the Change was complete, I lay there, naked and trembling, my body out of sync with my mind. As a Were, I’d gotten real used to being in the altogether, so I didn’t even think about the lack of clothing until I heard a twig snap somewhere in the distance.

It probably says something fairly revealing about my character that in that moment—stark naked, drenched in sweat—my first thought wasn’t to reach for my pants.

I reached for my shotgun. As a general rule, it’s hard to feel naked when you’re packing heat.

My eyes scanned the perimeter of the forest for signs of movement, and I ran one hand along the barrel of the gun. Some girls had dolls. Some girls had teddy bears. I had a Remington 870 shotgun named Matilda and had since I was twelve.

There
.

My eyes landed on the outline of a form at the edge of the forest.
Human. Male
. I could have run. Even in this form, I was fast enough that a human wouldn’t have stood a prayer of a chance of keeping up—but this was our forest,
our
land, and fresh off a Shift, defending my territory mattered more than the fact that I was standing there in my birthday suit.

Literally.

The interloper and I were separated by maybe thirty yards, maybe less. The forest was dense, and I couldn’t make out the specifics of his face, but there was something familiar about the way he stood. A boy from school, maybe, come to gawk at the girls in the woods?

It wouldn’t have been the first time, but there was something inside of me that said
no
, something that pushed me forward, even though I knew it was a bad idea. I didn’t think this boy had seen me Shift, but I didn’t
know
. The last thing I should have been doing was sauntering toward him, shotgun at the ready, buck naked with something to prove.

It’s my party
, I thought. If I wanted to put the fear of Jesus and psychotic blonde chicks into a Peeping Tom, I figured that was my prerogative.

“You lost?” I called out. “Or just perverted?”