Raised by Wolves (15 page)

Tomorrow, Bryn. Right after school.

Those five words were all it had taken for Callum to transform from the man who’d promised Ali he’d take care of me to the one who made no guarantees about my safety if I took a single step out of line.

I was Pack and I’d act like it.

I’d submit.

If my last visit had been any indication, the pack wouldn’t let me get too close to Chase. Wouldn’t risk my asking questions the answers to which they either didn’t want him to give or didn’t want me to know.

Maybe both.

I knew my Rabid was coming. I knew he was bad. I was trapped and I was scared and I ran. Hid.

Was that what it had been like for Chase?

Was that what it would always be like for me?

“Five minutes,” our teacher announced from the front of the room, and then, just to clarify the point, he wrote the number 5 in a big loopy scrawl on the chalkboard. On my right, Devon had already started checking his answers. On my left, Jeff of the motorcycle incident had simply given up, opting instead for staring at the sweet, quiet girl who’d dumped him not long after he’d given her my pen.

I stopped writing with forty-five seconds to spare, and even though I didn’t have time to double-check my calculations, I couldn’t shake the sense that I’d aced it. I certainly should have. On late, sleepless nights, the memory of the Big Bad Wolf waiting for me in dreams, there’d been nothing to do but study algebra and think of Chase.

He’d grown up in the foster-care system.

He’d been angry for as long as he could remember.

He appreciated the power of privacy—or had before he’d turned.

He was a living, walking impossibility.

And he was mine.

Pack. Not Pack. Pack. Not Pack.

“Time’s up!”

The teacher sounded way too perky for someone who typically took pleasure in our dismay, but given the fact that his summer vacation started the second that ours did, I didn’t suppose I could blame him. Once upon a time, summer had meant running around barefoot with Devon and a visit from the only female werewolf anywhere near our age. I could feel it in my bones that this summer was going to be different.

I wasn’t ready.

As the teacher came by to collect my exam, I had a single moment of insanity, during which I fought the urge to hold on to my paper. If I didn’t turn in the test, it wasn’t really summer yet.

If it wasn’t summer, I wasn’t going to see Chase again.

And if I didn’t see Chase again, I wouldn’t have to worry about what he might say. What I might find out. What I might remember.

What I might do.

“Ms. Clare?”

The teacher sounded so befuddled that I loosened my grip on the exam and let him have it. Beside me, Devon grinned.

“Did you pass?” he asked, as we gathered our bags and headed for the door.

I didn’t respond.

“Come on, Bryn—my summer plans are just as subject to your state of groundedness as yours are. Did you pass?”

With my luck, Dev’s summer plans probably involved attempting to organize a werewolf theater festival. I shuddered to think of the number of roles I’d have to play when the surplus of males in the pack refused to don curly blonde wigs and play girls in the tradition of the original Shakespearean plays.

“I passed,” I said. “And for the record, I haven’t agreed to any of your so-called plans yet.”

With Devon, things were easy. Besides Ali, he was the only one I could look at without thinking of the rest of the pack.

“You don’t have to go, you know,” Devon said, his voice uncharacteristically understated. “If you decide you don’t want to, if you’d—for instance—rather hitch a ride into Denver and have a night on the town such as only I can show you …”

My look stopped Devon mid-sentence.

“Sorry. It’s just … you smell like him.” Devon said the words lightly, but a muscle in his jaw tensed. “You haven’t seen him in weeks, you didn’t touch him, and you still smell like him.”

That was news to me. Self-consciously, I sniffed at my own arm, and a couple of town girls glanced at me and snickered.

They probably thought I was checking myself for BO.

“I don’t smell anything,” I told Devon, ignoring the townies.

Devon didn’t reply—he just twirled his pen around his fingers like a tiny, ink-filled baton. “Come on,” he tried again.

“You. Me. Netflix.”

He was every bit as bad as Ali, pulling me back from the edge just before I dove headfirst into the abyss below.

Screw the townies, I thought, and giving them a real show, I butted my head gently against Devon’s chest, and he rested his chin on the top of my skull.

“You know I’m going,” I said, speaking directly into his shoulder.

He sighed, once quietly and once with the melodrama I’d come to expect from him. “Yes. I know. Nobody puts Baby in the corner, et cetera, et cetera, blah, blah.”

The fact that he could attach not one but two “blah”s on the end of a Dirty Dancing quote conveyed the true depths of his sour mood.

“I’ll be fine.”

Devon didn’t reply.

“Chase wouldn’t hurt me.” Even if Chase lost it, even if Callum and the Rabid were duking it out for dominance in his head, if I’d gotten under Chase’s skin half as much as he’d gotten under mine, I’d be fine.

Devon said his next words so quietly that I almost didn’t catch them. “It’s not Chase I’m worried about.”

I tried to make him repeat himself, but he wouldn’t, and that, more than anything, told me that the person Devon was worried about wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Chase.

It was Callum.

“You can’t honestly be worried about that,” I told Dev, but even as the words left my mouth, I sensed his wolf stirring.

Females were to be protected, but the alpha was to be obeyed.

“Callum would never hurt me.” That had been my litany since the moment he’d rescued me from under the sink.

Crooned to me. Talked to me. Banished the haze.

“If you break your permissions, he won’t have a choice.”

I jabbed my fist into Devon’s stomach hard enough to knock the air out of a normal boy. He didn’t respond at all.

“I’m not going to break the conditions,” I said. “I didn’t last time. I’m not stupid.”

That statement was met with rather insulting silence.

“I followed instructions last time, didn’t I?”

More silence, and then, finally, Devon broke into a song from Annie.

“‘Hard Knock Life,’” I said. “Seriously?”

Devon shrugged, but I noticed that he didn’t step away from me, like his wolf thought that if they just stayed close enough to me, I’d be okay.

“Trust me, Dev. I’ll be fine.”

My words must have sounded like truth, because he backed off, but in the depths of my brain, I wondered if the future would make a liar out of me. Because the last time I saw Chase, I wasn’t fine. I didn’t break permissions. I didn’t force Callum’s hand.

Chase hadn’t laid a finger on me.

But I hadn’t been fine.

Come out, come out, wherever you are, little one. No sense in hiding from the Big Bad Wolf. I’ll always find you in the end...

The only way I was going to be fine—now or ever—was when I knew exactly what had happened to Chase, and knew that it wasn’t going to happen to anyone else.

Ever.

Again.

“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU WOULD PRETEND FOR A SINGLE second that you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen!”

“Alison—”

“Don’t you ‘Alison’ me, Callum. You want to talk conditions, what were my conditions?”

“Ali—”

I recognized the voices from twenty yards away: Ali, Callum, and Casey. They were yelling so loudly that they didn’t even seem to be aware of my approach, which was really something, because I wasn’t making any attempt to mask the sound of my footsteps, and Callum and Casey should have heard me coming from a mile off.

“This is between me and Callum, Casey. If you can’t back me up, keep your mouth closed.”

Ali’s voice lowered in volume, and I gulped on Casey’s behalf. If she’d been using that tone with me, I would have turned tail and run, no questions asked.

“I don’t know why I even—”

A low, unidentifiable sound, issued from Callum’s throat, stopped Casey’s words in their tracks. I wasn’t sure if Callum had growled in warning or in threat, but either way, Casey didn’t finish what was probably an entirely inadvisable sentence.

I don’t know why I even bother?

I don’t know why I even try?

I don’t know why I even act like there’s the smallest chance you might listen to me?

It didn’t matter. Even I could tell that Ali wasn’t in the mood to hear any of the above. She was challenging Callum. Casey was trying to get her to back off. Our house had somehow become Dominance Issue Central, and I had a sinking suspicion that it was my fault.

Casey was mad at Ali. Ali was furious with Callum. And Callum was talking in low, even tones, like he couldn’t have forced both of them to their knees in under a second if he’d taken it in his head to do so.

This wasn’t good.

I stopped walking. I stopped breathing. I didn’t move.

“I left my family behind. I left my friends. I never contacted any of them again. I kept the pack’s secrets, and what did you give me in return?” This wasn’t a rhetorical question. Ali was waiting for an answer, and Callum replied, his voice gentle, like he was reprimanding a child instead of facing down the rage of a mama bear. “I gave you Bryn.”

“She’s mine, Callum. Not yours. Not the pack’s. She’s my daughter, and you swore to me that when it came to her safety, my word would be law, so whatever you know, whatever you’ve seen—”

And then, there was silence, so abrupt that I wondered for a second if I’d lost consciousness or gone spontaneously deaf in both ears.

“You might as well come in,” Callum called, disabusing me of that notion. His voice was dry, like he should have known I’d be hovering at the perimeter of their argument, marking every word. “This concerns you.”

I heard Ali mutter something under her breath but couldn’t make out what. Slowly, deliberately, I made my way to the house, taking my time with each step, not sure I wanted to see the looks on any of their faces.

I was right to worry.

Ali looked like Ali, Callum like Callum, and Casey looked like he wanted to kill me.

Like any of this was my fault. For once, I hadn’t done anything. Yet.

“How were your finals?” Ali asked, breaking the silence with a question that sounded so normal that I wondered for an instant if I’d imagined their yelling a moment before.

A glance at Casey out the side of my eye told me that I hadn’t.

“Finals went well,” I said, keeping my back to the wall, an instinct that I couldn’t shake, even though we were all family here. “I’m pretty sure I aced algebra.”

I felt Callum smile beside me, but when I looked over at him, his face was neutral, calm. The face of the alpha, taking care of pack business.

My hands flitted to the waist of my jeans, needing a reminder—a physical reminder—that even when he was alpha, he was still Callum. Even when it came to pack business, I was still his.

“Is this about my seeing Chase again?” I asked. I was facing Callum, but Ali was the one who answered my words.

“You don’t have to go. You don’t have to do this.”

First Devon and now Ali. What did they know that I didn’t?

“Nothing,” Ali said, and I wondered if my thoughts were always apparent on my face. “I don’t know anything that you don’t, Bryn, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that this could get ugly.”

“Chase won’t hurt me.”

Ali glanced at Callum, and Devon’s words floated back to me—It’s not Chase I’m worried about.

Callum won’t hurt me, either, I thought, but I didn’t broadcast the words. The fact that I had to say or think them at all was mind-boggling. I’d approached Callum as a member of his pack, and his actions and mine were equally bound by our agreement. I knew better than to break faith with our entire pack, and I had more inhibition than they were giving me credit for.

Tempting fate was one thing; baiting Pack Justice was entirely another.

“Are you ready?” Callum asked me, ignoring Ali. The look in his eyes told me that he knew me better than she did. He didn’t question, even for a second, the possibility that I’d back down.

“He’s just a boy,” I said out loud. Just a boy with a Rabid in his head, who claims he loved me before we ever met. “I’m ready.”

Ali sighed, and the sound was unnatural, like her lungs were being deflated, the air sucked out of them by some external force.

“Take care of her, Casey,” Ali said, and I couldn’t tell if her words were an order or a plea. “Please.”

Casey nodded, but not for the first time, I wondered if he’d fully bargained on me when he’d married Ali.

“I’ll take care with her, Alison. You have my word.” Callum’s words should have been comforting, but as an expert at obfuscation myself, I couldn’t help but notice what he hadn’t said. He hadn’t said that he’d take care of me. He’d said he’d take care with me, and I knew better than to think that those two things were the same.

Casey, Callum, and I walked toward Callum’s house in silence. Sora and Lance joined us halfway there.

“You know he’s not just a boy,” I said, feeling the need to explain myself to someone in Ali’s absence.

“I know,” Callum replied, and I wondered if he meant for me to hear the slight echo of sadness in his tone.

This visit had nothing to do with Chase being a boy and me being a girl. It had nothing to do with the way he dogged my dreams and haunted my field of vision every time I blinked.

This was about the Rabid.

It was about me.

By the time we got to Callum’s house, I’d stopped trying to explain myself.

“Casey, Sora, and Lance are dominant. Your pack-bond remains open. You’re not to touch him.” With those words, Callum disappeared, and I wondered again why it was that he couldn’t or wouldn’t stay to watch my interaction with Chase.