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Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology
Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology Read online
ALSO BY JENNIFER LYNN BARNES
The Raised by Wolves series:
Raised by Wolves
Trial by Fire
Taken by Storm
Every Other Day
Nobody
Dear Readers,
The books you’re reading in this collection were all written during the period of my life when I was a graduate student by day and a writer by night. I started writing Raised by Wolves near the beginning of my graduate school career, and the third book in the trilogy, Taken by Storm, was released the day after I received my Ph.D.
There are many things that unite all of the stories in this bundle—my love of strong female protagonists and an emphasis on female friendships; the importance of family and the idea that the people we love are our family, whether we share blood or not; themes related to sacrifice and the idea that sometimes there are no good choices; being powerfully drawn to someone because you feel, on some bone-deep level, like the two of you are the same—but looking back, one of the biggest threads that I can see tying all of these books together is the role that my scientific background—and my double life as a cognitive scientist—played in the writing of these books.
The Raised by Wolves series, about a human girl who was raised by werewolves, was strongly inspired by the time I spent doing research with pack animals in the wild. In my case, the pack animals in question were monkeys, not wolves, but spending summers as one of the only humans on an island full of wild monkeys has a way of making you pay attention to things like dominance, body language, and hierarchy (see also: the time I didn’t realize the monkey standing next to me was the alpha of the whole island and I maybe, kind of, tried to get him to move along, and he proved to me that in the great battle of Jen vs. the Alpha Monkey, the alpha monkey will always come out on top).
Every Other Day was similarly inspired by science: in the world that my protagonist, Kali, lives in, the creatures of myth not only exist—they were discovered by Charles Darwin on his voyage on the Beagle! Kali’s character also owes her nature to my double life: she’s a superpowered demon hunter whose powers only work every other day, and on the off days, she’s completely human. I have no superpowers (that I know of), but I was very much living an every other day kind of life while writing the book: every other day I was a writer, and every day in between, I was researching human psychology instead.
The theme of being pulled between two worlds is widespread in fiction—particularly coming of age stories, where characters are caught between adolescence and adulthood. For Kali and Bryn, the battle between their dual natures is fierce. Bryn was raised like a werewolf, but she’s biologically human. It’s Nature vs. Nurture in its purest form: if you were raised like a werewolf, how human could you be? For Kali, the answer to the question “What am I?” literally changes every twenty-four hours. Ultimately, both girls have to figure out not only what they are and how they fit into their respective worlds, but who they are and who they want to be.
Also included in this collection is a bonus short story, featuring Lake from the Raised by Wolves series. Like my other protagonists, she’s caught between worlds, both by virtue of being a werewolf and by virtue of being female, a rarity in the werewolf world. She’s powerful, but objectified—and in “Sweet Sixteen” you get a hint of the fact that she has her own reasons for feeling like she doesn’t quite belong in this world.
I hope you enjoy these books—and the girls at their heart—as much as I enjoyed writing them. At the end of this bundle, you’ll find a teaser for my newest book, Nobody, a romance about two supernaturally unnoticeable teenagers: a boy who has been raised as an assassin and the girl he is sent to kill. It’s a book about feeling invisible—and finding the one person who actually sees you.
Happy reading!
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
CONTENTS
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Note from the Author
THE RAISED BY WOLVES SERIES:
Raised by Wolves
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Acknowledgments
BONUS: “Sweet Sixteen”: a RAISED BY WOLVES short story
Title Page
Copyright
First Page
Trial by Fire
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Acknowledgments
Taken by Storm
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Epilogue
Every Other Day
/> Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Teaser for Nobody
About the Author
EGMONT
We bring stories life
First published by Egmont USA, 2010
443 Park Avenue South, Suite 806
New York, NY 10016
Copyright © Jennifer Lynn Barnes, 2010
All rights reserved
www.egmontusa.com
www.jenniferlynnbarnes.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barnes, Jennifer (Jennifer Lynn)
Raised by wolves / Jennifer Lynn Barnes
p. cm.
Summary: A girl raised by werewolves must face the horrors of her past to uncover the dark secrets that the pack has worked so hard to hide.
eISBN: 978-1-60684-475-5
[1. Werewolves—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.B26225Rai 2010
[Fic]—dc22
2009041157
CPSIA tracking label information:
Random House Production • 1745 Broadway • New York, NY 10019
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.
v3.1
For my family, close and extended—
the best pack a girl could ask for.
In Loving Memory of
Annie Mae Barnes,
An incredible woman
I never got the chance to know.
CHAPTER ONE
“BRONWYN ALESSIA ST. VINCENT CLARE!”
Four names, five words, one pissed-off werewolf. The math in this particular equation never came out in my favor.
“Callum,” I said, feigning surprise at his sudden appearance in my workshop. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
His eyes narrowed slightly. On a human, the same motion would have conveyed sharp irritation, but on Callum’s face, the expression was mild, until and unless you looked for the power behind the gaze and caught a glint of the wolf staring back.
Growing up the way I did, you learn a few things, so I knew the dangers involved in standing my ground and the ones that came with letting it go. My right hip twinged just above the band of my low-rise jeans, and my fingers played along the edges of the scar that lived there. The Mark tied me to Callum and the rest of the pack, and it served as an ever-present reminder that they were bound to protect me as one of their own. It also drove me into a hierarchy I’d never subscribed to. That and the whisper of the rest of the pack at the gates of my mind—closed for business, thank you very much—spurred me into choosing the lesser of two evils in my interaction with the aforementioned pissed-off werewolf.
Calmly, I brought my eyes to Callum’s. The power coming off him made it an effort, even for me. After a few precious seconds of meeting his gaze, I flicked my eyes to the side. Protocol would have had me looking down, but I was about as far from submissive as you could get. I also wasn’t a Were, and Callum wasn’t my alpha, so despite the constant pull of the pack at my psyche, there was nothing in Emily Post’s Guide to Werewolf Etiquette to say that I absolutely had to submit.
Callum responded to my subtle, pointed defiance with a roll of his amber-colored eyes, but he had the good grace to abstain from pressing me into the wall or down to my knees the way he might have if not for that pesky humanity of mine. Instead, he brought one suntanned hand up to his jaw and ran it roughly over the five o’clock shadow on his chin in a way that made me think he was mentally counting to ten. The action—and the frustration that drove it—reminded me that even if he wasn’t my alpha, Callum was my legal guardian, the executor of my estate, and the closest thing I had to a brother, uncle, or mentor, all rolled into one. Despite my best efforts as a small child to convince Callum that he was not (and I quote) the boss of me, he technically was. As alpha, he took pack business seriously, and had I not had four names of my own to choose from, I could have easily gone by “P.B.”—Pack Business of the first and highest order.
The Mark on my hip wasn’t just for show.
“Bryn.” Callum’s voice, even-toned with not even a hint of a growl, brought me back to the present. I was somewhat relieved that the situation had been downgraded in his mind from meriting all four names to just one. Better still that he stuck with Bryn, which I vastly preferred to Bronwyn.
“Bryn.” Slightly sharper this time, but mostly exasperated, Callum’s voice forced me to focus.
“Sorry,” I said. “Mind bunnies.”
Callum nodded curtly and waited for me to address the reason for his presence in my workshop. This was supposed to be my sanctuary, a tiny slice of pack territory that belonged to only me, myself, and I. It wasn’t much more than a standalone garage turned second-rate art studio, but I didn’t much appreciate the invasion, or the way Callum kept his eyes on mine, confident that I’d eventually tell him exactly what he wanted to know. Experience told me that he was probably right. Callum could outwait anyone, and though he was only a few inches taller than me, and the muscles in his granite jaw were relaxed, the power behind his eyes was always palpable in his stare.
“I really don’t know why you’re here,” I told him, selecting my words carefully. Most Weres could smell a lie, and Callum, the alpha of alphas in our corner of the world, would have known immediately if I’d offered up an excuse that wasn’t technically true. Luckily for me, I didn’t know precisely what it was that I’d done to merit a visit from our pack’s leader. There were any number of possibilities, none of which I wanted to openly admit to on the off chance that there was something I’d done that he hadn’t found out about yet.
“You have no idea why I might want to talk to you?” Callum asked, his voice never losing its calm, cool tone.
That was a trickier question to answer without crossing the border from half-truths into lies, but I’d had years of practice. This I could handle. “I really don’t have an idea why you’d want to talk to me.”
Technically, I didn’t have an idea; I had several.
Callum measured my response. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that he bought what he was hearing (and smelling), but I knew him well enough to hope that he might not want to play this game all afternoon. He was the one who’d taught me to play it in the first place, but at the moment, he really didn’t seem to be in the mood for a “surviving pack life” tutorial on obfuscation.
With a much-aggrieved sigh, Callum opted out of forcing me to speak, and instead, he itemized my transgressions for me. “Motorcycle. Algebra. Curfew.” Callum never used four words where one would do—unless, of course, he was calling me by my full name, a trick that he must have picked up from watching television, since he’d been born in a time and place where middle names weren’t standard fare. The rest of our pack took their cue from him. Of all of us, I was the only one with a middle name, let alone two
…
“Bryn.”
“Right,” I said, valiantly fighting the mind bunnies, which had a vicious tendency to multiply at inconvenient times. “I let a boy from town give me a ride on his motorcycle, my algebra teacher’s a sadistic imbecile, and I’m a bad, bad girl who doesn’t believe in curfews. Can I go now?”
For a split second, I thought I’d pushed him too far. I imagined his wolf instincts overtaking his human ones, changing Callum into something harder and primal. Unless he actually Shifted, he’d keep his human appearance, but I knew better than anyone that smooth skin, sandy hair, and slightly upturned lips meant nothing. Wolves in sheepskin had nothing on werewolves masquerading as men; shape-shifters were dangerous when their beasts were loose on the inside but contained on the surface. As wolves, they were hunters. In human form, they could be deadly.
Come out, come out, wherever you are, little one. No sense hiding from the Big Bad Wolf. I’ll always find you in the end.…
I clamped down on the flicker of anxiety, snuffing it out. I was well acquainted with the dangers associated with strolling down that path on memory lane. I also knew from years and years of experience that Callum never lost control; his wolf would never harm a human. In any form, Callum would have died before hurting me. Instead, he took my sass and responded to it just as he always had—with a warning look and the air of someone who was trying very, very hard not to laugh.
Slightly abashed because I’d maligned him with misplaced anxiety (not fear), I took Callum’s silent chastisement and didn’t push back at him.
“Motorcycle.” Callum issued the word as a statement rather than a question, but I felt compelled to answer anyway. That’s the way it was with Callum—once you stopped pushing back, once you submitted, you’d find yourself acting in line with his will. He would have had the same effect on any other human, whether they knew what he was or not. The Mark on my flesh, and the bond between us, let me recognize the compulsion for what it was, but I didn’t fight it.
“A kid from school offered me a ride on his motorcycle,” I said, byway of explanation. “I took it.” I chose not to mention the fact that I’d nearly died of shock at the invitation. The kids in town didn’t mix with those of us who lived in the woods, and I wasn’t generally the kind of girl who drew attention from the male of the species. Any species. “There is a slight chance that the guy in question didn’t want me driving aforementioned ’cycle, but I might have ended up with the keys anyway. I guess I’m faster than he is.”