Trial by Fire Read online

  Unfortunately, unlike Callum, I didn’t catch even minor glimpses of the future, so I had no way of knowing that my “wait and see” plan would be effective for less than three hours.

  Shay contacted all the alphas, including me, via email, which just felt wrong. Our world was brutal, the kind of place where issues of dominance were settled with a fight to the death. The idea of Shay sitting down and typing out a polite query about whether any of the other alphas had seen his “missing runt” was completely bizarre.

  It also didn’t leave me any wiggle room regarding how or when to reply. Once the other alphas started sending in their statements, I had no choice but to send mine and CC it for the rest of the Senate alphas to view.

  Treading lightly, I channeled Callum and wrote a polite but pointed reply—one that said that Shay’s wolf had trespassed on my territory, that he’d been out of control of his Shift, and that I’d gladly send the trespasser back Shay’s way as soon as I determined whether he’d been acting on his own agenda or someone else’s, and assured myself that he wouldn’t be a future threat.

  Shay didn’t have to agree to give up his claim on Lucas, but by Senate Law, I had the right to deal with trespassers as I saw fit. And if the other alphas wanted to read between the lines and infer that perhaps Shay had sent Lucas here to kill me …

  Well, I figured that couldn’t hurt.

  After I hit send, I spent the next three hours refreshing my inbox, but the internet was silent, and I was left wondering if I’d done the right thing, or if I’d somehow crossed a line in the sand already.

  With only a few hours left in my Thanksgiving break, I tried to distract myself with homework, and when that didn’t work, I played with the twins. Unfortunately, even Katie’s puppy antics couldn’t take my mind off the threat hovering above me and mine, so I went for a walk and ended up at Cabin 13.

  The others wouldn’t be happy that I’d gone to see Lucas alone, but I figured they could deal. I wasn’t happy about having to choose between sending an abused kid back to his abuser and risking the safety of people I’d sworn to spend the rest of my life protecting.

  I opened the door to the cabin, half expecting Mitch to be standing guard, but he was nowhere in sight, and my pack-sense sent an unpleasant chill down my spine, a way of reminding me that taking your eyes off the enemy was always a mistake.

  Even if the enemy in question was a person I was desperately trying to save.

  As I came to the doorway of Lucas’s bedroom, I wondered if I would get over feeling this way around him, or if as long as Lucas was Snake Bend, a part of me would always want to bare my teeth at his presence on our land. He wasn’t a threat, but he also wasn’t mine, and I wasn’t sure I could convince my gut that there was a distinction to be made there.

  Lucas, however much he didn’t want to be, was an extension of Shay. He smelled like Shay, and Shay would be a presence—no matter how faint—in his mind, the same way I was connected to Maddy, to Lake, to Dev.

  “Is your alpha trying to talk to you through your pack-bond?” I asked, not bothering to say hello as I entered the room. “Is he telling you to come home?”

  Except in the most extreme circumstances, werewolves couldn’t disobey their alphas. The stronger ones—purebreds, like Dev, or Resilients, like Chase and the rest of the Changed Weres in our pack—could fight it, but even for them, holding out against a direct order was like trying to keep from blinking when a sharp object was flying straight for your eye.

  “He’s trying,” Lucas murmured, face downcast, body stiff, “but I’m too far away.”

  That smacked of the truth to me, even though I didn’t have a Were’s ability to smell lies. A wolf’s tie to his pack depended on how close he was to its other members—especially the alpha. The same principle that made the Wayfarer unbearably loud for Chase would have shielded Lucas more and more from Shay’s influence the farther away from Snake Bend territory he got.

  “Your alpha emailed looking for you.” I wanted to soften my words but instead found myself saying them in a completely neutral tone and observing Lucas’s reaction. I’d spent too many years watching Callum do the same thing, and the experience had left its mark. “Shay wants you returned. I stalled, but unless we figure out a way around it, I’m going to have to send you back.”

  “No.”

  Lucas had opened his mouth to say the word, but the sound came from behind me. I turned.

  Standing in the doorway, Maddy didn’t elaborate on her no. She didn’t challenge me. She just came to sit on a chair next to Lucas’s bed, her legs tucked under her body, her head tilted slightly toward his. She didn’t say another word. She didn’t introduce herself. She just sat there, watching over him, and his body curled toward hers, like they were pups in the same litter.

  Like he could feel her presence the way I’d always felt Chase’s.

  “Maddy.” It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her to be careful, but then I realized the irony of the situation: of the two of us, she was the one more capable of fighting back if Lucas made a move. Still, I didn’t like it. Didn’t like the idea that someone—anyone—might hurt her, after everything she’d been through already.

  I’ll be careful, Bryn, Maddy promised silently, but someone has to keep an eye on him. It might as well be me.

  I brought my gaze to meet Lucas’s. “I’m going to try to find a way to help you, but you need to know up front that I won’t trade my pack’s safety for yours. If I have to send you back to Shay to keep them safe, I’ll do it.”

  I hated myself for saying those words and hated Callum for raising me to be the kind of person who could say them—but they just kept coming.

  “If you lay a hand on Maddy, if you hurt her or any of mine in any way, I’ll kill you myself.”

  As an alpha, I was bound by those words, and in that moment, I didn’t have a single doubt about my ability to follow through on the threat. Maddy could probably take care of herself, but if Lucas wasn’t what he appeared to be, if he attacked her or tried to force his will on hers in any way, Shay would be taking home a body instead of a live wolf.

  On the bed, Lucas lowered his head in a sign of submission, and even from a distance, I could see an angry red scar on the back of his neck. Its edges were jagged, like it had been carved into his flesh with a knife, and the shape—a four-pointed star laid over a half circle—looked too deliberate to have been the product of anything but a steady hand.

  How could Shay have done something like that? How could anyone?

  Seeing Lucas sitting so close to Maddy made me imagine her in his shoes, and I knew without probing the edges of her mind that she was thinking the same thing, seeing herself—and the things she’d survived at the hands of the Rabid—in this boy.

  “Unless you force me to act, I won’t turn you over until I have to.” I addressed Lucas, though he seemed to know that I was saying the words for Maddy’s benefit as much as his. “But right now, I don’t really have a plan, Lucas, so if you’ve got any ideas here, I’m all ears.”

  Lucas retreated, pressing himself back and down into the mattress, and I cringed at the motion and the knowledge that I’d just established dominance over a person who had experience with only one kind of alpha.

  “He doesn’t know anything.” Maddy lifted her chin and looked just over my left shoulder, a guarded, faraway gaze in her eyes. “They don’t want you to think. They don’t want you to believe it could be different.” She turned her face away from mine, but she didn’t look directly at Lucas, either. “It takes a while.”

  I know, Maddy, I told her silently. I know.

  Out loud, I directed my words to the boy on the bed. “I’ll give you as much time as I can, Lucas, but you need to know that I’m not magic. I’m not fearless. I can’t just pull a miracle out of my hat.”

  “You’re Bryn.” Lucas lifted his head slightly. “That’s going to be enough.”

  After a long moment’s consideration, I left Lucas under Maddy’s
watchful eye, confident that, if nothing else, she wouldn’t let him slip off into the night unnoticed, leaving the rest of us to explain to the Senate exactly how I’d gone about losing a wolf that I’d already admitted to having, one who another alpha was within his rights to want back, once I’d dealt with the matter of trespassing in the first place.

  Call me if you need me, Maddy, I told her silently, not even realizing until after I gave the order that to her ears, my mind-voice vibrated with the kind of power most werewolves couldn’t deny.

  I’ll call you if I need you, Bryn, Maddy replied. I always do.

  She trusted me, relied on me the way I’d once counted on Callum, before he’d taught me that sometimes things—and people—got caught in the crossfire of the greater good.

  “Hey, you.” Chase had been expecting me, which was ironic, because even after I’d left Cabin 13 and started walking toward the woods, I hadn’t realized I was looking for him.

  “Hey,” I replied, all too aware of the difference between the last time we’d had this conversation and now. There were times when it felt like Chase and I were the only two people in the world, when I was a girl and he was a boy and everything else just faded away.

  This was not one of those times.

  “I’m not sure there’s a way out of this.” I wouldn’t have been able to admit that to anyone but Chase, the same way he wouldn’t have wanted Devon to know that this year had been his first real Thanksgiving. “I can stall Shay, but eventually, unless I think of something else …”

  The rest of that sentence, the very idea of sending Lucas back to Shay, was unthinkable.

  What kind of person could do something like that?

  What kind of alpha would I be if I refused and my pack got hurt as a result?

  “You do what you have to do,” Chase said in a way that told me he’d crossed lines and seen the point of no return firsthand himself. “You can’t save everyone, Bryn. You do what you can, when you can. You try. But sometimes, at the end of the day, you just have to take care of yourself.”

  I couldn’t help giving Chase an incredulous look. “Who said anything about taking care of myself?”

  I was worried about Maddy, about Lucas, about the precedent I might set if I stepped on the wrong side of certain political lines. I was worried about the pack, about being the kind of alpha that Callum was, and about not being that kind of alpha. The last thing on my mind was me.

  Chase reached up and brushed a stray hair out of my face, his thumb tracing a gentle line from my cheekbone to my jaw. “I know,” he said, “but you can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  The rest of his words flowed straight from his mind into mine. Your job is watching out for the pack, Bryn. Let my job be watching out for you.

  He held up his palm, waiting for me to accept his offer. After a long moment, I mimicked the motion, pressing my hand against his. A jolt of energy ran up the length of my arm.

  “If you want to watch out for me,” I said, as single-minded as a dog with a bone, “then help me find a way out of this that doesn’t involve sending Lucas back to Shay.”

  Chase didn’t reply. He stared at me for several seconds, and then he gave in to the wolf inside. He leaned forward, rubbed his cheek against my neck—and turned to walk away.

  “Where are you going?” I called after him, wanting to hear the answer from his lips, even though I could have pulled it from his mind.

  Chase turned, his features caught in the light of the moon. He didn’t say anything, but suddenly, I knew.

  Chase, who rarely spoke to the people in our own pack, was going to talk to Lucas.

  To try to come up with a plan, find a way out of this.

  For me.

  Just before I went to bed that night, I got an email from Shay. He hadn’t CC’ed the other alphas this time, and reading over his message, I could hear the condescension dripping from his honeyed words. Underneath the condescension, I could sense something a thousand times worse.

  Satisfaction.

  Shay didn’t demand that I return Lucas immediately. He didn’t contradict my claim that I had the right to deal with a trespasser as I saw fit. Instead, he said, very politely, that he would be more than happy to retrieve Lucas as soon as I’d handled the situation to Cedar Ridge’s satisfaction, and then he signed off with a final line.

  I feel it only fair to warn you—I’m not the only one with a vested interest in his whereabouts, and the others might not be quite so understanding.

  Others? I thought, my heart dropping to my stomach. What others?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THAT NIGHT, I DIDN’T SLEEP. I READ SHAY’S EMAIL A half dozen times, paced the full length of my room, and read it a half dozen more. No matter how many ways I looked at it, I could only think of two possible interpretations.

  Either Shay was lying to me, or Lucas was.

  If Shay was lying, he was probably doing it just to get under my skin. Psychological warfare was the closest he could come to an assault, and if his objective had been to keep me up at night, turning the possibilities over and over again in my head, he’d succeeded.

  I’m not the only one with a vested interest in his where- abouts …

  Who else could possibly care where Shay’s whipping boy was? Since I hadn’t heard from any of the other alphas, all of whom had received my email admitting that Lucas was here, I doubted that any of them were the “others” Shay was referring to, and that left, what? One of the few lone wolves who weren’t associated with any pack? Lucas’s family, who—depending on whether he’d been born Snake Bend or transferred in—might or might not be a part of Shay’s pack?

  A Rabid?

  None of the possibilities were good ones, and they all seemed far-fetched. If Lucas had family outside of Shay’s pack, he would have gone to them, not me, looking for salvation, and I couldn’t imagine that he’d done anything to attract the attention of someone who lived in No-Man’s-Land, between one alpha’s territory and the next.

  Shay was probably just messing with me. There was nothing to keep a Were from lying in an email. For Lucas to mislead me, in person, with Maddy, Lake, Devon, Chase, or some combination thereof in the room, would have been significantly harder, given the werewolf ability to smell lies.

  Then again, I knew the power of telling half-truths better than just about anyone. Lucas hadn’t said that anyone besides Shay was after him, but I hadn’t asked.

  At three in the morning, unable to sleep or lie down or even sit still, I decided it was time to remedy that.

  Ali was a light sleeper, but her hearing was completely human, and I used my hold over the twins to keep them in a nice, quiet, undisturbed sleep as I snuck out my window. After I’d made my escape, I ran to Cabin 13, eased open the door, and slipped inside before shutting it behind me and moving quickly through the front hall.

  “Watching you try to be stealthy is just plain sad.”

  Lake didn’t bother whispering, and the sudden sound of her voice took me off guard just enough that I felt a flash of irritation—at her for sneaking up on me and at myself for being so focused on my Lucas mission that I hadn’t heard or felt her coming at all.

  “What are you doing here?” I snapped, keeping my voice low.

  “Bryn, just about everyone in these parts has hearing like mine. Whispering isn’t going to do you a lick of good.” One second, Lake was sitting, and the next, she was on her feet beside me. I never even saw her stand up. “Luckily for you, my dad sleeps like the dead, and nobody else within range would bat an eye at you taking a midnight stroll that just happens to bring you up close and personal with the only werewolf in the state of Montana who wouldn’t die to keep you safe.”

  “Did you follow me here?” I asked.

  Lake shrugged. “The word follow seems to suggest you got here first.”

  I rolled my eyes. “This isn’t a race, Lake.”

  “If it was, I would’ve given you a head start. Now, you want to tell me why the alp
ha of the Cedar Ridge Pack is sneaking out windows and putting herself in a potentially dangerous situation without backup?”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to remind Lake that she’d scoffed at the idea of Lucas being a threat, but I bit the retort back. Just because Lake thought she could take someone with three paws tied behind her back didn’t mean that I’d stand a chance against him in a fair fight. The best I could hope for in a fight against a Were—any Were—was catching him off guard enough that I could take to higher ground and wait out the assault. With weapons, I might stand a chance at inflicting some damage, but I hadn’t exactly come here armed.

  Rather than acknowledge that Lake might actually have a point, I met her eyes. “You breathe a word of this to Devon or Chase, and I will kill you.”

  Lake smiled. “I’ll take that under advisement. Now, you care to clue me in to what we’re doing here, or should I start making educated guesses?”

  I glanced at the door to Lucas’s room. If he was awake, he was hearing every word we said, and I didn’t want to give up the element of surprise.

  I got an email from Shay, I told Lake silently. He said that I’m welcome to deal with Lucas’s trespassing as I see fit, but that he thought it fair to warn me that he wasn’t the only one with an interest in Lucas’s whereabouts.

  Lake’s lips twitched, and though a normal person might have mistaken her for someone holding back laughter, I knew instinctively that she was holding back a growl.