Raised by Wolves (Raised by Wolves #1)(61)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Well, well, well… if it isn’t the prodigal son.

The voice sounded so normal, so human, but the sound of it hurt Chase’s ears. I pictured him bleeding, torn to pieces, the way the Rabid had left him that day.

Not your son, Chase thought. Not your anything.

That’s right, I echoed, my words for Chase’s ears only. He was his own person, and he was mine, the same way that I’d been his from the moment we’d touched. The Rabid thought he knew so much, but he didn’t know that I was there.

Change.

The word was a whisper, but also a command. This wasn’t Callum telling Katie to change back to human form. This wasn’t me asking Chase to become a wolf.

This was domination. And punishment. It was cruel.

You don’t have to, I told Chase, even as I felt the pressure the Rabid was applying.

He’ll know something is wrong if I don’t.

I heard Chase’s bones breaking, felt his skin give way as he lost his human form. The Rabid laughed.

Change back.

Shifting took energy. It was painful. Chase needed to recover.

Change.

Change back.

The Rabid didn’t let Chase settle fully into one form before forcing him into another.

Stop, I wanted to scream. Stop!

But I didn’t. Tears streaming down my cheeks, my own body shaking with Chase’s burning white pain, I pushed. Pushed my way from Chase’s mind into the Rabid’s.

Burnt hair and men’s cologne.

The smell was overwhelming. Suffocating. I needed to throw up, but I couldn’t. I had to do this, because Chase couldn’t. Because his body was being forced to break itself and reassemble, over and over again.

Sweat mixed with the tears on my cheek. A white-hot poker pressed into my stomach, my legs, my jaw.

Change. Change back.

I had to concentrate. I had to find out what we needed to know so Chase could throw his walls back up.

Protect, my pack-sense demanded. Chase was mine. I had to protect him. I had to push the Rabid away—

But first, I had to track him.

I closed my eyes. I pictured the wiry bond that connected Chase to this madman. I followed it to its roots. I let damp, overwhelming darkness wash over me, until I couldn’t remember what it felt like to be warm.

Blood. The Rabid liked blood. He liked power. His name was Wilson.

The information came all at once, but it wasn’t enough. I pushed further.

Where are you? I thought, knowing he couldn’t hear my words. Tell me where you are.

I saw a cabin. And blood. A forest. And blood. A town—one stoplight. A store called Macon’s Hardware.

A path into the woods.

Trapped. The word was a whisper in my mind, and the second I heard it, Chase’s own instincts flared to life. Trapped, he echoed. He struggled not to fight the Rabid. Not to push him back.

We needed to fight. We needed to get out of there. We needed to take care of each other.

But first, I needed more. A cabin. One stoplight. Macon’s Hardware. A path into the woods.

Tell me where you are.

For the first time, the Rabid stopped in his onslaught against Chase. He paused, and I wondered if he smelled me, the way I smelled him.

No time. I had no time. Chase was hurting. If the Rabid smelled me, he’d punish Chase. Hurt him. Hurt him more.

No-Man’s-Land. Macon’s Hardware. Images flashed from the Rabid’s mind to mine. He pulled back, but once I got ahold of something, I never let go until I was ready.

Macon’s Hardware. Path into the woods. And then, finally a name. A town.

The Rabid roared, a noise more fitting to a bear than a wolf, and then he laughed a horrible, mad sound that made me picture blood running from his human lips, down his human face, soaking his human hands.

My stomach rolled. This was a man who killed his victims and laughed.

Time to go, I told Chase.

I can’t. He’s too strong. Walls are gone. Callum helped me. I can’t—

You can, I said back. Think of me, Chase. Think only of me.

He did. He thought of me, and the Rabid thought of me, and their mental images mixed together in my mind. Wet cardboard and drain cleaner and the smell of little-girl fear. Brash and beautiful and home.

That’s right, I told Chase. I’m home. Come back to me.

I had to protect him. I had to undo this. There had to be a way. The panic rose in both of our throats. I saw Chase’s field of vision bleed into a dotty, hazy red.

Trapped.

This time, I grabbed on to the word. Made Chase hear it. We were cornered. We were scared.

We would get out of this alive.

Trapped. Escape.

Survive, I whispered the last word, because Chase couldn’t seem to remember what it was, and his own instincts flared to life. He was a fighter. He fought. This man was nothing.

He wasn’t all-powerful. He was Prancer.

And we didn’t have to let him do this.

Chase was mine. I was his. The Rabid wanted us both, and with that realization, I felt something snap inside of Chase. The Rabid could threaten him. The Rabid could torture him. … But he had no right to think of me. None.

I felt the hum of power, a shift in the air when Chase slammed up his mental walls and caught the sliver of power that bound him to this man between his teeth. Like an animal, a hunter, he tore into it. Shredded it.

And as it began to reweave itself, impervious to Chase’s attack, the boy I called mine took everything that bound him to this Rabid, and in a moment of perfect symmetry, he threw it at me.

I’d felt the sensation before. A tilting of the world on its axis. An explosion in my brain.

Echoing, seductive silence. Silence and Chase.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“YOU OKAY?” LAKE’S VOICE BROKE INTO MY THOUGHTS and brought me back to the present. To the back porch on Cabin 12, where I’d sat down to contact Chase. “At first, you were quiet, and then you were crying. Your body starting twitching, and then, you got real still.”

I caught my breath. “I’m fine,” I told Lake. We’re fine. Back at Callum’s, I’d panicked and rewired our pack-bonds, mine and Chase’s, and just now, when he’d sensed the Rabid threatening me, Chase had done the same. Only this time, he’d cut his connection to the Rabid completely. The pack was still there in the depths of Chase’s mind, in mine, but the Rabid was gone.

“You didn’t feel anything?” I asked. When I’d rewired my pack-bond, every wolf in the near vicinity had felt it.

“Nope,” Lake said. “Should I have felt something?”

I thought for a moment: of the pack, of Chase, and of the Rabid. “No.”