Taken by Storm (Raised by Wolves #3)(36)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“You came,” Maddy whispered. For a moment, all I could think was that the first time I’d seen Chase, locked in a cage in Callum’s basement and half out of his mind with the Change, he’d said the same thing.

“Of course I came.”

Maddy closed her eyes, and as Chase inhaled beside me, he caught a scent, too faint for my human nose to pick up.

Tears.

She hadn’t shed them yet, and I didn’t know whether I should go to her or just go. But we’d come here for a reason, and Callum’s warning was still fresh in my mind.

“The other alphas will be looking for you,” I told Maddy, matching her whisper with one of my own. “Soon.”

I wanted to be saying something else—that we loved her, that we missed her, that if I could have taken her pain and made it mine, I would have, in a heartbeat.

“The Senate doesn’t know about the baby, Maddy, but if they find out, you won’t be safe here.” I paused, and my eyes traveled to her stomach, round against her rail-thin frame. “Neither one of you will be.”

This wasn’t how I’d imagined our reunion with Maddy going, but I didn’t know how to say anything else. Hesitantly, I crouched where I was, my knees pulled tight to my chest. I forced my own guard down, so she would know that I wasn’t trying to scare her or threaten her or imply that she’d made a mistake. Instead, I let my face show my feelings, let my own tears come.

“I was scared, Maddy, so scared that something had happened to you, and that we wouldn’t get here in time.”

She looked at Griffin and nodded, and he shot me a warning look and then backed up to stand next to Lake, leaving nothing but a few feet of space separating Maddy and me.

“I left to get better,” the girl who’d been one of us said simply. “And everything got worse.”

I ached for the bond missing between us, for the ability to take on her thoughts as my own, to feel them with and for her and protect her from those who would see her harmed.

But every instinct I had was screaming at me that I wasn’t Maddy’s alpha anymore.

I wasn’t even sure we were friends.

“I knew,” she said, her hand rubbing small circles over her bulging stomach and leaving no question what she was referring to. “When I left, I knew, Bryn, and I didn’t tell you. I didn’t tell anyone. I thought I could do it—just go away and get better and stop missing Lucas, who I thought he was, what I thought we had. “

She eased toward me. Or maybe I eased toward her. I couldn’t be sure.

“I didn’t know how much it would hurt.”

I wasn’t sure if she was talking about the pregnancy, or leaving the rest of us behind.

“I didn’t know that having someone inside of you could make you a hundred times more lonely on the surface. But I was doing it. I was.” She nodded, as if to convince herself of that fact, even as the tears she’d been holding back spilled over and carved tracks into the grime on her face. “We were doing fine, but then there was a full moon. It wasn’t the first one, but the baby …”

“He Shifted, too,” I said.

Maddy met my eyes. “She,” the pregnant girl corrected softly. “She Shifted, too.”

It wasn’t uncommon for werewolf pups to Shift in the womb—that was part of the reason so few human women survived giving birth to werewolf kids. Combined with Maddy’s own body morphing and breaking, the effect must have been excruciating, so much so that I could almost overlook the other thing she’d just said.

Behind me, Lake could not. “She?”

“It’s a girl,” Maddy said. “Don’t ask me how I know, but I do, and that full moon, when she was Shifting, and I was Shifting, I thought—”

She’d thought she was having a miscarriage. Because female pups only made it to full term if there were twins.

“But nothing bad happened, Bryn. I was fine, and she was fine, but my body—it was like being split in two, cut up from the inside out. It was like dying, and then, suddenly, I wasn’t alone.”

Her eyes landed on Griffin’s, and he smiled, a tragic smile that looked out of place with the freckles on his face.

“You brought Griffin back?” Lake’s voice was very small. Through the bond, I could feel the slight tightening of her throat, the aching knowledge that, for years, she hadn’t been able to do what Maddy had that night. “There was a full moon, and you Shifted, and you just brought him back? That doesn’t even make any sense.”

Maddy looked down at her hands—away from Lake and her question. Griffin picked up where Maddy left off, speaking the words she couldn’t bring herself to say.

“It wasn’t like that, Lake. One second, I was there, watching, invisible, and the next, I could feel Maddy’s Shift, feel the baby Shifting, feel the moon pulling me closer, turning me inside out. Maddy was screaming, Lake, and it hurt me. I started to Shift, too, and then it was like a nuclear reactor went off inside my body.”

His eyes shone just describing it, even now.

“Being dead is like being under anesthetic.” Griffin struggled to put the feeling into words. “Your emotions are there—the important ones, but everything else is numb. Nothing is the way it used to be. Nothing is right, but that night—” His eyes went back to Maddy. “I could feel. I was there.”

For one second, maybe two, Maddy smiled. Then she looked down at her hands, and I knew that whatever she said next wouldn’t be good. “The corpses started showing up a week later.”

There was a full moon. Griffin came back. And a week later, things started to die. Maddy had to realize how that sounded—but it was clear from the way she looked at him that she did not.

“Corpses?” Jed prompted, his voice so gentle, it surprised me.

“They were animals,” Maddy said. “At first.”

I thought back to the blood in the cabin in Alpine Creek. “Something killed them?” I asked, forcing my gaze to stay on Maddy and not dart over to Griffin.

Maddy continued on as if I hadn’t said a word. “I woke up that morning, and Griffin was gone. He just disappeared, and the moment he left, I felt it.” Maddy shivered. I was close enough to her now that I could have reached out and wrapped my arm around her—but I didn’t.

“I didn’t see anything, not at first, but I heard the door open. Then I heard bones snapping and skin stretching, and even though I couldn’t smell anything, I knew someone was Shifting. At first, I thought it was Griffin, so I walked out into the hallway.” Maddy stopped blinking, her eyes far away and glassy, as if she could see it happening, all over again. “The front door was open, and there was a dog standing on the porch. You could tell it was someone’s pet, because it was wearing a little red collar.”