Taken by Storm (Raised by Wolves #3)(37)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

I could see where this was going—well enough that she didn’t need to relive it by putting the experience into words, but when I opened my mouth to tell her that, her voice grew louder, more decisive.

“I didn’t know what the dog was doing there, and I thought that maybe I’d imagined the sound of Shifting. But then I saw the tag on the dog’s collar moving, and I realized he was shaking.” Maddy swallowed, but forced herself to continue. “The dog was a mutt, maybe a year old, and he was shaking so hard that I knew whatever I’d heard, whatever I was feeling, he could feel it, too.”

Now I could see it: Maddy and the mutt and a villain neither one of them could see.

“The puppy saw me. It came right up to me. It nuzzled my hand. And then something cut it in two.”

Blood on the floor and walls of the cabin. I couldn’t see through Maddy’s eyes, but I didn’t need to. I’d smelled the cabin, I’d seen the blood.

“It just kept going and going, claws digging into it, teeth ripping out chunks, and I just stood there.”

“You couldn’t have stopped it,” Griffin murmured. “You couldn’t even see it.”

Maddy continued on, as if she hadn’t heard him. “And then it stopped, and I thought whatever had killed the dog might come for me, but it didn’t. Griffin came back.” Maddy blinked, and I could see her coming back into the present. “We buried the dog—what was left of it—out back.”

It was an odd thing for a werewolf to do, to bury an animal that should have smelled like prey, but the horror of what had been done to the little dog in the red collar had left a mark on Maddy that was visible on her face even now.

This wasn’t just hunting.

This was torture.

And she’d been helpless to stop it. There was nothing a person like us hated more.

The rest of the story made its way out of her mouth in halting, staccato bits. She’d showered, scrubbing her hands raw, using an entire bottle of shampoo, but never feeling clean. Griffin had come back, and whenever he was near, things weren’t so bad, but the second he disappeared …

It happened again. And again. And again. Sometimes it was strays. Sometimes it was someone’s pet, but always, it was brutal. She and Griffin left Alpine Creek, but wherever they went, whatever Maddy did, the monster followed. It always knew where to find her, and Griffin was the only thing that kept it away.

“What happened during that full moon, Maddy?” Jed spoke before I had a chance to, and I wondered if he knew something on the subject of ghosts that the rest of us didn’t. “The night you saw Griffin for the first time—I need you to tell me exactly what you did to bring him back.”

I saw the logic in the question—if we could figure out how Maddy had brought Griffin back, we might be able to figure out the likelihood that she’d brought something else back, too.

Let it be something else, I thought. Not someone she cares about. Not someone Lake cares about, too. Just this once, let it be something else. Let it be easy.

For a long time, Maddy didn’t answer Jed’s question. When she did speak, the words came out in a whisper. “We don’t think it’s anything I did,” she said, each word hard-won. “We don’t think it’s me at all.”

She looked down, but not at her hands this time—at her stomach.

It hadn’t just been Maddy Shifting that night. According to what they’d told us, the baby had, too.

The baby Maddy said was a girl.

The baby who—based on everything we knew about werewolf biology—shouldn’t have lived past that night.

“You think She did this somehow?” Lake said the word she like it was capitalized, like it was a name.

Maddy didn’t answer.

“You have a knack, Maddy,” I said, trying to get her to look at me. “You’re Resilient, but maybe the baby is something else. Maybe her knack isn’t just surviving.”

“It’s not her fault.” Maddy’s eyes flashed. “If having her means this monster following us—I won’t let you touch her. I won’t let anyone touch her.”

“Maddy.” I held my hand out, palm up, and then slowly placed it on her stomach. I didn’t say a word, but as Maddy put her hand over mine, I hoped that every assurance I couldn’t put into words would flow between us, with the exchange of body heat.

Even when I’d thought she was the killer, I’d been determined to keep the other alphas away from Maddy. I wasn’t about to let anyone—or anything—hurt her baby now.

Not even if the baby was somehow responsible for raising the dead.

“What happened last week?” Chase turned the conversation back to the event that had brought us here in the first place. If anyone else had asked, Maddy might have winced, but this was Chase, and for whatever reason, she seemed to trust him.

“We stayed away from people.” In Maddy’s mouth, the word we took on new meaning—whatever else she’d thought or done, she was a mother now, would never just be I again. “I swear, we stayed away from people, but we were outside for months, and then there was this house, and it was empty. The people who lived there had moved, but they hadn’t sold it yet, and we thought—I was hungry, and I was tired, and I just wanted to sleep for one night, just one night, Bryn.”

“Hey.” I caught her chin in my hand. “It’s okay.”

She looked at me, incredulous. “It’s not okay,” she said. “There was a boy. A runaway, and I guess he thought the house looked pretty good, too.”

Blood in the foyer.

Blood on the fireplace.

Blood on the walls.

“He came too close to me, and then Griffin disappeared. I tried to get out of the house. I tried to run, but it was too late.”

“And today?” Caroline asked, her voice decidedly less gentle than it had been before.

“Today, I was hungry.” Maddy met Caroline’s gaze head-on, and for a second, I saw a flicker of the inner steel she’d always hidden beneath that quiet surface. “The baby needs meat.”

“So you went hunting,” Lake said, like it was the most natural thing in the world. For a werewolf, it was.

“I went hunting,” Maddy replied.

Not for humans. Not for pets. For a rabbit or deer, a clean kill that wouldn’t have felt any unnecessary pain or fear.

“And you?” Caroline turned her piercing gaze to Griffin. “If you knew she had to go closer to town to hunt, why weren’t you with her? If this invisible killer only shows up when you’re not around, then why in God’s name would you leave her alone? Why disappear?”