Taken by Storm (Raised by Wolves #3)(43)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Stitches.

If the Shadow bite had been numb before, my shoulder was on fire now. Lovely.

“How long was I out?” I ground out. Jed eyed Caroline, and she tossed me a rolled up pillowcase.

“Little over an hour,” she said. “Bite down on that.”

I wanted to refuse, just on principle, but as the needle dug deep into my skin, I stuffed the pillowcase into my mouth and bit down as hard as I could, muffling the scream that wanted to make its way out of my mouth.

I could do this. I could handle this. I hadn’t faced off against a ghostly opponent to be undone by a few measly stitches.

“Is poor wittle Bryn going to cry?” I could see worry playing at the edges of Lake’s mouth, but her tone was an exact match for the time I’d broken my arm, when we were nine. “Don’t be such a bawling little crybaby. You’ll be fine.”

Chase gave her a disgruntled look, but I found myself appreciating the distraction. It was easier to deal with Jed sewing me back together like a patchwork quilt when I had something else to concentrate on.

To that end, I turned my attention to Lake and said something that does not bear repeating into the pillowcase bunched up in my mouth.

She grinned, but the expression didn’t go all the way up to her eyes. I may have only been out for an hour, but that was an hour too long. She’d worried.

They all had.

“Almost done here, Bryn.” Jed made good on his words, and thirty-five excruciating seconds later, he tied off the last stitch. He smoothed something that looked like mud and smelled like booze over the wound and then bandaged it.

I spat out the pillowcase.

“Guess I can scratch ‘get eaten by an immaterial being’ off my to-do list,” I groused, trying—and failing—to find some humor in the situation. Beside me, Chase swallowed a noise halfway between a snort and a cry and ran his hand up and down my good arm.

I could almost feel the pain flowing from my body to his. If he could have borne this for me, he would have, in a heartbeat.

“I wouldn’t recommend trying to move that arm,” Jed told me—no muss, no fuss, no pity. “Unless you’re looking to repeat this particular experience.”

More stitches? No, thank you. The throb of pain was

constant—burning, aching, incessant assaults against each and every nerve ending in my shoulder.

“I’ll take it easy,” I said.

The rest of the room scoffed audibly. In unison.

I took the high road and ignored their obvious skepticism. Instead, I focused on the real issue here. “The Shadow’s gone, but he could come back.”

Griffin caught my gaze and lifted his eyebrows slightly. I thought I’d done a good job hiding my doubts about him, but the look on his face was enough to tell me that he’d known. He may as well have written do you believe me now? across the sky in large block letters.

I nodded—as close to an apology as I could come when there was something much, much bigger at stake. The very possibility that the Shadow might be Wilson had changed everything, even though I had no way of knowing if my instincts were on point. Maybe the specter that had been following Maddy wasn’t the same monster who’d turned her into a werewolf when she was six years old—but maybe it was.

That same monster had killed my parents, Changed Chase. The kids in my pack had once been his, until they’d turned on him and literally torn him to pieces.

Female twin. Violent death. Those were the ingredients Callum had said went into making a Shadow. I hoped I was wrong, but we knew for a fact that Samuel Wilson fit at least one of those requirements.

As soon as Devon got back to me, we’d know if he fit the other one, too.

“I’m sorry.”

It took me a second or two to figure out who was apologizing and another stretch of time to work my mind around why.

“I thought having Lake here would keep me grounded—and it did, to an extent. I think our killer got tired of waiting. When he realized I wasn’t going anywhere …” Griffin trailed off.

I thought back to what he had said earlier, about sometimes losing his grip on this reality. I hadn’t understood until I’d seen it myself, but now I had to wonder—what if the other Shadow didn’t choose to wait until Griffin was gone until it attacked? What if they couldn’t be in the same place at the same time?

Without even realizing I was doing it, I let that thought bleed over onto Lake’s and Chase’s minds. With absolutely no ceremony whatsoever, Lake turned immediately to Griffin and proceeded to show him the exact same amount of sympathy she’d shown me.

“Stop your caterwauling,” she said, though I could hear the undercurrent of sadness, worry, and fear in her voice. “That thing came here, and you left. We could all do with a few less sorrys and a little more figuring of the hows and the whys.”

“Caterwauling?” Griffin repeated dryly. “You think I’m caterwauling?”

Lake nodded and then made an imperious shooing motion, which Griff must have interpreted as encouragement to stay on task and start talking. With an aggravated look at his sister, he did.

“The second before I blinked out, I could feel a presence trying to get in. There was this pressure, inside my head, outside it.” He paused. “Then it was here. For a split second, we both were. And then …”

He stopped talking, and the moment he did, memories passed from Lake’s mind to mine. I didn’t know how she’d picked them up from Griffin, or how he’d known that she would be able to pick up where he left off. If the bond between them was that strong, why hadn’t I picked up on Griffin’s innocence sooner? Why hadn’t I believed what Lake was telling me? Why hadn’t I seen?

Because you didn’t want to. I answered my own question. Because you couldn’t let yourself let him in—not after Lucas. Not again.

I shook myself free of the thought like a dog shaking off the rain. Through my bond with Lake, I let myself feel what Griffin had in the second before the other Shadow began the attack—the incredible pressure, the chill, and finally, the pull of a vacuum.

Pulling Griffin apart.

Pulling him to pieces.

“Two Shadows can’t be in the same place at the same time,” I said, mulling it over and wondering if there was any way we could use that little tidbit to our advantage. Besides an attack against the Shadow’s twin, that was the only thing we’d found that even approximated weakness.

Facing off against Wilson had been bad enough when he was a corporeal Rabid. Taking him down in this form would be much, much harder.