Taken by Storm (Raised by Wolves #3)(7)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Someday, waiting for the other guy to attack might get me killed.

“You know how to get there,” Jed said finally, breaking what felt like a small eternity of silence. “Deep down, you know. You just ain’t admitted it to yourself yet.”

He wasn’t talking about pain or panic or running like someone was on your heels. The kind of trigger Jed was talking about was something I wanted no part of.

Something I’d spent my entire life training myself not to do.

“Think of the worst thing that ever happened to you,” Jed told me. “Think of a time when you were cornered and trapped and terrified.”

Was that really what it took to summon up my Resilience, to fall into that state where nothing mattered but surviving and protecting the people I loved?

Where I was a faster, better Bryn?

“Every bad thing that’s ever happened to you.” Jed was implacable. “Every moment of terror, every loss, every time you had no power, and someone else had it all. One by one by one, Bryn. That’s the way.”

I’d said I would do anything for my pack. I’d said I would do this Jed’s way. So I did.

I started with recent memories, moments I spent all of my time trying to forget.

The look in Lucas’s eyes—hungry and desperate and dark—when he’d challenged my right to rule. The knowledge that had flooded my body in that instant, that a Were—any Were—was physically capable of killing me dead.

Dread built up inside of me, like bile rising in my throat, but I pressed on and thought of another heart-in-throat moment: seeing Devon lying still on the ground, blood pouring from a bullet wound in his heart. I thought of Lake missing a shot in a fateful game of pool and pretending that she wasn’t terrified that losing might mean spending the rest of her life as the property of Shay.

In the here and now, I was sweating. I was cold. But I wasn’t done yet. Forcing my muscles to relax, I went further, deeper, the memories flashing before my eyes at rapid speed.

I saw a man with violet eyes threatening to burn me to death in my sleep. I couldn’t fight back, couldn’t move—

I felt myself waking up in a cabin belonging to the monster who’d killed my parents, tied to a chair and wearing a frilly white dress designed for a little, little girl. The Rabid had touched me and cooed to me and backhanded me to the floor.

At the time, I hadn’t let myself be scared. Didn’t ever let myself be scared, but now …

I pictured myself standing still, as the members of Callum’s pack circled up around me. I pictured Sora, long and lean, her familiar face devoid of emotion. I pictured myself just standing there, heart pounding, knowing that if I fought back, I might die.

I remembered letting her break my ribs and bloody my lips, blacken my eyes and strip away every illusion I’d ever had that they were my family, that I was theirs.

“No.” I opened my eyes. I wasn’t going to do this. There was no sense in opening up old wounds when Shay would be calling a meeting of the Senate later today. This wasn’t the time for me to be feeling anything that might remind the other alphas of what I was.

Or, more to the point, of what I wasn’t.

“Sooner or later,” Jed said, opening his own eyes, “you get to the point where you know fear the way you know a lover. You know what it smells like. What it tastes like. How it feels.”

Listening to Jed use the words lover and taste in close proximity to each other was flat-out disturbing. His voice was dark and almost tender, and I just didn’t want to go there—on so many levels.

“You memorize that feeling, Bryn, and you build a place for it in your mind. You keep it under lock and key, and when you need to …” Jed’s pupils pulsed, and an instant later, he was behind me, his arm wrapped around my throat, crushing my windpipe and cutting off the flow of air.

“When you need to,” Jed repeated, “you let the dark things out.”

He dropped his hold on me before my own power could flare up, and then he took a step backward, his palms upturned, unthreatening. I took that to mean that the lesson was over. He’d made his point. I’d felt the power come over him, an instant before he’d rushed me—stronger, faster, and more sure of his movements than he would have been without it.

For a second, I let myself think of the way fear tasted—like sweat, like metal, like blood.

“It might take some practice, and it might take some time, but you’ll get there, sooner or later.” Jed ran one hand over the stubble on his chin. “Then again, what do I know? I’m just an old man.”

Yeah. And a saber-toothed tiger was just a kitty.

“Caroline!” Jed’s scarred face lit up as he said her name. Warily, I followed his gaze over my left shoulder. Sure enough, the Wayfarer’s resident assassin was standing there, her blue eyes narrowed at Jed, like she hadn’t expected him to clue me in to the fact that she was there.

“Going running?” Jed asked her.

Caroline nodded, her gaze—sharp and guarded—shifting over to me.

Jed cleared his throat. “What do you say, Bryn?” he said, suddenly sounding inept and awkward and old. “You feel like a run?”

I stared at him, trying to decide whether or not he was seriously suggesting that the two of us play running buddies, like we’d never wished each other dead.

“I can run by myself,” Caroline interjected. “In fact, I prefer it.” She sent Jed a mutinous look that told me he’d be hearing about this later.

Jed, however, was not easily deterred. “It will make Ali happy,” he said, playing his trump card. “Won’t it?”

I didn’t answer his facetious question. Instead, disgruntled, I turned to Caroline. “You’d better be able to keep up,” I told her.

She arched one blonde eyebrow at me. “Big words, wolf girl.”

She took off running. I took off after her, pushing down all of the memories my session with Jed had called up and banishing my gut reaction to them—the one that said if and when I let the dark things out, there was no guarantee I’d ever be able to put them back.

CHAPTER SIX

CAROLINE AND I DIDN’T SAY TWO WORDS TO EACH other on our run, but at least she kept up. By the time we’d finished and I’d made my way home, I wanted nothing more than to fall back into bed.

You! You! You! Not Pack, you. Want play? Want play?

The voice in my mind didn’t belong to someone who was deliberately trying to talk to me, and I certainly hadn’t gone looking for anyone else’s thoughts, but the littlest members of my pack could never quite contain themselves. Their thoughts—such as they were—were always at the surface of their minds, spilling through the pack-bond whenever I was in range.