Trial by Fire (Raised by Wolves #2)(13)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Convincing myself to dial the number was harder than it should have been. The part of me that was alpha objected to the idea of bringing another pack into this, and the part of me that had once considered Callum like family balked at the idea of hearing his voice.

There were things—more of them than I wanted to admit—that were easier to forget when Callum stayed in his territory and I stayed in mine.

Flopping down on my bed, I reached for my nightstand and picked up the carving he’d sent me. I still had no idea what it was supposed to mean, but I was positive that it did mean something, and that if and when I called Callum, nothing I had to say would surprise him in the least.

I’d spent my entire life growing up under Callum’s watch without realizing that he had a psychic knack. Sometimes it felt like everyone but me had known that Callum saw flashes of the future and made a routine practice of nudging it in one direction or another. He was fallible. He wasn’t omniscient—but he’d probably known that I was going to call him before the option had even occurred to me, and if I chickened out, he’d probably know that, too.

Screw that.

My fingers were dialing before my mind had processed the decision to do so, and my breath caught in my throat with the first ring. I pictured Callum’s house and saw the landline ringing over and over again.

Maybe I should have called his cell.

The moment that thought crossed my mind, someone picked up the phone, and a smooth, even voice said hello.

Not Callum’s.

The voice was female, and even if I hadn’t recognized it, the process of elimination would have told me that it was Sora—the only female Were in Callum’s pack now that Katie and Lake were in mine. Unfortunately, Sora was also Devon’s mother, which meant that she was Shay’s mother. I was going to go out on a limb and guess she probably wasn’t the best person to ask about how to legally steal a wolf out from under the monstrous product of her loins.

Ew. I so did not want to be thinking about Devon’s mother’s loins.

“Hello?” Sora repeated for what was probably the third or fourth time.

“It’s me.” I’d spent as much time at Devon’s house as my own growing up, so I took it for granted that Sora would know who the me in question was.

“Bryn.” There was a faint trace of a smile in Sora’s voice, and I pulled my knees tight to my chest, surprised at how short a mental hop it was from hearing her say my name to thinking about the last time I’d seen her.

I could almost hear my ribs popping, feel my mouth bleeding as she came at me again and again.

I tried to force myself out of the memory. When I’d broken faith with Callum’s pack and he’d ordered me beaten, Sora was the one who had carried out the sentence. I knew now that the entire ordeal had been part of a larger plan, one that had led me to the founding of the Cedar Ridge Pack, but that didn’t make me hate Sora for it any less.

“Did you want something, Bryn?” Sora’s voice was unbothered and calm, and I wondered if she’d thought, even for a second, about asking me about Devon.

“I need to talk to Callum,” I replied tersely. “Is he around?”

“He’s otherwise occupied at the moment.”

I recognized the half-truth for what it was. For all I knew, Callum was “otherwise occupied” with watching Sora talk to me.

“You might as well just say he doesn’t want to talk to me,” I said dryly. “It’s not going to hurt my tender feelings. This is business.”

Sora snorted. “Some of us have manners.”

“Yeah,” I replied, “and some of us are alphas, so if the Stone River big guy can’t spare the time to talk to the head of Cedar Ridge, just say so.”

The silence on the other end of the line was deafening. I counted to ten in my head and wondered if Sora was doing the same.

“The Stone River alpha can’t officially advise the Cedar Ridge alpha on matters of inter-pack relations,” she said finally, her words clipped and precise. “Were the Stone River alpha to do so, the remainder of the Senate might interpret that as evidence of a political alliance and might therefore feel compelled to make alliances of their own. The Stone River alpha would prefer to avoid such complications.”

I huffed and blew a strand of hair out of my face. “In other words, Callum can’t help me.”

“Officially.”

I translated Sora’s reply to mean that Callum could and would help me unofficially. The trick would be figuring out how exactly a thing like that might work.

“You’re not an alpha,” I said slowly, and this time, I wasn’t throwing the words in Sora’s face. “So technically, if you were to give me advice, it would be …”

“Unofficial?” Sora suggested.

“Exactly.”

Now the reason that Sora was answering the phone at Callum’s house was perfectly clear. Callum couldn’t tell me what to do, but he could send me cryptic homemade gifts and arrange for another knowledgeable source to answer his phone when I happened to call.

It was unfortunate that the knowledgeable source in question was related to the alpha I had in my sights.

“What has Callum told you about why I’m calling?” I asked, wondering how much Sora knew—and, for that matter, how much of what was happening now Callum had foreseen.

“Callum said you might have some questions, and that since my son is now in your pack, if I wanted to answer them for Devon’s sake, that decision was up to me.”

To the best of my knowledge, Devon hadn’t spoken a word to Sora since she’d carried out Callum’s sentence against me. He’d left their pack and hadn’t been home since. Maybe Sora figured this was the least she could do for Dev, and if not mentioning Shay prevented her loyalties from being split …

Well, I wasn’t above telling half-truths myself.

“I need to know if there’s a way for a Were to transfer into another pack against his alpha’s will.”

“Both alphas have to sign off on all transfers.” Sora’s answer was immediate—and not at all what I wanted to hear. “The first alpha relinquishes his hold over the wolf, who then becomes a lone wolf, and the lone wolf can then be claimed by another alpha, with or against his will.”

“What if the first alpha is abusive?” I asked, knowing even as I did that it was a wasted question. Sora had broken my ribs at Callum’s request, and she was my best friend’s mother. Words like abuse didn’t have the same kind of meaning to people with animal instincts. “What if he’s doing horrible things to his pack for no reason other than that he can?”