Trial by Fire (Raised by Wolves #2)(21)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“You recognize it,” Caroline said. “Very good. You get a sticker. Sadly, you won’t be able to really enjoy that sticker if we’re forced to put you down like a rabid dog.”

The second the threat left her mouth, Devon, Lake, and Maddy were on their feet, and I could feel the hackles rising on Chase’s back in the distance.

For the first time, Caroline flicked her eyes around the rest of our little group, and she held one gloved hand out to Devon. “Down, boy,” she said, not even bothering to reply to Maddy or Lake. “That wasn’t a threat. It was a conditional statement. If we get back what’s ours, everyone lives to howl at the moon another day. If we don’t …”

Caroline shrugged delicately. A low growl ripped its way out of Maddy’s throat. I glanced at her, and she swallowed the inhuman noise, but not without taking a step closer to the little blonde girl with the great big mouth.

“Who’s we?” My voice gave no hint of the deafening barrage of thoughts in my mind. I was cool, calm, collected.

So was she.

“My family.” Caroline dragged her eyes up and down my body, and they settled on my sunburned cheeks. “I see you’ve already met Archer. He has an uncanny way of getting under your skin, wouldn’t you say?”

She gave me time to reply, then smiled when I didn’t say a word. “You’ll have to excuse his manners, though. Archer’s all about the hunt.”

Hello, mutt-lover. The voice echoed through my memory, and my temples throbbed just thinking about it.

“My mother told him to wait, but Archer was anxious to meet you in person. If she tells him to pull back, though, he’ll listen. My mother can be a very persuasive woman, and she has no desire for bloodshed, especially not yours, Bryn.”

They knew my name.

“I think you’ll find us reasonable. We won’t attack. We won’t rush you. My family can be very patient—some of us, anyway.” Caroline folded her hands in front of her and brought blue eyes to meet mine once more. “You have one week.”

“One week,” Lake repeated. “One week or what?”

Lake, I said sharply. On instinct, I held her back, my mind willing her feet not to move, not to carry her into a confrontation with an enemy whose true nature was still, for the most part, unknown.

“One week or what?” Devon repeated. He didn’t make a move on Caroline, and it was taking everything I had to keep Lake from ripping out her throat, so I let him press the question in his own way: with a gentle elevation of one eyebrow and an endless, pointed stare.

Caroline took a step back, but I knew by the expression on her face that it wasn’t a retreat. She ran the tip of one gloved finger over the inside edge of her jacket, and I saw a flash of silver.

She didn’t draw her weapon, but I knew the others had seen it, too.

“I never miss.” Caroline said the words simply, the same way I would have said that my eyes were brown.

“Guess that makes two of us.” Lake hooked her fingertips through the belt loops on her jeans, a casual gesture completely at odds with the tension in her neck.

“No,” Caroline said softly. “You do miss. If the target’s too far away, or if the wind isn’t right. If you throw knives or take a shot with an arrow, if you line someone up in your sight—sometimes, you miss.”

I narrowed my eyes. “And you don’t?”

Caroline inclined her chin slightly. “No.” A faint breeze caught her hair, and it fanned out like a halo around her head. Beside me, Devon stiffened and took a step forward.

“Can’t smell me, can you?” Caroline said, a soft, deadly smile working its way onto her lips. “Call it a gift. Once I leave here, you won’t be able to track me. If I’m a hundred yards out, you won’t hear me coming.”

Her tone was enough to send a chill up my spine, but that was nothing compared to what I was feeling from the others. She was standing right in front of them, and they couldn’t smell her. She was armed, and unless they wanted the whole school to see it, they couldn’t attack.

“What are you?” I couldn’t help asking the question. She looked human, but there wasn’t a human on the planet who could sneak up on a Were. There wasn’t a hint of fear on her face.

There was no doubt.

She knew what we were, and she wasn’t afraid—and that was terrifying.

“I’m a hunter.” Caroline’s smile grew predatory. “It’s what I was made for. It’s all that I do.”

Threat.

The sensation was so overwhelming, so intense that I could feel it as bile in the back of my throat, an incredible pressure at my temples, a knife through my stomach. I let go of my mental hold on Lake, because I needed every ounce of control I had to keep myself from springing forward and tackling this thing in front of me to the ground.

She shouldn’t have been able to make me feel this way. I shouldn’t have taken her words at face value, but it was all too easy to believe that when she took aim, she really didn’t miss—that she couldn’t, that the rest of her so-called family was just as unnatural, just as deadly.

Threat. Threat. Threat.

Predatory grin still in place, Caroline took another step backward, her hands held out to the sides, like she was dancing.

Like she was seconds away from going for her knife.

“You have one week,” she said, and then, with every confidence that not one of us would go for her back, she turned and walked toward the school.

You can’t smell me, she’d promised. You won’t hear me coming.

It’s what I was made for. It’s all that I do.

I never miss.

“Show of hands,” Devon said, breaking the silence. “Who thinks we’re screwed?”

CHAPTER NINE

WE CUT OUT ON THE REST OF THE SCHOOL DAY, AND as Chase leapt in wolf form into the back of Lake’s Jeep and I buried my fingers in his stiff, damp fur, I had a sinking feeling that none of us would be back.

Not until this threat was taken care of.

Maybe not ever.

For as long as I could remember, I’d attended public school, human school, pretending that I could be one of them. That I could be normal. That I had some kind of future outside the boundaries of a werewolf pack. But maybe that was all it would ever be.

Pretense.

One way or the other, I had no business going through the motions of a normal school day while a foreign wolf lay on a bed in Cabin 13. Maybe this was a sign that as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t give Maddy homeroom or prom or any typical teen experience to make up for all the things she’d missed growing up.