Trial by Fire (Raised by Wolves #2)(22)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

The five of us were Pack, and we belonged with the others. We belonged at home, not out in the open where a threat could waltz up to us at lunchtime and calmly issue ultimatums we weren’t at liberty to respond to.

It was a miracle that none of the Weres had lost their grip and Shifted.

That wasn’t a chance I was going to be taking again anytime soon. If Caroline and her “family” wanted a confrontation, they would have to come to us. I had to believe that on our turf, werewolf strength and instinct and the thirst for our enemies’ blood would be worth something, no matter what—besides Caroline—the other side had in their arsenal.

Worse comes to worst, you don’t have to fight them, the pragmatic part of my brain whispered. Give them what they want, and they’ll go away.

I didn’t want to be the kind of person who could consider that option, but what I wanted wasn’t what mattered. Keeping my pack safe mattered. Making sure that no one laid a finger on Katie or Alex or Lily mattered.

But didn’t Lucas, with his haunted eyes and heartbreaking wariness, matter, too?

“He really did lie.” Maddy’s thoughts weren’t far from my own, but I knew that this was harder for her, that she’d wanted to believe in Lucas, because she’d seen so much of herself in the things that had been done to him. “Lucas lied.”

“No,” Lake corrected tersely, taking a turn with all the zeal of an Indy 500 driver. “He didn’t lie. He just left out a few key details, such as the fact that the humans who are after him aren’t exactly what you’d call run of the mill.”

I’m a hunter, the little blonde girl had said. It’s what I was made for. It’s all that I do.

“Caroline might have been exaggerating her abilities.” I had to say the words, even though I didn’t believe them. There was a tone to Caroline’s voice, a look in her eyes that I recognized all too well. “If you can’t smell her, you wouldn’t be able to tell if she was telling the truth.”

Devon glanced at me for a second, maybe less. “You believe her,” he said—a statement, not a question.

“Believe what?” I asked. “That she’s the perfect hunter?”

The kind you didn’t see coming. The kind who never missed.

I shook my head, trying to clear it of unwanted thoughts.

“I believe,” I said slowly, “that she’s a threat, and I know she’s not working alone.”

The burn on my skin was fading, but the questions it had inspired weren’t going away. We didn’t know how big Caroline’s family was. We didn’t know what they were, other than human. We didn’t know why they wanted Lucas, and we certainly didn’t know the limits of what they could do.

“You think they’re like Keely?” Lake asked, gunning the engine the moment she said the bartender’s name. “With her … you know …?”

Before Ali had yanked me out of Callum’s pack and brought me to the Wayfarer, I hadn’t known there was anything unusual in the world, other than werewolves. I hadn’t known that Callum saw possible futures laid out in a complicated web, or that I had an unnatural ability to survive things that would kill a normal girl. I hadn’t had a clue that there were people out there like Keely, who could make you spill your secrets just by looking at you a certain way.

In all the time since I’d discovered those things, I hadn’t once stopped to wonder what else—or, more to the point, who else—was out there.

“So, what?” I said. “Some people are really scrappy, and some people are easy to talk to, and some people are made to hunt?”

My words were met with silence.

“And what about the other guy?” I continued. “The one I keep seeing in my dreams? That’s not just a knack. You can’t just be born with a knack for burning people in their sleep. That’s …”

Impossible?

Insane?

“That’s not a knack,” I said mutinously. “That’s magic.”

The word felt ridiculous coming out my mouth. I’d grown up around things that would have made normal girls take off screaming, but I’d never once believed in magic. Werewolves were just another species. Pack-bonds were connections, as natural as a mother feeding her infant in the womb. Even Callum’s seeing the future was something I could write off as …

Quirky.

But this? The symbol carved into Lucas’s skin. The foreign presence in my dreams. My pink and sunburned skin.

This was a whole new world of weird.

“I’m going to throttle Lucas,” I said, my voice deceptively cheerful. “I mean, seriously? He couldn’t have warned us?”

“Maybe he knew that if he told us the truth, we would send him away.” Maddy’s voice was soft, and in an uncharacteristically affectionate gesture, she laid her head on my shoulder and closed her eyes. “Maybe he doesn’t believe that anyone else could ever want to fight for him.”

I leaned my head over so that my temple was touching the top of Maddy’s head. Behind us, Chase stood up on his hind legs and put one paw on my shoulder and one on hers, huffing into our faces before nudging each of us with a wet, cold nose. The affection he showed Maddy surprised me, and my surprise made me realize that in human form, Chase never touched anyone but me.

“This is all Shay’s fault,” Devon said from the front seat. “He’s the one who gave Lucas to those … whatever they are. Shay probably sent Lucas there hoping that he would run to us and bring She Who Hunts to Kill right to our front porch.”

That did sound kind of like the type of thing Shay would do. For a few minutes, the five of us were silent. Then Lake pulled into the parking lot in front of the restaurant and slammed the car into park. “So, who wants to share all of this with my dad and Ali?”

“Not it,” Devon said quickly.

“Not it,” Lake and Maddy chorused. Beside me, Chase let out a small howl, and I cursed under my breath.

“Have I ever mentioned that being alpha sucks?” I said.

“A time or two,” Devon replied, but he didn’t even have the decency to sound sorry for me.

Sitting there in the backseat of Lake’s car, Chase and Maddy close enough that they felt more like extensions of my physical body than members of my pack, I tried to remember what it was like to be a normal teenager, but the next second, Lake popped open the driver’s-side door, and a burst of winter wind brought with it the smell of wet fur and cedar trees.