Trial by Fire (Raised by Wolves #2)(28)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“I needed to know,” Lucas said.

I breathed an internal sigh of relief that the naked boy on my floor hadn’t confessed his undying need for me.

“Yeah, well, I need you to cover yourself up.” I lowered the knife and reached across my body with my left hand to grab the blanket off my bed. I tossed it toward Lucas, and he caught it and did as I asked.

“I also need for you not to show up in my bedroom in the middle of the night.” I tried to put this in terms he could understand. “This is my territory. My personal territory, and no one comes here without an invitation.”

“I need to know.” Lucas was hunched over so far that his broken request was issued more to my feet than my face. “Are you going to hand me over?”

“I don’t know.” Now my voice was the one breaking. “I’m sorry, Lucas, but I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m hoping there’s a way, I’m going to try to find a way, but if you’re asking if I’ll send my pack to war to keep you safe, when Shay could come in at any moment and demand you back, the answer is no. I can’t promise that, and you shouldn’t be asking me to.”

“There’s a lot of things he shouldn’t be doing,” a low, even voice said.

Chase.

I felt him before I saw him, and my body didn’t register even a hint of surprise at his presence. Of course he’d come. Of course he was moving to stand between Lucas and me.

“Lucas shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be asking you to do this. And he shouldn’t take it the wrong way that I’m going to give him until I count to three to put as much distance between the two of you as he possibly can.”

“Chase—”

Chase didn’t let me finish. “He should also be glad that I beat the others here, because I doubt Devon or Lake would be nearly as understanding about this as I am.”

Even in the scant moonlight, I could make out the way Chase’s pupils surged until his eyes were more black than blue. There was a part of him—a bigger part than I’d realized—that knew violence, the way he and I knew each other.

He was fighting it, and he was trying, but I could sense his human half wanting to hurl Lucas across the room every bit as much as his wolf wanted to sink fang into flesh.

“One.”

As the alpha, I could have made him stop, but I didn’t.

“Two.”

Lucas took off through the window, the same way he must have come in, and Chase followed him far enough to shut the pane carefully behind him, lock it. He let out a long, even breath.

“He didn’t hurt you.”

I got the feeling that Chase was talking to himself more than asking me a question.

“He didn’t hurt me,” I echoed. Now didn’t seem to be the right time to point out that I could take care of myself. Instead, I pried my fingers off the knife still clutched in my right hand and massaged my knuckles.

Chase’s eyes faded back to their natural blue, and he crossed the room. He ran one hand over my arm and nodded, as if to convince himself that I was fine, that Lucas hadn’t hurt me—even though he could have.

“Bryn?”

“I’m fine.”

Chase nodded, breathed in my scent.

“He’s broken,” I said. “The look on his face, it was just …”

“I know,” Chase said. “Trust me, Bryn. I—of all people—know.”

“But,” I prompted, sensing he had more to say.

“I know what he’s been through and I’m sorry for it, but I don’t trust him.”

I didn’t trust Lucas, either—not by a long shot. He was too unpredictable; he held things back from us too often, too much. But even though I didn’t trust Lucas, I knew what it was like to be broken, to have to fight through it and find a way to put yourself and your life back together.

And so did Chase.

That was why I needed to do something—because once upon a time, another alpha had done something for me.

“You wanted me to go and talk to Lucas, to form my own impressions, and I did,” Chase said, pulling my mind back to the present. “Lucas is desperate. Desperate people do desperate things, Bryn.”

I heard him. I believed him—but I couldn’t wash my hands of this, no matter how much Chase wanted me to. I couldn’t let Lucas down just to take care of myself.

Chase pressed his lips to my temple, and I felt their touch through my whole body.

Your job is watching out for the pack, he’d told me. Let my job be watching out for you.

His lips traveled from my temple down to my mouth, his arms pulling me closer—and for a few moments, when it was just the two of us and I could feel him everywhere, it didn’t matter that I was alpha, didn’t matter that he wanted things for me that I would never be able to have.

I didn’t think about Lucas or the coven or the million and one ways this situation could end badly for everyone involved.

All I thought about was us. Chase and Bryn. Bryn and Chase.

Yes.

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHASE SPENT THE NIGHT, AND I WOKE UP THE NEXT morning with my head on his chest and his body curved around mine, like he could ward off the outside world by wrapping my frame in his. I listened to his heart beating in his chest, and burrowed in closer, surrounding myself with the warmth of his body, the scent of his skin.

This was right. This was safe. This had kept the nightmares away.

And then I heard the sound of someone moving around in the kitchen. My first thought was that Lucas was back. My second was that the coven, unable to send Archer into my dreams, had come to try out their intimidation factor in person. My third thought was the most logical—and the most terrifying.

Ali.

I flipped over onto my side and looked at the digital clock on my nightstand. 10:23.

“Chase.” I kept the volume of my voice low but made up for it by shoving him in the ribs.

“Bryn,” he said, his eyes still closed, a loopy smile on his face.

“Get up.”

He must have sensed the urgency in my tone, because the next second, the smile was gone and there was something feral and hard in its place. He moved quickly, pushing me back toward the headboard, crouching in front of me.

I rolled my eyes.

Not that kind of danger, Chase, I told him silently. You’re a boy. In my bed. And Ali doesn’t believe in sleeping past ten thirty. Ever. It’s a miracle she didn’t drag me out of bed to get ready for school.

In the madness of the day before, I hadn’t gotten around to dropping the “no more high school” bombshell. Luckily, Ali seemed to know that there was no margin for error in our current predicament—and no way that any of us should give the psychics an opportunity to divide and conquer.