Trial by Fire (Raised by Wolves #2)(31)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

In the clutches of the Rabid, they’d been the ones to bear the brunt of the abuse.

If there was one thing that seeing Lucas had taught me, it was how lucky they all were to have come out of it with their minds and spirits intact.

“Where’d you say you’re going again?” Mitch asked. His voice was mild, but he was a Were and Ali was female, so the things he didn’t say hung in the air between them, heavy and clear.

“We’re going to town,” Ali repeated, unfazed by the question and the manner in which it was delivered. “Just for an hour or so. Think you can hold things down here?”

“I suspect I can.” Mitch paused for a split second and then he turned to me and said, “Bryn, I ever tell you that you and Ali here are an awful lot alike?”

Ali couldn’t seem to decide whether to smile or throw her hands up in the air at that, so I saved her the trouble of responding.

“I’m going to assume that’s a compliment,” I told Mitch. “For both of us.”

Mitch shook his head in consternation, and Ali reached up and patted his shoulder, in a motion that I was fairly certain she didn’t mean to look nearly as intimate as it did. “We’ll be fine, Mitch. If it’ll make you feel better, have Lake rustle up a couple of tranquilizer guns. Just make sure they’re loaded for humans, not Weres.”

Lake wasn’t the kind of person you had to ask twice for weapons, so she didn’t even wait for her dad to give her a nod before she took off out the front door of the restaurant. I gave it ten-to-one odds that she’d be back with tranq guns in less than three minutes.

Unfortunately, three minutes was all it took for Devon and Chase to show up at the restaurant and innocuously volunteer to shadow Ali and me on our trip to town. Given that the whole reason we were going into town was to flush out people who tortured werewolves for fun, I wasn’t inclined to indulge the boys’ protective instincts over my own.

“I need you here,” I told Devon quietly. “Lucas showed up in my room last night.”

I’d expected those words to distract Dev, but he just glanced at Chase and then turned back to me. “I know,” he said, and the similarity between my best friend’s facial expression and Chase’s was eerie.

You told him? I asked Chase silently, torn between annoyance and shock. Chase and Devon weren’t exactly friends, and Chase wasn’t really what one would call chatty.

“Of course he told me,” Devon retorted, even though I knew for a fact he hadn’t heard me ask the question. “You can just imagine how thrilled I was to hear it.”

I wasn’t sure which was worse for Dev: that Lucas had gotten close enough to me that, if he’d wanted to, he could have ripped out my throat, or that Chase had been the one to stop him—and spend the night.

“Dev, I need you and Lake to keep an eye on Lucas. Wherever he goes, you go, and if you can keep him away from the younger kids—”

Devon’s eyes glittered. “You don’t even need to ask, milady.”

The milady he tacked on to the end of that sentence was the only thing that reminded me that Dev wasn’t usually the type who lived life on the cusp of violence. All of us were on edge.

And, Dev? I added. If you can keep him away from Maddy …

I didn’t allow myself to finish that silent request. It didn’t seem right to ask Devon to keep Maddy from Lucas while the rest of our group roamed free. Maddy was a big girl, and if she wanted to stay close to Lucas, to watch him, to figure him out—I couldn’t keep her from it, any more than Callum had been able to keep Chase from me.

I knew what it was like to look at someone and see yourself, to need answers, and as off balance as Lucas seemed, I had to remind myself that the day I’d met Chase, he’d snarled at me from inside a cage and told me that I smelled like meat.

You don’t have to ask me to watch out for Maddy, Bryn. Devon met my eyes.  And for what it’s worth, I don’t think you’d have to ask Maddy to watch out for me.

“Somebody ask for tranq guns?” Lake called, crossing the room in three long-legged strides, ponytail swinging. She handed one to Ali and one to me. “One dart will make a large male groggy or knock out a little bitty human girl.”

I assumed from the tone of Lake’s voice that the “little bitty” comment referred to Caroline, and that Lake herself would have taken no small pleasure in pulling the trigger. She’d been taught all her life not to attack humans, but knock- ing them unconscious with tranquilizer guns was more of a gray area.

“Thanks, Lake.” Accepting the gun from Lake, Ali turned back to me. “You ready to get out of here?”

I nodded, and Chase echoed the motion. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that he needed to stay here, but Ali shook her head slightly, and I let her speak instead.

“How far away can you be and still sense Bryn?” Ali put the question to Chase and waited for his response. I figured that she was probably planning to tell him to hang back far enough that no one would see him, but close enough that I could call for him if things went bad. I realized a second after Ali asked the question that she probably wouldn’t like Chase’s answer.

“I always sense her.” Chase shrugged, but despite the human gesture, I could tell that the answer was coming as much from the wolf as the boy. “Always feel her.”

Ali held up one hand.

“TMI?” I guessed.

“Something like that,” she confirmed before turning her attention back to Chase. “If you can always sense her, you’ll know if she’s in trouble, and you’ll come. Otherwise, this is kind of a mother-daughter thing.”

If there was one argument Chase couldn’t counter, it was that.

“I’ll wait at the edge of our property,” he said, addressing the comment to me, like we were the only two people in the room—like the seven words he’d said to Ali and the heads-up he’d given Dev had tapped out his desire to speak to anyone but me. “You need me, I’m here.”

That was what Chase did—whether he agreed with me or not, whether it was comfortable for him or not, he was always there.

“I should go.” I forced my voice to sound normal and pressed back the desire to close my eyes and remember what it had felt like to wake up that morning with him by my side. “And hopefully, when we get back, we’ll have answers.”

I didn’t bother to enumerate the questions; there were too many of them, and everyone in the room knew each one as well as I did. The only thing the others didn’t know was that Callum was the one who’d nudged Ali and me into doing recon on the psychics.