Trial by Fire (Raised by Wolves #2)(43)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“Bryn.” She said my name like she’d been expecting me, like everything up until this point had been her way of luring me in.

“Hello.” I didn’t give her more than I had to, and I watched her face for some clue as to what was going on inside her head. “You’re Caroline’s mother.”

She smiled, and for a moment, it was easy to picture her as one of those PTA soccer moms.

“Please,” she said. “Call me Valerie.”

The expression in her eyes never changed, but I felt it the moment she reached out to my mind, like a cube of ice sliding down the length of my spine. Her smile was gentle and warm, and just looking at her made me want to smile, too.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I concentrated on the shiver that ran through my body and the sound of wolves breathing heavily in my head.

Lake and Devon and Chase.

Valerie’s smile deepened. Her eyes glittered, and without another word, she moved aside, gesturing for me to step across the splintered threshold into the house.

She’d tried to get inside my head, to push me to trust her or fear her or whatever it was she’d had in store for my emotions, and she’d failed. She knew I wasn’t really there to join them. I knew that she knew, just like I was fully cognizant of the likelihood that she would keep trying to find a way into my head. The two of us were dancing, playing chess.

I stepped across the threshold.

“I was wondering how long it would take you to come to me,” Valerie said, her voice soft, comforting. “Bridget and Archer told me that you had an episode in town. It’s only natural that you’d have questions about what you are. What we are.”

The way she said the word might have made me feel like there really was a we, but for the unwavering certainty that I was already part of something bigger.

“I’ve done a pretty good job figuring things out for myself,” I said. “Good enough that all three of your people ended up on the ground.”

“You’re a fighter.” The edges of her lips tilted up in amusement. “No control. No forethought. Things go red around the edges, and you start cutting people down. It’s hardly surprising.”

“Because I was raised by werewolves?”

Valerie didn’t as much as blink at the word. The other members of the coven might feel blind fury whenever the species came up, but she wasn’t bothered by it.

Odd, considering that a werewolf had killed her husband.

“No, not because you were raised by werewolves, though I shudder to think of the effect that might have had on some with your natural proclivities.” Valerie reached forward and brushed a strand of my hair out of my face, a gesture so maternal—and so familiar—that I felt like I’d been slapped. “Most psychics require practice to hone their craft. The more you practice, the stronger you become.”

For a single, jarring second, I could feel her again, coming at me from all sides—pressure at my temples, the slightest hint of a suggestion: confusion, loneliness, yearning.

Yeah, right.

Valerie’s eyes narrowed. “People with your particular gift tend to be a bit more …  feral about things. Reining it in won’t make you more powerful, but it will give you choices, about when and how your ability manifests itself.”

My heart pounded in my ears, and when she stepped forward and took my chin in her hands, the only thing that kept me from going into fight-or-flight mode, from throwing her to the ground and giving in to the desire to escape, was the calming sound of other hearts, beating in other chests.

Chase’s eyes.

Lake running in a blur of white-blonde fur.

Dev.

They pulled me back from the edge. I brought one hand to my hip, laying my fingers over the scars underneath my clothes and feeling the light scratches on the surface of my hands.

“You’ve known other Resilients?” I asked calmly.

After a long, considering moment, Valerie let go of my chin. “Resilients?”

“People like me.”

“You sound surprised.” She tilted her head to the side, and her voice went from honey sweet to ice sharp in a moment. “Surely you didn’t think you were one of a kind?”

I couldn’t keep myself from snorting out loud. One of a kind? Me? Any human who’d ever survived a werewolf attack major enough to trigger the Change was, by definition, Resilient. As it happened, I had an entire pack of them back at the Wayfarer. I had no illusions whatsoever about being unique.

Of course, no one outside our pack knew that the secret to making new werewolves was to choose your victims very carefully. Shay didn’t know what separated the Changed Weres in my pack from the ones who’d been born that way, and he couldn’t tell Valerie what he didn’t know.

Advantage: us.

“As it so happens, there’s a man in our coven who shares your gift,” Valerie said.

I ingested that information, absorbed it, and kept my surprise from showing on my face. I’d met other Resilients, but by the time I’d met them, they’d already been Changed. I’d never met a human like me. I’d never even considered that there had to be others.

“His name is Jed,” Valerie continued. “He might be able to teach you a thing or two about control—that is, if you plan to stay?”

Of course I planned to stay. Just like I planned to learn everything I could about the coven, to choose my moment, and to use the tranq gun hiding in my boot to knock Valerie out long enough to put the rest of them through emotion detox.

“Will I be safe if I stay here?” I asked, knowing I might get more information out of what she didn’t say than what she did.

“I don’t make a practice of attacking my own kind, Bryn. We generally consider that type of thing to be a last resort.”

Her eyes flickered to my right, and I followed her gaze and realized that Caroline was standing there, a shape in the shadows, her arms at her sides. This time, I felt more than a chill as Valerie pushed at my emotions.

Threat.

I’d always felt it in Caroline’s presence. Valerie wanted me to feel it more. She wanted me to look at Caroline and think last resort. She wanted me to wonder who else Caroline had attacked at her mother’s request.

Even as I fought back against Valerie’s interference, I couldn’t help noticing the icy calm on Caroline’s face, the absolute readiness, the blackness that bled outward from her pupils as she stared at me, set her sights on me.

Lake and Chase and Dev. Pack.