Trial by Fire (Raised by Wolves #2)(46)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Like we were the same.

He’s Resilient, Chase whispered from his place in my mind. Like you. Like me.

Like us.

I tried to remember what Valerie had told me the day before, but all I could remember was the man’s name—Jed.

The two of us walked in silence, each taking the other’s measure. Once we were out of earshot of the house, Jed spoke. “Came close to flashing out in there, didn’t you?”

“Flashing out?”

He strung his thumbs through his belt loops and kept walking. “It’s what happens when people like us get backed into a corner. Smart girl like you must realize that woman was backing you into one on purpose.”

I knew other Resilients. The majority of our pack was Resilient. But this was the first time I’d met another human whose gift was being scrappy and stubborn and coming out unscathed when other people would be dead.

“I wasn’t going to lose it,” I told him.

The man grunted.

“I’m better at keeping my head than people give me credit for.”

He grunted again. “I shouldn’t have grabbed you, but she was pushing the others, and if you’d flashed out, they would have attacked.”

“She doesn’t want me dead—not if there’s a chance she could turn me into one of her little sock puppets instead.”

My use of the phrase sock puppet seemed to throw Jed for a loop, but only for a moment. “If Val can’t get inside your head, she won’t have any other use for you. Lucky for you, woman’s not the type to accept defeat. She’s been trying to get in my head going on eleven years now. Most of the time, I shake her off. Doesn’t put her in the best mood, but as long as I keep my mouth shut about it, ’bout what she’s doing to everyone else, she lets me be.”

As I processed Jed’s words, I realized that I was talking to the one person in the entire coven who was able to insulate his emotions from Valerie’s influence. From that, I concluded two things: first, that even without the others in my head, I might be able to do the same; and second, if I wanted to figure out what was really going on in this coven, my current companion would be a good place to start.

“Eleven years—is that how long you’ve been with the coven?”

Jed shook his head. “That’s how long she’s been with the coven. She showed up on our doorstep, same way you did, with a little blonde moppet in tow. Cutest kid you’d ever seen—real solemn, except when Valerie wanted her otherwise. Two months after the two of them showed up, Valerie married Wes.”

“Wes?”

“He was a good kid,” Jed said. “Great leader. I’d been with him since he was seventeen. He was the one who talked me into finding others like us. He found them, saved them, made them family.”

Your coven has lost someone. You must have loved whoever it was very much. The words Ali had used to spur the psychics into showing their hand echoed in my mind.

“He’s the one who got killed by a werewolf?” I said. Doing the math, I hit a snag. “He wasn’t Caroline’s father?”

“Not by blood.”

That shouldn’t have surprised me. I knew better than anyone that blood wasn’t what made people family.

“Valerie was with us three years when Wes died. By that time, it seemed natural to most folks that she’d be the one to take over.”

“Most folks,” I repeated. “But not you.”

He shrugged. “Never wanted to lead much myself. Filling Wes’s shoes would have been tough on anyone, but Valerie took to it.” He paused. “I always thought she took to it a little too well.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him why he’d stayed. It couldn’t have been easy, watching Valerie work her way into everyone else’s emotions, making them feel what she wanted them to feel—about her, about their former leader’s death, about Caroline. But before I could even ask the question, I had my answer, because in the brief exchange I’d seen between Jed and Valerie’s daughter, there’d been shades of Callum and me.

Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you.

Now was not the time to get caught up in memories—not with company in my head and a slew of questions Jed might be willing and able to answer.

“Valerie had Caroline give me an ultimatum—either I hand over a Were under my protection, or your coven is going to attack my pack.” I measured Jed’s response. Nothing I said surprised him, but his jaw tightened when I mentioned Caroline, scars jumping to life on his face as the muscles underneath them tensed. I pushed harder, further, testing my intuition that Jed’s weakness, the whole reason he’d stayed with the coven, was the girl. “How do you think Caroline is going to feel if her mother uses her to murder a bunch of little kids?”

Jed reached out, lightning quick, and grabbed my arm, his fingernails digging into my flesh and sending my pack-mates into a defensive roar in my head.

“I know what’s at stake here,” Jed said, his voice surprisingly quiet given his viselike grip on my arm. “Know it better than you, so if you’ve got questions, ask them, but don’t play with me, Bryn.”

He had one of those tones—one that said that I was a kid and he wasn’t and he’d been waging wars since before I was ever born.

“Fine,” I said. “Question: why does the coven care so much about getting Lucas back? What’s he to Valerie?”

Jed let go of my arm. “I’m no expert on the workings of that woman’s mind, but if I were a betting man, I’d say that odds are that one teenage werewolf is not what she’s after. She’s just using him to get the others all riled up, same as she’ll use you.”

It had occurred to me that Valerie might not want Lucas—that she might want me—but I’d never thought, even for a second, that maybe neither one of us was the point. That if I met Valerie’s ultimatum, she might find something else to demand, some other reason to set her coven against my pack.

“If I gave Lucas back, she’d just find another excuse to fight us.”

“That a question?” Jed asked, looking amused.

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Should it be?”

He grunted.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

The realization was strangely liberating. I’d spent all this time thinking that I had to choose between my own pack’s safety and sending an innocent to be tortured by people who blindly hated his guts, when in reality, there’d never been a choice.