Trial by Fire (Raised by Wolves #2)(48)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

They were what Chase would have been if it hadn’t been for me.

“Are they okay?” I asked.

Chase shrugged. “They’re not bleeding.”

“But …,” I prompted.

“But they need their alpha.” Chase waited for me to get in the car, then turned it around and accelerated. “Jackson and Sage haven’t said a word since they got here. Phoebe was still in wolf form when I left.”

“And Eric?” I asked. He was the oldest of the peripherals, a college freshman who’d been attacked by the Rabid when he was thirteen.

“Eric said that the Snake Bend Pack is closing in.”

Our territory was adjacent to three others. One was Callum’s. One was Shay’s. The third was irrelevant—at least for the moment.

As I got closer and closer to the Wayfarer, it was all I could do to keep from extracting the information from the peripherals’ brains with all the finesse of a person attempting to rip a phone book right down the center. The only thing on the surface of their minds was a mixture of sensations and emotion—confusion, adrenaline, hunt-lust, fear.

No details.

No explanations.

Devon met me at the door to the restaurant. Behind him, I could see Eric, lanky and in need of a shave. Phoebe lay in wolf form in the corner, her head on her paws, and Jackson and Sage both took a step toward me, my presence washing over them like a wave across the sand.

Alpha. Alpha. Alpha.

I was there. They were safe. We’d get through this.

The part of me that had been lying dormant since I invited my friends into my head—the alpha part—began to rise inside of me like smoke. Beside me, Dev ran one hand through his freshly trimmed hair and gave me a small smile, one that told me he understood—and reminded me that in order for me to be fully alpha, he’d had to willingly step back into his role as number two.

“It’s okay,” Dev told me, reading me, the way he always had. “You let us in. You let us protect you. You, Bronwyn Alessia St. Vincent Clare, actually admitted that you needed help, and I think we all know that’s a minor miracle in and of itself.” He cleared his throat. “And now it appears as though someone else needs your help.”

Eric stepped forward. He was tall, though not as tall as Devon, and had not gotten a haircut the entire time I’d known him. I hadn’t seen him in months, but he still smelled like Cedar Ridge: like pine needles and fresh snow, like us.

Eric bowed his head as he approached me, an instinctive gesture that made me reach out and place my fingers underneath his chin and bring his eyes back up to meet mine.

“Welcome home,” I said.

He closed his eyes, breathing in deeply. As loud as it must have been for him here, as disconcerting, I recognized that on some level, it was also a relief.

“Two days ago, I was coming back from a dorm party,” he said, taking his time with the words. “And I felt something—like the world was turning itself inside out, like everything was wrong. I thought maybe I’d had too much to”—Eric cast his eyes around, looking for Ali or Mitch—“drink, but then I smelled it—sour and sweaty, like vinegar, only stronger.”

Eric’s upper lip curled as he spoke. Peripheral or not, he still had the same reaction to the scent of a foreign pack. “I tracked it back to the border between our territory and Snake Bend, and there they were.”

“How many?” I asked.

“At least fifteen men,” Eric replied, his hair falling into his face. “Older than me. A lot older, I’d guess. They claimed not to have crossed over to our side of the border, but there were so many of them, the scent was so thick—I couldn’t tell for sure whether that was a lie.”

Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. Either way, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that if Shay had fifteen full-grown Weres camped out along our northwest border, they were there for a reason.

Biding their time.

I looked past Eric, toward the others. Phoebe lived a good hundred miles north of Eric; Jackson and Sage lived farther south.

“Was it the same for you?” I asked them.

Phoebe inclined her head, then Shifted out of wolf form, the cracking of her bones providing a sound track to Jackson’s answer. “There were more than fifteen where I am,” he said. “Twenty, at least, spread all up and down the border.”

Sage just nodded, and for a moment, I saw things through her eyes, saw the men standing a hundred yards away from her, tracking her progression with hungry, lupine eyes.

I swore. Vehemently. And so loudly that Eric actually blushed.

Technically, Shay wasn’t breaking Pack Law. He couldn’t invade my territory without explicit permission to do so, but there was nothing to stop him from playing the intimidation card. From lining his troops up along our borders. From letting them make my wolves feel like they weren’t safe.

“He wants us to know that if we fight him, he’ll win.” Devon’s voice was sharp enough to maim, and there was no question in my mind whose blood he wanted—just like there was no question that someday Dev would go alpha. “He’s playing with you, Bryn.”

My fingers worked their way into a fist, my fingernails digging into the skin of my palms. “Like he was playing with us when he made a deal with Valerie to have her coven attack us on his behalf? Like he was playing when he let them cut and tear and burn Lucas into ribbons and ash, for no reason other than needing a victim to bait me into a confrontation?”

“If it’s any consolation,” Devon said, his voice low and comforting, “I’m going to kill him.”

“Dev—”

“Maybe not today. Maybe not this year. But five years from now, or ten, or fifty, or however long it takes for me to do it right, Shay is going to die. Maybe it will be long and brutal. Maybe it will be short and sweet. Maybe I’ll hate myself for it, or maybe I’ll enjoy it, but I will kill him for doing this to you. To them.”

I wondered what it said about my life that I could listen to my best friend calmly discussing dispatching his brother to the great beyond, without having any emotional reaction other than an acknowledgment, deep in my gut, of the fact that Dev could do it, would do it, was probably meant to do it.

According to Pack Law, if Devon killed Shay, he’d be the alpha of the Snake Bend Pack. He’d have to transfer packs first, and Shay would have to accept him, but given Shay’s ego and what Devon meant to me, Shay would probably allow it. For a moment, I almost felt like Callum, looking over the years to come and seeing the likelihood play out, right before my eyes.