Trial by Fire (Raised by Wolves #2)(50)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

While Shay blathered on, I used the bond to ask Devon to check my email. Dev confirmed everything Shay had told me and informed me that in the time that Shay and I had been talking, another alpha had replied, asking that I either permit Shay access to my territory or send Lucas back to Shay.

That might not have sucker punched me the way it did but for the fact that the alpha was Callum.

Time was running out. I had to make a decision, but the only thing I could think about was Callum, teaching me how to throw a knife. Callum, running a hand over my hair. Callum, trading away a portion of his territory to save Marcus, who hadn’t deserved it.

I knew then that I couldn’t do the safe thing. I couldn’t hang Lucas out to dry, not if there was a chance—even a small one—that I could save him without endangering the rest of my pack.

I knew what Callum would do, and I had to try.

“Shay, you, and only you, have permission to come into my territory for exactly three hours.” The moment the words were out of my mouth, I could feel Devon on the other side of the bond, sending an email to the other alphas that said the same thing.

The email was time-stamped. The clock was ticking.

“Am I coming to retrieve my wolf, or am I coming to play you for him?”

I wasn’t sure of the answer to that question, so I responded by hanging up the phone. If Shay was as close to the border as he’d claimed, he’d be here in a little over an hour, and I needed time to assess the situation.

To decide.

What do you expect me to do? I knew things were dire when I started having pretend conversations with Callum in my head. You sent that email. I did what you wanted me to do, what you would have done. What now?

There was no answer—not from pretend Callum, and not from anyone else. As I sat there, the countdown already under way, I was sure of only one thing.

If Shay and I wagered anything—and that was a big if—it would be on my terms. Not his.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I STOOD WITH MY BACK AGAINST THE POOL TABLE, one ankle crossed in front of the other, waiting. The restaurant was eerily quiet, and as I felt Shay drawing nearer, twin urges—one to shudder and one to growl—fought for dominance in my mind. All around me, my backup seemed to be fighting the same battle, but they faded into the woodwork, letting me take the lead.

Before we could fight as a team, I had to meet Shay one-on-one, alpha to alpha.

Foreign. Wolf.

Threat.

I was familiar enough with Shay’s type to know that he wanted me to feel him coming. He wanted me to feel his presence washing over my body like thick, syrupy oil. He wanted me to shudder, to growl, to make one wrong move after another after another.

Shay wanted the advantage. Considering that we were on my land, surrounded by my wolves, that wasn’t going to happen. Shay could puff up his chest and leak pheromones until the cows came home, and I still wasn’t going to respond like he was a threat—even though all my instincts were telling me that he was. I wouldn’t let him get a rise out of me, wouldn’t let him see me scared. No shuddering. No growling. As the door to the Wayfarer opened, I didn’t bat an eye. I didn’t straighten to my full height. I just stayed there, leaning against the pool table, using the knife in my right hand to clean the fingernails on my left.

“You look well.”

Judging by Shay’s words, you would have thought the two of us were old friends, but I suspected that he meant them more as a complaint than anything else. For a fragile little human lotus blossom, I had an annoying habit of coming out of things unscathed. Shay probably would have preferred to see me in pieces.

Glancing down at my fingernails, I took my time responding to his greeting. “It took you an hour and fifteen minutes to get here. Presumably, it will take you an hour and fifteen minutes to go back where you came from, which means that the permission I granted you to be here expires in half an hour.”

I wasn’t going to let him get a rise out of me, but I didn’t have to sit there and exchange niceties, either.

“Very well,” Shay replied, strolling through the room like he owned the place. “This shouldn’t take long.”

I ran my fingertips over the worn felt of the pool table and met his eyes as if they held no more significance to me than a speck on the wind. He returned my stare, his face as blank as mine.

Alpha. Alpha. Alpha.

The familiar call of my pack took on a different tone in my head. I was alpha, Shay was alpha, and there was a subtle suggestion in the air all around us, a whisper in my ear, telling me that there was only ever meant to be one. Werewolves weren’t meant for politics. Shay and I weren’t meant to be exchanging words.

“I appreciate your hospitality.”

My only clue that Shay was feeling the undercurrent, same as I was, was the way that even as he was coating his words with sugar, his chest rose and fell at a quicker pace. It was all too easy to imagine him in wolf form, breathing jaggedly over my corpse.

Alpha. Alpha. Alpha.

Shay brought his gaze to meet mine. I felt him let go of his hold on the instinct to dominate, and I let go of mine.

I imagined my eyes boring twin holes in Shay’s body. I stared at him, and I smiled, because from the moment he’d engaged in this little staring contest, there was a way in which he’d already lost. Every second I held Shay’s gaze, every moment that I was able to stare back at him—the way very few werewolves probably ever had—was an insult.

I was human. I was a girl, and I was mocking him.

“How do you like that?” Devon said.

Shay turned toward the sound of his brother’s voice, and a rush of adrenaline flooded my body like water bursting through the holes in a dam.

Shay had looked away first.

Logically, I knew he’d been distracted, but no amount of logic could override the bodily sensation that I’d won something, that I was more. At the very least, I hadn’t lost—and even a draw felt like a win against a werewolf as powerful as Shay.

With a glint in his eyes, Shay took a step toward Devon, each of them a distorted reflection of the other. Dev was a fraction taller. Shay was broader through the shoulders. They had the same cheekbones, the same jaw, but while Devon’s features were in constant flux and motion, Shay’s face had an unnatural stillness to it, like he was incapable of smiling or frowning or displaying real human emotion of any kind.

“How do I like what?” Shay asked in a tone that would have been more appropriate for talking to a toddler. He was wasting his breath. Dev was the only werewolf in existence with a fondness for the Metropolitan Ballet—he’d been immune to all forms of mockery for years.