Trial by Fire (Raised by Wolves #2)(52)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

He wanted me complicit.

“Game or stakes,” Shay confirmed. “One of us sets the stakes—that would be what we’re betting and, specifically, what you’re willing to lose if I win, since we’ve already established that my side of the bet is”—he waved his hand in Lucas’s direction—“that.”

He paused, just long enough for Maddy, still pinned to the ground, to start fighting against Lake’s hold again. “Whoever doesn’t set the stakes gets to choose the game on which we’ll lay them.”

I had only a few precious seconds to decide whether I’d rather choose the game we were betting on, or what I was willing to give Shay if I lost. It was a lose-lose situation. If I let Shay chose the game, he’d choose something I’d never have a chance of winning. If I let him choose the stakes, he could demand I put my entire pack up for grabs.

“If I choose the stakes, what’s to stop me from betting a napkin?”

“Good point,” Shay said. “Let’s say that whatever you put up as your half of the wager has to be a person. A wolf for a wolf. If you set the stakes, you get to choose which wolf. If you choose the game we’re betting on, the choice of prize is mine.”

I wasn’t sure whether he meant them to or not, but as Shay spoke, his eyes lingered on Lake’s body, and a lump rose in my throat. For years, she’d been the only eligible female of the species in our entire world. Living under Callum’s protection, she’d been safe. Off-limits. Forbidden.

When we’d discovered the Rabid’s pack of Changed werewolves—seven girls among them, all of whom were now Cedar Ridge—I’d thought there might be safety in numbers, but Lake had been the ultimate prize for too long, and now she didn’t have Callum to protect her.

All she had was me.

No, I thought, the word rising up from my gut. I couldn’t do it. Not to Lake, not to Mitch, not to Callum and everything he’d raised me to be.

I’m sorry, Maddy, I said, sending the words to her across the bond, feeling her heart break like it was my own. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Lucas, couldn’t rid my mind of the sound of popping bones.

“Choose the game, Bryn.” Lake said the words out loud, even though she could have passed them quietly from her mind to mine. She eased herself off Maddy’s body and stood up.

She wanted Shay to know she wasn’t afraid.

She was a liar.

She must have seen the refusal on my face, because she repeated the words she’d said out loud silently, for my ears only. Choose the game, Bryn. Let him choose the stakes.

I narrowed my eyes. Lake, I’m not going to let him force me to bet you.

Lake didn’t even blink. Sure you are. You’re going to bet me, and you’re going to bet on me, and we’re going to win.

I glanced from Lake to the pool table, from the table to Lucas, and from Lucas to Maddy, who had eyes only for him. The floor was smeared with blood.

I can do this, Bryn, Lake said.  I’ve done it a million times before with a million other Weres.

Lake had been hustling pool since she was ten. I was pretty sure she hadn’t lost since she was twelve.

I’ve never asked you for anything, Lake said, the intensity of her voice pushing out every other thought in my head. Not since we were kids, and I’m asking you now, as your friend, as Maddy’s friend, to let me do this.

Without thinking about it, I glanced over at Dev, but there was no counsel in his eyes, only violence, anguish.

“Do we have a bet?” Shay asked, his own face an emotionless mask.

Lake caught my gaze and held it, and after a long moment, I nodded.

“Choose your stakes,” I said roughly. “The game is pool.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

LAKE DIDN’T SO MUCH AS LOOK AT SHAY AS SHE walked over to the pool table and chose her cue. She just ran her hands over the length of the wood and murmured something under her breath. I could see her lips moving but couldn’t make out the words, and I wondered if she was talking to the cue, the way she sometimes did her guns, or if the words were just another part of the performance she was putting on for Shay’s sake.

On Thanksgiving Day, I’d watched Lake teaching a bunch of twelve-year-olds how to hustle pool. She’d told them that the trick was to look completely helpless so your opponent would underestimate you. Now my friend’s entire future was riding on her ability to put her money where her mouth was and practice what she preached.

Lake could do this. She could.

I wanted to believe it. I wanted to tell myself that Lake really was that good, and that I wouldn’t have been any kind of friend at all if I’d kept her from trying, but I couldn’t, because despite everything we’d been through together, despite what she and the others had done for me the night before, I couldn’t shake the feeling building up inside me, the one that said that I was supposed to be protecting her.

“Take me instead.” My voice was low and guttural—a foreign thing in my own throat.

“Excuse me?” Shay raised one eyebrow, and for a single second, he looked so much like Devon that it hurt to look at him.

“The game hasn’t started yet. You can still change the stakes.” I ignored the low rumble of the others inside my head.

I ignored Chase, who’d gone ashen beside me, the unreadable look on his face masking the flash of horror and denial I could feel through the bond.

“Are you suggesting that if I win, you’ll abdicate the rule of your pack to your second-in-command and willingly transfer into mine?” Shay sounded vaguely amused. I thought of everything he could do to me, everything he would do to me, and then I nodded, unwilling to let myself feel even the smallest bit of fear.

Unwilling to let him smell it.

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”

Devon could take care of the pack once I was gone, he could be their alpha, and I could put my life on the line to save Lake.

Shay’s face hardened, amusement morphing into something darker. I recognized the emotion from places in my memory I didn’t want to go. The blood, the screams, my human parents. The smell of mildew and bleach as I backed myself farther and farther under the kitchen sink. Even dead, the Rabid still haunted my dreams, and I knew that Shay wanted that. He wanted me to cower, wanted to wear my blood and taste my human screams.

“You think highly of yourself,” he said, his eyes pulsing with bloodlust, and the muscles in his jaw tense with the effort it took to fight it back. “But at the end of the day, you’re human. You’re frail, you’re weak, you’re breakable. You’re meat. This one …” Shay turned to look at Lake, and through the bond, I felt her conflicting desires to lash out and shrink back from his gaze. “This one is strong.”