“Fix me up with one of everything,” I told her. “And make it silver.”
Lake nodded. At any other time, weapons talk would have made her downright giddy, but this wasn’t just any Rabid we were hunting.
There was a chance—maybe even a good one—that this was a friend.
“We’ll need restraints,” I said, thinking out loud. “And something to knock her out with if she’s …”
If she’s out of control?
If she’s a monster?
If she’s insane?
Across the table, Alex peered curiously up at me.
“If she’s sleepy,” I said.
Lake glanced at the twins and nodded. “If she’s sleepy,” she repeated, “I reckon a Taser or two might help her nap.”
Neither Katie nor Alex wanted anything to do with a conversation about naps. Ali set Katie back down, and the twins began babbling to each other, in words I couldn’t make out or understand. They had their own language, their own gestures, their own little twin world that, even as their alpha, I could never truly enter. The older they got, the more intense that connection was. If I reached out for her mind, I felt his. If I reached out for his, I felt hers.
Beside me, Lake paused in the middle of a sentence in which she was referring to a tranq gun as a pillow. She trailed off, her gaze caught on the twins. Alex reached out and grabbed Katie’s fist.
Griffin.
I didn’t go looking for the thought through the bond, and Lake didn’t send it to me, but in that moment, she was thinking her brother’s name so intensely that I couldn’t help overhearing.
Natural-born females, like Katie and Lake, were so rare because a cruel genetic quirk ensured that female werewolf pups were only carried to term if they were half of a set of twins. It had never occurred to me before that seeing Katie and Alex like this might be hard for Lake, whose own twin had died when we were only a few years older than my siblings were now.
I could barely remember the way Griffin looked and was suddenly struck by the realization that Lake would never forget. That what Katie and Alex had now was something Lake and Griffin had once. Something they wouldn’t ever have again. I reached out for Lake’s mind and felt the ache, the emptiness, the space inside of her where her brother should have been.
How could I have missed this? She might as well have been missing a limb, and I’d never seen it, never noticed.
Stay out of my head, Bryn. Lake’s voice was shaky in my mind, but I retreated, giving her space.
“So,” I said, “about those pillows …”
After a few more minutes of thinly veiled conversation, Lake went off to see about the weapons—and to get away from me. I hadn’t meant to go nosing around in her head.
Just like I hadn’t meant to send Maddy out into the big bad world to deal with a black hole of emotion alone.
Not wanting to prod Ali into another pep talk, I stood up from the table, restless and aching with everything I couldn’t afford to let myself feel.
“We need to leave within the hour,” I told Ali. “I’m going to check on Chase and Jed.”
That much, I should be able to handle.
That much, I could do.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“SIT DOWN.”
Checking on Jed wasn’t exactly going as planned. He was already up when I got there, already packed, and waiting for me when I showed up at the cabin he and Caroline shared. The Deadliest Little Psychic was nowhere to be seen, and Jed seemed to be under the impression that now was as good a time as any for lesson two.
“Jed, I don’t think—”
He didn’t let me finish that sentence. “Once upon a time, that might have been true, but I’d say that these days you’re doing plenty of thinking. Not thinking doesn’t keep a person up at night.”
Jed’s observation was mild, but it made me wonder just how tired I looked.
“Are you actually accusing me of thinking too much?” I raised one eyebrow in an imitation of an expression I’d seen on Devon’s face one too many times. “Have you met me?”
I’d been guilty of a lot of things in my life, but an overabundance of caution or logic had never been one of them. You didn’t end up accidentally founding your own werewolf pack by thinking things through or making pro and con lists.
“I’m not going to pretend to know what it’s like in your shoes, Bryn. You’ve got a lot on your mind, probably always will.” Jed eased himself down on the ground next to me. “But if you want to control what you are and what you can do, you’re going to have to learn when to think and when to give in and feel.”
I couldn’t help thinking that this would have been infinitely easier a year ago, or two, or three, back when I’d been nothing but feelings. Look Before You Leap Bryn could have mastered her Resilience in a heartbeat.
But I wasn’t that girl anymore.
“Close your eyes. Breathe. And remember.”
This time, Jed didn’t have to tell me what to remember. I knew what he wanted me to do. Ultimately, the thing that prodded me into doing it wasn’t that Callum had implied he wouldn’t Change me until I’d learned. It was the realization that Maddy had survival instincts every bit as honed as I did.
She was Resilient, too.
If the worst turned out to be true and we couldn’t get through to her, if she was caught up in a red haze of her own, too shattered on the inside to do anything but hurt, I’d need every advantage I could get just to keep the two of us alive.
So I forced myself to think of the look on Maddy’s face—
broken, but regal and holding it together by a string—the day she’d left.
I’m going to go away, and I’m going to get better, because if I don’t, the next time someone challenges you, it’s going to be me.
Those were words Maddy had actually said to me. For once, I didn’t fight the memories. I didn’t fight back the darkness, the horror, the fear that she’d been closer to the edge than I’d realized.
You did this to me. You.
Now my mind was putting words in her mouth, things she’d never said.
You killed him. You left me to deal with it alone.
I heard the words in Maddy’s voice. I allowed my imagination to conjure up the nightmares I hadn’t let myself dream the night before. I saw Maddy, covered in blood. I saw her Shifting to wolf form.