“Wait.”
Caroline paused. She waited. I didn’t know what else to say to her, didn’t want to be talking to her at all, but the resemblance to my foster mother, however fleeting, had reminded me that no matter what this girl had done, she was family. Ali’s family.
Her biological family.
“You should come by to see Ali more,” I said finally.
That was as close to an olive branch as I could come. Caroline lived with Jed: on our land, but not in the house I shared with Ali; privy to what the rest of us really were, but not a part of the pack. If I’d had my way, the girl who’d shot Devon and—whether she’d meant to or not, whether she’d had a choice in the matter or not—helped kill one of our own would have been living in another hemisphere. But Ali cared about her. She wanted a relationship with her, and I couldn’t be the one to screw that up.
Family mattered to Ali the way Pack did to me.
Family. Pack. That combination of words made me think of another person who should have been standing here, but wasn’t. A person whose absence I couldn’t blame on Caroline in any way, shape, or form.
Maddy.
Maddy, who’d been one of us. Maddy, who’d loved an angry, broken boy.
Maddy, who’d left, because I’d killed the boy she loved.
For a moment, Caroline actually met my eyes, and I wondered if she played Eric’s death over and over again in her head, the way I obsessed over Lucas’s. I wondered if she felt even an ounce of my guilt, if she sat up nights, staring at the ceiling.
Caroline broke eye contact first. She turned on her heels and left without snapping a single twig.
What happened last winter wasn’t her fault, Bryn, Devon told me silently, for maybe the thousandth time. Caroline never stood a chance against her mother’s mind-control mojo. You know that.
Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t, but my pack should have had twenty-two people, and it didn’t. Eric should have been starting his sophomore year in college, and he wasn’t.
Your mother never had a choice when Callum ordered her to beat the crap out of me, I retorted. But I don’t see you rushing out to mend bridges with her.
That was a low blow, and I knew it. Growing up, Devon and I had both been a part of the same pack—Callum’s. Devon’s mother was the second-in-command, and the moment Sora had laid hands on me, she’d changed everything—for me, for Ali, for her son.
Suffice it to say, Devon was much less willing to forgive and forget when the person who ended up hurt was me.
For a second after I snapped at him, I thought Devon might turn around and leave me standing there by myself, but he didn’t. He put an arm around my shoulder and pulled me close.
“Come on, brown-eyed girl,” he said. “Let’s get you some food.”
I’d never done a thing in my life to deserve Devon. I probably never would.
We passed the restaurant on the way back to my cabin, and Lake—who’d heard us coming—shot out the front door like a jackrabbit. Or a werewolf under the influence of too many Pixy Stix—take your pick.
“Got room for one more?” she asked. Dev inclined his head in a gentlemanly fashion, and Lake was on my other side in
an instant, her arm flung around my shoulder, just like Devon’s.
Pack. Pack. Pack.
Physical contact sent my pack-sense into overdrive, and my body was flooded with the feeling that this was how it was meant to be. We were together. We were safe. I could feel their wolves, feel the emotion rising up inside of them, the same way it did in me.
And then I felt something else.
Foreign. Wolf.
Devon and Lake went absolutely still, and I knew they’d felt it, too. Each of the twelve packs in North America had its own territory. The last time a foreign wolf had crossed into ours without permission, things had gone badly.
Very badly.
Foreign. Wolf.
Dev stepped in front of me, his jaw granite-hard. Lake’s upper lip curled, and I could physically see the growl working its way up her throat.
And that was when I felt it—a tremor in my pack-sense, horror and recognition that whoever had come here without seeking my permission first wasn’t just a wolf from another pack.
Wasn’t just a threat.
Our visitor—whoever he was—was an alpha.
CHAPTER THREE
ALPHAS DIDN’T INVADE EACH OTHER’S TERRITORIES. They didn’t take each other’s wolves. The Wayfarer was mine. The people who lived here, my pack—they were mine. The hairs rose like hackles on the back of my neck, and a sense of foreboding washed over me, one that said there was only one reason for another alpha to come here unannounced.
Our visitor wanted something: my head on a platter, a harem of underage females to add to his ranks—it didn’t matter. Either way, if another alpha had broken Senate Law to come here, there was nothing saying he wouldn’t take what he wanted by force.
Suddenly, running barefoot through the woods until my feet were bloody and my muscles weak didn’t seem like such a good idea. I’d been set on preparing myself for the next confrontation, but I’d assumed that the other alphas would continue playing by the rules.
That if Devon’s brother, Shay, wanted to kill me, he’d do it with cunning and subterfuge, staying just this side of the Senate strictures on inter-pack relations.
“If it’s him,” Devon said calmly, “he’s dead.”
If Shay had come into our territory without permission, Devon could attack him without fear of reprisal from the rest of the Senate. He could Shift and go for his brother’s throat, and the connection between the two of us told me that he wanted to.
That he was on the verge of losing control.
“Wait,” I said softly. I wanted Shay dead as much as the next girl, but the Snake Bend alpha had a couple of centuries on Devon and the same solid build. I needed a plan. I needed to think.
“Bryn.” The sound of Ali calling my name from just around the bend turned my blood to ice. Besides me, she was the only human in our pack, and she didn’t have a knack to fall back on. If Shay had her, if any of the other alphas had her—
“It’s okay.” Ali’s words barely penetrated my brain. “Take a deep breath.”
I couldn’t take a deep breath. I couldn’t even breathe.
Foreign. Wolf. Alpha.
“It’s not Shay,” Ali called. “It’s Callum.”