Hearing Callum’s name did something to me. My eyes stung, and my insides went liquid and warm. I would have sworn my heart stopped beating, and my fingers curled so tightly into fists that my nails cut into the palms of my hands.
Callum was the alpha who’d brought me into the werewolf world. He’d saved me from a rabid werewolf when I was four years old. He’d raised me. He’d protected me. He’d hurt me. And the last time I’d seen him, he’d promised that he would do the unthinkable.
My mind went immediately to places I didn’t want it to go—to memories of the rabid wolf who’d killed my parents, to the sound of their blood splattering against an off-white wall. Werewolf attacks were vicious. Brutal. And unless you had a knack for survival, they didn’t end with the wolf’s prey turning into a Were.
They ended with the wolf’s prey dead.
To Change me, Callum would have to rip me to pieces. He’d have to take me to the brink of death and hope my Resilience would pull me back. I told myself that I wanted this. That I was ready. That I’d been ready for seven long months.
I steeled myself against fear and took a mental hatchet to my reservations. I’d said I would do anything for my pack, and I meant it. I’d die for them. I’d Change for them.
I’d say good-bye to my human life forever.
A gust of wind snapped me out of my thoughts and beside me, Devon and Lake—oblivious to my train of thought—visibly relaxed, their noses confirming what Ali had said. Like me, Lake and Dev had once been a part of Callum’s pack. Intellectually, they might not have trusted him, but instinctually, they did. He’d been their rock, their protector, their alpha for too long for them not to.
Even though I was their alpha now.
As Devon and Lake dropped back and let me take the lead, I realized that knowing Callum was the trespasser didn’t completely calm my senses. He’d still come here without permission, and I couldn’t push down the part of my brain that said this was a challenge.
He’d challenged me.
Alpha. Alpha. Alpha.
The closer I got to Ali and Callum, the stronger the feeling was—alphas weren’t meant to coexist. By definition, there could only be one: one in a given territory, one total, if it weren’t for the precarious democracy in the werewolf Senate, which kept each of us in our own little worlds.
Alpha. Alpha. Alpha.
I had to do something, had to fight, had to protect what was mine—
I didn’t actively try to call up my Resilience. I didn’t have to. One second, I was fine, and the next, I could feel myself slipping, feel an alien power taking over my body, driven entirely by instinct and self-preservation.
“Bryn.” This time, Callum was the one who spoke my name, and it played in my mind in stereo, pushing back the haze, as I remembered the hundred thousand times he’d said it when I was a kid.
I looked at him—through the anger and fear and the heady call of letting everything go red again—and I met his eyes. I didn’t mean to. I knew his wolf would see it as a direct challenge, and I made it a rule not to get into any staring competitions I couldn’t win. But to my surprise, Callum only met my gaze for a second, before flicking his eyes downward and rounding his neck.
Submission.
He stood there, the man who’d made me what I was, a thousand-year-old werewolf with more power than the rest of the Senate combined, and he bowed his head toward me.
Relief washed over my body, then confusion, then awe. My skin thrummed with the power of what had passed between us, and slowly, Callum raised his eyes to meet mine once more. There was no challenge there, only understanding—of everything I was feeling, of everything I was.
On good days, I liked to think that was why he’d agreed to Change me. Because he still cared about me. Because he knew as well as I did that, sooner or later, being human would get me killed.
“The alpha of the Stone River Pack apologizes for this intrusion. I’ll accept any sanctions you see fit.”
The idea of applying any kind of sanction to someone who had grounded me more times than I could count was just bizarre.
To Callum’s left, Ali rolled her eyes. She had no use for werewolf politics, and Callum wasn’t exactly on her list of favorite people.
“The alpha of the Cedar Ridge Pack accepts your apology,” I told Callum formally. “No sanctions necessary.”
I didn’t always trust Callum. I knew he had an agenda, that his own knack—an ability to see possible futures—lent itself to manipulating the rest of us a little too well. Callum kept secrets, and he played God, and every time I thought I had him figured out, he threw me for a loop.
But I trusted that he wouldn’t have come here without a reason—a good one.
Knowing that, my mind jumped immediately to the promise he’d made me, the unthinkable thing I’d asked him to do—Teeth snapping. Muscles tearing. Skin and tendons and gristle. Minced, like meat—I couldn’t stop picturing what it would be like to be attacked by a Were, couldn’t keep from seeing the people I’d once called Mommy and Daddy reduced to carnage.
But there was no turning back now.
Callum had told me he would Change me. He’d made me wait. And now he was here. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to do the math.
“Tomorrow morning,” Callum said, his voice breaking into my thoughts, “Shay Macalister is going to call a meeting of the Senate.”
That wasn’t what I’d expected him to say. In retrospect, math had never been my strong suit.
“Since Shay is the one calling the meeting, the rest of the alphas will be expected to go to him.”
As far as I knew, the Senate normally met in Callum’s territory, at Callum’s house.
Callum shrugged in response to my unasked question. “Normally,” he said, “I’m the one who calls the meetings.”
Most of the other alphas probably would have been happy to stay in their own territories and forget that Callum existed altogether. For that matter, they’d probably have been happy if I didn’t exist. The last time I’d been in a room with the entire Senate was the day I became an alpha myself. None of them—save for Callum—had seen it coming. None of them had been pleased.
More than one alpha would have enjoyed bathing in my blood.
“The Senate is meeting,” I said slowly, “and I have to go.”