You’re going to burn.
I barely made it to lunch, and I knew before Devon said a word that the others had picked up on at least some portion of what had happened to me—not the details, but enough to know that I was on edge, that the part of me that was Pack was calling for blood.
An animal backed into a corner either cowers or snaps. Most werewolves weren’t any different, and human or not, I wasn’t the type to cower.
“Dare I guess we’re eating outside today?” Devon asked, the set of his jaw belying the casual tone with which he’d issued the question. His hair might have been gelled; his shirt might have been fitted, but beneath the surface of his skin, the wolf was restless.
He’d sensed the threat—they all had.
“We’re eating outside,” I confirmed, taking a step away from Devon and trying not to listen to the quiet rumble of the wolf beneath his skin. I had enough going on in my own mind right now; I didn’t need to deal with Devon’s animal desire to protect me at all costs.
I also didn’t need to deal with below-freezing temperatures and a wind chill disturbingly close to zero, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and the conversation I was about to have with Devon, Maddy, and Lake wasn’t the kind you could have in the middle of the high school cafeteria.
Despite the intense chill, sitting on the ledge outside the cafeteria loosened the knot in my chest and stomach. I could smell the wind, the trees, cedar and cinnamon, pine needles and morning dew.
“Chase.” Devon said his name before I could process the scents or let the warmth of his presence wash over me, and I followed my friend’s gaze out past the parking lot, to the line of trees that marked the spot where forest gave way to the town.
There, standing guard, was a wolf as dark as midnight, smaller than some, but bigger than any natural wolf.
Chase, I called out to him. Someone might see you.
In wolf form, Chase didn’t speak back to me in words. Instead, I got pictures—mostly of me—and the distinct sense that if the wolf had had its way, he and Chase would never have let me out of their sight in the first place. I was what mattered to them, and my urge to find this threat and tear it to pieces was nothing compared to how much Chase and his wolf wanted to see me, smell me, protect me.
Fine, Chase, I said silently, giving in because if he had been the one under attack, I probably would have done something a lot rasher than standing guard at the edge of the woods. Just stay hidden.
This time, I caught a hint of Chase’s human side in his reply, something that told me that he was good at blending in to the background, that he’d spent most of his human life trying not to be noticed.
“Hey, sleeping beauty.” Lake tried for nonchalance in her tone but couldn’t quite sell it, and her voice quivered as she pressed on. “Want to tell us what’s going on, and why exactly you look like you’ve seen the wrong side of a barbeque?” She plopped down next to me and stretched out her legs.
You guys remember that thing we weren’t going to tell Devon? I asked Lake and Maddy silently. They both shifted slightly in response. Devon narrowed his eyes, and Lake batted her eyelashes in a show of innocence that was just this side of terrifying.
I think we’re going to have to tell him, I continued. Any volunteers?
“Not it,” Lake said out loud.
“Not it,” Maddy chimed in quickly.
I sighed. “Hey, Dev, funny story …”
Shockingly, Devon didn’t find the story of the previous night’s events very funny, and none of them—not Lake, not Devon, not Maddy, not Chase in wolf form, lurking in the distance—was overly amused by the morning’s development.
“You had a dream that someone was trying to set you on fire, and when you woke up, your skin was burned,” Lake repeated humorlessly.
I leaned back on my wrists and blew out a breath, watching it take shape in the winter air. “That about covers it.”
“Except, of course, for the part where my brother sent you veiled threats about someone else coming after Lucas, and the part where our gentleman visitor looked you straight in the eye and told you the threat was human.”
When Devon got irked, he had a tendency to over-enunciate, and by the end of that sentence, his pronunciation was sharp enough to draw blood.
“Lucas wasn’t lying.” Maddy was the only one willing to speak up and voluntarily step into Devon’s line of fire. “I was there. Lake was there. We would have smelled it.”
“There’s lying and there’s not-lying,” Lake replied, mulling over each word. “If you ask me, Lucas was not-lying. His words weren’t exactly false, but for someone who wants our help, the boy isn’t really what you would call forthcoming.”
Lucas hadn’t ever explicitly said that the people after him weren’t a threat. He’d never said that they weren’t dangerous. He’d said that they were human, and I’d filled in the blanks on my own. The irony of the situation—that I of all people had assumed that by virtue of being human, a person couldn’t possibly be a threat—did not escape me.
Devon leaned over and pressed two fingers deliberately against my cheek, watching the skin go pale and then pink again. After a moment, he repeated the action.
“Are you done yet?” I asked, shoving him, to absolutely no avail.
“Depends. Is my bestie done lying to me and pretending things are okay when they aren’t? Hmmmmm?”
Devon poked me again. I was on the verge of giving in and promising him that whatever happened next, I would tell him, whether I thought hearing it would be good for him or not, but before I could say the words, our conversation was interrupted.
At first, the interrupter didn’t say anything. She just walked up to us—right up to us—so close that the tips of her black leather boots almost touched my jean-clad legs. She didn’t kneel to our level to speak. She didn’t even look down. Instead, she stared off into the distance.
Into the forest.
At Chase.
“Hello there,” Devon said, shifting position to move a fraction of an inch closer to the intruder. “Is there something I can help you with? Directions to the gymnasium? Personal tutoring on Hamlet? Predictions on this year’s Oscar favorites?”
Personally, I thought he was laying the drama geek vibe on a little thick, but the girl—the same one I’d seen in the cafeteria the week before—didn’t so much as bat an eye. In fact, I would have gone as far as to say that she paid less attention to Dev than any female had in a very long time.