Chase didn’t argue, didn’t tell me to lower my voice.
“You want to hit something?” he said in an even tone. “Hit me.”
I was standing there, yelling at him, and all he did was meet my eyes, his face impassive. How many times had I seen that exact expression, that same control, on Callum’s face when I was growing up?
“Go on, Bryn.”
Go on, what? Hit him? Hurt him? He was Pack, and he was Chase. I would have died first. Wasn’t that the problem? The list of people I had to protect—the ones who mattered—it just kept getting bigger and bigger, and no matter what I did, someone was going to get hurt.
“Shay. Caroline. That guy in your dreams. They’re messing with you, Bryn. They’re baiting you, and they’re hurting you, and if you don’t let it out and take a swing at something, you’re going to explode. So let’s have it.” Chase motioned me forward. “I can take it. Promise.”
He grinned.
Without even thinking, I swung. Chase ducked, lightning quick and impossibly coordinated, and I swung again, my fist tearing through the air and just missing the side of his cheek.
Again.
And again.
And again.
I didn’t lay a hand on him. Not once, but I kept going until the pent-up fury inside me broke and gave way to something else.
I couldn’t fight Chase, couldn’t match a Were’s speed or strength, no matter how hard I tried, just like I couldn’t keep Archer or Caroline from entering my dreams and showing up at school. I couldn’t make Shay sorry for the things he’d done to Lucas, and I couldn’t snap my fingers and make being alpha any easier.
I was what I was. The situation was what it was. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t easy, and maybe Chase was right, and I couldn’t save everyone—but I could try. Because that was the kind of alpha—the kind of person—I was.
The pace of my swings slowed, and Chase caught my arms in his. He pulled me close, and I breathed in raggedly, laying my head against his chest, vulnerable, spent. For a few precious seconds, I felt the borders between the two of us give, felt our connection as strongly as I had before there’d been a pack or an alpha or anything but the two of us.
I felt his wolf—animal instinct, undiluted and sure—as if it were my own.
“Thanks,” I said finally, pulling back just far enough that I could say the words to his face. “I needed that.”
And even though he had to have known, from that split second when we were more like one person than two, that I wasn’t backing off this, that I couldn’t just take care of myself, no matter how badly he wanted that for me, he nodded, his lips turning up subtly on the ends.
“Anytime.”
“Ali, I’m home!”
My words echoed through our cabin, and Ali called back that she was in the twins’ room. I took a deep breath and then followed the sound of her voice. Somehow, my ability to adopt a poker face when interrogating werewolves evaporated the moment it was just Ali and me, and I took a few seconds to try to wipe the evidence of the day’s events from my eyes, mouth, and brow.
What Ali didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her—and more to the point, what Ali didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me.
“Hey.” I poked my head into the twins’ room. For a split second, Ali held my eyes, and then she turned back to folding clothes into the dresser drawers.
“Mitch called.” Ali’s voice was muted. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking—or what, exactly, Lake’s dad had told her.
“Oh.”
“Yes,” Ali replied. “Oh.” She shut the drawer and then turned to leave the nursery, gesturing for me to follow.
I did.
When we got to the living room, I expected her to start lecturing, or to go into fierce-and-overprotective mode, but she didn’t. She just smoothed down my hair and wrapped one arm around me.
“We’ll get through this,” she said. “You shouldn’t have to be dealing with something like this, but you are, and you have to, and I can’t change that. I can’t make it go away.” Even though Ali’s voice was perfectly calm, I knew that saying those words was costing her. Ali had always protected me. She’d stood up to werewolves for me when I was too little to do it for myself. She’d given up a whole other life for me, twice: once when she’d left the human world to raise me in Callum’s pack, and later when she’d left her werewolf husband and her home in the Stone River Pack to keep me safe.
But now I had responsibilities of my own. I couldn’t stay out of this, even if I wanted to—not for Ali, not for Chase, not for anyone—and I loved her for knowing that and for not asking me to, even if a part of her felt like she’d failed me because at sixteen I had the weight of the world on my back.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said. Admitting that was nearly impossible, but this was Ali, and I couldn’t hold the words back. “No matter what I decide, someone gets hurt.”
Not emotionally hurt. Not kiss-it-and-make-it-all-better hurt. Dead.
“If we don’t help Lucas, he’s going to die, and if we do …” I searched Ali’s eyes. “Did Mitch tell you? About the … family of people with … knacks?”
“Psychics,” Ali corrected absentmindedly. “Humans with special abilities are called psychics.”
Somehow, the word psychic didn’t seem to do justice to the whole “burn you while you sleep” thing, but I didn’t see much point in arguing semantics.
“Okay, so there’s a family of psychics, and if we don’t hand Lucas over in the next seven days, I’m pretty sure they’re going to come after us, and even if we can take them, it won’t be pretty.”
There would be losses, and the idea of digging a hole in the forest and burying Devon or Lake or Chase—or, God forbid, one of the younger kids—was insurmountable.
“It’s an impossible choice, Bryn, and if you want me or Mitch to make it for you, if you want us to be the ones who make the call, and you just deliver it …” Ali tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and the casual gesture of affection almost brought me to my knees. “Say the word, Bryn. You have to do this, but you don’t have to do it alone.”
What kind of alpha was I that her offer tempted me? What kind of daughter was I that part of me would rather have Ali’s hands bloodied than my own?