Between Lake’s trigger finger and Devon’s fondness for show tunes, that seemed like a harsh enough incentive to walk the straight and narrow to me.
“Seems reasonable,” Ali agreed, “but it might not be a bad idea for you to take on a shadow yourself.”
Ali judiciously avoided meeting my gaze as she said those words. In the entire history of my life, I’d never once willingly agreed to lupine bodyguards—not that my agreement had ever been necessary before. In Callum’s pack, my refusal had been cause for amusement more than anything else, but now the decision was mine.
“I need you to do this for me,” Ali said, and I knew by her tone that it wasn’t a request.
Correction, I thought, the decision is technically mine.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll have Devon, Lake, Maddy, and Chase rotate through: half on me, half on Lucas, anytime I’m on the property.”
“You planning on leaving sometime soon?” Ali asked. I’d expected her to pick up on that, but I’d also expected her to be adamantly against it. Instead, her voice was guarded, like she knew something I didn’t.
Maybe multiple somethings.
“I don’t know what I’m planning on doing,” I said honestly. “But I’m getting the distinct feeling that you do.”
Ali pressed her lips together for a moment and then she spoke. “I called Callum this morning.”
Like mother, like daughter—Callum was never far from my mind and never far from hers. The difference was that I’d come to terms with the things Callum had done to set me on the path to becoming the Cedar Ridge alpha, and Ali probably never would. She’d loved Callum, the same way I had, but she’d never cared that he was the alpha. She’d fought him—and me—every time I’d started thinking and acting more Were than human.
He’d promised her once that she’d have the final word on my safety, and in Ali’s eyes, he’d broken that promise and then some.
“You called Callum?” I asked, watching a bevy of emotions and vulnerability flash across her face until she pressed back against them.
“I was worried, and in his own way, he … cares … about you.”
I thought about the Callum in my dream—mute and hovering just out of reach. “Did Callum actually answer the phone, or did he have Sora do it?”
Ali gave me a strange look. “He answered. Why?”
“No reason. Is he the one who told you I needed guards?”
Ali shrugged. “I believe his exact words were ‘If she was living in my territory, I’d have half my pack watching her back.’ ”
Even from a distance, Callum was still controlling parts of my life. The fact that he couldn’t be bothered to answer my phone calls was just salt in the wound.
I didn’t bother to bite back the sarcasm in my reply to Ali. “Did he round out the conversation by giving you cryptic warnings or promising to send you presents with some kind of secret meaning that you absolutely and without question won’t understand?”
“No,” Ali said, dragging the word out and tilting her head to the side. She waited to see if I would elaborate, and when I didn’t, she did. “He did say that it was best if the two of you had no direct contact for the time being, and that he couldn’t advise me on how this should be handled or things could go very badly.”
“What a drama queen,” I muttered, eliciting an incredulous laugh from Ali. “I mean, what’s the worst thing that could happen if he helps me out here? The apocalypse?”
“A high probability of civil war,” Ali corrected. “Or so says the drama queen.”
I just loved it when my worst-case scenario went from bad to horrific. The precarious democracy in the werewolf Senate was a stick of dynamite, waiting to go off. I had no desire to be the one to strike the match.
“So in summation, his only suggestion was putting half the pack on Bryn Babysitting Duty, and he can’t do anything to help us directly without inciting a chain of events that might lead to a future he doesn’t want.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Ali said in a voice that suggested it wasn’t much consolation to her, “I think the part of him that’s actually human wishes that he could help. It’s just not a very big part. Not anymore.”
I wasn’t about to touch Ali’s Callum issues with a ten-foot pole. “In other not-helpful news,” I told her, “I got a visit from one of the psychics again last night.”
Ali’s entire body went tense. “And you didn’t lead with that?” she asked tersely. “Are you okay? What did they do to you?”
In retrospect, I had to consider the possibility that telling Ali this was a mistake. For whatever reason, psychics were a sore spot with her. I should have known she wouldn’t take the idea of a nighttime invasion lying down.
“I’m fine. One of them just has a nasty habit of showing up in my dreams. At least this time, he came alone.”
“What did he look like?” Ali enunciated each of the words, and I could tell she was fighting to keep her voice from rising in pitch.
“Dark hair. Early twenties. Penchant for sarcasm.”
That wasn’t exactly a quality description, but at the time, I’d been too busy wanting to kill the guy to take note of his features. Still, the description seemed to satisfy Ali and she let out a breath that I hadn’t realized she was holding.
“Early twenties,” she repeated.
“College aged,” I confirmed. “Maybe a little older, but not much.” I hesitated a fraction of a second but then had to ask: “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Ali said. “I’m fine. You should be, too. Entering other people’s dreams isn’t all that different from what people with open pack-bonds can do with each other, and the psychic doing it can’t hurt you. He can annoy you. He can frighten you. But that’s it.”
I decided, for the time being, not to mention that the psychic in question appeared to be able to cross that line with relatively little effort.
“You seem to know a lot about psychics.” I let that statement hang in the air, but Ali didn’t offer up an explanation, leaving me to wonder if I wasn’t the only one dancing around full disclosure.
“I don’t know enough,” Ali said instead, “and neither do you. I told Callum as much.”