I got bit.
It would take much more than a “bite” to turn someone from a human into a Were. It would take an all-out slaughter, and no one could survive an attack like that. No one. For that matter, there were very few werewolves far enough gone to provoke their alpha’s wrath by attacking a human and risking exposure in the first place. And yet …
I got bit.
In his cage, Chase stared at me, his eyes pulsing. A growl burst out of his throat, and he threw himself at me, slamming his wolf body into the side of the cage. I backpedaled toward the stairs and clambered up them.
I shouldn’t have gone down there.
Still, I couldn’t deny that I’d gotten what I’d been wanting: knowledge. I stepped over the threshold and shut the basement door behind me. My heart pounded as I bolted the door from the outside, my mind caught up in processing Chase’s words—what they meant for him, and what they meant for me.
I got bit.
It was a miracle he hadn’t died. He should have died.
Teeth tearing into flesh and back out of it. Blood splattering. Again and again, vicious, relentless, thorough. Blood-blood-blood-blood-blood—
“Oh, Bryn.”
And then Callum was there with me in the present, his arms held wide, and I fell into them, caught up in bits and pieces of memories that wouldn’t leave me alone now that Chase’s words had opened the floodgates.
“You just couldn’t stay away.” There was no reproach in Callum’s voice. That would come later, I was sure. For now, he just held me, whispering to me in the old language, little comforts that I understood without knowing the meanings of the words.
“How’d you know?” I asked. How did he know that I was here? That I needed him? How had he always known? How had he known that day, when he’d been the one to pull me out from my hiding place as Sora and the rest of Callum’s men took down the rabid wolf who’d killed my family?
“Lance told me you’d gone, and I had a hunch.”
Hearing Lance’s name reminded me why I’d come here in search of answers in the first place. I’d needed to get away. “Ali?” I asked, the question coming out as a croak.
Blood-blood-blood-blood-blood …
I couldn’t do this again. I couldn’t lose Ali, too.
“She’s sleeping, but doing well. And I imagine she’ll be wanting to have a word or two with you when she wakes up, Bronwyn Alessia.”
Jaws closing around Daddy’s throat…
Callum forced me to look at his steady eyes and hear his words. “Ali’s fine, Bryn. I swore to you that she was going to be fine, and she is.”
“And the baby?” I asked, my stomach clenching with relief and with a deeper fear that wouldn’t let go until I saw Ali for myself.
“The babies,” Callum said, relishing the word, “are healthy. I believe they’ve expressed an interest in meeting their sister.”
Twins? Ali was fine, and she’d had twins? It was almost enough to banish the blood-red haze that I could feel coloring every thought in my head. Almost, but not quite, because somewhere in my mind, I could still hear those three little words.
I got bit.
And each time I heard them, it killed me a little. But more than that, it also made me wonder, because there wasn’t a wolf in Callum’s pack who would attack a teenage boy. There wasn’t a wolf in any of the North American packs who would have done such a thing, and I knew what that meant. I knew what it meant better than anyone.
Somewhere in our territory, there was a Rabid.
CHAPTER SIX
“THERE ARE BAD PEOPLE IN THE WORLD: MURDERERS and psychopaths and telemarketers who won’t take no for an answer.” I kept my voice soft as I spoke and—for the benefit of my audience—made a real effort at ditching my protective layer of sarcasm. “Sometimes, bad people do really evil things, and good people get hurt. Even kids.”
My listeners hung on to my every word with round, wide eyes.
“Humans call their monsters sociopaths. We call ours Rabids.”
Baby #1 (also known as Kaitlin or Katie or, if she was in a mood, Kate) signified her acceptance of my older sisterly wisdom by blowing a spit bubble of mammoth proportions. Baby #2 made what appeared to be a real effort at putting his left foot in his mouth. Reflexively, I reached my hand out and tickled his sole before catching his foot in my hand.
Alex (also known as Alexander, Little Guy, Big Guy, and Spot) wrinkled his baby brow.
“Got your foot,” I told him loftily. Alex wriggled. Clearly, he was unsure what to make of this development.
“Messing with the minds of the next generation again, Bryn? For shame!” Devon’s voice took me off guard. The twins, on the other hand, didn’t seem at all surprised to see him. Even at the ripe old age of six weeks, their senses were better than mine. I would have sworn that they knew it, too, based on their little baby smirks.
“It’s not like I have much else to do,” I said. “Grounded, remember?” Winter had given way to early spring, and I was still under house arrest for my “antics” the day the twins were born.
Devon sat down next to me and started playing with Kaitlin’s feet.
“I seem to recall this grounding that you speak of,” he said. “Remind me again—is this the grounding that kept you from going with me to see the delightfully horrendous film adaptation of my seventh-favorite Broadway musical, or the grounding that came about because you almost got yourself killed? And didn’t bother to bring me along? Hmmmmm?”
Devon loved playing the martyr almost as much as he adored cheesy movie musicals, and my being housebound was almost as bad for him as it was for me. Our age-mates in the pack (or “the Philistines,” as Dev sometimes referred to them) couldn’t quite grasp the appeal inherent in most of the things that Devon enjoyed.
“How many times do I have to say I’m sorry?” I huffed, finally releasing my hold on Alex’s captive foot. I smiled at the way he joyfully flailed like there was no tomorrow once it was free.
“How many more times do you have to apologize?” Devon asked, pretending to ponder the question deeply. “At least thrice more, I should think,” he said, slipping into a distinctively rhythmic pattern of speech that made me think that a reenactment of his seventh-favorite musical might just be forthcoming (again). Instead, though, he turned his gaze to Kaitlin and without even looking at me, he said, “You could have been killed, Bryn.”