There wasn’t much I could do with a knife—silver or not—to permanently damage Dev, but still, there were two kinds of people in the world: people who liked making their best friends bleed and people who did not. I fell into the latter classification.
“It’s okay. Hurt me you will not, young Bronwyn.”
“You do a terrible Yoda, Dev.”
Even though the exchange between us was light and familiar, our bond to each other—and the rest of the pack—told me that neither one of us was comfortable with this. If the two of us had been inseparable before I’d opened my bond, there were times when I felt like we were practically the same person now. All of Callum’s wolves lurked in the recesses of my brain, their eyes tracking my movements wherever I went. But even as our age-mates pulled closer to me for the first time in memory, Devon stood as a barrier between us—a Slab of Werewolf, every bit as intimidating and significantly less silent than his dad.
Devon didn’t want to hurt me. His wolf gnashed its teeth at the very idea, and for a split second, my pack-sense surged, and it was almost like Devon’s beast was talking to me. Or something inside of me.
Females, it seemed to be saying, were supposed to be protected. Pups were to be cherished. The girl was his, and he did not want to be laying hands on her. He did not want to fight her.
Yeah, well, I’m not so hot at the idea of fighting you, either, I thought in Devon’s direction. His head flicked forward, and I wondered how clearly my words had come through. It was weird. I’d been talking to his wolf instincts, not his conscious mind, but both parts seemed to understand me just fine.
“Well, children?” Callum prodded.
Devon slumped slightly, in a show of submission, and then followed Callum’s directives to a T. He put one arm around my neck, and though he couldn’t have been using even a measure of full strength, his grip was like steel. Since I’d spent the better half of the past week being drilled on effective escape maneuvers, my body responded immediately, twisting my legs to the side and using the firmness of Devon’s grip to hold up my body as my right leg scissored up to kick him in the side of the face. His other arm went to grab my leg, but the movement gave me a window during which to butt my head into his elbow and flip out of his grasp.
Like lightning, I had a knife in each hand, and as Devon came at me—a blur of popped collars and freshly ironed designer jeans—I settled my arms into an X over my chest, with every intention of thrusting them outward in a V, slicing through his clothes and into his flesh.
But even the best-laid plans go astray.
Logically, I knew that Devon would heal—within an hour, if not minutes. Instinct was telling me to fight him, tooth and nail, claw and blade, with whatever it took to survive. But both logic and instinct lost out, as I caught sight of the label on Dev’s shirt.
He should have been moving fast enough that my measly human eyes couldn’t make out the brand.
He wasn’t.
So I dropped my knives and with the heel of my right hand smacked him on the forehead.
Callum was not pleased. “Bryn!”
“What? He was going half speed, if that, and you want me to knife him?”
“I want you to be able to defend yourself.”
“Against Devon?”
The question hung in the air in all of its ridiculousness. I didn’t need to defend myself against Devon. Or Sora. Or Lance. Or anyone else Callum had set me up against. I wasn’t even certain that I needed to be able to defend myself against Chase. He was just a boy. A new wolf. A Were who didn’t quite have control of his animal instincts. One who was working every day with Callum to tame them.
He wasn’t Attila the Freaking Werewolf Hun.
Callum’s forehead wrinkled—a sure sign of frustration—and he turned his attention to Devon. “Do you want her to live?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then hit her. Hard. Go after her full speed. Don’t hold back, because she needs to know not to.”
Devon nodded.
“That’s an order. Start again, both of you.”
My skin hummed and throbbed at the tone in Callum’s voice, and it echoed through each and every part of me. I shuddered, and then it was gone, but I could still feel the remnants of the order through Devon via the bond.
Females were to be protected, but the alpha was to be obeyed.
Quite a quandary for Dev, who didn’t have the luxury of my humanity and my ability—bond or no bond—to make my own decisions even when Callum tried to force his will upon me.
Lips twitching spasmodically, Devon put me back in the hold, and I did the only thing I could think of to alleviate his guilt and put him in fighting mode for real. “Armani is for mama’s boys, and a movie doesn’t count as a real film if nothing gets blown up.”
You’re going down, Bronwyn. Them’s fighting words.
I was distracted for half a second by the sound of Devon’s voice in my mind, but as his grip tightened around my neck and the desire to breathe became paramount, something snapped inside of me.
Fight.
Fight.
Fight.
The burst of adrenaline came out of nowhere. It felt cold and calculated, but on some level I realized that my frenzied movements would have appeared feral to anyone observing them from outside of my body. I escaped Devon’s grasp, backpedaled, and before I had a knife in my left hand, my right was launching one directly at my attacker’s heart.
Dev moved quickly, kicking the blade out of the way, and then he was on top of me again. I twisted my left hand, driving the knife toward muscles in his chest and shoulders. He batted me off with an inhuman growl, and I fell to the ground. He pounced, overpowering me, bringing his teeth to my neck. I rolled back, pulling my feet tight to my chest and using them to push against his torso, but he didn’t move.
Trapped.
Blood.
Fight.
SURVIVE.
The world around me seemed to slow down with the strength of that command. The word—survive—pumped through my blood, burning me from the inside out like air held too long in lungs stretched past capacity. I saw nothing but a blood-red haze, granular and all-encompassing. One second, Devon was on top of me, and the next, I’d managed to dig my own teeth into his neck, which caused him to rear up, which let me stretch out far enough to grab my discarded knife, which—before I even knew what was happening—had gone straight for tendons I shouldn’t have even been able to reach.