“I’m human,” I said, “but I’m Callum’s.” I didn’t lay things out for him further. In most situations, Callum’s name alone was enough to protect me. Even though there were steel bars in between Chase and me, I couldn’t dismiss the sense that his wolf was close enough to the surface that I might need to be protected. It was odd, really, because despite the fact that it was his pain that had brought me down here, Chase seemed calm now—not agitated in a way that would have his wolf taking control of the human.
“Do you know where Callum is?” Chase asked, latching on to the fact that I’d spoken a familiar name. “He was supposed to let me out. He was supposed to be back by nightfall.”
“The sun hasn’t set yet,” I said. “It’s still early. And Callum’s not here, because he’s taking care of pack business.” No need to specify what that business was.
“It always feels like night to me,” Chase said, his voice oddly reflective considering the fact that his eyes were beginning to change, the pupils dilating and changing color. “Callum says that will pass. He says I’ve come a long way in just a month, that it takes most people in my situation years to shut out the night, to resist the call to run and hunt during the day.”
“And what exactly is your ‘situation’?” I asked Chase, drawn to him even though I could feel his Change coming on, and everything I’d ever been taught told me that now was the time to get out of Dodge.
“My situation?” Chase asked, arching his back in a spasmodic motion that didn’t match his casual tone at all. “I got bit.”
Those three words turned my feet to lead. I couldn’t move, couldn’t walk back up the basement stairs. All I could do was watch as his muscles leapt to life, the tension running up his body like a stadium full of fans doing the wave, each contraction triggering another, until I wasn’t staring at a boy.
I was staring at midnight-black wolf that easily weighed two hundred pounds. He had a few markings on his chest and paws, and his eyes flashed back and forth between pale blue and a dangerous yellow.
I shouldn’t be here.
Chase didn’t seem like a monster, but in this form, he could easily kill me without even meaning to. He’d said it himself: I smelled like Pack, but I also smelled like meat. Now that he’d Shifted, it was anyone’s guess as to which would matter more.
He’s in a cage, I reminded myself, but the words meant nothing to me, because I just couldn’t stop staring into his wild eyes and playing the last words he’d said before he Shifted, over and over again.
I got bit.
I got bit.
I got bit.
It was impossible. Werewolves were born that way. The condition was passed down from father to son, and very, very occasionally, daughter. Books and movies would have had me believe that any little scratch or bite could turn someone into a werewolf, but thousands of years of werewolf history said they were wrong. Unless it took place in the presence of the pack alpha and he forged a bond between biter and bitee, a nibble from a werewolf didn’t do jack. And even with Marks like mine and the wives’, the Mark didn’t turn the recipient into a werewolf. I was living proof of that.
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.