“Be home by dusk, Bryn,” he told me, before taking his leave. “Trouble’s afoot.”
I harrumphed. I was a human who had been quite literally raised by wolves. In my world, trouble was always afoot.
CHAPTER TWO
AFTER CALLUM LEFT ME ALONE IN THE STUDIO, I SET about pretending he’d never been there at all. This was my space, and if growing up in the pack had taught me anything, it was the importance of marking your territory. Since I had no compulsion whatsoever toward scent-marking, the best I could manage was refusing to acknowledge the fact that my sanctuary had been violated at all. Turning my discerning gaze to my work in progress, I evaluated the day’s efforts thus far. At present, the sculpture resembled nothing so much as a papier-mâché fire hydrant. I’d meant for it to be an oak tree, but c’est la vie. I was more concerned with my materials than the outcome per se. Chess-club flyers, notes passed in class, failed tests, and midterm papers—this was my medium. I was always happiest elbow-deep in things that other people had thrown away.
“Dusk in ten minutes, Bryn.”
The words were issued from directly behind my left shoulder, and the only thing that kept me from making a sound somewhere in the “eep!” family was years of experience with frustratingly stealthy werewolves. Despite my own training and the bond I shared with the rest of the pack, if Weres wanted to sneak up on me, they could. Even in human form, werewolves were stronger, faster, and more capable of masking their presence than us non-supernatural types. The most I could do was attempt to hide my surprise when they caught me off guard. Today, I was certainly getting plenty of practice at that. First Callum, and now this.
I whirled on the intruder. “I don’t care when dusk is,” I said. As my best friend, Devon was morally obligated to listen to me whine, and if he was going to keep me from working on “The Tree (or possibly Fire Hydrant) of Knowledge,” I was going to take full advantage of that obligation. “Nobody else has a five p.m. curfew.”
Devon didn’t bother to expend energy by disputing my words or acknowledging my whine in any way. He just leaned back against the door of my garage-turned-studio and waited for my ranting to subside.
“Besides,” I continued, hoping to engender some level of sympathy, “Callum’s put me on surveillance. I’m sure my babysitter will be showing up any minute to escort me home, whether I like it or not.”
Fact of life: pretty much everyone I knew was stronger, faster, and less disturbed by the idea of throwing a girl over his shoulder and hauling her to a given destination than anyone had a right to be.
A slightly more satisfying fact of life: I didn’t have to make it easy for them. I’d doubtlessly lose any fight I started, but it was the principle of the matter. That, and annoying werewolves was a good way to dispel pent-up frustration—if and only if they were bound to keep you safe and couldn’t raise claw or canine against you.
Teeth ripping into flesh. Skin tearing like Velcro.
Glancing out the window in a show of calm, I wondered why my “escort” wasn’t here already. Like Devon had said, it was almost dark, and Callum’s wolves were nothing if not punctual. It was at that exact moment that I noticed the faint grin on Devon’s face.
“You’re my escort?”
Devon shrugged. “The Big Guy tells you to do something, you do it, even if it means babysitting a bratty little human girl who calls playing with glue art.”
I reached over and smacked him.
Devon just smiled back at me. He was my best friend. My partner in crime. He was most certainly not my keeper. I was going to kill Callum for this. He knew that in my current frame of mind, I would have fought anyone else, but I couldn’t fight with Devon, and Devon couldn’t disobey Callum.
Insert four-letter word here.
“Have I mentioned that I really hate werewolves?”
“A time or two, I believe,” Devon said. For no reason other than the fact that he could, he adopted a ridiculously affected British accent. “Come along now, luv. Be a dear and walk with your old pal Devon, yeah?”
My best friend, the drama geek. If I didn’t go with him now, there was a high probability that he’d keep switching accents until I caved. A werewolf channeling the Swedish Chef was not a pretty thing—and I had absolutely no desire to see it again.
“Fine.” I sighed melodramatically. Two could play Dev’s game, and if he was going to put his drama chops to use, I had every right to channel my inner diva. “If we must, we must, yeah?”
My own British accent was, in a word, horrid.
To his credit, Devon didn’t wince. Instead, he adopted an austere look. “Indeed.” He managed to maintain his serious expression for about two seconds before the two of us started cracking up. He linked his arm through mine and gently steered me out the door. We locked up and then headed down the trail toward town.
“Do you have any idea what’s got Callum’s panties in a twist?” I asked as we walked.
“It’s a miracle he let you live past childhood, darling. I can’t imagine anyone else talking about our esteemed leader’s underpants.”
Although his words were entirely true, I couldn’t help but notice that they weren’t an answer. “Don’t evade the question, Dev. Callum said he’d put an entire team on me. I’m guessing that means more than just you and that you got the short straw tonight because—”
“Because Callum knew you’d be defenseless against my ample charms?” Devon suggested winningly. Of our generation in the pack, Dev was the largest, the strongest, and the most likely to turn alpha himself one day, but being Devon, he preferred to think his true power lay in other domains.
I rolled my eyes. “Because Callum knows we’re friends,” I corrected. Werewolves had heightened senses, and a person would have had to be deaf, dumb, blind, and just plain stupid to miss out on the connection that Devon and I shared. There were only a few other juvenile wolves in our pack, and with Devon’s sense of flare (he was, I was certain, the world’s only metrosexual werewolf), he’d never really fit in among the other pups. Then Callum had brought me home, Marked me, and given me to Ali. Most of the pack had ignored the tiny, shell-shocked human, but Devon claimed he’d loved me from the moment he’d seen me, shivering in Callum’s arms, blood-spattered and wild-eyed. The two of us quickly became inseparable. It was to Devon that I’d said my first words once I started talking again, and with Devon that I’d mastered the fine art of mischief. He was Devon.
And now, Callum had placed me in his charge.
“I hate this,” I said.
“I’m sure you do, Bronwyn Alessia St. Vincent Clare, but I’d not have you endangering yourself on my watch.”
It took me a second to realize that Devon was channeling Callum. The impression was a hilariously good one, and it reminded me that even when he obeyed orders, Devon was not just another member of the pack.
“Your stubbornness is also your folly,” Devon continued. He even had Callum’s facial expressions—or lack thereof—down pat.
“Fine. You win. I’m laughing. Happy now?”
Devon grinned, Callum’s quirks instantaneously melting off his heart-shaped face. “I’m ecstatic.”
“The point is—” I tried to bite back my giggles, but that stubbornness/folly line was so spot-on that I was having trouble recovering. “The point, Devon I-wish-you-had-a-middle-name Macalister, is that if Callum’s got an entire team watching me—including your fine wolfy self—then there’s something going on. I want to know what it is.”
“Leave it alone, Bryn.” Devon’s voice was soft and uncharacteristically serious. He knew something, he knew that I knew that he knew something, and he still wasn’t telling. Ten-to-one odds, that meant that (a) Callum had forbidden him from telling me, and (b) Devon agreed that it was in my best interest not to know.
“Devon!”
“Bronwyn.”
I really needed to come up with a better retort than “you suck.”
The two of us walked in silence for a bit, until the trail veered off to the right. Ark Valley was about 90 percent woods, and the forest was protected by the town by-laws—not surprising given that the town was one of a dozen or so in a five-state area founded by Callum’s pack, way back when. Every couple of decades, the pack moved, rotating through our territory just when the older wolves’ agelessness began pushing the line from “incredible genetics” to “unnatural.” We’d been in Ark Valley for as long as I could remember, and the townspeople hadn’t gotten suspicious yet—at least about the aging thing.