“So it’s true,” Lake said, saving me the trouble of finishing my sentence.
“What’s true?”
“You and this boy. You Marked him.”
When she put it like that, the impossibility of the situation became a magnitude more difficult to ignore. I wasn’t a werewolf, and I certainly wasn’t the Stone River Pack alpha. Callum hadn’t been present when I’d thrown my pack-bond at Chase. The alpha hadn’t forged a new connection between us, I hadn’t bitten Chase, he hadn’t bitten me, and what we shared was nothing like the bond between a werewolf and his mate.
It also bore no resemblance to the bond between Callum and me.
“It wasn’t like that,” I said. “It was—” How could I possibly describe what had happened, even to Lake? “We’d just figured out that his Rabid was the same as mine, and they were going to separate us.”
We’d panicked. Both of us. “I had to calm him down. I couldn’t let them take him away. I had to—”
Had to what? I wasn’t explaining this right. Lake was sitting very still, an odd light in her eyes that I couldn’t quite diagnose.
“I had to protect him. And me. So I took everything I felt for the pack. I saw the bond, and instead of closing myself off to it, I pulled. I pulled at it and I thrust it toward Chase.”
I expected Lake to tell me again that what I’d done was impossible, but instead, she looked down at her knees, and in the softest voice I’d ever heard her use, she asked me the last question I ever expected to hear from her lips. “Could you do it again?”
For a second, I thought she was asking if, given the chance, I would go back in time and do the exact same thing again, knowing the consequences, but there was something between us—a light shifting of air, a pulsing in her bond with the pack and the muted power of the Mark on my side—that told me that wasn’t so.
She was asking if I could rewire someone else’s pack-bond. She was asking if I could rewire hers. Lake and her dad were peripherals. Callum didn’t require their attendance at the Crescent, but they were still a part of Callum’s pack. He was still her alpha.
“I don’t know, Lake.”
Could you try? I didn’t hear the words, the way I would have if my bond with Chase didn’t stand between Callum’s pack and my mind, but I could see the question on the tip of her tongue. After a moment, she bit her lip, and whatever I’d imagined I’d seen disappeared, replaced by a look I associated with Lake’s reaction to being dared to do something.
An alarm sounded in the back of my head, because that look was trouble. Lake Mitchell didn’t turn down dares.
“I suspect you’re wanting to know why Callum didn’t kill the Rabid,” Lake said.
Cautiously, I nodded.
“And I suspect you’re wanting to know if he has plans to kill the Rabid now that he’s back?”
This was why I had dealt Lake in. She had no inhibition, no sense of propriety, and she was fearless. Pack or not, she wouldn’t shy away from pressing Callum’s buttons. Growing up removed from Ark Valley had given her the luxury of following her own will more than the alpha’s, and right now, Callum’s privacy and hallowed judgment didn’t command her respect nearly as well as my need to make sure that this Rabid was put down.
“If Callum’s not going to kill the Rabid, I will.” I said those words out loud for the first time and knew that it wasn’t a bluff. It wasn’t me blustering or running off at the mouth without thinking. It wasn’t foolishness, and it didn’t matter that I was human and the Rabid was not.
He’d messed with what was mine. He’d killed my family. He’d hurt Chase. And the only way to get him out of Chase’s head forever was to see him dead.
I told Lake as much, and she didn’t even blink. She didn’t ask me how exactly one human girl was going to take down a Rabid that had been evading our entire pack for over a decade. She just took me at my word and moved on to the next order of business.
“What do you need me to do?”
I looked out at the water, working my way through the situation, taking into account everything I knew about Lake, the Wayfarer, and her brand of persuasion. I thought of the human bartender, with her talk-to-me face and eyes that didn’t look like they missed much, and I thought about the kind of clientele that a place run by a peripheral male would naturally attract.
Wolves weren’t solitary creatures. Where there was one werewolf, sooner or later, there were more, and Mitch and Lake weren’t our pack’s only peripherals.
“I think I need you to talk to the bartender,” I said, turning the idea slowly over in my mind. If any of Callum’s other wolves had been here, the bartender would know, and if she’d gotten them drunk enough, they might have talked. Lake didn’t ask for the rationale behind my request. She just stood up and made her way back to the restaurant, because she knew as well as I did that any good plan started with recon.
It wasn’t until Lake and I were sitting on stools in front of the bar that I thought to wonder how exactly a human female had ended up working for Lake’s dad. Looking for answers, I closed my eyes and let my senses take over. The woman in question smelled like Walmart soap and evergreen trees. She bore no Marks and had no connection to the pack. Not to Stone River, and not to any of the others. She wasn’t on edge and there wasn’t the slightest whiff of fear in the air around her. From somewhere behind us, I heard a rustle, and my fingers curled reflexively into fists.
Wolf.
And not one of ours, either.
“Easy, girl,” Lake said, even though I got the feeling that the intruder’s presence sent her hackles up, same way it did mine. “This here’s neutral territory. We welcome all types.”
Technically speaking, this wasn’t neutral territory, and it wasn’t Lake’s. Montana was Stone River territory. It belonged to Callum, and the wolf behind us did not.
“He’s a peripheral,” Lake told me. “One of Shay’s.”
I hadn’t had much practice identifying other packs by smell, but I recognized the name. Shay was the youngest alpha in North America. He’d challenged the former leader of the Snake Bend Pack around the turn of the century and won. Like Devon, Shay was a purebred Were, and Sora was his mother, too. Technically, that made him Devon’s half-brother, but since neither of us particularly cared for him, we didn’t think of him that way. Shay had broken all ties with his family—and Callum—long before either Devon or I were born.
“Your dad lets Shay’s wolves eat here?” I asked. It was unfathomable.
“Only the peripherals, and only the ones that can mind their manners,” Lake said. “It doesn’t hurt to have friends.”
I tried to see the sense in that, however much my instincts were telling me it was wrong-wrong-wrong. I’d thought that the Wayfarer was a resting point for Stone River peripherals, but given the host of smells in the air, its clientele was far more eclectic than I’d given it credit for.
All the more reason to talk to the bartender and find out what she knew.
“I’m Bryn.” I opened my eyes again and met hers, and if she noticed that I’d been smelling her, she didn’t comment on it.
“Keely.” For a long moment that was all she said, and then she turned and narrowed her eyes at Lake. “You up to something?”
Lake’s lips worked their way into an easy grin. “Always. You heard anything about a Rabid?”
I’d expected her to finesse the question more, but who was I kidding? This was Lake. Keely paused for a moment and then snorted. “If I lied, you’d smell it, so I’ll stick with that’s no concern of yours and suggest you leave it at that.”
Lake opened her mouth to argue, but I pinched her leg in the age-old sign for shut up and let me do the talking.
“You know about werewolves,” I said, meeting Keely’s gaze.
“I expect I might,” Keely allowed.
“And you’re not dead.”
Keely snorted. “This one sure knows how to sweet-talk a girl, doesn’t she, Lake?”