I felt the fight drain out of me, and with it, some fraction of the emotion that had been pent up inside of me for months. He put his hands under my chin, angled my head toward his.
My lips met his, and I closed my eyes, my hands reaching around his body and grabbing on to the back of his shirt, like I was holding on for dear life.
That was the most I’d ever heard him say at once, the most of the person he’d been before the Change that I had ever seen. I wanted this, wanted him, but there was still a part of me that couldn’t do what he wanted me to, couldn’t entirely forgive myself, couldn’t let it go.
Because, yes, everyone made mistakes—but when I made them, people died. Chase had lifted some portion of the burden off my shoulders, but there was still a weight there.
There always would be.
His thumbs traced the lines of my jaw. I leaned into his touch, opening my eyes and staring into his, so blue that I could have lost myself in them, if only for a moment.
“Ahem.”
Chase broke away from the kiss, and the two of us turned to our left to see Caroline and Lake standing side by side. Lake had a good nine inches on Caroline, and though they were both blonde, they looked nothing alike—but the expressions on their faces were almost identical.
This wasn’t awkward or anything.
Lake, who’d known me longer and was less capable of keeping her smart mouth shut, broke the silence. “Sorry to interrupt, but we weren’t sure if or when you two crazy kids were going to come up for air.”
I wondered how much, if any, of our fight they had overheard.
“I mean, really, B., you and lover boy here ought to look into careers in deep-sea diving.”
Sometimes, having friends who were like family was a good thing, and sometimes, it was like having an endless supply of very nosy, very irritating siblings.
For a second, it looked like Caroline was considering chiming in as well, but ultimately, she exercised that trademarked restraint. “You have a phone call,” she said instead. “On your cell.”
I glanced back at Lake and saw that, all teasing aside, there was tension in her body and a sharpness to her eyes.
“Who is it?” I asked.
Lake gave me an apologetic smile. “It’s Callum.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I DEBATED WHETHER OR NOT TO TELL CALLUM WHAT, exactly, had sent Maddy over the edge, and then I debated what the likelihood was that he already knew about the baby. The second I came on the line, though, he spoke, and I immediately had other concerns.
Bigger ones.
“She’s going to kill again. Tomorrow.”
“Are you sure?” It was a stupid question, one that came out as a reflex.
“I’m sure someone dies,” Callum replied. “And I’m sure that we’ll have thirty-six hours after the body is discovered before Shay learns there’s been another attack and moves to enact the Senate’s vote.”
Thirty-six hours? We’d been looking for Maddy for longer than that already, and while the picture of how she’d spent these past few months was becoming clearer and clearer, I still didn’t know where she was now.
Thinking back to the dream we’d shared, I grasped for clues. I’d seen images in her mind: sharp stones, the dark walls of a hollow place, some kind of stream. The mountains, maybe? Was she holed up in some kind of cave?
That didn’t exactly narrow things down.
“Is there any way to stop this?” I wasn’t sure whether I was asking if there was a way to prevent another attack, or to keep the other alphas from racing to find Maddy on their own.
Both, probably, but I would have settled for either.
Callum did not oblige. “The future’s been uncertain, Bryn, but in the past hour, certain outcomes have become more and more likely.” He didn’t pause, didn’t give me time to process. “Someone else is going to die.”
I thought of blood-streaked walls, of Maddy’s haunted eyes and broken words.
Everything I touch dies.
“And the Senate?” I asked. There was no use dwelling on the things I couldn’t change, not if this was something that I could. “Is there anything we can do to keep that from happening?”
“There might be. There might not.”
Well, that was less than helpful.
“Either way, Bryn, you need to find her first.”
A year ago, I might have snapped at him for telling me the obvious. Instead, I relayed what I’d seen in the dream, the images that I’d pulled from Maddy’s mind of the place she’d been staying.
“If we could get an idea of the general area she’s in,” I concluded, “I might be able to find her, but there’s too much No-Man’s-Land, and we don’t even know for sure that she hasn’t crossed a border somewhere.”
She could just as easily be holed up in the remotest areas of our territory—or someone else’s. If she was careful to stay far enough away from the other wolves, they might not even know she was there.
“There’s a third-rate ski resort near your western border in a town called Winchester. It falls between Shadow Bluff territory and Cedar Ridge, but the northern packs could reach it through the mountains.”
“And that’s where Maddy is?” I asked, wondering why, if he knew that, he hadn’t just sent me straight there, before the countdown to confrontation had gotten so tight.
“That’s where the next attack happens,” Callum said. “You won’t get there in time to stop it.”
“But if we move quickly,” I said, “she might still be in the area when we get there.”
Maddy wouldn’t stay in the immediate area—she was too smart for that, but if she was hiding out in the mountains, she might retreat to the place I’d seen in the dream. Assuming it was close by, we might be able to put two and two together and find it.
Find her.
“Be careful, Bryn. Things could get bad, and I’d not have you dying, not for this, not now.”
“Don’t worry,” I said reflexively. “Rumor has it I’m hard to kill.”
For the first time in memory, I hung up the phone on him first. There was something Callum wasn’t telling me—
probably lots of somethings. That was nothing new, but this time, I couldn’t tell whether this was just another stage of the Let Her Make Her Own Mistakes plan in which he seemed to revel, or if there was another reason for keeping me in the dark.
If my knowing something would cause me to act differently than I otherwise would have, and if that difference led to an undesirable future, Callum wouldn’t bat an eye at keeping things to himself—even if those were things I wanted—and maybe even needed—to know.
Then again, I hadn’t exactly told him that Maddy was pregnant.
“This is my cue to leave.” Archer kept his distance and very wisely did not put a hand on my shoulder this time. “I was happy to help, but I gave up danger for Lent.”
“It’s August,” I told him.
“Global warming,” he replied, without missing a beat.
“Fine,” I said. “Go.” I didn’t even watch him leave. Instead, I turned my attention back to the others.
“We’re going north,” I said. “Weapon up.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
WINCHESTER, IDAHO, WAS A TWO-BIT TOWN COVERED in dirt. Winchester, Montana, wasn’t much better. The two sat nestled beside each other in the middle of a pile of rocks that looked less like a mountain than an environmental death trap.
“Ski resort?” I muttered. “Yeah, right. And I’m Molly Ringwald.”
In the silence that followed my words, I felt Devon’s absence like a missing piece of my own body. I wasn’t sure how he would have replied to my sarcastic statement, but I was almost certain it would have involved some variation on the phrase pretty in pink.
Getting to Winchester hadn’t been easy—especially since we didn’t have the option of entering from the west. The Montana side of Winchester wasn’t exactly accessible by car—not if you didn’t want to risk blowing a couple of tires, at least. Since we couldn’t risk trespassing on Shadow Bluff territory, that left us traversing the last few miles by foot.