Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology (59 page)

“Can we get some lemonades?”

“Sure thing, kiddo.” Keely spun glasses out from underneath the counter like a pro, and Devon cleared his throat.

“Don’t be stingy with the cherries, Keel,” he called back to her.

Obligingly, Keely put a cherry in each of the glasses. I knew for a fact that she could carry four at a time without breaking a sweat, but she opted for carrying one in each hand, a strategy that would allow her to make several trips past Lucas and back to the bar.

Anything happens to her, and we’ll be having words, Bryn
. Mitch eyed me across the table, his expression deceptively mild. Lake’s dad might have been a part of my pack, but Keely and the rest of the folks at the Wayfarer were Mitch’s to take care of, the same way the rest of Cedar Ridge was mine.

I did not want to consider the possibility of “having words” with Mitch any more than I wanted to think about something happening to Keely—which meant that I had to play this just right.

“Here ya go,” Keely said, bending over to set one of the drinks in front of Lucas, brushing his arm as she did.

“Now that you’re all beveraged up, mind telling me how many of these
humans
are after you?” I timed my question perfectly and managed to keep my voice casual and wry.

Lucas never knew what hit him. “There were maybe ten of them total, maybe not even that many, but I don’t think I saw them all. Their leader was a woman named Valerie. She and Shay have some kind of agreement, I don’t know what exactly, but he did something for her, or she was going to do something for him, and I was just a part of the deal. There was something about a daughter, Valerie’s daughter, but I never saw her.”

The information was flowing freely now, but I didn’t have time to sort through the significance of what Lucas was saying. Keely went back to the bar for two more lemonades, and my next question made its way out of my mouth as she returned.

“How dangerous are they?”

“Very, and they’re not exactly fond of werewolves. Something happened a long time ago, and now … sometimes I think the only reason they didn’t kill me is because dead dogs don’t scream. If I’d stayed long enough, the novelty might have worn off, but it also might not have. I’m not sure if they’ll kill to get me back, but if the killing involves werewolves, they probably wouldn’t consider it murder any more than one of us would report a fight for dominance to the human police.”

Keely made her last trip to and from the bar: two more lemonades, one more question.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

It was a pretty broad question, but with Lucas’s apparent habit of hiding the truth until it blew up in his face, I had a feeling that the information I most needed to know was probably whatever he least wanted to tell me.

At first, he said nothing, but as Keely leaned over Lucas to pass Mitch a lemonade, the bottom of her arm touched Lucas’s shoulder, and his entire body seemed to relax. “I won’t go back,” he said, his tone conversational, with an iron edge buried layers underneath. “I’d die before going back to those people, and I’d kill myself before going back to Shay. I don’t care what I have to do. I really don’t, because I’m never going to let anyone do that to me again. When this is over, I’ll be six feet under or I’ll be free. For good.”

Having said his piece, Lucas went very quiet, but his words hung in the air, reinforcing what I’d already deeply suspected.

Sending Lucas back to Shay or giving in to Caroline’s ultimatum didn’t just mean turning my back on someone who needed my help. One way or another, it meant sentencing Lucas to death, because if the psychotic werewolf-torturers and megalomaniac alpha didn’t do him in, Lucas had as good as promised to kill himself.

Between Keely’s power and the Weres’ ability to smell lies, I had to assume that he was telling the truth.

CHAPTER TEN

T
HIS TIME
, I
WAS THE ONE WHO RETREATED TO THE
forest—and away from the rest of the pack—to think, and Chase was the one who found me. He’d Shifted back to human form, and I could feel him taking in everything: the way I was standing, the tilt of my head.

“You look like you want to hit something,” he observed mildly. “A wall. Possibly a tree. Something hard.”

“Lucas is going to kill himself.” I didn’t sugarcoat it, but my voice didn’t exactly reflect the black hole of emotion churning in my gut, either. “If I can’t work something out, if we don’t protect him from this family and from Shay, he’s going to die.”

If Chase found what I was saying at all surprising, he certainly didn’t show it, and the only thing I felt through his end of the bond was a brief surge of dislike for Lucas, distrust, pity.

“Don’t,” I said sharply before he could say a word. “Don’t tell me this isn’t my problem. Don’t tell me it’s not my fault. There’s an answer to this, Chase, and if I don’t find it—if I
can’t
find it—then whatever happens to Lucas damn well is my fault.”

Chase didn’t argue, didn’t tell me to lower my voice.

“You want to hit something?” he said in an even tone. “Hit me.”

I was standing there, yelling at him, and all he did was meet my eyes, his face impassive. How many times had I seen that exact expression, that same control, on Callum’s face when I was growing up?

“Go on, Bryn.”

Go on, what? Hit him? Hurt him? He was Pack, and he was Chase. I would have died first. Wasn’t that the problem? The list of people I had to protect—the ones who mattered—it just kept getting bigger and bigger, and no matter what I did, someone was going to get hurt.

“Shay. Caroline. That guy in your dreams. They’re messing with you, Bryn. They’re baiting you, and they’re hurting you, and if you don’t let it out and take a swing at something, you’re going to explode. So let’s have it.” Chase motioned me forward. “I can take it. Promise.”

He grinned.

Without even thinking, I swung. Chase ducked, lightning quick and impossibly coordinated, and I swung again, my fist tearing through the air and just missing the side of his cheek.

Again.

And again.

And again.

I didn’t lay a hand on him. Not once, but I kept going until the pent-up fury inside me broke and gave way to something else.

I couldn’t fight Chase, couldn’t match a Were’s speed or strength, no matter how hard I tried, just like I couldn’t keep Archer or Caroline from entering my dreams and showing up at school. I couldn’t make Shay sorry for the things he’d done to Lucas, and I couldn’t snap my fingers and make being alpha any easier.

I was what I was. The situation was what it was. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t easy, and maybe Chase was right, and I couldn’t save everyone—but I could try. Because that was the kind of alpha—the kind of person—I was.

The pace of my swings slowed, and Chase caught my arms in his. He pulled me close, and I breathed in raggedly, laying my head against his chest, vulnerable, spent. For a few precious seconds, I felt the borders between the two of us give, felt our connection as strongly as I had before there’d been a pack or an alpha or anything but the two of us.

I felt his wolf—animal instinct, undiluted and sure—as if it were my own.

“Thanks,” I said finally, pulling back just far enough that I could say the words to his face. “I needed that.”

And even though he had to have known, from that split second when we were more like one person than two, that I wasn’t backing off this, that I couldn’t just take care of myself, no matter how badly he wanted that for me, he nodded, his lips turning up subtly on the ends.

“Anytime.”

“Ali, I’m home!”

My words echoed through our cabin, and Ali called back that she was in the twins’ room. I took a deep breath and then followed the sound of her voice. Somehow, my ability to adopt a poker face when interrogating werewolves evaporated the moment it was just Ali and me, and I took a few seconds to try to wipe the evidence of the day’s events from my eyes, mouth, and brow.

What Ali didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her—and more to the point, what Ali didn’t know wouldn’t hurt
me
.

“Hey.” I poked my head into the twins’ room. For a split second, Ali held my eyes, and then she turned back to folding clothes into the dresser drawers.

“Mitch called.” Ali’s voice was muted. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking—or what, exactly, Lake’s dad had told her.

“Oh.”

“Yes,” Ali replied. “Oh.” She shut the drawer and then turned to leave the nursery, gesturing for me to follow.

I did.

When we got to the living room, I expected her to start lecturing, or to go into fierce-and-overprotective mode, but she didn’t. She just smoothed down my hair and wrapped one arm around me.

“We’ll get through this,” she said. “You shouldn’t have to be
dealing with something like this, but you are, and you have to, and I can’t change that. I can’t make it go away.” Even though Ali’s voice was perfectly calm, I knew that saying those words was costing her. Ali had always protected me. She’d stood up to werewolves for me when I was too little to do it for myself. She’d given up a whole other life for me,
twice
: once when she’d left the human world to raise me in Callum’s pack, and later when she’d left her werewolf husband and her home in the Stone River Pack to keep me safe.

But now I had responsibilities of my own. I couldn’t stay out of this, even if I wanted to—not for Ali, not for Chase, not for anyone—and I loved her for knowing that and for not asking me to, even if a part of her felt like she’d failed me because at sixteen I had the weight of the world on my back.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said. Admitting that was nearly impossible, but this was Ali, and I couldn’t hold the words back. “No matter what I decide, someone gets hurt.”

Not emotionally hurt. Not kiss-it-and-make-it-all-better hurt.
Dead
.

“If we don’t help Lucas, he’s going to die, and if we do …” I searched Ali’s eyes. “Did Mitch tell you? About the … 
family
of people with … 
knacks
?”

“Psychics,” Ali corrected absentmindedly. “Humans with special abilities are called psychics.”

Somehow, the word
psychic
didn’t seem to do justice to the
whole “burn you while you sleep” thing, but I didn’t see much point in arguing semantics.

“Okay, so there’s a family of psychics, and if we don’t hand Lucas over in the next seven days, I’m pretty sure they’re going to come after us, and even if we can take them, it won’t be pretty.”

There would be losses, and the idea of digging a hole in the forest and burying Devon or Lake or Chase—or, God forbid, one of the younger kids—was insurmountable.

“It’s an impossible choice, Bryn, and if you want me or Mitch to make it for you, if you want us to be the ones who make the call, and you just deliver it …” Ali tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and the casual gesture of affection almost brought me to my knees. “Say the word, Bryn. You have to do this, but you don’t have to do it alone.”

What kind of alpha was I that her offer tempted me? What kind of daughter was I that part of me would rather have Ali’s hands bloodied than my own?

“No,” I said softly. There was no getting out of this, no way to un-become what I was.

Ali sighed. “Color me shocked.”

“I have to do this, Ali. I’m the reason Lucas is here. I’m the reason Shay beat him down and gave him to a bunch of psychics to use as a pincushion. I’m the one the kids look to, and I’m the one who’s supposed to protect them.”

Ali folded her arms over her chest. “And who’s the one who’s supposed to protect you?”

That seemed to be a popular question lately.

“Who’s the parent?” she asked. “Who’s the wise and benevolent Cool Mom type?”

I cracked a smile—the first in what felt like forever. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

Ali pretended to be offended. “Are you trying to say that I’m not cool?”

“Fine. You’re cool. You’re the epitome of cool. Everyone wishes they could have mom hair just like yours.”

Ali hooked an arm around my neck. “I do
not
have mom hair,” she said, “and you don’t have to do this on your own. I know you—you’ll look for other choices. Ways to keep Lucas safe without endangering the pack. And I hope to God you find one, kiddo, but either way, deal me in. They’re my family, too, and you have no idea how dangerous some psychics can be.”