I loved cars, Yeats, having a bedroom that locked from the inside, and you.
How willing I was, already, to go back.
“You did a good job,” Callum told me.
Alpha, my pack-sense said in return.
Callum, I thought. But there was a part of my mind that was thinking something else. Thinking about someone else.
Chase.
“You’re all right. You’re safe. You’ll see him again.” Callum’s voice was gruff, but to me, his words sounded like a lullaby, and my legs shook, threatening to turn to jelly beneath me.
Chase wasn’t in control. Not fully. Not yet. And the man who’d done this to him, the monster who’d changed him, was still lurking in the recesses of his mind, the same way that each and every member of our pack was in the corners of mine.
“You’re all right. You’re safe. You’ll see him again.”
Alpha. Callum. Guardian. Pack.
The unspoken words all told me the exact same thing—Chase would be okay. Callum wouldn’t give up the fight, wouldn’t let the Rabid take one of ours. Alpha meant safety. Callum was safe—and so long as I kept up my end of the agreement, followed his orders, didn’t run back to Chase and close the space between us, so was I.
CHAPTER TWELVE
FOR WEEKS AFTERWARD, THOUGHTS OF CHASE dogged my every step. It didn’t matter what I was doing—running with Callum, sparring with Sora or Lance—Chase was always there, his blue eyes flecked with the incomprehensible. I saw him lying in the cage, the way he had that first night. I saw him on his knees, held down by Lance’s stone-hard fists. I saw him the way he must have looked walking home from work on the day the Rabid systematically tore him to shreds.
He’d been human once.
He should have died.
And each time I imagined him, thought about seeing him again, I was reminded of the fact that I should have died, too. Jagged, uneven bits of that long-ago night worked their way into my consciousness, and like the pieces of a puzzle, I assembled them.
Someone had knocked on my parents’ door. I’d run to answer, but hadn’t. I’d stepped back. Mommy had rushed past me.
I’d stepped back again.
Blood. Splattering.
There were still pieces missing. I couldn’t remember what my father had looked like. I couldn’t remember the length of my mother’s white dress. All I could remember was the man who’d turned into a gray wolf, the white star on his forehead, the blood.
Running.
Hiding.
Air hot in my throat. Burning my lungs. Panic.
I remembered pressing back farther and farther in the cabinet under the sink. I remembered the Bad Man’s words.
Quiet. I remembered being so quiet, and then—nothing, but a red haze. An instinct.
Blood.
Beside me, Devon looked up from his paper and tilted his head to one side.
You okay? I read the words in his expression, felt them in the pull of his pack-bond at mine, but I didn’t actually hear his voice in my mind. I hadn’t heard anyone’s, not even Callum’s.
Not since Chase.
Not that I’d heard Chase, either. I’d resisted the urge to go looking for him, to close my eyes and sort my way through the mass of interconnected psychic bonds that was Stone River until I found him.
I was being a good little pack daughter, doing everything Callum asked me to. I’d been biding my time, until he’d allow me to see Chase again.
Blood. Splattering. Burnt hair and men’s cologne.
It was all messed up in my mind—Chase and the Rabid who’d turned him, Callum and the Rabid he’d killed the night the rest of my family had died. Stone River. Foreign wolves.
Running and losing myself to the overwhelming, indescribable force of us.
I’m fine. I sent Devon the message in feelings, not words, but the set of his jaw—not a single, easy grin in sight—told me that he didn’t believe me. I made my best effort at a smile, and with a look that told me that Devon had absolutely no respect for my nonexistent acting chops and that we would be talking about this later, he turned his attention back to his own desk, and I did the same.
Failing my algebra final would probably be ill-advised.
May had come and gone too quickly, and the sheet of paper on my desk was the only thing standing between me and summer. Standing between me and Chase, who’d been working with Callum to force the taint of the Rabid out of his head.
Tomorrow, Bryn. Right after school.
That was the sum total of what Callum had said to me the day before, but it was all I’d needed to hear, and if Chase had been on my mind these past weeks, he was in it now.
Before, I loved cars, Yeats, having a bedroom that locked from the inside, and you.
Whether it was my bond with the pack or the fact that he was the first boy to ever haunt my dreams, I couldn’t say, but as the days passed and I didn’t see him, I started to feel more and more like Chase’s words were true. Like I’d always known him.
Like we were the same.
Which was ridiculous and silly and less than no help when it came to graphing the equation for y = sin x.
Forcing all other thoughts out of my mind, I worked my way through the exam. I willed the numbers to make sense. I matched the sheer force of my will against the power of partial credit, and I forced it to submit.
I forced it to cave.
I dominated that test, the way I couldn’t dominate anything or anyone else.
Tomorrow, Bryn. Right after school.
Those five words were all it had taken for Callum to transform from the man who’d promised Ali he’d take care of me to the one who made no guarantees about my safety if I took a single step out of line.
I was Pack and I’d act like it.
I’d submit.
If my last visit had been any indication, the pack wouldn’t let me get too close to Chase. Wouldn’t risk my asking questions the answers to which they either didn’t want him to give or didn’t want me to know.
Maybe both.
I knew my Rabid was coming. I knew he was bad. I was trapped and I was scared and I ran. Hid.
Was that what it had been like for Chase?
Was that what it would always be like for me?
“Five minutes,” our teacher announced from the front of the room, and then, just to clarify the point, he wrote the number 5 in a big loopy scrawl on the chalkboard. On my right, Devon had already started checking his answers. On my left, Jeff of the motorcycle incident had simply given up, opting instead for staring at the sweet, quiet girl who’d dumped him not long after he’d given her my pen.
I stopped writing with forty-five seconds to spare, and even though I didn’t have time to double-check my calculations, I couldn’t shake the sense that I’d aced it. I certainly should have. On late, sleepless nights, the memory of the Big Bad Wolf waiting for me in dreams, there’d been nothing to do but study algebra and think of Chase.
He’d grown up in the foster-care system.
He’d been angry for as long as he could remember.
He appreciated the power of privacy—or had before he’d turned.
He was a living, walking impossibility.
And he was mine.
Pack. Not Pack. Pack. Not Pack.
“Time’s up!”
The teacher sounded way too perky for someone who typically took pleasure in our dismay, but given the fact that his summer vacation started the second that ours did, I didn’t suppose I could blame him. Once upon a time, summer had meant running around barefoot with Devon and a visit from the only female werewolf anywhere near our age. I could feel it in my bones that this summer was going to be different.
I wasn’t ready.
As the teacher came by to collect my exam, I had a single moment of insanity, during which I fought the urge to hold on to my paper. If I didn’t turn in the test, it wasn’t really summer yet.
If it wasn’t summer, I wasn’t going to see Chase again.
And if I didn’t see Chase again, I wouldn’t have to worry about what he might say. What I might find out. What I might remember.
What I might do.
“Ms. Clare?”
The teacher sounded so befuddled that I loosened my grip on the exam and let him have it. Beside me, Devon grinned.
“Did you pass?” he asked, as we gathered our bags and headed for the door.