Back in the creek, underwater. I barreled toward the surface and broke through, rising up into the air like a humpbacked whale or a mermaid child, and for a long time, things were quiet.
By the time I woke up for real, I’d been flitting in and out of consciousness—and, when unconscious, in and out of my own mind and Chase’s—so much that I wasn’t sure where I was, or who I was, or what had happened. As I opened my eyes, feeling flooded back into my body, and I really wished that it hadn’t.
Moving carefully, I sat up, and my body lodged its various objections, from a groan in my ribs to a hissing scream in my lip. The rest of me just throbbed. After the shock of it waned, I was able to move my arms, running my fingers over my legs, arms, and torso, probing the damage and expertly checking for broken bones.
A werewolf who’d committed my crimes would have had his entrails torn out for display. I had a host of bruises, a few cracked ribs, and a face that—if it looked as ugly as it felt—probably wouldn’t be winning beauty pageants anytime soon.
“It could have been worse,” I said, and I winced, deciding that moving my sore jaw wasn’t so easy that I could justify talking to myself.
The door opened, and my first instinct was to flinch or to flee, but I had nowhere to go. My body relaxed—warm, like butter—when I realized that it was just Ali, and that no matter what the pit of my stomach might be telling me, I wasn’t going to wake up any second, back inside the circle of justice.
“You’re up.”
Ali had never been one for stating the obvious. Or using short sentences. Or staring just over my shoulder instead of looking me in the eye.
“I’m up,” I confirmed.
The dark circles under her eyes were uneven and oddly shaped, like inkblots on a note card, and though I was pretty sure that I looked worse, the wage this whole ordeal had obviously taken out of Ali hit me hard.
“How long have I been out?” I asked, determined not to let her see how painful speaking was.
“Three days. Doc couldn’t explain it. Nobody could.”
Three days? I’d been unconscious for three days with a battered face and handful of cracked ribs? That wasn’t normal, was it? Given that I’d never been beaten before, I wasn’t sure. The only thing I did know was that I hadn’t blacked out from the pain Sora had rained down on my body, fist after fist, kick after kick. I hadn’t lost consciousness bit by bit, piece by piece. It hadn’t closed in on me. I hadn’t taken a particularly hard blow to the head.
I’d blacked out because I’d refused to fight back.
The conclusion made no sense and complete sense at the exact same time, and my face was throbbing too much to question it. Memory of the haze—the need to protect myself, the solar eclipse in my brain when I’d refused—grounded me in place and rendered me speechless for a moment.
“Where am I?” I recovered, not wanting to think about it. About how inhuman I felt when I gave in to the whisper in the back of my brain to fight, fight, fight, survive.
Ali’s brow furrowed at my question. “You’re in your room.”
For a second, I thought that maybe I’d suffered permanent brain damage, because the answer seemed so obvious, but then my mind processed the fact that I’d had very good reason not to recognize my own room.
It was bare. Absolutely bare. My desk was empty. My closet doors were open, and there were no clothes inside. My books were in boxes beside the shelves, and even the bedding that I was sleeping on wasn’t mine.
“Where’s all of my stuff?” I asked.
“Packed,” Ali said.
“Packed?” I repeated.
She didn’t say a single word.
“Why is all of my stuff packed?” Was she kicking me out? Was Callum taking me from her? Were they sending me away?
Bryn had been a bad girl, and now they didn’t want her anymore.
I stopped breathing, the tightening in my chest drowning out the ache in my ribs.
“Your stuff is packed because we’re leaving,” Ali said, matter-of-fact.
“Leaving? For where? Who?”
“Yes. Montana. You. Me. The twins.”
What was she talking about? Montana? That was the very rim of Callum’s territory. Only peripherals lived there.
“We’re leaving?”
“Well, after what they did you to, we’re certainly not staying here.”
I remembered the set of Ali’s jaw and the ferocity in her voice when she’d said that I was hers first—her daughter, her responsibility, her charge.
When it comes to her safety, my word is law.
“Casey?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer, but I asked anyway.
Ali’s expression—already hard—went completely blank. “Casey,” she said in a tone that seemed to communicate that she couldn’t be bothered with elaborating further, “is gone.”
“Gone as in dead?”
Ali shrugged. “Might as well be.”
“You’re leaving Casey,” I said, my voice going up an octave. “You’re leaving Casey and taking me and the twins and we’re moving to Montana?”
Ali nodded. “That about covers it.”
“But, Ali—”
“This isn’t up for discussion. It’s decided. The station wagon’s been mostly packed for two days. We’ve just been waiting on you to wake up. Now, can you get out of bed?”
No, I could not get out of bed. I couldn’t even process what was happening. I’d known that Ali wouldn’t take the whole Pack Justice thing well, but this …
“Bryn. Can you get out of bed? Can you walk?”
I swung my feet over the side of my bed and stood up. All things considered, it was easy. Even my ribs didn’t protest too much.
“Doc said you did a lot of healing while you were unconscious,” Ali told me. “You’re still banged up, but your pupils aren’t dilated, and he said that unless there were signs of a head injury, you should be fine to travel.”
Travel.
As in leave.
Leave our home.
Leave our family.
Leave the pack.
“Ali, we can’t go.”
She turned around and walked toward the door. At first, I thought she was going to walk out without answering me at all, but instead, she spoke in a tight, strangled voice that made me wonder if she’d turned around because she didn’t trust herself to maintain steely control over the muscles in her face.
“They beat you, Bryn. Callum beat you. He had you beaten. When they brought you back to me, you were bleeding. You had fourteen bruises, six lacerations, two black eyes, and you were unconscious. They did to that to you.”
“I broke the rules,” I said. “Pack Law, I—”
Ali whirled back around. “Don’t you dare say this is your fault. Don’t you think it, don’t you even come close to making excuses for them. They hurt you. And everyone just stood there and let them—my friends, your friends, my husband—”
Ali’s voice cracked and her body hunched over. For a moment, I thought she’d collapse inward and crumble to the floor, but instead, she straightened and threw her head back. “I don’t care what you did. I don’t care who they think they are, or what Pack Law says, or who’s dominant to who.” She took a long, ragged breath. “All I care about is you.”
“I’m fine.”
She crossed the room and hauled me up in front of a mirror. “Tell me again that you’re fine.”
The unforgiving surface of the mirror told me in no uncertain terms that although the bruises on my face were beginning to yellow and fade, I still looked like I’d been tie-dyed in a vat of black, blue, green, and corpse-colored paint.
“Ali, I’ll be okay,” I said, trying to convince her to take a step back and think about this. “It could have been so much worse.”
She snorted. “If you think you’re making a convincing case for staying, you’re mistaken. Just listen to yourself, Bryn. ‘It could have been worse.’ Who’s to say that it won’t be in the future?” She paused. “Do you think I want that for you? For Katie and Alex?”