Willing all four of us to be okay.
Sleep came. The clearing. The forest. The smell of early autumn—but no Chase. I knelt down to the ground, and with the motion, I lost my awareness that this was a dream. That maybe Chase’s absence just meant that he wasn’t asleep. Instead, I dug two fingers into the dirt and brought it to my nose.
I couldn’t smell him. I couldn’t smell anything. A sluggish worry wrapped its way slowly around the base of my spine, and like a snake, it slithered up my back, one vertebra at a time. I couldn’t smell anything. It was worse than being blindfolded, worse than small spaces, worse than opening my mouth to scream, knowing the sound would never make it from my throat.
I couldn’t smell.
I hugged my knees to my chest, unable to rise into a crouch, unable to ready my fists or reach for my blade. And then the world around me folded in on itself, like someone was making origami. Like I was a test paper and someone had crumpled me up and thrown me away.
And then the world was being uncrumpled, and the forest unfolded into something new.
Something small.
Something that smelled like wet cardboard and drain cleaner. I would have taken comfort in the fact that I could smell again but for the memories that combination brought with it.
Teeth ripping into flesh. Skin tearing like Velcro. Blood splattering. Again and again, vicious, relentless, thorough. Blood-blood-blood-blood-blood …
Jaws. Daddy. No! I wasn’t back there. This wasn’t real. I was big now. I was strong.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are, little one. No sense hiding from the Big Bad Wolf. I’ll always find you in the end. …”
Even though I was big now, even though I knew that this was impossible and that it wasn’t happening again, I couldn’t stop myself from walking through the old, familiar motions. I peeked out of my hiding space under the sink, saw the man.
I couldn’t smell him.
I saw him Change.
Star on his forehead. Gonna find me. Blood. Blood-blood-blood—
I closed my eyes, the same way I had when I was four. I closed them, but I could hear the monster breathing—right outside.
It was gonna get me. The Big Bad Wolf was gonna get me.
Wood cracked, splintering. It was the front door—the door the wolf had locked behind him, back when he had been a man. And in came others—so many others. A man with exactly three lines on his face: one from smiling, two from frowning.
Callum, the grown-up me realized, even as the four-year-old inside me watched, unable to move.
A woman with a sleek dark ponytail—Sora—dove across the room, tackling the Big Bad Wolf away from me.
“I’ve got you, Little One.” Hands reached in to grab me, but I didn’t resist. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
Blood-blood-blood-blood.
“Shut your eyes.”
I couldn’t follow Callum’s gentle command. Couldn’t then. Couldn’t now. The first time, I’d seen Sora change to wolf form and go for the Rabid’s throat. Then Callum had turned my head away. Only this time, he didn’t. He let me watch, and there was nothing to see.
No Big Bad Wolf.
No house.
Nothing but the forest, outside of Callum’s house. I turned back to face him in his arms, and he dropped me. I hit the ground hard, and Sora, still in human form, lashed out at me. She was too fast. I was too slow.
Bryn.
No. Not again. No-no-no-no—
Bryn. It wasn’t Callum in my head. It wasn’t the pack. It was Chase, and the moment I realized that, the world shifted on its axis, and I was back in the clearing, crouched down, smelling the dirt.
“Chase.” I said his name out loud, and in wolf form, he nuzzled me, pushing his head under my hand.
Chase.
He butted my chest with his nose, and I fell over back onto my butt. “Jerk,” I said.
He laughed, as much as any wolf could. Then, without any warning, he was human, and he was holding me. Rubbing his cheek against mine. Smelling my hair.
This time, I pushed him away, and he fell back. “Jerk,” he said.
I smiled. “It really is you,” I replied. “Isn’t it? It’s not just a dream.”
Chase snorted. “I wasn’t even asleep.” For a moment, he sounded human, but then his eyes began to yellow, and the diameter of his pupil doubled within a single beat of my heart. “You needed me,” he said, a deep vibrating hum in his voice. “I felt you. Protect.”
The last word didn’t sound human. It didn’t sound human at all. Chase had claimed me every bit as much as I’d turned my pack-bond to him, and what was an itch in the back of my mind when I was awake was all-encompassing now.
Chase wanted to protect me.
He had to protect me.
His wolf wanted out, wanted to smell me again. Make me okay.
“It was just a nightmare,” I said, my voice low and calming. “No interference. No Rabid in my brain. No Callum. Just me.”
I didn’t mention that my brain wasn’t the safest place to be these days. Without a word, Chase brought his hands up, ran them lightly over the bruises on my face, one by one.
“Scared,” he said.
It was easier to admit it here. I nodded.
“Angry,” he said, the wolf sneaking into his tone.
I nodded again.
“Sad.”
These were things that the wolf inside Chase understood. Simple things that a human wouldn’t have been able to diagnose with one-word sentences. Emotions were complicated for humans. They were complicated for me. But for Chase, liquid and feral and always a moment away from changing, they were simple.
I was scared and I was angry and I was sad, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about any of it.
Chase cocked his head to the side, and for a moment, I thought he would Change again, but instead, his body went abruptly still in a jerky, violent motion, like someone or something was holding him back. He dropped to his knees, then to his stomach, and as I reached for him, a foreign smell filled the air.
Burnt hair and men’s cologne.
The Rabid. I pulled Chase up, forced him into a kneeling position, and put my hands on his shoulders the way that Lance had when the Rabid had flooded Chase’s waking mind.
“Look at me, Chase. Look only at me.”
For a moment, it wasn’t Chase looking back from those eyes. His lips curled into an ugly smile, serpentine and sharp.
Come out, come out, wherever you are. …
No.
“Look at me, Chase. Look at me!” I forced myself into his mind, brought his eyes to mine with my strength of will. I let my mind flood every corner of his. And I saw the Rabid.
He couldn’t get to me.
Couldn’t get to Chase when he was awake.
Callum had put up walls. And it was even harder now. Now that the boy had changed.
Looking at Chase, I got a sense of the Rabid. I could almost see the floss-thin line that connected the two of them. Nothing like the wall of light shining out of my body, connecting every part of Chase to every part of me.
Chase was mine. And the Rabid didn’t even know it. Didn’t know that anyone who hurt Chase was dead.
Warmth. Safety. Home.
The smell of burnt hair receded as Chase buried his hands in my hair and mine found their way to his. I stared into his eyes as they faded back to blue, and in them, I saw a reflection of an image Chase had seen when the Rabid had taken over.
“Girl.” Chase said the word out loud.
A girl. My mental image of her was complete, the bond between Chase and me pulsing full force. Like we weren’t hundreds of miles apart. Like he was standing right there beside me. Like this was real.
“Girl,” I repeated. “Four years old, maybe five. Light hair. Gray eyes. Blood.”
Only this time, the girl wasn’t me, and she wasn’t covered in someone else’s blood. It was hers.
Girl.
There was a name on the tip of Chase’s tongue, on the tip of mine, but before I could say it, I felt a sharp pinch in my ear. And another in my toe. And then—
“Ow!” I sat up in bed. My heart was pounding. My throat was dry. Chase was nowhere to be seen.
“Pleasant dreams?” Ali asked.
Not exactly, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. I brought my hand up to my ear. It wasn’t bleeding. Neither was my toe. But Alex, who was in his wolf form for the first time in I wasn’t sure how long, looked quite pleased with himself, and Katie licked the side of my face.