“Scootch over,” Lake told me.
I obeyed. Part of me wanted to wait for her to say something, but given the fact that she’d come right out and asked me about the Callum situation, I figured I owed her the same courtesy.
“So. Alphas passing through on their way to Callum’s, and that peripheral thought you should know because they might decide you’re worth fighting for.”
Lake blew out a breath of air with so much force that her lips actually made a popping sound. “If they tried anything, I’d kill ’em.”
“Still sucks, though,” I commented.
Lake snorted.
“Don’t want to talk about it?” I asked.
Lake shook her head. “Sorry about crashing here. Was feeling kind of lonesome. When we were little, I used to sneak into Griff’s room all the time. Drove him nuts.”
The rare mention of Lake’s twin took me by surprise. Anyone with the power of inference could tell just by looking at her that she’d had a brother once, since by definition, female Weres were always half of a set of twins. Sora’s was a male in our pack named Zade. Katie’s was Alex. Lake’s was dead.
Thinking back, I couldn’t remember the last time Lake had mentioned Griffin, but I knew better than to comment on that fact.
“I don’t mind the company,” I said instead. “I get it. You run to be alone. And when you’re done …”
You don’t want to be alone anymore.
I didn’t say the words out loud, but I pushed them toward her, not knowing if she’d hear them, since I was Chase’s first and Stone River’s second.
“You figure out anything else about the Rabid?” Lake asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “There are some places that don’t technically belong to any of the alphas. He could be hiding out in one of those.”
“You think the Senate knows where he is?” Lake asked.
I didn’t answer. If they didn’t now, they would soon. There wasn’t a place in the country someone could hide from a dozen alphas once they had his scent.
Burnt hair and men’s cologne.
“We need to know what the Senate knows,” I said. “We need to hear what they say in that meeting.”
Even in the dark, I could see Lake go sardonically wide-eyed. “Really? I never would have thought of that!”
I folded my arms across my chest. “Well, if you’re going to be that way, then I’m not going to tell you my plan for eavesdropping.”
“No more sarcasm. Scout’s honor.”
I snorted. The idea of Lake in the Girl Scouts was something else. She’d have earned all of their badges and single-handedly destroyed their reputation within a week.
“Bryn,” she prodded, her voice coming closer to the high-pitched whine of a dog begging to be let inside.
Being the generous soul that I was, I gave in and provided her with the key to all of this. The thing I’d discovered earlier tonight. “Chase.”
The two of us didn’t have to be asleep to enter each other’s minds. We just had to be still. If he could get close enough to overhear the alphas talking, I could eavesdrop on them myself.
Two days. One for the alphas to get to Ark Valley. One for the meeting. Two days, and I’d have answers. Glancing out the side of my eye at Lake and thinking about everything she had and hadn’t said tonight, I decided it wouldn’t kill either one of us to stay inside and hidden until then.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
AFTER TWENTY-FOUR HOURS INDOORS, LAKE WAS SO twitchy I thought she’d implode, or, more likely, explode, leaving a variety of casualties in her wake. Since I had no desire to be blown to Bryn bits, I was as relieved as she was when Mitch declared the coast clear. Unfortunately, unlike Lake, I couldn’t take a romp through the forest in celebration, and I couldn’t follow her to the restaurant and lend a hand waiting tables.
I had bigger fish to fry.
If the coast was clear at the Wayfarer, that meant the alphas had arrived in Ark Valley. And that meant it was time to put Operation Eavesdrop into play. Like the old pro I was, I faked the stomach flu and talked Ali into letting me stay in bed all day. The secret to success, as it turned out, was oatmeal—even I thought I was throwing up as I hurled three quarters of a bowl of cooked oats into the toilet.
After a little bit of wheedling and looking pathetic, I managed to convince Ali that she didn’t need to worry and that all I needed was the solitude and quiet to sleep off the flu, so—with a trash can beside my bed and the evidence/oatmeal hidden away from prying eyes—I bought myself a ticket to slumber land. Or, more precisely, to Chase.
I told myself that it would be simple, that I’d just slip into his mind the way I had on numerous other occasions. I’d done it without even meaning to when I was unconscious; we’d done it in our dreams. But even as I tried to convince myself that this was nothing, a traitorous part of my brain whispered that the second I came within a hundred yards of this meeting, Callum would know—not because of his knack or because he was alpha, but because staying away had been one of the conditions he’d laid down. Long before I’d had any reason to want to attend this meeting, Callum had forbidden me from going. He might as well have dared me to be there.
He had to have known that.
As I lay back, my eyes on the ceiling, I wondered if double jeopardy applied in Pack Law. I’d already broken my permissions. What more could they do?
“Deep breaths,” I muttered, willing my heart to quit bludgeoning my chest from the inside out. “You’re going to be fine.”
What would they do to Chase if they caught us? What would they do to me?
For a moment, I considered backing out, but like a neon sign, the image of a pigtailed little girl lit up in my mind. Madison.
This wasn’t just about me anymore, and it wasn’t just about Chase and the way the Rabid stalked him through the night, refusing to let him forget even for a second who had the power and who’d been left gutted on the pavement.
This stopped now. The attacks. The aftermath. The victims. It had to stop, and the alphas would take care of it. Once I heard it from their own mouths, maybe the ever-present roar in my gut—kill the Rabid, save them, fight, protect—might dissipate and die, and I could go back to being the girl who loved playing in other people’s trash and didn’t care much for dominance hierarchies and inter-pack relations.
Maybe I could go back to being Bryn.
“I’m calming down. I’m breathing. I’m ready.”
My body rebelled against those orders, but I ignored it, closed my eyes, and let myself be pulled into thoughts of Chase.
Dark hair. Blue eyes. Lopsided grin.
Chase.
He had a small, sinewy scar that pulled at one edge of his mouth. He appreciated rooms that locked from the inside and despised being caged. He moved like flowing lava. He thought he loved me, even though I could count on one hand the number of times we’d actually met.
Chase.
My body relaxed. My heartbeat slowed until I could only imagine the low, soothing whoosh of blood through my veins. Chase’s scent enveloped me, and as I breathed it in and out and felt his presence all around me, I lost myself to the pull of his psyche at the edges of mine. Like a sand castle at high tide, I broke, dissolved, and drifted slowly away.
“They want to see you.”
As my mind settled into Chase’s, and we became Chase-Wolf-Bryn, the senses we shared flared to life. Smell came first, the way it always did, and I recognized the person speaking to Chase because underneath the familiar scent of Stone River, he smelled angry. Not the fresh rush of adrenaline that came with fury, but the rotting irritation of bitterness as it decomposed.
Marcus.
If he’d found my adoption galling, the fact that the entire Senate wanted to see Chase, who hadn’t even been born a Were, must have chafed, too.
Senate? Us? Now?
On one level, I was aware that this was why I’d come here, but going to the meeting hadn’t been part of the plan. We were supposed to eavesdrop. We weren’t supposed to venture into Alpha Central ourselves. My thoughts blended into Chase’s, my questions into his.
Why did the Senate want to see Us?
Deeper in Chase’s mind, his wolf was anxious, antsy about going into a room filled with Others. Wolves who weren’t Pack. People he didn’t trust.