They weren’t Marked by an alpha at the ripe old age of four.
Long story short, the way to Callum’s place, the inner sanctum of our werewolf community, wasn’t the kind of thing a girl just forgot, and I made it there in record time. Not being a complete idiot, I paused as I got close, standing absolutely still and listening for several minutes. My hearing was good for a human, my senses as developed as they could be given my species, and I put every ounce of that to use, trying to determine whether or not anyone was guarding Callum’s house. I doubted he would have anticipated my coming here, but if there were answers to be found inside, I might not be the only reason to guard them.
I closed my eyes. Concentrating on one sense at a time helped my accuracy. There was definitely someone inside, probably in the living room. And there, I thought, another one in the kitchen. There was no telling about the basement or the second floor. I opened my eyes, edged closer and closer until I was very near the house, and looked. And then, of course, I was promptly caught, because as quiet as I was, and as sneaky as I was, the people inside were werewolves, and any attempt at pitting my stealth against their stealth had roughly the same chance of success I would have enjoyed in challenging them to a wrestling match.
My first clue that things had gone awry was the person in the living room turning to look directly at me, her face tightening into a pointed glare. My second was the fact that the person I’d heard in the kitchen was now outside and stalking toward me, beefy fists clenched.
My third clue was a very, very audible growl.
“What are you doing here?” Marcus spat, grabbing me by the shoulder and turning me to face him in a way that hurt but wouldn’t leave a bruise. He’d learned the hard way not to leave any marks, and he’d never learn more than that. I was Callum’s, more connected to him than his most loyal soldiers, and for as long as I lived, Marcus would hate me for that. Any injury—physical or mental—that he thought he could get away with inflicting on me, he would.
It hadn’t taken very long on my end for the feeling to become mutual.
“I asked what you were doing here, girl.”
From Marcus, girl was an insult, and a large part of the reason that he hated me as much as he did. If the alpha had adopted anyone, chosen to teach anyone, that person should have been a werewolf, and he should have been male.
“C-C-C-Callum,” I said, forcing myself to stutter as a means of stalling for the time necessary to think up a truth that wouldn’t incriminate me.
“Callum?” Marcus said. “Is he hurt?”
As much as I hated Marcus, I couldn’t deny his loyalty. He would have died for Callum.
“Bryn, is Callum hurt?”
I could count on one hand the number of times Marcus had called me by any of my given names, let alone my preferred one. I remembered then how awful I’d looked in the bathroom mirror back at home. Each of Ali’s screams had carved itself onto my face: my eyes were bloodshot, my lips torn from biting down, and the shadows under my eyes extended down past my cheekbones. Every muscle in my body was tuned to anguish. And Marcus, who hated Ali nearly as much as he hated me, probably couldn’t fathom the fact that I could be this worried about her. The only person Marcus cared enough to worry about was Callum, and he was taking my current state—and probably the fact that I was here and Callum and my team of guards hadn’t stopped me—as a sign that something was seriously wrong.
A better person would not have taken advantage of this fact. It was cruel, it was wrong, and it was stupid, but hey, it wasn’t like Marcus could possibly despise me more, and knowing that he’d be happy if Ali died rid me of any guilt I might have otherwise felt for playing him.
“It’s bad,” I said, letting the tears that I’d kept myself from shedding all day come. Marcus, smelling the truth in my words, didn’t notice that I hadn’t specified what was bad. “Might not make it.”
“Callum?” Marcus breathed. He gripped me with both arms, his fingers biting into my skin so hard that I could feel my flesh bruising. It occurred to me that I couldn’t make Callum’s condition sound too dire, because Callum was the only thing keeping me safe from Marcus, even now. “What’s wrong with you? Talk! Is Callum hurt?”
“Callum’s hurt,” I said, thinking of how much I was hurting and how Callum loved Ali the way I did. “He’s really hurt, Marcus.”
“Where?”
“Our house,” I said. And just like that, Marcus was gone, a blur of greasy hair and short, compact ferociousness tearing through the woods, convinced that he was on his way to save Callum.
I should have felt bad, but I didn’t. I felt nothing—not even a hint of trepidation that Callum wasn’t the only one who was going to kill me when what I’d been up to today became common knowledge.
One down, I mused silently, afraid that the wolf inside would hear me if I spoke out loud, one to go.
Since my cover had been truly blown already, I walked up to Callum’s front door and let myself into the house. I made it exactly three steps into the foyer before a voice stopped me.
“How is Callum hurt, Bryn?”
Of course the werewolf inside had heard my conversation with Marcus, and of course it was someone smart enough to ask the right questions.
“What do you mean how?” I returned.
Sora’s wide-set eyes narrowed, emphasizing the angles of her face. Clearly, she was not amused. “You know exactly what I mean, and you have three seconds to provide me with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth before you really, really regret it.”
As a threat, it was less than precise, but the step she took toward me as she issued those words sold it completely. Female werewolves were incredibly rare. Our pack had two, and most didn’t even have that, but somehow, over the past two hundred years, Sora had managed to rise above the males’ instincts to protect their females at all costs. In the years I’d been with the pack, she’d been one of Callum’s strongest, smartest, and most trusted soldiers.
She was also Devon’s mother, which meant that she knew me all too well.
“Two seconds.”
Well, shoot. “Callum isn’t physically hurt,” I said. “He’s hurting because Ali’s hurting. And if Marcus assumed otherwise, it’s totally not my—”
Sora cursed, her dainty lips twisting sideways into a full-on snarl. She grabbed my arm and none-too-gently dragged me to the kitchen, where she quickly and methodically bound my wrists and my ankles and then tied me to the handles on the refrigerator and freezer doors. If I hadn’t spent enough time at her house growing up to personally acquaint her with my affinity for picking locks, she probably would have just locked me in one of the spare bedrooms, but Sora had learned the hard way not to underestimate my resourcefulness.
I tested the resistance of her knots, and she snarled again, causing me to go very, very still.
“You are nearly too stupid to live, you foolish, reckless child.” She didn’t sound like Devon’s mother. She sounded like Callum’s right-hand man. “And you don’t even realize what you’ve done.”
“Marcus will be angry with me,” I said, trying to prove that I wasn’t completely ignorant of the inevitable consequences of my actions.
“He’ll be furious—and not just with you,” Sora said, checking her knots and making sure that I wasn’t going anywhere. “He’ll be angry with himself, and with you, and with Ali, because you’re her responsibility.”
Callum had Marked me, but as far as the pack was concerned, I was Ali’s daughter. If Marcus hadn’t hated Ali for her own sake, he would have hated her for mine.
“He’ll be furious with Ali, and he’ll be in her house. While she’s giving birth. She’s in enough danger as it is. She doesn’t need Marcus adding to it.”
My mouth went instantly dry. “Callum would … Callum would never let Marcus hurt her.”
“The odds are against her, Bryn. Do you really think having a homicidal werewolf in her house is going to help? He may not strike out at Ali directly, but his being there will hurt her, I promise you that.”