Trial by Fire
Page 4
Long story short: no matter how much I didn’t want to talk about the way I’d woken up that morning, covered in sweat and ready to swear that the house was on fire, I didn’t stand a chance of keeping my mouth shut.
Knowing my own limitations, I leaned forward and grabbed the straw out of her hand. “Nothing gives. I just didn’t sleep very well.”
Because werewolves had a habit of sniffing out lies—literally—I’d spent years training myself to tiptoe around the truth. Rather than fight the compulsion to tell Keely everything she wanted to know, I made an effort at telling her the most abbreviated version of the truth I could manage.
“Bad dreams.”
Keely tilted her head to the side. “What kind of bad dreams?”
I thought on the question for a couple of seconds before the bartender’s uncanny ability for getting answers—which we called a knack—had my lips moving completely of their own volition.
“One second, I was dreaming, and the next, it was like I was being watched.” I shuddered, remembering the way the cocky stranger had observed me, like I was some kind of specimen under a microscope.
“Do you think it was anything?” Keely’s question was deceptively simple, and she masked its significance by turning her back on me and going to get refills for the handful of other patrons who’d found themselves at the Wayfarer on Thanksgiving Day.
Grateful for the temporary respite, I considered her question: did I think there was something to this dream?
Yes.
Whether the answer was mine as a human or the result of the pack-sense that had long since woven itself into the pattern of my thoughts, I couldn’t say. In either case, I wasn’t keen to share it with Keely, who would relay my answer to Mitch, who told everything to Ali, no questions asked.
Sometimes Keely’s knack really sucked.
Taking a final slurp of my root beer float, I slipped off the bar stool and headed for the exit. “Bye, Keely.”
Behind me, Keely snorted. “Leaving so soon?”
Once I was safely out of range, I paused to give Keely a disgruntled look and caught sight of Lake plunking her elbows down on a nearby pool table. I could tell by Lake’s posture that she was preparing to lecture a couple of our twelve-year-old pack-mates on the art of the hustle.
“If you go in looking like you could tear them to pieces, they’ll hedge their bets. The trick is to look completely defenseless.”
I found myself nodding in agreement with Lake’s lesson, because those were words to live by—in pool and in life.
The way Keely looked and the fact that she was human kept most Weres from realizing that she had a way of making people admit things they had no desire to say out loud, and it wasn’t like I looked like much of a threat. Our entire pack was a testament to the power of being underestimated. We were younger and smaller and newer to the werewolf game than any of the other packs, but like Keely—like me—my charges were more than they appeared to be.
Most werewolves had at least one werewolf parent, but my pack—aside from Devon and Lake and a few others—was different. I was human, and the others had been at one point, too. The only difference was that they’d been bitten, and I hadn’t.
Most humans didn’t have what it took to survive a major werewolf attack, but those of us who did had one thing in common—a knack for survival.
We called it Resilience.
I’d spent most of my life as the underdog (no pun intended), so supernaturally good survival instincts had come in handy more than once—and I was fairly certain they would again. Or at least, I hoped they would.
Soon.
Images from my dream—eyes watching me, flaming fingertips, waving hello—flashed like lightning through my brain, leaving an impression in their wake that I couldn’t quite shake, but I did my best to keep them from bleeding out to the rest of the pack. Leaving Lake to her lecturing, I pushed the front door open and was greeted by a chilly breeze and a feeling of wrongness that I recognized all too well: the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard, the smell of black pepper and rotting leaves.
My back arched, and the only thing that saved me from growling was that I wasn’t actually a Were.
Wolf. Foreign wolf.
My pack-sense went into overdrive, as it always did when a strange werewolf stepped foot onto Cedar Ridge land. Territory was everything to people like us, and though we allowed peripheral males from other packs to cross through our slice of Montana on a semi-regular basis, my reaction to their presence was always, for the first few seconds at least, completely visceral. Instinctively, my eyes scanned the grass lot, looking for the intruder in question, and the moment they landed on a familiar form, my pack-sense relaxed, and my stomach tightened with nausea and guilt.
“Casey.” I greeted him with a nod, giving no visible indication of weakness. I’d been taught to hide my emotions by the master, and even though my temper had a tendency to get away from me, I could have written the book on pretending to be okay when a major part of you wasn’t.
“Bryn.” Casey returned my nod but didn’t quite meet my gaze. Within my own pack, everything seemed so natural, but interacting with people from other packs—older male people in particular—was a jarring reminder of my alpha status. I was sixteen, female, and human and had at one point been this man’s subordinate.
The only thing that made his deference now more awkward was the fact that a lifetime ago, he’d been married to Ali.
If it hadn’t been for me, he still would be.
“Ali’s back in the kitchen,” I said, trying not to let my mind go back to the night less than a year ago when Casey had stood by and watched me being ceremonially beaten for breaking faith with Callum’s pack. That Ali’s then-husband had done nothing to stop it was something my foster mother would never, even for a moment, forget. “She and Mitch are working on getting dinner rolling. The twins are around here somewhere—you know how it is.”
Babies were prized in any pack, and Katie and Alex had no end of teen and preteen admirers anxious to pull babysitting duty whenever Ali needed a break.
“I know how it is, Bryn.”
Before Ali had left Casey, the twins had been the darlings of Callum’s pack. Now even their father was relegated to the occasional holiday visit, which reminded me …
“Ali didn’t say you were coming.” I met Casey’s eyes, and he glanced away.
“It’s Thanksgiving,” he said with a shrug that looked—to my eyes—almost like a challenge. “My family is here.”
Werewolf law dictated that Casey’s ability to visit Cedar Ridge lands depended on my consent, but given that I was a large part of the reason he’d lost Ali—and the twins—I wasn’t about to bring Pack politics into this.
“Kitchen’s right through the back. You can go surprise Ali and Mitch yourself.”
Casey’s jaw clenched when I said Mitch’s name, and I kicked myself for inadvertently baiting him. Werewolves tended to be possessive of their females, and one very human divorce hadn’t managed to convince Casey’s inner wolf that Ali wasn’t his anymore.
Luckily, however, I had no illusions whatsoever about Ali being incapable of taking care of herself. She had even less tolerance for dominance maneuvers than I did, and if there was something going on between her and Mitch, I doubted she’d think it was Casey’s business any more than she thought it was mine.
“Good luck.”
My words caught Casey off guard, and for a moment, he looked like he might actually smile. Instead, he held out a small package wrapped in brown paper.
“From Callum,” he said. “For you.”
I took the package and pushed down the urge to tear immediately through the paper, the way I’d opened Callum’s gifts when I was little. Things were different now, and this was a token from one alpha to another. The situation called for a little dignity.
The second Casey stepped inside the Wayfarer and the door shut behind him, I ripped through the paper, shredding it to reveal a small green box underneath. Since I seriously doubted Callum had sent me a box, I dropped the paper and began gently tugging the lid off the top of the package to reveal …
Knowing my own limitations, I leaned forward and grabbed the straw out of her hand. “Nothing gives. I just didn’t sleep very well.”
Because werewolves had a habit of sniffing out lies—literally—I’d spent years training myself to tiptoe around the truth. Rather than fight the compulsion to tell Keely everything she wanted to know, I made an effort at telling her the most abbreviated version of the truth I could manage.
“Bad dreams.”
Keely tilted her head to the side. “What kind of bad dreams?”
I thought on the question for a couple of seconds before the bartender’s uncanny ability for getting answers—which we called a knack—had my lips moving completely of their own volition.
“One second, I was dreaming, and the next, it was like I was being watched.” I shuddered, remembering the way the cocky stranger had observed me, like I was some kind of specimen under a microscope.
“Do you think it was anything?” Keely’s question was deceptively simple, and she masked its significance by turning her back on me and going to get refills for the handful of other patrons who’d found themselves at the Wayfarer on Thanksgiving Day.
Grateful for the temporary respite, I considered her question: did I think there was something to this dream?
Yes.
Whether the answer was mine as a human or the result of the pack-sense that had long since woven itself into the pattern of my thoughts, I couldn’t say. In either case, I wasn’t keen to share it with Keely, who would relay my answer to Mitch, who told everything to Ali, no questions asked.
Sometimes Keely’s knack really sucked.
Taking a final slurp of my root beer float, I slipped off the bar stool and headed for the exit. “Bye, Keely.”
Behind me, Keely snorted. “Leaving so soon?”
Once I was safely out of range, I paused to give Keely a disgruntled look and caught sight of Lake plunking her elbows down on a nearby pool table. I could tell by Lake’s posture that she was preparing to lecture a couple of our twelve-year-old pack-mates on the art of the hustle.
“If you go in looking like you could tear them to pieces, they’ll hedge their bets. The trick is to look completely defenseless.”
I found myself nodding in agreement with Lake’s lesson, because those were words to live by—in pool and in life.
The way Keely looked and the fact that she was human kept most Weres from realizing that she had a way of making people admit things they had no desire to say out loud, and it wasn’t like I looked like much of a threat. Our entire pack was a testament to the power of being underestimated. We were younger and smaller and newer to the werewolf game than any of the other packs, but like Keely—like me—my charges were more than they appeared to be.
Most werewolves had at least one werewolf parent, but my pack—aside from Devon and Lake and a few others—was different. I was human, and the others had been at one point, too. The only difference was that they’d been bitten, and I hadn’t.
Most humans didn’t have what it took to survive a major werewolf attack, but those of us who did had one thing in common—a knack for survival.
We called it Resilience.
I’d spent most of my life as the underdog (no pun intended), so supernaturally good survival instincts had come in handy more than once—and I was fairly certain they would again. Or at least, I hoped they would.
Soon.
Images from my dream—eyes watching me, flaming fingertips, waving hello—flashed like lightning through my brain, leaving an impression in their wake that I couldn’t quite shake, but I did my best to keep them from bleeding out to the rest of the pack. Leaving Lake to her lecturing, I pushed the front door open and was greeted by a chilly breeze and a feeling of wrongness that I recognized all too well: the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard, the smell of black pepper and rotting leaves.
My back arched, and the only thing that saved me from growling was that I wasn’t actually a Were.
Wolf. Foreign wolf.
My pack-sense went into overdrive, as it always did when a strange werewolf stepped foot onto Cedar Ridge land. Territory was everything to people like us, and though we allowed peripheral males from other packs to cross through our slice of Montana on a semi-regular basis, my reaction to their presence was always, for the first few seconds at least, completely visceral. Instinctively, my eyes scanned the grass lot, looking for the intruder in question, and the moment they landed on a familiar form, my pack-sense relaxed, and my stomach tightened with nausea and guilt.
“Casey.” I greeted him with a nod, giving no visible indication of weakness. I’d been taught to hide my emotions by the master, and even though my temper had a tendency to get away from me, I could have written the book on pretending to be okay when a major part of you wasn’t.
“Bryn.” Casey returned my nod but didn’t quite meet my gaze. Within my own pack, everything seemed so natural, but interacting with people from other packs—older male people in particular—was a jarring reminder of my alpha status. I was sixteen, female, and human and had at one point been this man’s subordinate.
The only thing that made his deference now more awkward was the fact that a lifetime ago, he’d been married to Ali.
If it hadn’t been for me, he still would be.
“Ali’s back in the kitchen,” I said, trying not to let my mind go back to the night less than a year ago when Casey had stood by and watched me being ceremonially beaten for breaking faith with Callum’s pack. That Ali’s then-husband had done nothing to stop it was something my foster mother would never, even for a moment, forget. “She and Mitch are working on getting dinner rolling. The twins are around here somewhere—you know how it is.”
Babies were prized in any pack, and Katie and Alex had no end of teen and preteen admirers anxious to pull babysitting duty whenever Ali needed a break.
“I know how it is, Bryn.”
Before Ali had left Casey, the twins had been the darlings of Callum’s pack. Now even their father was relegated to the occasional holiday visit, which reminded me …
“Ali didn’t say you were coming.” I met Casey’s eyes, and he glanced away.
“It’s Thanksgiving,” he said with a shrug that looked—to my eyes—almost like a challenge. “My family is here.”
Werewolf law dictated that Casey’s ability to visit Cedar Ridge lands depended on my consent, but given that I was a large part of the reason he’d lost Ali—and the twins—I wasn’t about to bring Pack politics into this.
“Kitchen’s right through the back. You can go surprise Ali and Mitch yourself.”
Casey’s jaw clenched when I said Mitch’s name, and I kicked myself for inadvertently baiting him. Werewolves tended to be possessive of their females, and one very human divorce hadn’t managed to convince Casey’s inner wolf that Ali wasn’t his anymore.
Luckily, however, I had no illusions whatsoever about Ali being incapable of taking care of herself. She had even less tolerance for dominance maneuvers than I did, and if there was something going on between her and Mitch, I doubted she’d think it was Casey’s business any more than she thought it was mine.
“Good luck.”
My words caught Casey off guard, and for a moment, he looked like he might actually smile. Instead, he held out a small package wrapped in brown paper.
“From Callum,” he said. “For you.”
I took the package and pushed down the urge to tear immediately through the paper, the way I’d opened Callum’s gifts when I was little. Things were different now, and this was a token from one alpha to another. The situation called for a little dignity.
The second Casey stepped inside the Wayfarer and the door shut behind him, I ripped through the paper, shredding it to reveal a small green box underneath. Since I seriously doubted Callum had sent me a box, I dropped the paper and began gently tugging the lid off the top of the package to reveal …
