Trial by Fire
Page 43
Relief painted my body with an unearthly, adrenaline-fueled glow. Lake was okay. I was okay. We were all okay—including Lucas, who Shay had just officially lost.
“Your permissions expire in a little over an hour,” I told Shay. “I expect you to retract your claim on Lucas and be off my land before then.”
I could feel Callum in the set of my jaw, the ease with which the words rolled off my tongue.
Shay snapped his pool cue in two, as easily as he could have—and would have—snapped my neck if it weren’t for Callum and the Senate. He stalked over to Lucas and lifted his limp body like a rag doll. Shay held him with one hand and flexed the fingers on the other until they began to take on the appearance of claws. He slashed his not-quite-human nails across Lucas’s face, and I felt the world shifting around us.
This was how pack transfers—the official kind—worked. The first alpha retracted his claim, cut off all mental ties, leaving the second alpha free to instate his—or in my case, her—own.
As I watched, unable to tear my eyes away, Shay wrenched his mind out of Lucas’s with all of the delicacy of a dentist using pliers to pull teeth.
“You are nothing to me,” he said, the words coming out more like a growl than any I’d ever heard spoken out loud. “I am nothing to you. If you step foot on Snake Bend territory again, I will kill you.”
With that, Shay dropped Lucas back onto the ground, and the younger Were’s back arched so hard and fast that I thought his body would snap in two.
“Lucas.” Maddy was by his side in an instant, and as the panic cleared from Lucas’s eyes and he met hers, I saw the contours of his face the way she did, felt his hand on hers as if it were mine.
Lone. Wolf.
My pack-sense trembled with the realization that Lucas didn’t feel foreign anymore—that now that Shay had released his hold, Lucas felt like something else altogether.
“He’s yours if you want him.” Shay kept his comment short and sweet. “But he’ll bring you nothing but trouble.”
That sounded more like a promise than a threat, and I thought of the psychics and everything Lucas had already led—however unwittingly—straight to our door.
“I doubt the Senate will be pleased when they find out you’ve been making deals with psychics.” I tossed the words out like they meant nothing, but I saw the moment they hit their mark. “I may be new to all of this, but I’m fairly certain that bringing the outside world into Pack matters is frowned upon.”
Shay recovered before I could fully register how deep my threat had cut. “The Senate would want proof,” he said, “and without my help, I doubt you’ll be alive to give it.”
Without his help? I snorted. Shay had orchestrated all of this. He’d forced my hand to allow him entry to my lands, he’d strong-armed me into wagering one of my wolves against one of his, and now that he’d lost, he was trying to offer me help?
“Your pack has one adult male, fewer than a dozen teenagers, and a handful of children. You can’t expect to face down a coven of psychics on your own.”
To my left, Devon’s eyes glittered. “Would this be the same coven of psychics who are attacking us at your request?”
Shay shrugged, the human gesture completely at odds with the feral glint in his eyes. “The why and the how don’t matter. If I were you, I’d be more concerned with the when.”
Jed had warned me that Valerie might call an end to the armistice, repay my visit with one of her own now that she had a better idea of what I could do. Now, Shay seemed to be promising that Jed’s words would prove true.
“You have hours.” Shay began walking backward toward the door, each footstep falling like a gavel. “At most, you have a day. If and when you come to your senses, say the word, and the Snake Bend Pack would be more than willing to cross into your territory and fight on your side.”
Fight on our side? He was the one who’d set them on us. Maybe if I hadn’t realized that, I would have taken his offer as mercurial, but given everything I knew, it seemed absurd.
“You’re offering to fight on our side?” I asked. “Couldn’t you just tell them to back down?”
Shay smiled. “Invite us into your territory,” he said, “and I will.”
Every time I thought I had Shay’s strategy figured out, I peeled back a layer of his machinations and found another one underneath.
He’d sent Lucas here so he’d have a reason to come to my territory. He’d made a play for Lake, and just in case that failed, he’d lined his pack up along our borders and sent the coven after me so that I’d have reason to invite his people in.
“The answer,” I said, the words working their way up from the pit of my stomach, uncompromising and sure, “is no.”
Backing me into a corner was a mistake, and someday, Shay would pay for it. Maybe not today, but eventually he’d regret every trap he’d laid for me and mine. I took a step toward him, this foreign alpha who didn’t belong here, and the rest of my pack moved in tandem, all eyes on Shay as we closed in.
He didn’t have my permission to be here any longer, and I wasn’t asking him for help.
Not surprisingly, given Shay’s pedigree, he didn’t flinch. He didn’t blink. He didn’t even shrug. Instead, he lowered his voice to a whisper that crawled up my spine. “Funny, isn’t it?” he said. “You’re in danger, I’m here, and Callum’s not.”
The statement hung in the air, and without another word, Shay Shifted effortlessly into wolf form, and in a blur of timber-colored fur—his markings a perfect match for Devon’s—he was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I KNEW BETTER THAN TO LET SHAY GET UNDER MY skin, but still, his parting shot hit me hard. I’d almost lost Lake—and Dev. I’d been threatened and burned, and another alpha was circling my territory, just waiting for an opportunity to swoop in.
There was a good chance the psychics were planning an attack.
And where was Callum?
Not here. He hadn’t even taken my phone call.
“If the psychics are planning to attack, we need to set up a defense.” I looked at the others, one after another: the peripherals, Lucas, my inner guard. “Able-bodied fighters need to be ready to fight. Earplugs are a must. Dev, tell Ali to get the younger kids together. They’re going on a field trip. Lake?”
Leaning back against the pool table, Lake preempted my next request. “Weapons?” she asked, all business.
“Anything that will help us secure the perimeter. I’m thinking some strategically placed explosives wouldn’t hurt.”
Some people lived for the phrase strategically placed explosives. Lake was one of those people.
“On it.”
I turned to Chase. “Help Maddy with Lucas,” I said.
Lucas’s bones were probably already healing, but he still hadn’t picked himself up off the floor. I couldn’t be sure how much damage Shay had done when he’d pulled out of Lucas’s head, so despite being free to claim him, I held back, uncertain if Lucas could take that kind of mental assault at the moment.
Besides, I had bigger fish to fry.
“Meet back here in half an hour,” I said. Just enough time for the others to finish their jobs and for me to get on with mine.
I didn’t know the coven’s plan of attack. I didn’t know the extent of their knacks. I didn’t know their weaknesses, or if killing Valerie would remove the emotional suggestions she’d planted.
But I knew somebody who probably did.
Callum might not have been omniscient. He might have seen the future as a complicated web, with possibilities branching out like leaves on a thousand-year-old tree. He might have been limited by distance, but chances were good that he’d know something.
More than I knew, at least.
Now that Shay was technically out of the picture, Callum’s sharing what he knew couldn’t be considered a political alliance. The coven wasn’t a part of our world, their safety wasn’t a Senate concern.
“You’re going to answer,” I said, willing the words to be true. “You have to.”
“Your permissions expire in a little over an hour,” I told Shay. “I expect you to retract your claim on Lucas and be off my land before then.”
I could feel Callum in the set of my jaw, the ease with which the words rolled off my tongue.
Shay snapped his pool cue in two, as easily as he could have—and would have—snapped my neck if it weren’t for Callum and the Senate. He stalked over to Lucas and lifted his limp body like a rag doll. Shay held him with one hand and flexed the fingers on the other until they began to take on the appearance of claws. He slashed his not-quite-human nails across Lucas’s face, and I felt the world shifting around us.
This was how pack transfers—the official kind—worked. The first alpha retracted his claim, cut off all mental ties, leaving the second alpha free to instate his—or in my case, her—own.
As I watched, unable to tear my eyes away, Shay wrenched his mind out of Lucas’s with all of the delicacy of a dentist using pliers to pull teeth.
“You are nothing to me,” he said, the words coming out more like a growl than any I’d ever heard spoken out loud. “I am nothing to you. If you step foot on Snake Bend territory again, I will kill you.”
With that, Shay dropped Lucas back onto the ground, and the younger Were’s back arched so hard and fast that I thought his body would snap in two.
“Lucas.” Maddy was by his side in an instant, and as the panic cleared from Lucas’s eyes and he met hers, I saw the contours of his face the way she did, felt his hand on hers as if it were mine.
Lone. Wolf.
My pack-sense trembled with the realization that Lucas didn’t feel foreign anymore—that now that Shay had released his hold, Lucas felt like something else altogether.
“He’s yours if you want him.” Shay kept his comment short and sweet. “But he’ll bring you nothing but trouble.”
That sounded more like a promise than a threat, and I thought of the psychics and everything Lucas had already led—however unwittingly—straight to our door.
“I doubt the Senate will be pleased when they find out you’ve been making deals with psychics.” I tossed the words out like they meant nothing, but I saw the moment they hit their mark. “I may be new to all of this, but I’m fairly certain that bringing the outside world into Pack matters is frowned upon.”
Shay recovered before I could fully register how deep my threat had cut. “The Senate would want proof,” he said, “and without my help, I doubt you’ll be alive to give it.”
Without his help? I snorted. Shay had orchestrated all of this. He’d forced my hand to allow him entry to my lands, he’d strong-armed me into wagering one of my wolves against one of his, and now that he’d lost, he was trying to offer me help?
“Your pack has one adult male, fewer than a dozen teenagers, and a handful of children. You can’t expect to face down a coven of psychics on your own.”
To my left, Devon’s eyes glittered. “Would this be the same coven of psychics who are attacking us at your request?”
Shay shrugged, the human gesture completely at odds with the feral glint in his eyes. “The why and the how don’t matter. If I were you, I’d be more concerned with the when.”
Jed had warned me that Valerie might call an end to the armistice, repay my visit with one of her own now that she had a better idea of what I could do. Now, Shay seemed to be promising that Jed’s words would prove true.
“You have hours.” Shay began walking backward toward the door, each footstep falling like a gavel. “At most, you have a day. If and when you come to your senses, say the word, and the Snake Bend Pack would be more than willing to cross into your territory and fight on your side.”
Fight on our side? He was the one who’d set them on us. Maybe if I hadn’t realized that, I would have taken his offer as mercurial, but given everything I knew, it seemed absurd.
“You’re offering to fight on our side?” I asked. “Couldn’t you just tell them to back down?”
Shay smiled. “Invite us into your territory,” he said, “and I will.”
Every time I thought I had Shay’s strategy figured out, I peeled back a layer of his machinations and found another one underneath.
He’d sent Lucas here so he’d have a reason to come to my territory. He’d made a play for Lake, and just in case that failed, he’d lined his pack up along our borders and sent the coven after me so that I’d have reason to invite his people in.
“The answer,” I said, the words working their way up from the pit of my stomach, uncompromising and sure, “is no.”
Backing me into a corner was a mistake, and someday, Shay would pay for it. Maybe not today, but eventually he’d regret every trap he’d laid for me and mine. I took a step toward him, this foreign alpha who didn’t belong here, and the rest of my pack moved in tandem, all eyes on Shay as we closed in.
He didn’t have my permission to be here any longer, and I wasn’t asking him for help.
Not surprisingly, given Shay’s pedigree, he didn’t flinch. He didn’t blink. He didn’t even shrug. Instead, he lowered his voice to a whisper that crawled up my spine. “Funny, isn’t it?” he said. “You’re in danger, I’m here, and Callum’s not.”
The statement hung in the air, and without another word, Shay Shifted effortlessly into wolf form, and in a blur of timber-colored fur—his markings a perfect match for Devon’s—he was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I KNEW BETTER THAN TO LET SHAY GET UNDER MY skin, but still, his parting shot hit me hard. I’d almost lost Lake—and Dev. I’d been threatened and burned, and another alpha was circling my territory, just waiting for an opportunity to swoop in.
There was a good chance the psychics were planning an attack.
And where was Callum?
Not here. He hadn’t even taken my phone call.
“If the psychics are planning to attack, we need to set up a defense.” I looked at the others, one after another: the peripherals, Lucas, my inner guard. “Able-bodied fighters need to be ready to fight. Earplugs are a must. Dev, tell Ali to get the younger kids together. They’re going on a field trip. Lake?”
Leaning back against the pool table, Lake preempted my next request. “Weapons?” she asked, all business.
“Anything that will help us secure the perimeter. I’m thinking some strategically placed explosives wouldn’t hurt.”
Some people lived for the phrase strategically placed explosives. Lake was one of those people.
“On it.”
I turned to Chase. “Help Maddy with Lucas,” I said.
Lucas’s bones were probably already healing, but he still hadn’t picked himself up off the floor. I couldn’t be sure how much damage Shay had done when he’d pulled out of Lucas’s head, so despite being free to claim him, I held back, uncertain if Lucas could take that kind of mental assault at the moment.
Besides, I had bigger fish to fry.
“Meet back here in half an hour,” I said. Just enough time for the others to finish their jobs and for me to get on with mine.
I didn’t know the coven’s plan of attack. I didn’t know the extent of their knacks. I didn’t know their weaknesses, or if killing Valerie would remove the emotional suggestions she’d planted.
But I knew somebody who probably did.
Callum might not have been omniscient. He might have seen the future as a complicated web, with possibilities branching out like leaves on a thousand-year-old tree. He might have been limited by distance, but chances were good that he’d know something.
More than I knew, at least.
Now that Shay was technically out of the picture, Callum’s sharing what he knew couldn’t be considered a political alliance. The coven wasn’t a part of our world, their safety wasn’t a Senate concern.
“You’re going to answer,” I said, willing the words to be true. “You have to.”
