“I didn’t kill Wilson.” My voice—barely more than a whisper—echoed with the power of the entire pack, a frenzied blood-thirst that made me sound less human than I was. “They did. The ones he Changed. The ones you let him Change.”
Lily growled, and coming from a cherubic two-year-old, the sound seemed more demonic than lupine.
“They’re free now,” I continued, my voice still echoing with power that wasn’t mine. “And nobody gets to them except through me.”
“You can’t honestly believe we’d let you keep them,” Shay said, his tone incredulous. Every instinct I had said that he was challenging me and that staring him down almost definitely wasn’t going to get me out of this one. Like flame and tinder, the challenge caught on; I could feel it spreading across the room from one alpha to another. They were stronger than I was. One on one, I didn’t stand a chance against any of them. Even surrounded by Resilient werewolves who’d do anything I asked them to, I was outclassed. Resilient or not, my wolves were just kids, and every alpha in this room except me numbered their years in centuries.
I’m not backing down. I tried to let them see that in my face. I may have been outclassed, but if these alphas thought they could take even one of these kids from me when they’d been perfectly content to leave them to a Rabid in exchange for new wolves of their own, they were mistaken.
I won’t back down. Not now. Not ever. Even if I was signing my own death warrant.
My gaze flickered over to Callum, and his amber eyes focused on mine in a way that made me wonder if he was seeing me at four or five or six or ten, or any age up until the point that Ali had taken me away.
Bryn. I didn’t hear his voice in my head, but I saw that single word—my name—in his eyes. Saw the recognition behind it. The feeling. And something else: a look I knew, one I’d seen many times before. It was a look that pushed me. One that challenged me to take everything he’d ever taught me and think. There was a way out of this dilemma, but I had to find it and set it in motion myself.
So I did what Callum’s eyes bid me and thought. And the answer was there, in everything I knew about the men in this room and everything Callum had taught me about maneuvering my way around werewolves.
“Actually,” I said, finally responding to Shay’s words, my eyes still on Callum’s, “I do think you’ll let me keep them.
Because this isn’t Europe. This isn’t Asia. And in North America, alphas don’t take other alphas’ wolves. We don’t challenge each other, and if you want to take what’s mine, you’re going to have to challenge me.”
You’re going to have to kill me. Those words went unstated, but every single person in the room understood that they were there, and a wave of static energy pulsed through the air. Alphas didn’t like being challenged. Especially not by females. Especially not by humans.
Especially not by me.
“Seems to me the girl has a point,” Callum said, his face neutral, his body perfectly relaxed in a way that would have scared the daylights out of anyone with enough sense to know that Callum wasn’t the type to get mad.
He got even.
“By Senate law, if a wolf wants to transfer packs, both alphas have to sign off on it, and Bryn seems a bit resistant to that idea,” Callum continued.
Shay growled. “You can’t be serious, Callum. She’s human! She’s weak. If we want what she has, we’ll take it. I’ll take it.”
Callum didn’t growl, but he must have stopped holding back, stopped shielding his power from the others, because in the next instant, something ancient and undeniable flooded the room. This was what it meant to be alpha. This was what real power felt like.
Each and every one of the men in the room stumbled. I didn’t even blink.
“Now, see, that depends,” Callum said, his voice still neutral, his face still blank. “On whether or not we consider ourselves a democracy.”
I couldn’t help the satisfied smile that spread slowly over my lips. I’d seen this coming. I’d set him up to say it. If the Senate was a democracy, none of the alphas in this room could challenge me or take a single wolf that belonged to me.
And if we weren’t a democracy, well …
In that case, Callum had no reason to hold back. No reason to recognize anyone else’s claims to their wolves.
“Well, Shay, are we a democracy or aren’t we?” I took great pleasure in throwing those words, the exact words Shay had used to force a vote on the Rabid, back into the Snake Bend alpha’s face.
Game. Set. Match.
No one wanted to challenge Callum, and to take what was mine, that was exactly what they were going to have to do. I wasn’t sure if this was just some cog in a greater scheme of Callum’s, some detail that had to fall into place for the future he most desired, or if maybe he was doing this for me. Because I mattered. Because maybe I was worth it.