“Want another root beer?” Keely asked me.
I shrugged. “Sure.”
The man who’d futilely asked for more coffee turned to glare at me, but all I did was raise an eyebrow, and he looked very quickly away.
There were seventeen werewolves permanently in residence at the Wayfarer now—Lake, Mitch, Katie, Alex, Devon, and twelve of the kids we’d rescued from Alpine Creek. Some of the others—mostly teens—had chosen to make their way elsewhere. I hadn’t objected. The two who’d been attacked most recently had gone home, with the understanding that the local pack would treat them like visiting dignitaries and not try to claim them or enforce any dominance of their own. For now. Two or three others, all eighteen years old (or close enough to it to convince Ali they didn’t need constant supervision), were playing at being peripheral, though my pack-sense—alpha-sense—told me that none of them would stay gone for long.
You’re quiet today.
The sound of Chase’s voice in my head made my lips curve slowly upward. There were moments when my pack-sense was still, and for seconds, maybe minutes at a time, I could remember what it had been like when the two of us were the only people in my head.
The only people in the world.
I knew without asking that he was nearby. That if I snuck out my window late at night and tiptoed into the forest, I’d see him. I’d bring him clothes, and he’d shed his wolf skin, and under the blanket of darkness, he’d tell me everything he’d seen since he’d been gone.
Chase was my eyes and ears. Lake and Devon were my guard, the way Devon’s parents were Callum’s, but Chase was my emissary, the one who ran the perimeter of our territory and reported back.
The job suited him, and it suited Ali that he wasn’t always here, that some days, there was space between us and she could pretend that since he hadn’t Marked me and I hadn’t Marked him, we were just two crazy kids with a crush.
You’re always quiet, I replied to Chase’s comment by turning it around on him. I miss you.
I felt the reply from his wolf, the kind that told me that sometimes, they thought they’d spent their whole lives missing me.
Dork.
Cynic, Chase retorted.
I wished that I could leave my root beer on the counter and run out to meet him, but being alpha meant that I didn’t always get to do as I pleased. Sometimes, I had to do things just because they needed to be done, even if they terrified me.
Even if they made me feel like there was a possibility that the entire world might fall out from underneath me.
That was what I was doing in the restaurant today—besides watching Maddy and Lake torturing the clientele. The alpha of the Stone River Pack had requested a meeting with me.
I’d agreed.
Callum and I hadn’t seen each other since he’d walked out of that cabin in the woods. He hadn’t called me. He hadn’t written. He hadn’t made a single move to even talk to me until now.
Pack. Pack. Pack.
I took some relief in their presence, and I opened up my senses, reminding myself that I was doing this for them. That Callum was an ally, not my keeper. That I was an alpha, not his girl.
Sipping on my root beer, I swung my feet back and forth and found amusement in the way that Lake zeroed in on a target—human, most likely—to hustle at pool. A low hum in my pack-bond brought my eyes to look for Maddy, who had fallen into a quiet spell, the kind she still had every hour or two, and I reached out to her with my mind, reminding her that I was here. That we all were. And that she was herself.
Maddy, not Madison.
Ours, not Wilson’s.
Healing, not broken.
She hadn’t been able to go back to her family. Not after being dead for ten years, not when she couldn’t go more than a mile away from the rest of our pack without her wolf driving her back—to pack, to safety, to home.
“Bryn.”
I turned toward Callum’s voice, and something inside of me began to dissolve. Seeing him would always make me feel like a kid, and it would always remind me of the things that had brought me here. The things he’d done and the things he hadn’t. Some days, I thought everything went back to Callum—
He’d saved me from the Rabid when I was four.
He’d Marked me.
He’d raised me.
He’d given me Ali, who loved me enough to take me away.
He’d trained me.
He’d pushed me.
He’d lied to me.
And ultimately, he’d let me discover the truth, because based on everything I’d learned about Callum’s knack, he had to have known that I would.
“Let’s walk,” I said.
For a long time, Callum and I walked and said nothing. And then, finally, he spoke. “How are your grades?”