Raised by Wolves(33)

I narrowed my eyes. “That’s Ali’s decision, not yours.”

Callum didn’t reply, and it occurred to me that the expression on Ali’s face when she’d reamed me out about my illegal adventure into Callum’s basement had looked disturbingly similar to the look on the alpha’s face now.

Okay, so maybe it had been a joint decision. And maybe the conditions of my permissions weren’t the only card that Callum had in his deck to hold over my head.

“Breakfast?” I asked, half as a peace offering and half to see if he’d take me up on the offer, or if he’d have other, more pressing pack business to deal with. “I could swing time for a Pop Tart if I skip out on my shower.”

A human probably would have found the notion disgusting, but Callum wasn’t human, and Weres didn’t much care about sweat. “You’d have more time to shower if you could knock yourself down from that seven-minute mile.” Callum’s lips turned up in a subtle, lupine smile and then he inclined his head slightly, accepting my invitation for breakfast. I let myself wonder, just for a second, if he was here for more than just training me. If I wasn’t the only one who remembered how much time the two of us had spent together when I was little.



“Are you coming, or do you intend to spend the entire day in a tree?”

The corners of his lips quirked upward, and I answered his question and his amusement by diving out of the tree, straight into his body, taking us both down to the ground.

Bit.

Bit.

I got bit.

I reminded myself that this was what my training was about. It wasn’t about Callum and me. It wasn’t about the pack—there, still, in the corners of my mind. It was about Chase. Chase and the Rabid, questions and answers. That was what mattered.

“You’re getting slow,” I told Callum.

He threw me back to my feet and was on his own an instant later, but his words belied the ease of that motion. “And you, little one, are getting big.”





CHAPTER TEN


THEY SAY NOT TO BRING A KNIFE TO A GUNFIGHT. Extend the logic, and it’s probably not much of a stretch to say that you shouldn’t be relying on basic self-defense and martial-arts moves in an altercation with a werewolf. You should be bringing knives. And guns. And as much silver as you can physically carry.

Not all of the Weres I knew were allergic to silver—Devon wasn’t—but the old myths about silver bullets weren’t completely off base, either. Bullets had the potential to cause major problems, because accelerated healing increased the likelihood of a werewolf healing around a bullet, and having a piece of metal firmly embedded in one’s innards had a way of leading to malfunctions. Beyond that, a good 80 to 90 percent of Weres were allergic to silver, the same way that most humans had a bad reaction to poison ivy. At best, it caused a rash and discomfort. At worst, if the silver got into their bloodstream, it could kill them. In any case, unless you were fighting a silver-immune wolf, like Devon, it ended up evening the playing field a little. They could kill you in an instant; you might, if you got lucky, be able to inflict some damage on them.

So I wasn’t overly surprised when, after weeks of sparring with a good dozen members of the pack, Callum changed up my training regime and gave me claws of my own. He’d taught me to throw knives around the same time I was learning to tie my shoes, so that was nothing new. My aim left a little to be desired—I could only hit a bull’s-eye about eight times in ten—but there was a decent amount of heat behind my throws, and if I could put enough distance between me and an opponent to make a long-range attack feasible, I stood a fighting chance of doing some damage—especially if the knife I was throwing happened to be made of silver.

Of course, werewolf communities didn’t exactly look kindly on humans who carried silver weapons, and Callum had made it clear from the time I hit my first bull’s-eye that unless I had very good reason to suspect that my life was in imminent danger, that particular alloy and any damage I might inflict with it were off-limits. Pack Law forbade werewolves from attacking humans, but humans who wielded silver weapons—or even carried them—were in a category of their own. The Senate was just as likely to put down a human intent on hunting Weres as vice versa.

So the fact that Callum had me practicing with knives and had actually mentioned the word gun in my presence was not altogether unexpected, but it was mildly disturbing nonetheless, because for the first time, I got the sense that he really did think that my life was in danger, or that it might be in the future.

Which, of course, made me wonder if there was something about Chase I didn’t know.