They told you not to talk about your parents, he said silently, but technically, we’re not talking.
He understood. Thank God, he understood. Out loud, I said something else. “How did he bite you?”
“Throat first. Then stomach. It’s hard to remember. Everything went dark after that. I think I managed to throw him off, but he kept coming back. First my arms, then my legs—”
“Enough,” Sora said, cutting Chase off.
He stopped speaking, and the air around us seemed to shift, weighed down by the power of Sora’s command. I looked from Sora to Chase and back again, and that was when I realized—he had to listen to them, too.
Obey. Obey. The pack was to be obeyed.
“I hear you like art,” Chase said, probably under orders to make small talk instead of talking about being systematically disemboweled.
I nodded. “I used to.”
I thought of my exchange with Ali that morning, of the bit of myself I’d hidden far away, and for a split second, it began to crack, and with it came the intensity with which I’d wanted to ask these questions, the incredible, undeniable need to see him.
“What did you like to do, when you were … human?” That wasn’t the question I wanted to be asking, but I could practically feel my pack-bond as a leash around my neck, choking me, pulling me back from asking the things I really wanted to know.
You can fight this, a tiny voice whispered in the back of my head. Not Chase’s. Mine.
Fight.
Fight
Trapped.
Fight.
But I didn’t. I slowed my breathing and pushed back the panicked haze that threatened to descend on my body the moment I realized just how tight my metaphorical leash really was. A low whimper caught in the back of my throat, and I waited for Chase’s answer. For more than small talk. For whatever Callum—through his henchmen—would actually allow me to hear.
“Before the attack, I liked cars, Yeats, and having a lock on my bedroom door.” Chase paused, and behind his wry, self-deprecating grin, I saw an echo of the whine still caught in my throat.
Out.
Out.
Out.
We wanted out.
Chase’s eyes pulsed amber, and without a word, Lance walked over and put a firm hand on each of his shoulders. Forced him off the chair and to his knees.
A high-pitched sound escaped my throat, and Sora laid a hand lightly on my shoulder. She didn’t push. She didn’t force a confrontation, but as I leaned forward, her grip tightened, pulling me gently back.
“Look at me.” Lance growled the words, and on the floor, Chase responded. His body jerked once, twice, three times against Lance’s hold, and the smell of burning hair and men’s cologne filled the air. The smell wasn’t Chase. It wasn’t Stone River. It was something different, something foreign, and it was here.
One second I was sitting and the next, Sora had shoved me at Casey. “Get her out of here!”
But since the order hadn’t been directed to me, I didn’t have to obey, and Casey’s main concern seemed to be staring at Chase—staring and staring and daring him to come closer.
Pack. Not Pack. Pack. Not Pack. Pack.
The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. I’d never seen anything like it before. Callum had made Chase a part of the Stone River Pack, but every wolf in the room was reacting like he was a stranger.
A foreign wolf on our lands.
A threat.
Mine, I thought.
A moment ago, I’d been talking to Chase.
He’d been in my head.
Even now, I could feel each spasm of his body in the corresponding muscles in mine.
“Chase. Look at me.” This time, Lance’s voice was low and soothing, but I felt the command behind the words, felt shades of Callum—alpha—in Lance’s tone.
Look at him, I begged Chase silently, sure it would help, but uncertain why. Look at Lance.
He did, and slowly, the scent of foreign wolf receded, until the only thing in this room was us.
Me, Chase, Casey, Sora, and Lance.
Pack.
“What just happened here?” I recovered my voice before the others found theirs. If I’d been paying attention, I might have noticed just how close to the edge Callum’s guards were.
How close they’d come to Shifting themselves.
“He’s in my head.” Chase’s voice was soft. Too soft. Any other girl wouldn’t have been able to make out the form of his words.
“Callum. The wolf. Both of them.”
It wasn’t Callum’s wolf that had flooded the room with a foreign scent, and it wasn’t Callum who’d put the haunted expression—empty and clear—in Chase’s eyes.
It was the Rabid.
If a Mark connected you to a werewolf, what did a full-blown attack do? There wouldn’t have been a ceremony, but …