“When the Rabid attacked you, did you feel it?” As far as stupid questions went, this one ranked pretty high, and I struggled to make myself clearer. “Did you feel it here?” I closed my fist and touched it gently to my chest. Casey still had a hold on my shoulder; otherwise, I might have moved and gone to Chase, who was still kneeling on the floor, to place my hand over his heart.
“I felt it everywhere,” Chase said, his simple words cutting into me like a knife to the stomach. “Sometimes, I still do.”
“I think that’s enough for today,” Sora said, and beside me, I felt Casey stiffen, his head dropping even as his spine snapped back. Sora had told him to get me out of there. He hadn’t.
Dominance lash-backs. They were enough to give a girl fits.
“Bryn, outside. Now.” Sora’s words took on the hollow tone of an order issued at half strength, and I got the sense that the kid mitts were more for Chase’s benefit than for mine. On the floor, Lance still had his hands on Chase’s arms, but instead of holding him down, he appeared to be holding the younger wolf up. Just looking at him, I felt Chase’s exhaustion, felt his muscles liquefy as the battle in his head subsided.
“I’m sorry.” I hadn’t planned on apologizing, but as Sora’s words compelled me toward the door, the apology came out of my mouth anyway. Chase had been in control. He’d been Callum’s. And something I’d said had ruined that.
“No sorry.” Chase’s voice was liquid, too, just like his muscles, fluid and flowing, one word running into the next as he closed his eyes. “Never sorry.”
I was almost to the door by then, and the urge to go back, to go to him, was overpowering.
Obey. Obey. Obey.
If I wanted to see Chase again, I had to obey now, and Sora had told me to leave. Slowly, I brought my hand up to the doorknob.
Bryn? Chase’s voice was a whisper in my mind, and the sensation sent a single chill up my spine.
Yes?
You asked what I liked, before. He paused, and the silence tickled my mind, the chill in my spine climbing its way to the hairs on the back of my neck. Before, I loved cars, Yeats, having a bedroom that locked from the inside, and you.
His words exploded in my brain, and if Casey hadn’t had a hold on me, I would have stumbled.
You didn’t even know me then. The part of me that still thought like a human would have rolled my human eyes at Chase’s declaration that he’d known me long before we’d ever met, but my pack-sense wouldn’t let me. Because deep down, Chase was Pack. He and I were the same, and there were situations in which you couldn’t expect a wolf—Were or otherwise—to understand the concept of time.
Glancing back over my shoulder, I opened the door and stepped outside, directly into Callum. I wasn’t sure when he’d gone out, or how much he’d been listening, only that he was waiting for me. Callum closed his arms around me, pulled me tight to his body, and held me the way Lance had held Chase—like I needed his support to stay vertical. Until I fell into his grasp, I hadn’t realized just how close I’d followed Chase to the edge of something dangerous and scary.
I loved cars, Yeats, having a bedroom that locked from the inside, and you.
How willing I was, already, to go back.
“You did a good job,” Callum told me.
Alpha, my pack-sense said in return.
Callum, I thought. But there was a part of my mind that was thinking something else. Thinking about someone else.
Chase.
“You’re all right. You’re safe. You’ll see him again.” Callum’s voice was gruff, but to me, his words sounded like a lullaby, and my legs shook, threatening to turn to jelly beneath me.
Chase wasn’t in control. Not fully. Not yet. And the man who’d done this to him, the monster who’d changed him, was still lurking in the recesses of his mind, the same way that each and every member of our pack was in the corners of mine.
“You’re all right. You’re safe. You’ll see him again.”
Alpha. Callum. Guardian. Pack.
The unspoken words all told me the exact same thing—Chase would be okay. Callum wouldn’t give up the fight, wouldn’t let the Rabid take one of ours. Alpha meant safety. Callum was safe—and so long as I kept up my end of the agreement, followed his orders, didn’t run back to Chase and close the space between us, so was I.
CHAPTER TWELVE
FOR WEEKS AFTERWARD, THOUGHTS OF CHASE dogged my every step. It didn’t matter what I was doing—running with Callum, sparring with Sora or Lance—Chase was always there, his blue eyes flecked with the incomprehensible. I saw him lying in the cage, the way he had that first night. I saw him on his knees, held down by Lance’s stone-hard fists. I saw him the way he must have looked walking home from work on the day the Rabid systematically tore him to shreds.