Raised by Wolves(45)

I was right to worry.

Ali looked like Ali, Callum like Callum, and Casey looked like he wanted to kill me.

Like any of this was my fault. For once, I hadn’t done anything. Yet.

“How were your finals?” Ali asked, breaking the silence with a question that sounded so normal that I wondered for an instant if I’d imagined their yelling a moment before.

A glance at Casey out the side of my eye told me that I hadn’t.

“Finals went well,” I said, keeping my back to the wall, an instinct that I couldn’t shake, even though we were all family here. “I’m pretty sure I aced algebra.”

I felt Callum smile beside me, but when I looked over at him, his face was neutral, calm. The face of the alpha, taking care of pack business.

My hands flitted to the waist of my jeans, needing a reminder—a physical reminder—that even when he was alpha, he was still Callum. Even when it came to pack business, I was still his.

“Is this about my seeing Chase again?” I asked. I was facing Callum, but Ali was the one who answered my words.

“You don’t have to go. You don’t have to do this.”

First Devon and now Ali. What did they know that I didn’t?

“Nothing,” Ali said, and I wondered if my thoughts were always apparent on my face. “I don’t know anything that you don’t, Bryn, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that this could get ugly.”



“Chase won’t hurt me.”

Ali glanced at Callum, and Devon’s words floated back to me—It’s not Chase I’m worried about.

Callum won’t hurt me, either, I thought, but I didn’t broadcast the words. The fact that I had to say or think them at all was mind-boggling. I’d approached Callum as a member of his pack, and his actions and mine were equally bound by our agreement. I knew better than to break faith with our entire pack, and I had more inhibition than they were giving me credit for.

Tempting fate was one thing; baiting Pack Justice was entirely another.

“Are you ready?” Callum asked me, ignoring Ali. The look in his eyes told me that he knew me better than she did. He didn’t question, even for a second, the possibility that I’d back down.

“He’s just a boy,” I said out loud. Just a boy with a Rabid in his head, who claims he loved me before we ever met. “I’m ready.”

Ali sighed, and the sound was unnatural, like her lungs were being deflated, the air sucked out of them by some external force.

“Take care of her, Casey,” Ali said, and I couldn’t tell if her words were an order or a plea. “Please.”

Casey nodded, but not for the first time, I wondered if he’d fully bargained on me when he’d married Ali.

“I’ll take care with her, Alison. You have my word.” Callum’s words should have been comforting, but as an expert at obfuscation myself, I couldn’t help but notice what he hadn’t said. He hadn’t said that he’d take care of me. He’d said he’d take care with me, and I knew better than to think that those two things were the same.

Casey, Callum, and I walked toward Callum’s house in silence. Sora and Lance joined us halfway there.

“You know he’s not just a boy,” I said, feeling the need to explain myself to someone in Ali’s absence.

“I know,” Callum replied, and I wondered if he meant for me to hear the slight echo of sadness in his tone.

This visit had nothing to do with Chase being a boy and me being a girl. It had nothing to do with the way he dogged my dreams and haunted my field of vision every time I blinked.

This was about the Rabid.

It was about me.

By the time we got to Callum’s house, I’d stopped trying to explain myself.



“Casey, Sora, and Lance are dominant. Your pack-bond remains open. You’re not to touch him.” With those words, Callum disappeared, and I wondered again why it was that he couldn’t or wouldn’t stay to watch my interaction with Chase.

“Hello.”

Speak of the devil. There was depth to that one word. Even just the sound of Chase’s voice made me think of the full moon, silvery and larger than life.

“Hello,” I replied, feeling human and small. Someday, I’d run with him, the way I had with the rest of the pack. Not today.

Within seconds, the two of us were positioned just as we had been the last time, me on the sofa, Chase on a nearby chair. He smiled, and in the curves of his lips, I could almost see his wolf: dark fur, light eyes.

“Same rules as last time,” Sora said, her impeccably controlled voice breaking into my mind.

No touching.

No talking about my family or the way they’d died.