And now Sora’s hand was on my shoulder, and they’d lied to me. All of them. My peripheral vision went first, and then the darkness circled in, red and rough, like blood splattered on the wall, as I watched from under the sink.
Obey. Fight. Trapped. Submit.
Survive.
There was the order that mattered. The only one. I leapt from the couch, the darkness closing in all around me, and my guards were so surprised at the show of outright disobedience that they didn’t react quickly enough. Not quickly enough to press their will onto mine, or quickly enough to keep me from bashing through one order after another after another, with the fury and ferocity of an animal cornered and caged.
I leapt at Chase, barreling toward him, and he caught me and held on so tight that I could feel my arms bruising, but it didn’t matter.
We were touching.
They’d told us not to touch, and we were touching.
My parents got bit. They didn’t survive. Callum killed the wolf who did it before he got to me. Only I guess he didn’t. Kill him. Not really.
More passing between us. Feelings: anger-hate-fear-love-hope, words, and scattered images. I was in Chase’s mind. He was in mine. I couldn’t see a thing. Not even his face.
Trapped. Fight. They’re going to take me away. Have to—have to—
Sora, Lance, and Casey jumped to their feet—I couldn’t see them, too red, too much red—and Chase pulled me closer.
“Mine,” he growled.
“Let her go.”
“No,” I said, forcing my body to follow my commands, grinding my jaw and forcing the world to settle back into place in front of my eyes. “Don’t.”
Everything I’d known my entire life was a lie. The person—the monster—who’d killed my family was still out there, and Callum knew. He knew and he’d kept it from me, kept Chase from me—not because he was dangerous, not because of the Rabid in his mind.
Because together, we would have figured it out.
“Let her go. Now.”
The air crackled with Lance’s dominance. I hadn’t realized how strong he was, how close to alpha himself, and the fact that he rarely spoke gave his words more power than they would have had otherwise. Chase’s wolf responded to the order, pausing, growling, backing down.
His fingers loosened around my arms.
OBEY. OBEY. OBEY.
It was overwhelming. Suffocating. Crushing. I felt Chase’s panic, and somehow, that rid me of mine. My vision was perfect, because his was becoming cloudy. My thoughts weren’t scrambled, because his were.
Trapped, I could hear him thinking. Fight. Bryn.
I recognized the madness, saw him losing control, bit by bit and piece by piece, and I remembered what I’d done to Devon when I’d lost myself to a similar directive. When I’d been trapped with nowhere else to go.
If he attacked Lance, they’d kill him.
Fight.
I couldn’t lose myself to the adrenaline, the need to get the two of us out of there and away. One of us had to stay in control.
It had to be me.
Look at me, I thought, fighting back my haze and his. Only at me, Chase.
I could have shut down my bond to the pack, could have put back up some excuse for a mental block, but I didn’t.
Instead, my body threatening to seize with the effort it took to keep my basest, most vicious instincts from taking over, I gathered everything that existed between me and the pack, everything that made me one of them, every invisible tendril that tied me to my wolf-brothers, and I shoved it toward Chase.
Mine, I thought.
Trapped. Fight. Survive.
Mine.
There was a whoosh, like all of the air had been instantaneously sucked out of the room, and then there was silence, the pack roaring at me from a great distance, unheard. Silence.
Silence, and Chase.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“WHAT DID YOU JUST DO?” CASEY’S WORDS WERE sharp, but the expression on his face was closer to horrified. “What did the two of you do?”
Chase looked at Casey and then at me. My panic and Chase’s were gone, and in its place, there was something dynamic and warm weaving its way through my body and through his, pulling us together, inch by inch.
“I don’t have to answer,” Chase said, puzzled. “Normally, when they ask me something, I have to answer.” He flicked his head to the side. “It’s there, still. I can feel them. Callum. Wolf. Pack. I can almost hear them, but it’s different.” He leaned forward and buried his nose in my hair, breathing me in. “It’s you.”
“She reformed their bonds.” Sora’s voice was dull. “They’re each other’s first, and Pack second.” I felt her prowling near me psychically, testing the limits of our bond, trying to undo whatever it was that I’d done.