It cost him everything to make the promise, and his pain hit me like a physical blow. I wanted to curl up next to him, to be closer to him, to make the pain go away. He wrapped his arms around me.
“This just figures,” Casey muttered. “Never had a boyfriend, never wanted one, forgets to even brush her hair unless Ali reminds her, and now, this. There’s just no in-between with you, is there?”
I was minutes away from being on the receiving end of terrifying and unquestionably physical retribution. Was now really the time for Casey to be complaining about my dating habits, or lack thereof?
But at the same time, he was right. There wasn’t an in-between for me. I lived at extremes. And maybe I’d die at them, too.
Right. Now.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
I was stupid, and I’d been betrayed, and I wasn’t at all sure which one was worse. I felt Callum come into the room behind me, and as he crossed it, I turned, averting my eyes to keep from looking straight at him. A second later I realized that I needn’t have bothered. It wasn’t like he was looking at me. His movements were stiff, his face unreadable. For what I could only assume was the first time in a thousand years, he looked old.
Callum said nothing to me. He just nodded at Sora, and she walked over and told Chase to move away from me.
He didn’t want to.
He wanted to stay.
To protect.
But he’d promised, and so he let go of me and I of him. “He’s safe?” I asked Sora, knowing deep down that Callum wouldn’t respond.
“Safer than you are,” Sora replied. “His disobedience was mild.”
Chase hadn’t reneged on a pact with our entire community. I had. Message received.
“What’s going to happen to me?” I didn’t want to be asking those words, but there they were.
Sora didn’t answer. She just dragged me from the house, out onto Callum’s front lawn. Callum followed, but didn’t step past the threshold of his door.
“Permissions were granted and conditions were set,” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Those conditions weren’t met. Justice demands blood.”
This from Callum. The closest thing to family I had, next to Ali. The man whose Mark I bore—and would always bear—on my flesh. The man who’d lied to me for years and years. The person who for the longest time I’d looked up to most in this world.
“However,” Callum said, and that provoked a hum of grumbles that settled when the alpha demanded silence.
“However, the girl is human. Her body would not recover from that which she has rightly earned, and our justice—if it is to be justice—cannot be blind. Sora will serve in my stead. She will extract our pound of flesh.”
I really, really hoped he was talking about a metaphorical pound. Ice-cold terror filled my veins, and from head to toe, I froze.
“But Sora will do so in human form, and only until the girl’s body gives out.”
Gives out?
Gives out how?
“And how will Sora know when it’s enough?” Ironically enough, that question—which was on the tip of my tongue, too—came from Marcus, his lips twisted into a colorless sneer. “Who is she to judge? The pack will be satisfied. This cannot be a slap on the wrist.” He paused and then added, “Alpha,” with what sounded like respect—probably to stave off a lesson in what challenging the alpha really meant.
“Sora will know,” Callum said, and that was all the warning I got. One moment, things were still being debated in the abstract, and the next, a circle had formed around me and Sora—Devon’s mother, pack, protector—had thrown me to the ground. I scrambled to my feet, but the next second, she came flying at me, a kick delivered to my chest. I flew backward, and there was a popping in my ears. It took me a second to recognize the sound as the cracking of my ribs.
I was lucky she hadn’t broken them in half. But somehow, I didn’t feel lucky. Again, I made my way to my feet, and again, she was upon me. Instinct said to draw my knives, but even I had more sense than that. This was as much of a reprieve as Callum could give me. If I touched silver, I’d lose it.
I’d die.
And I owed Chase more than that. I heard him howling, as if from a great distance, and I knew that he’d lost the battle for control, that he’d Shifted and that it was the wolf and not the boy who was bound now by the promise he’d made me not to interfere.
I lost my tenuous grip on that fleeting thought when Sora backhanded me, strong enough to send me down again. She rained blows down upon me, and I could feel my eyes blackening, my lips swelling, my body hopeless under the barrage.