Raised by Wolves(88)

Right now, I couldn’t be Chase’s first and the pack’s second. My first allegiance was—and had to be—to what we’d come here to do.

Lake and I paid for a room in cash, and I pushed down the growing sensation that as Chase got closer and closer, I was riding a roller coaster climbing steadily to its highest peak, the anticipation of the world dropping out from underneath me to a screaming, hand-waving, heart-thumping freefall, the moment Chase and I met eyes. I didn’t have time for that, any of that. I was within ten miles of the man who’d killed my family. The one who’d broken Chase and laughed at the breaking.

That man needed to die.

That thought in the forefront of my mind—and probably Lake’s, too—we passed the time waiting for Devon and Chase by settling into our room: one twin bed, no window, no air-conditioning. To Lake’s credit, she didn’t say a word about my silence, or the volley of emotions that must have been crisscrossing my face as minutes turned into hours. She just took out two knives and started sharpening them against each other, the rhythmic ching-ching-ching of metal on metal providing a fitting sound track to my own violent thoughts.

The Rabid’s death wouldn’t be bloody. Revenge was a luxury for those who had the upper hand, and we didn’t. There were more of us, but Wilson was older. He might not have known we were coming yet, but he’d sense Lake, Devon, and Chase the second they got within a mile of his little cabin in the woods. Mulling our disadvantage over in my mind, I detached from the instincts that told me that this man needed to be torn limb from limb. Werewolves were all about the instincts. The one advantage I might have in this game was that I wasn’t a Were.

When I had to, I could think like a human.

I didn’t need to see my parents’ murderer torn limb from limb. All I needed was to put a silver bullet through his forehead and a matching set in his heart and lungs.

I was so caught up in weaving in and out of the situation’s logic that I almost didn’t recognize the feel of the world turning upside down, my stomach flipping inside out, every hair on my body standing slightly on end, like I’d found myself in the center of an electrical storm.

“Chase.” The moment Chase opened the door to our motel room, I said his name, because from the second I saw him, it was the only sound my mouth agreed to produce.



“Bryn.” His voice was deep and thicker than I remembered. He seemed to have recovered, as much as anyone could, from what the Rabid had done to him before.

I was wrong, I thought, as I crossed the room to kill the space between us, needing to assure myself that, yes, he really was okay—that, no, my brilliant plan hadn’t broken him past the point of repair. Seeing him was nothing like the downward swing of a roller coaster. It felt like having my soul pulled out of my nose.

It hurt.

His arms wrapped around me, and I turned my head to the side and pressed my face into one of them, assuring myself that he was solid and real. That the Rabid hadn’t destroyed him. That I hadn’t failed him in a way that he never would have failed me.

“Oh, I see how it is. Baby finds her Johnny Castle, and all of a sudden, she forgets about the small matter of her BFF?”

There was only one person in the world who could deliver that line with a straight face. Until I’d heard his voice, I hadn’t realized just how much I’d missed it.

“Devon!”

Chase stiffened as Dev’s name left my lips, and Devon beamed at me, doing a good impression of someone who hadn’t been bristling a moment before, when I’d buried myself in Chase’s arms.

“In the flesh,” Devon said. “When you call, Miss Bronwyn, I answer. Always.” It was a testament to the gravity of the moment that he didn’t treat everyone present to an impromptu performance of “Ain’t No Mountain.” Lest Devon decide the situation did call for some tunes, I pushed on.

“You probably shouldn’t have come,” I told him. When I’d told Chase to go to Devon for help, I hadn’t thought through the full extent of what it would mean. Two male Weres, both of whom had some claim to a single girl, in one car for hours on end. If Chase had been born a werewolf, or if Devon and I had ever been more than friends, they probably wouldn’t have both made it to Wyoming in one piece. And even if the four of us did survive the next few hours and the Rabid in the woods, Devon would still have to deal with the fact that he’d left Ark Valley without permission to come assist me in blowing a Senate mandate to smithereens.

“Do you have any idea what Callum’s going to do to you when he finds out you came here?” I asked Devon, cursing myself for involving him in this and for not being able to think far enough ahead to realize what it would mean.