Ours, I replied. Something exploded between the four of us: a wave of knowing. A realignment of the earth. And then, for a moment, there was silence.
Lake was the first to recover. “Huh. You know, I really don’t think other people can do that, Bryn. If it was even remotely possible, my dad would’ve found a way to pull some mojo a long time ago.”
Impossibility. These days, it was my strong suit.
“What just happened here?” Devon asked, still sounding dazed.
I cleared my throat. “I … well, Chase and I … we … ummm … we redid your pack-bond,” I said, hoping Dev wouldn’t be mad.
Can you hear me? I asked silently.
Devon nodded. Like my own thoughts. Your voice—it isn’t coming from outside of me, it’s not coming through an external connection. It’s coming from inside my head.
“Rewiring bonds … it’s this thing,” I said out loud, “that Chase and I do.” This thing we did that, when I’d done it last, had brought Callum’s entire pack barreling down on us.
Lake, playing it cool, pushed back the feeling of awe that I could feel from her end of our connection. “There’re four of us. Does that mean we qualify as a pack now? Because if we do, we need to think of a seriously killer name for ourselves.” Devon opened his mouth and Lake cut him off. “No allusions to musicals, Broadway boy.”
“The lady doth offend my ears,” Devon said. “Begone, foul witch!”
Lake snorted. “I’ve missed you, too, Dev.”
I barely registered the interaction between the two of them, because I was stuck on what Lake had said about Chase and I being able to do something that nobody else could do.
On an unconscious level, I’d assumed that what I’d done with my pack-bond, I’d been able to do because I was human and Pack, connected, but different. I’d spent years manipulating my own bond, protecting my mind from Callum’s pack.
And maybe I’d made Chase different, too, or maybe being a turned werewolf instead of a born one had something to do with it. But maybe not. Maybe what it really boiled down to was what I’d known from the moment I first saw him, sprawled in a cage.
Chase and I were the same.
Enough with the philosophizing. Lake’s voice. Inside my head—and somehow, it didn’t sound the way it did when she spoke out loud. It was quiet. Unassuming in tone, if not in words. Not timid, but understated and cautious.
Vulnerable.
Focus, Lake told me, and I could feel her taking a step back from my mind, folding herself inward and concentrating—to the extent that she could—on hiding from me the things that I didn’t normally see.
I nodded and took the reins. “Rabid. Here, in Alpine Creek. There’s a cabin in the woods. We’ll only have one shot.”
Chase pulled me close to him, and I wondered if he’d even realized he’d done it. And then I realized that my hand was on the top of his hipbone, but somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to remove it as I continued speaking to my friends. My pack.
“The last time I messed with someone’s pack-bond, it set off a psychic flare that brought the entire pack straight to us.” I paused, letting my words take hold, my grip on Chase tightening. “If what Chase and I just did has the same effect, we’re working under a time limit here, so let’s move. Lake and I are set for an attack. I have a plan. Boys, it’s hunting season.
Weapon up.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
NOBODY LIKED MY PLAN.
“You want us to split up?” Chase asked, his brow wrinkling in obvious bewilderment.
Lake echoed the sentiment, her voice flat. “Why would we split up? There’s four of us and one of him.” After a brief moment’s pause, she amended her head count to better reflect our real odds. “Three and a half of us, one of him.”
Three and a half, as in three werewolves, one human. I narrowed my eyes. “For your sake, Lake, I’m going to pretend that Devon is the half.”
Dev, unquestionably the strongest person in this room, just shrugged and let me keep my delusions. “It’s because of my petite stature,” he said. All 6′ 4″ of him.
My sensibilities halfway appeased, I turned my attention back to the crux of Lake’s point. “Yes, we have stronger numbers, but we have no idea how old this guy is! Do any of you think for a second that the four of us together could take Callum?”
The fact that Callum was still my point of reference and would probably always be the standard to which all others compared was less than comforting.
“We can take him.” Chase said the words quietly, but an echo of them, silent and whispered from his mind to mine, lingered in my thoughts. “Not Callum. Prancer. The four of us together, I think we could take him.”