Especially not by me.
“Seems to me the girl has a point,” Callum said, his face neutral, his body perfectly relaxed in a way that would have scared the daylights out of anyone with enough sense to know that Callum wasn’t the type to get mad.
He got even.
“By Senate law, if a wolf wants to transfer packs, both alphas have to sign off on it, and Bryn seems a bit resistant to that idea,” Callum continued.
Shay growled. “You can’t be serious, Callum. She’s human! She’s weak. If we want what she has, we’ll take it. I’ll take it.”
Callum didn’t growl, but he must have stopped holding back, stopped shielding his power from the others, because in the next instant, something ancient and undeniable flooded the room. This was what it meant to be alpha. This was what real power felt like.
Each and every one of the men in the room stumbled. I didn’t even blink.
“Now, see, that depends,” Callum said, his voice still neutral, his face still blank. “On whether or not we consider ourselves a democracy.”
I couldn’t help the satisfied smile that spread slowly over my lips. I’d seen this coming. I’d set him up to say it. If the Senate was a democracy, none of the alphas in this room could challenge me or take a single wolf that belonged to me. And if we weren’t a democracy, well …
In that case, Callum had no reason to hold back. No reason to recognize anyone else’s claims to their wolves.
“Well, Shay, are we a democracy or aren’t we?” I took great pleasure in throwing those words, the exact words Shay had used to force a vote on the Rabid, back into the Snake Bend alpha’s face.
Game. Set. Match.
No one wanted to challenge Callum, and to take what was mine, that was exactly what they were going to have to do. I wasn’t sure if this was just some cog in a greater scheme of Callum’s, some detail that had to fall into place for the future he most desired, or if maybe he was doing this for me. Because I mattered. Because maybe I was worth it.
My chest tightened, and I could almost hear the sound of glass shattering as something inside me broke, but I couldn’t risk letting anyone else see the breaking, so I kept my face carefully neutral, like someone who’d learned from the very best.
“I think we’re done here,” I said, daring the alphas, any single one of them, to tell me we weren’t. “You can see yourselves to the door.” For a moment, I thought Callum would throw his head back and roar with laughter, but he didn’t. He just glanced up at the ceiling as one by one, I met the other alphas’ gazes, and one by one, they turned away and filed out the door, their hatred for me and the way Callum had tied their hands palpable in the air. As I watched them go, I couldn’t shake the feeling that someday they’d be back. Maybe not to this cabin. Maybe not anytime soon, but eventually, some or all of these alphas would decide that the prize was worth the gamble. They’d call Callum’s bluff and take their chances. And when they did, things were going to get ugly.
Finally, I brought my face back to Callum’s, and out of habit, my hand went to my waist, to the Mark that had once connected the two of us into something more. For a moment, I felt a pang for what we’d lost, but that longing was drowned out by a moment of prescience, one that told me that Callum knew as well as I did that this wasn’t the end. Not between the two of us and not with the Senate. Someday, the other alphas would strike back.
And when they did, we’d be ready. I’d be ready.
For the first time in my life, Callum looked away from my gaze before I looked away from his, a slight, knowing smile playing at the corners of his lips. Then, without a word, he turned and followed the other alphas out the door, until the only ones left in the cabin were the ones whose minds and heartbeats I knew as well as my own. The ones whose strength and power pulled at me from all directions, with the familiar call of alpha, alpha, alpha.
Pack, pack, pack, I whispered back, my mind to theirs. Let’s run.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“HEY, COULD I GET A REFILL ON THIS COFFEE?”
“That depends,” Lake said, looking at the customer with dancing eyes before turning to shout toward the bar. “Maddy, you want me to shoot him?”
Maddy—who’d joined Lake as a waitress and proven that the only thing more terrifying than one of them was two—pretended to think it over for a moment and then shook her head. “If you shoot him, it’ll take him longer to run far, far away. And besides, it might hurt your tip.”
Lake turned back to the man in question—one of many Weres who’d ventured into the Wayfarer in the two months since it had become the center of a new territory. Montana and western North Dakota no longer belonged to the Stone River Pack. The Wayfarer and the land surrounding it for a good hundred miles on either side belonged to the newly minted Cedar Ridge Pack, courtesy of Callum.