I came back into my own body and sat down hard on the ground. I’d realized that Callum had probably planned for me to throw Shay’s line about democracy back in his face, that he’d known or at least suspected that the Rabid’s victims would claim me as their alpha, but I hadn’t really let myself hope that I was anything more than a detail.
That to Callum, the big picture had always gone back, again and again, to me.
For months, years, maybe my entire life, Callum had been preparing me to save the children Wilson had Changed; he’d been pulling my strings and Chase’s and everyone else’s. And that moment—the one that had nearly destroyed me—when he’d ordered me beaten, he’d done it not to save face with the pack, but because he needed Ali to take me to Montana.
He’d done it for me.
“I’m not sorry for it, Bryn. I’d do it again. And I needed you to know that.”
I got the feeling that he wasn’t here looking for forgiveness, and he wasn’t here just to let me know that even when I thought he’d left me, I’d been loved. He was warning me—because sometime, down the line, his knack for seeing and manipulating the future might involve me again. Depending on what he foresaw—for his pack, for me, and for mine—he might be left with some tough choices and he wouldn’t promise to deal me in, not if keeping me in the dark pushed things in the direction he wanted them to go.
I nodded. “Consider it known,” I said. “And for the record—everything I did? I’d do it again. And if it ever comes down to the safety of my pack versus the safety of yours …”
Callum smiled. “Consider it known.”
There was something about the expression on his face that made me suspicious, made me wonder if it was starting already. If he knew something that I didn’t.
“It’s not going to come down to the safety of my pack versus the safety of yours, is it?” I asked. “At least not immediately. There’ll be other threats. Outside threats. The other alphas, maybe. Or something worse.” I paused. He said nothing, and I knew without asking that I couldn’t push my way back into his head no matter how hard I tried.
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“The future’s always changing, Bryn.” That was it. That was all he gave me. I wanted to scream, but I didn’t. He was an alpha. So was I. Things were different. I couldn’t just bait him into giving me an answer.
I’d have to wait it out.
“You really are the most impossible man I’ve ever met,” I told him. He flopped down beside me on the grass and brushed his grizzly cheek against mine. “And you are, without question, the most troublesome and irksome child I’ve ever had the displeasure of knowing.”
Callum and I had been family once. We bore each other’s Marks still. I savored this moment, because deep down, I knew that I wasn’t a little girl anymore, that I wasn’t his anything anymore, and that for as long as I was alpha of my pack and he was alpha of his, we would never just be Callum and Bryn again.
Mine.
Mine.
Mine.
I belonged to my own pack now, and they belonged to me—Devon and Lake and Chase, Maddy and Lily and the rest of the Resilients, most of whom weren’t even into their teens. A random and rather twisted thought occurred to me, and I smiled.
“What are you smiling about, Bronwyn Alessia?”
I shrugged. “It’s just that I was raised by wolves, and now in a twisted way, with all the kids around here, I’m raising them. Ironic, huh?”
Callum snorted. “Bryn, m’dear, if there’s any justice in this world, they’ll be nothing but trouble.”
I groaned. Knowing my luck—and theirs—they probably would.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Before this book had a title, I referred to it simply as “love book,” because it was written for the sheer love of storytelling, and I owe an incredible debt to those who helped bring it into print. At the top of that list are my agent, Elizabeth Harding, who believed in this book from day one, and my editor, Regina Griffin, whose editorial input and passion for this project both challenged and thrilled me. I’m also thankful to the rest of my Egmont and Curtis Brown families—Mary Albi, Elizabeth Law, Alison Weiss, Nico Medina, Greg Ferguson, Rob Guzman, Doug Pocock, Holly Frederick, Dave Barbor, and Ginger Clark.
The single biggest blessing in my life as a writer has been the incredible and constant support of my writing friends, who really are my people (or, to put things in werewolf terminology, my pack). Melissa Marr, Ally Carter, and Sarah Cross keep me sane and make me smile, and I’m also grateful to Team Castle, for recharging my writerly batteries when I needed it most, and Bob, who’s always there for a late-night email.