This was why I had dealt Lake in. She had no inhibition, no sense of propriety, and she was fearless. Pack or not, she wouldn’t shy away from pressing Callum’s buttons. Growing up removed from Ark Valley had given her the luxury of following her own will more than the alpha’s, and right now, Callum’s privacy and hallowed judgment didn’t command her respect nearly as well as my need to make sure that this Rabid was put down.
“If Callum’s not going to kill the Rabid, I will.” I said those words out loud for the first time and knew that it wasn’t a bluff. It wasn’t me blustering or running off at the mouth without thinking. It wasn’t foolishness, and it didn’t matter that I was human and the Rabid was not.
He’d messed with what was mine. He’d killed my family. He’d hurt Chase. And the only way to get him out of Chase’s head forever was to see him dead.
I told Lake as much, and she didn’t even blink. She didn’t ask me how exactly one human girl was going to take down a Rabid that had been evading our entire pack for over a decade. She just took me at my word and moved on to the next order of business.
“What do you need me to do?”
I looked out at the water, working my way through the situation, taking into account everything I knew about Lake, the Wayfarer, and her brand of persuasion. I thought of the human bartender, with her talk-to-me face and eyes that didn’t look like they missed much, and I thought about the kind of clientele that a place run by a peripheral male would naturally attract.
Wolves weren’t solitary creatures. Where there was one werewolf, sooner or later, there were more, and Mitch and Lake weren’t our pack’s only peripherals.
“I think I need you to talk to the bartender,” I said, turning the idea slowly over in my mind. If any of Callum’s other wolves had been here, the bartender would know, and if she’d gotten them drunk enough, they might have talked. Lake didn’t ask for the rationale behind my request. She just stood up and made her way back to the restaurant, because she knew as well as I did that any good plan started with recon.
It wasn’t until Lake and I were sitting on stools in front of the bar that I thought to wonder how exactly a human female had ended up working for Lake’s dad. Looking for answers, I closed my eyes and let my senses take over. The woman in question smelled like Walmart soap and evergreen trees. She bore no Marks and had no connection to the pack. Not to Stone River, and not to any of the others. She wasn’t on edge and there wasn’t the slightest whiff of fear in the air around her. From somewhere behind us, I heard a rustle, and my fingers curled reflexively into fists.
Wolf.
And not one of ours, either.
“Easy, girl,” Lake said, even though I got the feeling that the intruder’s presence sent her hackles up, same way it did mine. “This here’s neutral territory. We welcome all types.”
Technically speaking, this wasn’t neutral territory, and it wasn’t Lake’s. Montana was Stone River territory. It belonged to Callum, and the wolf behind us did not.
“He’s a peripheral,” Lake told me. “One of Shay’s.”
I hadn’t had much practice identifying other packs by smell, but I recognized the name. Shay was the youngest alpha in North America. He’d challenged the former leader of the Snake Bend Pack around the turn of the century and won. Like Devon, Shay was a purebred Were, and Sora was his mother, too. Technically, that made him Devon’s half-brother, but since neither of us particularly cared for him, we didn’t think of him that way. Shay had broken all ties with his family—and Callum—long before either Devon or I were born.
“Your dad lets Shay’s wolves eat here?” I asked. It was unfathomable.
“Only the peripherals, and only the ones that can mind their manners,” Lake said. “It doesn’t hurt to have friends.”
I tried to see the sense in that, however much my instincts were telling me it was wrong-wrong-wrong. I’d thought that the Wayfarer was a resting point for Stone River peripherals, but given the host of smells in the air, its clientele was far more eclectic than I’d given it credit for.
All the more reason to talk to the bartender and find out what she knew.
“I’m Bryn.” I opened my eyes again and met hers, and if she noticed that I’d been smelling her, she didn’t comment on it.
“Keely.” For a long moment that was all she said, and then she turned and narrowed her eyes at Lake. “You up to something?”
Lake’s lips worked their way into an easy grin. “Always. You heard anything about a Rabid?”