After a little bit of wheedling and looking pathetic, I managed to convince Ali that she didn’t need to worry and that all I needed was the solitude and quiet to sleep off the flu, so—with a trash can beside my bed and the evidence/oatmeal hidden away from prying eyes—I bought myself a ticket to slumber land. Or, more precisely, to Chase.
I told myself that it would be simple, that I’d just slip into his mind the way I had on numerous other occasions. I’d done it without even meaning to when I was unconscious; we’d done it in our dreams. But even as I tried to convince myself that this was nothing, a traitorous part of my brain whispered that the second I came within a hundred yards of this meeting, Callum would know—not because of his knack or because he was alpha, but because staying away had been one of the conditions he’d laid down. Long before I’d had any reason to want to attend this meeting, Callum had forbidden me from going. He might as well have dared me to be there.
He had to have known that.
As I lay back, my eyes on the ceiling, I wondered if double jeopardy applied in Pack Law. I’d already broken my permissions. What more could they do?
“Deep breaths,” I muttered, willing my heart to quit bludgeoning my chest from the inside out. “You’re going to be fine.”
What would they do to Chase if they caught us? What would they do to me?
For a moment, I considered backing out, but like a neon sign, the image of a pigtailed little girl lit up in my mind. Madison.
This wasn’t just about me anymore, and it wasn’t just about Chase and the way the Rabid stalked him through the night, refusing to let him forget even for a second who had the power and who’d been left gutted on the pavement.
This stopped now. The attacks. The aftermath. The victims. It had to stop, and the alphas would take care of it. Once I heard it from their own mouths, maybe the ever-present roar in my gut—kill the Rabid, save them, fight, protect—might dissipate and die, and I could go back to being the girl who loved playing in other people’s trash and didn’t care much for dominance hierarchies and inter-pack relations.
Maybe I could go back to being Bryn.
“I’m calming down. I’m breathing. I’m ready.”
My body rebelled against those orders, but I ignored it, closed my eyes, and let myself be pulled into thoughts of Chase.
Dark hair. Blue eyes. Lopsided grin.
Chase.
He had a small, sinewy scar that pulled at one edge of his mouth. He appreciated rooms that locked from the inside and despised being caged. He moved like flowing lava. He thought he loved me, even though I could count on one hand the number of times we’d actually met.
Chase.
My body relaxed. My heartbeat slowed until I could only imagine the low, soothing whoosh of blood through my veins. Chase’s scent enveloped me, and as I breathed it in and out and felt his presence all around me, I lost myself to the pull of his psyche at the edges of mine. Like a sand castle at high tide, I broke, dissolved, and drifted slowly away.
“They want to see you.”
As my mind settled into Chase’s, and we became Chase-Wolf-Bryn, the senses we shared flared to life. Smell came first, the way it always did, and I recognized the person speaking to Chase because underneath the familiar scent of Stone River, he smelled angry. Not the fresh rush of adrenaline that came with fury, but the rotting irritation of bitterness as it decomposed.
Marcus.
If he’d found my adoption galling, the fact that the entire Senate wanted to see Chase, who hadn’t even been born a Were, must have chafed, too.
Senate? Us? Now?
On one level, I was aware that this was why I’d come here, but going to the meeting hadn’t been part of the plan. We were supposed to eavesdrop. We weren’t supposed to venture into Alpha Central ourselves. My thoughts blended into Chase’s, my questions into his.
Why did the Senate want to see Us?
Deeper in Chase’s mind, his wolf was anxious, antsy about going into a room filled with Others. Wolves who weren’t Pack. People he didn’t trust.
We have to go, I thought, even though, like the wolf, I didn’t want to. Chase nodded to Marcus, not bothering to conceal his dislike of a man who’d always hated me. If I’d been in my own body, I might have made a comment specifically designed to press werewolf buttons, but instead, I let Chase’s thoughts guide mine. We were about to walk willingly into the wolf’s den. Literally. We couldn’t afford a divided front at a time like this.
Chase pushed forward, and as we neared Callum’s house, his fists clenched. From the depths of his mind, I tried to prepare him for the rush of power that slammed into Our body the moment we crossed the threshold of Callum’s door. Each alpha in this room carried with him the weight of an entire pack, and it nearly brought Us low. These men played at being human, sitting around a table in Callum’s living room, but the air between them was so saturated with primal instincts that Chase almost couldn’t breathe.