Raised by Wolves(86)

Lake breathed out a happy sigh as she approached the row filled with guns. “Matilda was my first, but, ladies, you know how to make a girl want to stray,” she said.

“Lake, could you please stop sweet-talking the weapons? It’s kind of freaking me out.”

This room didn’t look like the cautious work of a dad who was afraid that someone might get a little fresh with his teenage daughter. It looked like the work of a man preparing for a brutal and inevitable war.

Lake stuck her bottom lip out in a pout at my reproach but then shifted into business mode. “Silver bullets are in the chest on your right,” she said. Then she paused, picked up a container full of some kind of arrows, and poured them on the ground. “Fill this up. Grab a dozen or so silver arrows, too. I’ll take care of the crossbows and guns.”

While I followed her instructions and started stocking up on ammunition, Lake hauled a large, empty duffel bag off one of the shelves and began throwing in the big guns. Literally.

And some small guns.

Three crossbows.

“Lake, you do know that there are only three of us, right?”

She snorted. “All of this is just for me. I’m getting to you. Callum taught you how to shoot on a nine millimeter, right?”

I nodded.

She threw several more guns into the bag, moving so quickly that her choices should have seemed haphazard but didn’t.

“Is this good?” I asked Lake, after I’d pulled several boxes of handmade silver bullets out of the cabinet and gathered a few of the arrows off the floor.

“Yup. You prefer a crossbow, a longbow, or old school?” Lake asked me.

“I’m better with knives,” I said.

Lake nodded, and then she looked at me very closely and said, “Stand up.”

I did.

“You’ve got two on you right now, correct?”

I nodded, not bothering to ask how she could tell. “I don’t go anywhere without them.”

“You’ll be better with your own than you are with mine, but I’ll bring a few extras, for throwing. First, though …” She trailed off, thoughtful. “How tall are you?”

“Five-six.”

“You’re a couple of inches shorter than me,” Lake said, “but you’ve got pretty long arms, so …”

I had no idea where this was going, until Lake walked over to the workbench and picked up two metal wrist guards about the length and width of my forearms, but thin. “Let me put these on you,” she said. I complied. The metal was much lighter on my wrists than it should have been.

“Can you lift your arms?” she asked me.

I nodded.

“Can you fight?”

She didn’t give me a chance to answer the question—she just attacked me. In a room full of enough firepower to blow the whole reservation to kingdom come.

I managed to dodge her blows and get in one of my own. The weight of the wrist guards didn’t slow me down, but I couldn’t put the same kind of force behind my blows.

“With these, you won’t need to,” Lake said. “My dad made them for me. Just in case. Take a step back and then twist your wrists sideways, hard.” She demonstrated and, mystified, I obeyed. Four long, thin silver blades popped out of each of the wrist guards.

“If you’re fighting something with claws, you might as well have some of your own,” she said.

I stared at them and then began to experimentally move my wrists. “Your dad a big fan of the X-Men?” I asked.

Lake shrugged. “Worse comes to worst, he wanted to give me an edge.”

“You couldn’t Shift with these on,” I told Lake.

Lake arched an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t need to. Land one or two good hits to a Were with these, and you’ve bought yourself some exit time.”

Mitch had said that he didn’t know many werewolves who were even half as fast as Lake. If she took them off guard in her human form, they might not be able to catch up to her as a wolf.

“Twist your wrists the other way, and the claws will retract. Now, let me throw in some explosives and we’ll be good to go.”

As Lake added the finishing touches to our artillery and slung the duffel bag over her shoulder, I picked up the box I’d loaded up with ammo. “You okay?” I asked her.

Lake snorted. “Do I look not okay to you?”

She didn’t look the way she had the other night, as we’d lain in my bed, listening to foreign alphas passing through.

“You look fine.”

“I am fine.”

I nodded. There would be plenty of time for me to play werewolf Dr. Phil later. Right now, Lake and I needed a ride. Preferably one with GPS. “Ready to commit a felony?” I asked her.