Taken by storm(2)

Chase was gone. Not for good. Not even for the night. He was checking in on the peripherals, the members of the pack who’d chosen to live at the edges of our territory instead of at the center. As much as Chase hated leaving me—leaving what we had together—I knew there was a part of him that felt the distance as a relief. He wasn’t wired for pack living the way I was.

He was used to being on his own.

“Penny for your thoughts.” Jed’s voice was as gruff as always, but there was something about the set of his features—old and worn and wrinkled—that made me think he was being generous with his offer, that he didn’t need to pay a fictional penny for my thoughts when he understood why I’d been running fast and hard enough that I’d come close to throwing up.

“Things have been quiet,” I said finally, answering Jed’s question carefully. “They won’t always be quiet.”

And there it was. The reason I couldn’t just sit back on my haunches. There was a threat out there, and every day was like waiting for the guillotine to fall. I had to be ready. I had to do something. The rest of the pack trusted me to be prepared. They trusted me to make the right decisions, even when there wasn’t a right decision to be had.

They trusted me to lead, but I didn’t trust myself.

Sure, I’d make the decisions, I’d do whatever I could to make them safe, but at the end of the day, I was human. I was slower, weaker, more fragile—and if the previous year’s events had taught me anything, it was that to protect my pack, I might need to be something else.

Since I hadn’t heard word one from the werewolf who’d promised to Change me into one myself, that left only one option. I had a psychic knack. I had power. I just didn’t know how to use it.

Yet.

“Seems to me, a girl like you could think of better uses for quiet time than running around and getting her feet all cut up.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but Jed preempted the words.

“Seems to me, you could have asked someone.”

“For help,” I clarified, since Jed was a man of few words. “Asked someone for help.”

There were days when I relied on the rest of the pack as much as they relied on me, and days when the concept of help seemed as foreign as the idea that most girls my age were just starting to look at colleges. Being an alpha was impossible and lonely and bigger than anything my human half might have wanted.

“I don’t need help,” I said softly, willing that to be true.

Jed rolled his eyes heavenward. “I’m not suggesting you go belly-up and ask your Weres for pointers,” he said. “I’d wager the ability works differently once there’s another set of animal instincts at play.”

Like Jed and me, many of the wolves in my pack were Resilient. At one point in time, they’d been human.

Just like I was.

Just like I wouldn’t be anymore, once Callum made good on his promise to Change me.

In the distance, I heard a rumble of thunder. Looking up, I noticed the blue sky turning a dark and ominous gray.

“How’d you know it was going to rain?” I asked Jed.

He snorted. “I’ve broken just about every bone in my body at one point or another, Bryn. I can feel a storm coming from a mile away.”

Jed’s body was covered in scars. I’d gotten so used to seeing them that I barely noticed anymore, but his words reminded me he’d had a lifetime of experience coming out on top of fights he had no business winning.

If anyone understood that a few scratches were a small price to pay for what I was seeking, it was Jed.

“You’ll help me?”

Jed nodded, gazing out at the horizon, looking oddly at peace as it started to rain. “I’ll help you,” he said. “But we’ll do it my way.”

I was going to go out on a limb and guess that his way did not involve putting myself through hell in hopes of convincing my body I was under attack.

“Fine by me.”

Jed gave me a look that said he thought I was constitutionally incapable of doing things any way but my own. Once upon a time, that might have been true, but now I’d do whatever it took to keep my pack safe. To be the kind of alpha they deserved and make sure that what had happened last winter never, ever happened again.

With nothing more than a nod in my direction, Jed began walking back toward shelter, but I just sat there, letting the rain beat against my body and thinking about a broken boy with hungry eyes.

A boy I’d invited into my pack.

A boy who’d tried to kill me.

A boy I’d killed.

Bone-tired and sopping wet, I went home.





CHAPTER TWO





THE CLOSER I GOT TO THE WAYFARER, THE MORE aware I was of the rest of the pack, and the more aware they were of me. Being alpha meant that the others didn’t have an all-access pass to my mind, the way I did to theirs, but even without the benefits of the pack-bond, my friends knew me well enough to know that a quiet Bryn meant Trouble with a capital T.