Taken by storm(28)

She wasn’t thinking about the pack.

“You killed Lucas.” Ali didn’t sugarcoat it. She didn’t hedge. “Just like I killed my mother before she could kill you.” The weight of the things we’d done hung in the air between us. “It happened, it’s done, and I’m not sorry that either one of us is alive. You can regret a lot of things, Bryn, but don’t you ever feel sorry for that.”

“Never,” Katie chirped, like this was all a game—because at her age, everything was. “Never ever ever ever!”

So much for crying over spilled milk.

“Everybody decent?” Lake yelled those words from the front porch, and that was the only warning we got before she let herself in.

“Morning, Lake.” Ali gestured toward the kitchen table, but Lake shook her head.

“I already ate. Twice. I just stopped by because I was packing and I thought I’d see if there was anything Bryn wanted me to bring.”

When most girls said the word packing, they meant clothes. When Lake said packing, she meant heat.

“Fix me up with one of everything,” I told her. “And make it silver.”

Lake nodded. At any other time, weapons talk would have made her downright giddy, but this wasn’t just any Rabid we were hunting.

There was a chance—maybe even a good one—that this was a friend.

“We’ll need restraints,” I said, thinking out loud. “And something to knock her out with if she’s …”

If she’s out of control?

If she’s a monster?

If she’s insane?

Across the table, Alex peered curiously up at me.

“If she’s sleepy,” I said.

Lake glanced at the twins and nodded. “If she’s sleepy,” she repeated, “I reckon a Taser or two might help her nap.”

Neither Katie nor Alex wanted anything to do with a conversation about naps. Ali set Katie back down, and the twins began babbling to each other, in words I couldn’t make out or understand. They had their own language, their own gestures, their own little twin world that, even as their alpha, I could never truly enter. The older they got, the more intense that connection was. If I reached out for her mind, I felt his. If I reached out for his, I felt hers.

Beside me, Lake paused in the middle of a sentence in which she was referring to a tranq gun as a pillow. She trailed off, her gaze caught on the twins. Alex reached out and grabbed Katie’s fist.

Griffin.

I didn’t go looking for the thought through the bond, and Lake didn’t send it to me, but in that moment, she was thinking her brother’s name so intensely that I couldn’t help overhearing.

Natural-born females, like Katie and Lake, were so rare because a cruel genetic quirk ensured that female werewolf pups were only carried to term if they were half of a set of twins. It had never occurred to me before that seeing Katie and Alex like this might be hard for Lake, whose own twin had died when we were only a few years older than my siblings were now.

I could barely remember the way Griffin looked and was suddenly struck by the realization that Lake would never forget. That what Katie and Alex had now was something Lake and Griffin had once. Something they wouldn’t ever have again. I reached out for Lake’s mind and felt the ache, the emptiness, the space inside of her where her brother should have been.

How could I have missed this? She might as well have been missing a limb, and I’d never seen it, never noticed.

Stay out of my head, Bryn. Lake’s voice was shaky in my mind, but I retreated, giving her space.

“So,” I said, “about those pillows …”

After a few more minutes of thinly veiled conversation, Lake went off to see about the weapons—and to get away from me. I hadn’t meant to go nosing around in her head.

Just like I hadn’t meant to send Maddy out into the big bad world to deal with a black hole of emotion alone.

Not wanting to prod Ali into another pep talk, I stood up from the table, restless and aching with everything I couldn’t afford to let myself feel.

“We need to leave within the hour,” I told Ali. “I’m going to check on Chase and Jed.”

That much, I should be able to handle.

That much, I could do.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN





“SIT DOWN.”

Checking on Jed wasn’t exactly going as planned. He was already up when I got there, already packed, and waiting for me when I showed up at the cabin he and Caroline shared. The Deadliest Little Psychic was nowhere to be seen, and Jed seemed to be under the impression that now was as good a time as any for lesson two.

“Jed, I don’t think—”

He didn’t let me finish that sentence. “Once upon a time, that might have been true, but I’d say that these days you’re doing plenty of thinking. Not thinking doesn’t keep a person up at night.”