Taken by storm(6)

But I trusted that he wouldn’t have come here without a reason—a good one.

Knowing that, my mind jumped immediately to the promise he’d made me, the unthinkable thing I’d asked him to do—Teeth snapping. Muscles tearing. Skin and tendons and gristle. Minced, like meat—I couldn’t stop picturing what it would be like to be attacked by a Were, couldn’t keep from seeing the people I’d once called Mommy and Daddy reduced to carnage.

But there was no turning back now.

Callum had told me he would Change me. He’d made me wait. And now he was here. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to do the math.

“Tomorrow morning,” Callum said, his voice breaking into my thoughts, “Shay Macalister is going to call a meeting of the Senate.”

That wasn’t what I’d expected him to say. In retrospect, math had never been my strong suit.

“Since Shay is the one calling the meeting, the rest of the alphas will be expected to go to him.”

As far as I knew, the Senate normally met in Callum’s territory, at Callum’s house.

Callum shrugged in response to my unasked question. “Normally,” he said, “I’m the one who calls the meetings.”

Most of the other alphas probably would have been happy to stay in their own territories and forget that Callum existed altogether. For that matter, they’d probably have been happy if I didn’t exist. The last time I’d been in a room with the entire Senate was the day I became an alpha myself. None of them—save for Callum—had seen it coming. None of them had been pleased.

More than one alpha would have enjoyed bathing in my blood.

“The Senate is meeting,” I said slowly, “and I have to go.”

I was an alpha. The Senate was composed of the alphas of all of the North American packs. Eleven dominant werewolves and me. In one room.

This could not possibly be good.

“What does Shay want?” I asked. Beside me, Devon stiffened at the mere mention of his brother’s name.

“Shay wants what Shay always wants,” Callum replied calmly, his voice washing over us, understated and warm. “Trouble. Power. Females. Take your pick.”

“So this is a power play?” I asked. “Shay’s calling the Senate just because he can?”

I could tell by the look on Callum’s face that the answer to that question was no. Shay had a reason for calling the Senate—but Callum wasn’t sure I was ready to hear it.

“Tell me.”

Callum’s lips quirked upward at my no-nonsense tone, more like his than either one of us would have cared to admit. After another long pause, he answered my question. “Whatever Shay’s going to tell us at this meeting, there are bodies involved. Human bodies.”

Those words hit me like a physical blow. Callum must have known the effect this would have on me, the memories his words would drudge up.

Human lives would never be mere collateral damage to me, but the last time the Senate had met, they’d voted to make a deal with the psychopathic werewolf who’d killed my parents, a monster who had been hunting and killing human children—and Changing Resilient ones into werewolves—for years. If Shay was concerned about a few dead bodies, it wasn’t because he recognized a value to human life. It was because the Senate’s highest priority was keeping the human world from finding out that werewolves existed.

That was the reason werewolves didn’t attack humans.

That was the reason a Were who hunted without authorization was normally executed, no questions asked.

I met Callum’s eyes, and this time, neither one of us looked away. I knew then what he wasn’t saying, why he’d risked trespassing on my territory to give me warning that Shay was about to call.

“It’s happening again,” I said, my mind going back to the last time, to a werewolf who hunted humans and the things that he had done to my family, to the kids in my pack, to Chase, and to me. “Shay isn’t calling the Senate as some kind of power play.” The words stuck in my throat, but I pushed them out. “He’s calling this meeting because there’s a Rabid.”





CHAPTER FOUR





HOURS LATER, WHEN I CREPT INTO THE BATHROOM and shut the door behind me, a sense of overwhelming relief flooded my body. Around the others—around Callum—I had to be strong. Showing weakness to a member of another pack was not an option, and I couldn’t afford to let my feelings about this development infect the rest of my own pack, either. Devon would be accompanying me to the Senate meeting as my second-in-command. Coming face-to-face with Shay, knowing his brother wanted me dead—that would be hard enough for Dev. He didn’t need my emotional baggage making it any worse.