Trial by fire(4)

“So noted, Mr. Mitchell.”

The smile finally won out over his scowl, but it lasted only a second or two before Mitch eyed the space (or lack thereof) between my body and Chase’s. “Last I heard, Ali was on her way here with the twins,” he said, which I took as a not-so-subtle hint that Chase and I should give each other some breathing room. Chase must have interpreted it the same way, because he stepped back—away from me and away from Mitch, who delivered the rest of his update with a nod. “Lake and Maddy are rounding up the troops, and I believe Devon said something about making an entrance.”

I was fairly certain that I was the only alpha in the history of the world to have a second-in-command who appreciated the impact of arriving fashionably late. Then again, I was also the only alpha with as many females in her pack as males and more toddlers and tweens than grown men.

Besides, it wasn’t like the whole human thing was status quo.

“Bryn!” The unmistakable sound of a very small person bellowing ripped me from my thoughts, and I smiled. There was nothing quite like hearing my name yelled at the top of a three-year-old’s lungs—unless it was having the aforementioned three-year-old barrel into me full blast and throw her arms around my legs like she was afraid that if she let go, I’d disappear off the face of the earth forever.

“Hello, Lily,” I said wryly. The kid acted like she hadn’t seen me in a lifetime or two, even though it had only been an hour, if that.

Moon! Happy! Fun!

With the older wolves, I had to go looking for thoughts, unless someone was using the pack-bond to actively send them my way, but with Lily, everything was right there on the surface, bubbling up the way only the strongest emotions did in adults.

Alpha-alpha-alpha! Bryn-Bryn-Bryn!

The two words—alpha and Bryn—blended together in her mind. As the youngest of the kids I’d saved from the werewolf equivalent of a psychopath, Lily was one of the only ones who couldn’t remember the time before our pack, or the things that the Rabid had done to her, to all of them.

In Lily’s mind, Bryn meant alpha, and alpha meant Bryn. It was as simple as that.

“Can we Change yet?” Lily asked. “Can we, can we, can we?”

Not yet, Lily, I answered silently, and she stilled, mesmerized by a power I’d never asked to hold over anyone.

“Lily, I told you to wait.” The voice that issued that statement was aggrieved, and the look on its owner’s face was one I recognized all too well from my own childhood.

Come to think of it, it was a look I recognized all too well from about a week ago, two tops.

“Hey, Ali,” I said, glad that Chase and I had heeded Mitch’s warning and put a little space between my body and his.

“Hey, baby,” Ali replied, a twin on each hip. “Everyone’s been fed, but I make no guarantees about their state of mind.”

For most of my life, it had been just Ali and me, but she’d taken to managing an entire brood with the same efficiency with which she’d once transformed herself from a twenty-year-old college student into my protector within Callum’s pack. Ali was human, but the words force of nature still applied, and I would infinitely rather have tangled with an irritated werewolf than Ali in mama bear mode.

“Now?” Lily asked, right on cue with Ali’s disclaimer about the younger werewolves’ state of mind. “Now-now-now?”

“Shhhh,” I said, and Lily closed her mouth and laid her head against my knee.

“You know, Bryn,” Ali said thoughtfully, “if Lily minded me half as well as she minds you, I wouldn’t be considering renaming her Bryn Two.”

“Ha-ha,” I retorted. “Very funny.”

Ali smiled. “I try.” She looked toward Mitch, and without saying a word, he walked over and took Katie and Alex from her arms. Not even a year old, Ali’s babies already looked more like toddlers, and in identical motions, their hands found their way almost immediately to Mitch’s beard.

He smiled. “I’ve got them,” he told Ali, and she nodded before kissing the twins and turning to walk back out of the woods. Ali never stayed to run with the pack.

As far as I knew, she never had.

Now, Bryn? Now?

Lily refrained from asking the question out loud, but I heard it through the pack-bond all the same, and this time, the answer—soon, soon, soon—seemed to come from outside my body, from instincts I couldn’t have explained to the human world. Lily seemed to feel it, too, and a keening, whimpering sound built in the back of her throat. I ran a hand gently over her bright red hair and she began rocking back and forth on her feet. Within moments, the others had arrived, filling the clearing, and the effect was magnified a hundred times.