Trial by fire(68)

“Do you actually think I’m going to agree to let you and the little foot soldiers you’ve got peppered up and down my border cross over into Cedar Ridge territory?”

He had to be actually, clinically insane.

“Of course not,” Shay replied smoothly. “If you read the email I sent, you’ll see that I only requested passage for myself and one guard to assess the situation with the Snake Bend wolf you’re currently holding at your compound.”

He made it sound like I was keeping Lucas hostage.

“I think you’ll find that the other alphas consider my request to be quite reasonable. A few of them may have even chimed in to say as much. You’ve had the boy for days. Whatever justice you were going to impart on the trespassing matter should have been carried out immediately. Indecision,” he said, savoring the word, “is a sign of weakness.”

“Cut the crap, Shay,” I said, only I didn’t use the word crap, and I didn’t call him Shay. There were so many other names that seemed more appropriate. “You don’t want Lucas.”

I could practically hear him smiling on the other end of the line. “Do you?”

He’d backed me into a corner, and now he was dangling a carrot just out of reach. I recognized the tactic. There was only one person at the top of a werewolf pack—good cop, bad cop all rolled into one.

“Are you saying you’d consider cutting ties with Lucas?” I couldn’t keep myself from asking the question. Before I’d gotten bogged down in psychics and conspiracies, getting Shay to relinquish his claim on Lucas had been the goal. I hadn’t been within a hundred yards of Lucas for almost forty-eight hours, but I could still see him kneeling on that bed, baring his scars.

I could hear him telling me that if I couldn’t help him, he wanted to die.

“I’m willing to entertain the idea,” Shay replied, “if you’ll give me a little something in return.”

“I’m not giving you any of my wolves.”

“Pity,” Shay said. “I do think the boy actually believed you could save him, that you cared.”

I didn’t rise to the bait, but knowing he was doing it on purpose didn’t take the sting out of his words. I wanted to help Lucas, and I couldn’t. If a loophole existed, I hadn’t found it.

I’d lost.

“I also hear you’ve got yourself into a sticky situation with a coven of psychics.” Shay reverted back to bad-cop form. “If you could be persuaded to part with one or two of your little ones, I might be able to help you with that, too.”

“The answer is no.”

“No, you won’t consider my offer, or no, you really don’t care about the safety and longevity of your pack?”

I hated Shay—hated him more than I’d thought I could hate anyone.

“I will not, under any circumstances, give you any of my wolves.” My voice echoed with more than my sixteen years of experience, and I wondered if this was what it felt like to issue a decree as an alpha, the kind of promise I couldn’t have broken even if I’d wanted to.

“Well, if you’re not open to the idea of a trade, perhaps you’d prefer a wager?”

I would have preferred Shay be abducted by aliens and vaporized at the molecular level—but if Shay was telling the truth, if the other alphas were backing his request for entry into my territory, I couldn’t imagine that they’d react well to my holding Lucas much longer.

Across the room, Chase met my eyes, and I didn’t need the pack-bond to know what he was thinking.

Sometimes, at the end of the day, you had to take care of yourself.

“No wager?” Shay said, and I tore my eyes away from Chase’s. “In that case, bring Lucas to the border—unless you’d prefer to give me your permission to come collect him myself. There’s a thing or two I’d like to say to the boy, and I believe the psychics want a word as well.”

While Shay blathered on, I used the bond to ask Devon to check my email. Dev confirmed everything Shay had told me and informed me that in the time that Shay and I had been talking, another alpha had replied, asking that I either permit Shay access to my territory or send Lucas back to Shay.

That might not have sucker punched me the way it did but for the fact that the alpha was Callum.

Time was running out. I had to make a decision, but the only thing I could think about was Callum, teaching me how to throw a knife. Callum, running a hand over my hair. Callum, trading away a portion of his territory to save Marcus, who hadn’t deserved it.

I knew then that I couldn’t do the safe thing. I couldn’t hang Lucas out to dry, not if there was a chance—even a small one—that I could save him without endangering the rest of my pack.