Jed had warned me that Valerie might call an end to the armistice, repay my visit with one of her own now that she had a better idea of what I could do. Now, Shay seemed to be promising that Jed’s words would prove true.
“You have hours.” Shay began walking backward toward the door, each footstep falling like a gavel. “At most, you have a day. If and when you come to your senses, say the word, and the Snake Bend Pack would be more than willing to cross into your territory and fight on your side.”
Fight on our side? He was the one who’d set them on us. Maybe if I hadn’t realized that, I would have taken his offer as mercurial, but given everything I knew, it seemed absurd.
“You’re offering to fight on our side?” I asked. “Couldn’t you just tell them to back down?”
Shay smiled. “Invite us into your territory,” he said, “and I will.”
Every time I thought I had Shay’s strategy figured out, I peeled back a layer of his machinations and found another one underneath.
He’d sent Lucas here so he’d have a reason to come to my territory. He’d made a play for Lake, and just in case that failed, he’d lined his pack up along our borders and sent the coven after me so that I’d have reason to invite his people in.
“The answer,” I said, the words working their way up from the pit of my stomach, uncompromising and sure, “is no.”
Backing me into a corner was a mistake, and someday, Shay would pay for it. Maybe not today, but eventually he’d regret every trap he’d laid for me and mine. I took a step toward him, this foreign alpha who didn’t belong here, and the rest of my pack moved in tandem, all eyes on Shay as we closed in.
He didn’t have my permission to be here any longer, and I wasn’t asking him for help.
Not surprisingly, given Shay’s pedigree, he didn’t flinch. He didn’t blink. He didn’t even shrug. Instead, he lowered his voice to a whisper that crawled up my spine. “Funny, isn’t it?” he said. “You’re in danger, I’m here, and Callum’s not.”
The statement hung in the air, and without another word, Shay Shifted effortlessly into wolf form, and in a blur of timber-colored fur—his markings a perfect match for Devon’s—he was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I KNEW BETTER THAN TO LET SHAY GET UNDER MY skin, but still, his parting shot hit me hard. I’d almost lost Lake—and Dev. I’d been threatened and burned, and another alpha was circling my territory, just waiting for an opportunity to swoop in.
There was a good chance the psychics were planning an attack.
And where was Callum?
Not here. He hadn’t even taken my phone call.
“If the psychics are planning to attack, we need to set up a defense.” I looked at the others, one after another: the peripherals, Lucas, my inner guard. “Able-bodied fighters need to be ready to fight. Earplugs are a must. Dev, tell Ali to get the younger kids together. They’re going on a field trip. Lake?”
Leaning back against the pool table, Lake preempted my next request. “Weapons?” she asked, all business.
“Anything that will help us secure the perimeter. I’m thinking some strategically placed explosives wouldn’t hurt.”
Some people lived for the phrase strategically placed explosives. Lake was one of those people.
“On it.”
I turned to Chase. “Help Maddy with Lucas,” I said.
Lucas’s bones were probably already healing, but he still hadn’t picked himself up off the floor. I couldn’t be sure how much damage Shay had done when he’d pulled out of Lucas’s head, so despite being free to claim him, I held back, uncertain if Lucas could take that kind of mental assault at the moment.
Besides, I had bigger fish to fry.
“Meet back here in half an hour,” I said. Just enough time for the others to finish their jobs and for me to get on with mine.
I didn’t know the coven’s plan of attack. I didn’t know the extent of their knacks. I didn’t know their weaknesses, or if killing Valerie would remove the emotional suggestions she’d planted.
But I knew somebody who probably did.
Callum might not have been omniscient. He might have seen the future as a complicated web, with possibilities branching out like leaves on a thousand-year-old tree. He might have been limited by distance, but chances were good that he’d know something.
More than I knew, at least.
Now that Shay was technically out of the picture, Callum’s sharing what he knew couldn’t be considered a political alliance. The coven wasn’t a part of our world, their safety wasn’t a Senate concern.