Trial by fire(88)

The same parents.

Shay killed Caroline’s dad.

That truth was like a splash of cold water in my face. Jed had told me that Valerie had taken to leading the coven a little too easily, a little too well. She’d never shown the hatred for werewolves that she’d instilled in the others. She was the type of person who could throw her own daughter away.

It wasn’t a stretch to think that she could have orchestrated the death of her husband.

I’d wondered about the terms of the deal Valerie had made with Shay, and now they were inescapably clear. She hadn’t attacked us to curry favor with Shay; she’d been paying off a debt—an old one.

Turning this over in my mind, I looked at Caroline—really looked at her—and wondered if she’d connected those dots.

Probably best not to ask, Bryn, Devon said quietly. She doesn’t talk about it, but she’s dealing.

She. As in Caroline. Ali’s sister, the self-proclaimed hunter of werewolves.

“Eric’s dead,” I said, unable to forgive her that, even if she hadn’t been fully in control of her own mind, even if she’d resisted the urge to shoot to kill. “She shot him, and now he’s dead.”

Devon fell into a standstill, the expression on his face 100 percent wolf.

I know, he said silently, the words echoing through the pack-bond between us like a cry of mourning, a song for the dead. I know. I know. I know.

“I was supposed to protect him,” I said softly.

Dev nodded, accepting my words. “I wasn’t even there.”

I felt the weight of that. So did he. It would have been so much easier to put it all off on someone else—say, for instance, the person who’d put a bullet through Eric’s leg.

Caroline didn’t feel like a threat to me, not anymore, but I didn’t want to see the tear tracks on her face.

I wanted her gone.

She’s Ali’s sister, Bryn. Her mother is dead. Devon’s words inside my head were like a gentle nudge with a massive wet nose. You do the math.

I didn’t want to do the math.

“I want to see Chase,” I said, clinging to that instead. His presence on the other end of the pack-bond was muted, but it was there. He was weak, but he was healing.

He was alive. Impossibly, undeniably, wonderfully alive.

“We had to move him to the far side of the property.” Dev held up a hand and wiggled his fingers, holding off my protest. “Nuh-uh-uh,” he said. “You don’t get to complain about this. The closer he was to you, the faster he healed, but neither one of you was waking up. You shouldn’t have been out more than a couple of hours, but whatever it is you all can do, however that pesky little knack of yours works—yours was doing the work for him.”

I thought of the dreamworld, where Chase and I had lain side by side. I thought of the walls between us melting away and the things I would have given—everything—to make him okay. Chase was Resilient. So was I. We’d shared dreams often enough that I didn’t question the idea that we’d done it again, and it seemed right that after everything he’d given up for me, I’d somehow funneled some of my strength to him.

I didn’t know how it worked or what it meant, but at that instant, I didn’t care.

“Chase was getting better. You weren’t.” Coming from Devon, that was clearly a condemnation of Chase. “You usually have more sense than that.”

Apparently, it was also a condemnation of me.

I gave Devon a look. “Did you actually just accuse me of normally having common sense?”

Dev finally cracked a smile. “Touché.”

I didn’t realize that Caroline had left the room until I looked for her and discovered her gone.

Good.

“I need to see Chase,” I said, allowing myself one moment of selfishness before the alpha in me reared its head, forcing me to amend the statement. “I need to see everyone.”

I needed them near me. I needed to touch them, to know that they were okay.

Injured or not, I needed to run.





CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT





WAITING FOR NIGHTFALL WAS TORTURE—WORSE than the searing ache in my left arm, worse than the itching underneath the gauze. Somehow, against all odds, my pack had survived this confrontation. Shay’s wolves were already pulling back from the border. The psychics—with the exception of Caroline and Jed, who had stayed for her sake—had dispersed. Aside from Chase, who was dealing with the aftereffects of being poisoned in more ways than one, and Mitch, who’d taken his share of hits—including a bullet—while defending Maddy and Lake, the pack was no worse for the wear, but like me, they felt the loss of one of our own keenly.