Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology (109 page)

Not to care.

Not to let it hurt this time.

Not to think about burying him again.

I staggered toward the border, turning my eyes and mind away from Lake, giving her what little privacy I could.

“Thank you,” I told Sora quietly, wondering if taking her twin’s heart had provoked in her some measure of what Lake was feeling now.

The bond between them had outlasted even death—and now he was gone. Really gone.

Sora inclined her head slightly, but didn’t otherwise acknowledge my thanks in any way. I waited for her to speak and wondered if there was something I was supposed to be saying.

Hallmark didn’t exactly make cards for occasions like this.

“You promised me,” Sora said finally, her voice dry and hoarse, “that when this was over, you would give Callum a chance to make things right.”

Apparently, the fact that she hadn’t died didn’t void that promise in her eyes, and that made me think—

“Make what right?”

There was another long silence.

“Make
what
right, Sora?”

She may not have been part of my pack, but I was an alpha, and that dominance was audible in every single syllable as it exited my mouth.

“Griff!” Lake’s voice broke into our standoff, and reluctantly, I tore my eyes from Sora’s in time to see Lake launch herself at newly reappeared Griffin. In a flurry of overly long limbs, her body collided with his, nearly bringing them both down. She wrapped her arms around his body and squeezed, hard enough to leave marks.

Anyone else’s hands would have passed through him, but not hers.

Never hers.

Griffin ran a hand through Lake’s hair and tweaked the end of her ponytail, a calming gesture and a familiar one. Then he pulled back. He untangled himself from Lake’s arms, extracted himself from her steely grip, and turned his attention to me—and by extension, to Sora.

“It’s Maddy,” he said.

The second I heard her name, my insides twisted—a portent of things to come.

“She’s in labor,” Griffin continued, sounding calmer than he looked. “I would have stayed with her, but I couldn’t. The baby—it made me—I felt it—I couldn’t be there.”

I nodded, like I understood, even though I didn’t. The only thing I was able to wrap my mind around was the fact that something was about to go down.

Something bigger than Maddy giving birth.

“Sora?” That was all I said—no elaboration, no pretense that what she was about to say might not rock me to my core. I waited for her to speak, feeling emptiness bubbling up inside of me instead of anger, exhaustion instead of fear.

I didn’t want to hate Devon’s mother again, didn’t want to look at her and see the bad things, instead of the good. She must not have wanted that, either, because she expelled a long breath and then started talking.

“What exactly did Callum tell you about Maddy?” she asked. “What did he tell you about the Senate?”

Callum had told me that Maddy might be rabid.

I’d discovered she wasn’t.

He’d told me that if Maddy wasn’t the killer, the Senate wouldn’t be able to enact the vote.

“He told me she was safe,” I said, realizing even as I said it that those words had never left his mouth.

He’d said that the Senate couldn’t enact the vote.

He’d said that they wouldn’t be able to cross into our land without permission.

He’d never said they wouldn’t come after her. He’d never said that she was safe.

“Maddy’s in No-Man’s-Land.” My thoughts went from my brain to my mouth with no filter. “And once you get there, No-Man’s-Land is fair game.”

The other alphas couldn’t cut through my territory to get
to Maddy, but they might not have to. By definition, any slice of No-Man’s-Land fell between two territories—maybe more. Maddy’s cave was in the mountains, and the mountains were accessible from Cedar Ridge territory, from Shadow Bluff, and from Vallée de Glace in the North.

It might not be easy, but it was doable, and Callum had never said Maddy was safe. He’d just listened to me say it.

He’d let me believe it.

“Two other alphas have access to that mountain,” I said. “If they realize she’s there …”

Maddy had been hiding out in No-Man’s-Land for months—but this time, there was a trail of bodies, including one in Winchester, that could lead the other alphas straight to her door.

Looking at Sora’s poker face and seeing Callum’s, I knew suddenly that the Shadow Bluff alpha wasn’t the problem, and neither were our neighbors to the north. Shay had called the Senate meeting. He was the one who’d been building alliances.

“He’s coming for her,” I said. “Shay got passage—from Shadow Bluff or the northern packs, from someone who has access to that mountain.”

And Callum knew.

This had nothing to do with the Shadows. Callum’s ability to sort through possible futures would have been operating full force. He’d seen this coming. He’d known Shay might come after Maddy, and he hadn’t said a word.

“Callum has his reasons,” Sora said, but I doubted that she
knew them—I doubted he would have shared them with her any more than he would have shared them with me.

This was what Callum did, who he was. He played God. He played me. He let bad things happen.

You need to be human for this
.

I’m sorry
, he’d said.
For something that might happen and might not
.

I swallowed down the words that wanted to come and instead gave Sora a small, flippant nod.

“Thanks for the heads-up.” My words came out sounding tired, not sarcastic.

Damn it
. I didn’t have time to be tired. I didn’t have time to celebrate Wilson’s permanent death, to sob with the memory of holding a gun to Sora’s head, to rail against Callum for playing with us like we were dolls.

I stuffed my feelings back in their little steel box, and I turned to the others: to Lake, who hadn’t taken her eyes off Griffin, to Chase, still in wolf form. I turned to Jed and Caroline, both ready to fight at a moment’s notice.

“Let’s go.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

I
T
’
S GOING TO BE OKAY
. I
T
’
S GOING TO BE OKAY
.
I didn’t bother blocking my thoughts off from the others—to the point where I wasn’t sure whether my silent mantra, as we climbed the mountain, was for my benefit or theirs.

We would get to Maddy in time, and even if we didn’t, I had to trust that she could hold her own. Shay wouldn’t physically harm her—she was too valuable, the
baby
was too valuable.

Shay would try to claim her. He’d dig his fingernails into her skin and try to force his mind into hers, instating a bond that would tie her to the Snake Bend Pack.

To him.

But Maddy was Resilient. She could fight him. She could resist.

I just had to hope that she would be able to hold on until I got there, that giving birth wouldn’t have taken too much out of her. I had to trust that, push come to shove, her survival instinct—and her instincts as a mother—would be enough.

It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay
.

We were getting close. I nodded to Chase and Lake, let them go. Faster than my human eyes could track them, they ran.

We were going to get there.

Maddy was going to be okay.

And then I was going to kill Callum.

“Wolves.” Caroline said the word out loud, and I was reminded for the second time that day that she wasn’t a part of our pack. She wasn’t a part of this.

Yet, here she was.

“How many?” I asked, unwilling to distract Lake and Chase from their task with that question.

“I don’t know,” Caroline replied, her baby blues narrowed in concentration. “They’ve got a perimeter set. The wind’s coming out of the north. I can go around back, scope it out.”

I glanced at Jed, and he nodded. Caroline was impossible to track—even with werewolf senses, they wouldn’t hear her coming.

Like a thief in the proverbial night, she was gone, blending perfectly into her surroundings, stalking through the rough mountain terrain, a girl on a mission.

I turned to Jed. Darkness fell over his eyes, and that was the only signal I needed. I reached for my own Resilience, called up the power, and ran.

One second I was at the base of the mountain, and the next thing I knew, I was at the mouth of the cave. I saw Chase first, then Lake, both in wolf form. Their clothes littered the cave floor. Their hackles were raised.

Opposite them, Shay Macalister was smiling. He was bent at the waist, too large to fit fully inside Maddy’s den.

“Leave. Me. Alone.”

Maddy’s voice was wispy weak, but full of emotion. I stalked into the cave, past Chase and Lake, right up to Shay, and that was when I saw her.

Maddy was lying on her side, her face ghostly pale, blood smeared on her dress. And there, in her lap, was a baby.

A pup.

The newborn must have Shifted during labor, or soon thereafter, because there wasn’t a hint of baby-pink skin to be seen—only short, spiky fur, sticky and standing straight up.

Her baby eyes were closed.

“You’re mine,” Shay said, leaning over Maddy, kneeling next to her, his voice vibrating with power and want and need.

“No. I’m. Not.”

Maddy spat at him, on him, but she was too weak to move. She couldn’t move.

“Maddy,” I said, wary of coming to stand within Shay’s grasp, but knowing I had no other choice.

If he kills me
, I thought,
Callum will kill him
. Right now that was cold comfort.

“Maddy?” I reached out to touch her cheek. Shay growled, but there was nothing he could do about it—first come, first serve, and he hadn’t managed to break his way through Maddy’s defenses yet.

She was fighting him—but she might not fight me.

“Mads?” There was a question in my voice. She hadn’t wanted this—not last winter, not when she’d left us in the motel room.

She nodded.

“Yes,” she said, reaching out and taking my hand, pressing my nails into the flesh of her neck. I felt my fingers curling, felt myself digging in deeper, drawing blood. Then I took all that I was—all that my pack was—and I threw it at her.

Chase and Lake and me.

Devon, at home with the kids.

Lily, Katie, Alex, Ali, Mitch.

Phoebe, Sage, and all the rest.

This was what we were. We were a pack made by choice. We were
family
.

Power exploded out of me. The air hummed with it. I stopped breathing. Maddy stopped breathing. When we started up again, we breathed as one.

Pack. Pack. Pack
.

She was mine.

I turned to Shay, expecting to see rage marring his features—so like Devon’s I wanted to hurl—but the only thing on Shay’s face was a smile.

I didn’t realize I’d let go of my Resilience until it flared back up. This cave was too small, Shay was too big, too strong, and he was smiling.

We have to get out of here
, I told Maddy, the words flowing
freely from my mind to hers, as if she’d never left, as if it had always been this way between us, this easy.

Eyes on Shay’s, I hooked my arms beneath Maddy’s armpits. I pulled her backward. She scraped her heels against the floor, pushing, propelling herself out toward the mouth of the cave, toward morning’s first light, toward freedom.

Shay followed, but stopped when Chase and Lake came to stand in front of us, their lips curled upward, mouths open, canines gleaming.

Maddy was ours. If he attacked one of us, if he made a move against us, my wolves could attack him—and if his pack didn’t want to face the wrath of the Senate when it was said and done, they’d leave him to fight us alone.

Us
, I thought, and reflexively, I scanned the woods for Caroline and found her, poised behind a rock, twenty yards away, gun in one hand and crossbow in the other.

“It’s over, Shay.” I shut my fear away—didn’t give him the chance to smell it. He couldn’t fight me, not unless he wanted to start something that Callum would end.

“It is over,” Shay agreed amicably. “And you, my dear, have something that belongs to me.”

At first, I thought he was talking about Maddy, but then a garbled cry escaped her throat, and I realized that he wasn’t talking about the girl.

He was talking about the pup.

No
. A child was born into his or her mother’s pack. There
was no Marking, no claiming. It was automatic—but Maddy’s child was born in No-Man’s-Land. She was born to a lone wolf.

I’d claimed Maddy after the child’s birth, not before.

With horror, I realized the implications. Maddy had fought Shay. She’d resisted. She’d been able to. But the baby—

“No,” Maddy said, the word halfway between a howl and a growl, not human in the least. “You can’t have her. You
can’t
.”

Shay walked between Chase and Lake, like they were nothing. To him, they probably were. He knelt, and as bile rose in my throat and my dry eyes burned with tears that wouldn’t come, he ran one hand gently over the sleeping pup’s head.