Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology (73 page)

“Touch him again, and I won’t even think about your wager.” My voice was so steady it surprised me, and I could hear a hint of Callum in my words. “Damaged goods.”

Shay took a single step away from Lucas, but before he did, he leaned down and whispered something in the younger boy’s ear. “Stay.”

It was a direct command from Lucas’s alpha—one he’d be physically unable to disobey.

“Now that that’s taken care of, would the alpha of the Cedar Ridge Pack rather choose the game we’re betting on or the stakes?” Shay asked, his pupils dilated with an appetite I recognized all too well.

Violence. He wanted to hurt me. He wanted to hurt all of us.

“The game or the stakes?” I repeated.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that Shay had offered me a choice, but I was. He wanted to be able to say that this had been a fair wager, aboveboard, completely legitimate. He didn’t want anyone to be able to say that he’d strong-armed me into doing this.

He wanted me complicit.

“Game or stakes,” Shay confirmed. “One of us sets the stakes—that would be what we’re betting and, specifically, what you’re willing to lose if I win, since we’ve already established that my side of the bet is”—he waved his hand in Lucas’s direction—“that.”

He paused, just long enough for Maddy, still pinned to the ground, to start fighting against Lake’s hold again. “Whoever doesn’t set the stakes gets to choose the game on which we’ll lay them.”

I had only a few precious seconds to decide whether I’d rather choose the game we were betting on, or what I was
willing to give Shay if I lost. It was a lose-lose situation. If I let Shay chose the game, he’d choose something I’d never have a chance of winning. If I let him choose the stakes, he could demand I put my entire pack up for grabs.

“If I choose the stakes, what’s to stop me from betting a napkin?”

“Good point,” Shay said. “Let’s say that whatever you put up as your half of the wager has to be a person. A wolf for a wolf. If you set the stakes, you get to choose which wolf. If you choose the game we’re betting on, the choice of prize is mine.”

I wasn’t sure whether he meant them to or not, but as Shay spoke, his eyes lingered on Lake’s body, and a lump rose in my throat. For years, she’d been the only eligible female of the species in our entire world. Living under Callum’s protection, she’d been safe. Off-limits. Forbidden.

When we’d discovered the Rabid’s pack of Changed werewolves—seven girls among them, all of whom were now Cedar Ridge—I’d thought there might be safety in numbers, but Lake had been the ultimate prize for too long, and now she didn’t have Callum to protect her.

All she had was me.

No
, I thought, the word rising up from my gut. I couldn’t do it. Not to Lake, not to Mitch, not to Callum and everything he’d raised me to be.

I’m sorry, Maddy
, I said, sending the words to her across the bond, feeling her heart break like it was my own. I couldn’t
bring myself to look at Lucas, couldn’t rid my mind of the sound of popping bones.

“Choose the game, Bryn.” Lake said the words out loud, even though she could have passed them quietly from her mind to mine. She eased herself off Maddy’s body and stood up.

She wanted Shay to know she wasn’t afraid.

She was a liar.

She must have seen the refusal on my face, because she repeated the words she’d said out loud silently, for my ears only.
Choose the game, Bryn. Let him choose the stakes
.

I narrowed my eyes.
Lake, I’m not going to let him force me to
bet
you
.

Lake didn’t even blink.
Sure you are. You’re going to bet me, and you’re going to bet
on
me, and we’re going to win
.

I glanced from Lake to the pool table, from the table to Lucas, and from Lucas to Maddy, who had eyes only for him. The floor was smeared with blood.

I can do this, Bryn
, Lake said.
I’ve done it a million times before with a million other Weres
.

Lake had been hustling pool since she was ten. I was pretty sure she hadn’t lost since she was twelve.

I’ve never asked you for anything
, Lake said, the intensity of her voice pushing out every other thought in my head.
Not since we were kids, and I’m asking you now, as your friend, as
Maddy’s
friend, to let me do this
.

Without thinking about it, I glanced over at Dev, but there was no counsel in his eyes, only violence, anguish.

“Do we have a bet?” Shay asked, his own face an emotionless mask.

Lake caught my gaze and held it, and after a long moment, I nodded.

“Choose your stakes,” I said roughly. “The game is pool.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

L
AKE DIDN
’
T SO MUCH AS LOOK AT
S
HAY AS SHE
walked over to the pool table and chose her cue. She just ran her hands over the length of the wood and murmured something under her breath. I could see her lips moving but couldn’t make out the words, and I wondered if she was talking to the cue, the way she sometimes did her guns, or if the words were just another part of the performance she was putting on for Shay’s sake.

On Thanksgiving Day, I’d watched Lake teaching a bunch of twelve-year-olds how to hustle pool. She’d told them that the trick was to look completely helpless so your opponent would underestimate you. Now my friend’s entire future was riding on her ability to put her money where her mouth was and practice what she preached.

Lake could do this. She could.

I wanted to believe it. I wanted to tell myself that Lake really was
that
good, and that I wouldn’t have been any kind of friend at all if I’d kept her from trying, but I couldn’t, because despite
everything we’d been through together, despite what she and the others had done for me the night before, I couldn’t shake the feeling building up inside me, the one that said that
I
was supposed to be protecting
her
.

“Take me instead.” My voice was low and guttural—a foreign thing in my own throat.

“Excuse me?” Shay raised one eyebrow, and for a single second, he looked so much like Devon that it hurt to look at him.

“The game hasn’t started yet. You can still change the stakes.” I ignored the low rumble of the others inside my head.

I ignored Chase, who’d gone ashen beside me, the unreadable look on his face masking the flash of horror and denial I could feel through the bond.

“Are you suggesting that if I win, you’ll abdicate the rule of your pack to your second-in-command and willingly transfer into mine?” Shay sounded vaguely amused. I thought of everything he could do to me, everything he
would
do to me, and then I nodded, unwilling to let myself feel even the smallest bit of fear.

Unwilling to let him smell it.

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”

Devon could take care of the pack once I was gone, he could be their alpha, and I could put my life on the line to save Lake.

Shay’s face hardened, amusement morphing into something darker. I recognized the emotion from places in my memory I
didn’t want to go. The blood, the screams, my human parents. The smell of mildew and bleach as I backed myself farther and farther under the kitchen sink. Even dead, the Rabid still haunted my dreams, and I
knew
that Shay wanted that. He wanted me to cower, wanted to wear my blood and taste my human screams.

“You think highly of yourself,” he said, his eyes pulsing with bloodlust, and the muscles in his jaw tense with the effort it took to fight it back. “But at the end of the day, you’re human. You’re frail, you’re weak, you’re breakable. You’re
meat
. This one …” Shay turned to look at Lake, and through the bond, I felt her conflicting desires to lash out and shrink back from his gaze. “
This one
is strong.”

Shay didn’t come right out and say that Lake would make a good incubator for his future children, but he might as well have, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t shake the image of Lake running, running, running and never getting far enough away.

Bryn, if we lose, I’m going with her
. Dev met my eyes from across the room as the silent words passed from his mind to mine. If I’d been capable of feeling anything other than the animal need to answer Shay’s innuendos with fury and blood, I might have taken a moment to consider what it would mean to lose Devon and Lake at the same time.

What it meant that he would leave me to go with her.

Instead, I gritted my teeth and nodded.
If we lose, Dev, I
want
you to go
.

Shay flicked his eyes from Devon’s to mine, unable to hear our words, but aware that something had passed unspoken between us.

“So the stakes aren’t changing.” Lake tossed her hair over one shoulder and twirled the pool cue absentmindedly in her hand. “Now that we’ve got that over with, you want to break, Shay, or should I?”

Lake threw out the challenge, looking cocky and young and like the type of person who would rush into a bet like this one without thinking things through, but I knew better. Her bravado was a familiar mask, a special brand of fearlessness that she could put on at the drop of a hat.

She was smart. She was strong. She could do this. I repeated that to myself over and over again.

“You can break.” Shay walked past her and picked up the longest pool cue, twirling it lightly. “I spent most of the fifties in pool halls. If I broke, you’d never even get the chance to shoot.”

Shay might as well have taken a page out of Caroline’s book and pronounced himself incapable of missing a shot.

Unperturbed, Lake racked up the balls and walked the perimeter of the table, her hips swinging with forced carelessness, her eyes registering every angle, every contour, every ball. She placed the cue ball just to the left of the table’s center and leaned over, lining up her first shot. Numbness worked its way up my body, inch by inch.

Lake relaxed her grip on her stick.

Shay smiled.

And then she took her first shot.

The cue ball ricocheted off its target, and the rest shot outward, like an explosion had gone off at their core.

I felt, rather than saw, the first ball drop into one of the center pockets, and I forced myself to breathe.

There were too many of us in this room. There was too much riding on this moment, and it went against every instinct I had—as an alpha, as their friend, as a person who knew what it meant to fight for survival every second of every day—to just stand there, watching and willing Lake to sink one ball after another after another.

It hurt to hope.

It hurt to breathe.

Lake moved around the table with the precision of a surgeon, mid-operation, and the more shots she took, the closer the mask of fearlessness on her face came to slipping.

She wanted this.

She was fighting.

She was scared.

I ground my fingernails into the palm of my hand until red half-moons dotted my skin. I couldn’t feel the pain, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but wait for Lake to sink the next ball.

And then she missed.

With a sickening grin, Shay leaned down to the table, lined up his shot, and sent two balls ricocheting into opposite pockets with the ease of a pro. He worked his way around the table, shot after shot after shot.

I could feel Lake on the other side of the pack-bond, feel her insides shattering like glass as she tried
so hard
not to be scared. Seeing the bravado on her face nearly brought me to my knees.

Shay only had three balls left.

Then two.

Then one.

I knew then that I never should have let Lake risk it, never should have put her in a position where a game of pool could cost her everything,
everything
.

It’s going to be okay, Bryn. Whatever happens, it’ll be okay
. Chase met my eyes, and for the first time in memory, I felt like I was looking at a stranger. If Shay won, if he took Lake, nothing would be okay. Not now, not ever. If Chase didn’t understand that, he didn’t understand
me
.

“Call your pocket.” Lake’s voice was steady, and she thrust her chin out, like she could make him miss by sheer force of will.

“Back left corner.”

My eyes went immediately to the pocket in question. If Shay made this shot, he’d win—the bet, Lake …

I saw the eight ball hit the corner of the pocket. Saw it hover there. Saw it fall in.

Protect. Protect. Survive
.

As my Resilience rose up inside me, I could barely make out the world around me. I could barely see Lake, shutting down and shutting out the fear. I could barely see Shay, moving slowly toward her from one side, or Devon, cutting across the room from the other.

But I did see the cue ball as it bounced off one corner and rolled slowly toward another. My eyes tracked its progression, my fight-or-flight instinct taking control of my body even as they did.