“Ali—” Casey started to say something, but the look on her face stopped him cold, and a wave of calm—originating from Callum—went through the room.

“I’ll take care of her, Alison,” Callum said, dispelling Ali’s worries even as he calmed the wolves.

I always do.

Ali nodded, and then without another word, she walked out of the room. Callum turned his attention to me. “From the moment we leave this house, I’m invoking the second condition of your permissions. Sora, Casey, and Lance are dominant. You are not. Whatever they say, you do it. Whatever they tell you, you comply. There is no room for argument, no room for discussion, and there will be no leniency for disobedience. You’re Pack and you’ll act like it. Am I clear?”

In retrospect, it was a really good thing Ali had left when she did. And probably also not a coincidence that Callum had waited for her to leave before laying down the law, because I saw in his eyes that he wasn’t guaranteeing my safety, not in all things. Chase wouldn’t lay fang, claw, or hand on me, but I knew what happened to subordinate wolves who challenged dominance.

It wasn’t pretty.

“You’re clear, Alpha.”

Callum nodded, and we left, the five of us. I took a page from Lance’s book and didn’t say a word, and the others followed suit. Understanding passed between us, though—silent words and thoughts and feelings. The rumblings of their wolves; the butterflies in my stomach. I fingered the knives strapped to my side, seeking comfort in the familiar.

I don’t know what I expected when we got to Callum’s house, but it wasn’t to see Chase sitting on Callum’s couch, playing Grand Theft Auto, his fingers moving the controller with frightening accuracy, even when he turned away from the screen and looked directly at me.

“Hi, Bryn.”

He was a far cry from the boy I remembered, caged in the basement, shadows in his eyes. But when I looked at him, really looked at him, I could almost see them. Almost, but not quite.

He just looked so normal.

Then again, so did I.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Callum said. “You have an hour.”

I realized with a start that Callum was leaving. To give us privacy? Or as much privacy as anyone with three lupine nannies could have?

No. There must have been another reason for it. Callum didn’t do anything without a reason, but I decided that I could debate his motivations and intentions later. Right now, I had an hour.

“Ummm … can I sit down?” I wasn’t sure who I was addressing the question to—the other wolves, or Chase. The latter nodded and brought his legs down off the couch. I started to move forward, but a deep rumbling from Lance’s lips held me back.

Apparently, this was the kind of thing that a submissive needed permission for.

I paused, and the three guards exchanged a look. “Chase, move to the chair. Bryn, stay on the couch. You’re not to touch each other.” Sora spoke each word with an emphasis that made me think that she was considering the way she verbalized the orders very, very carefully.

I ingested them, internalized them, and let my pack-sense get a grip on them. Obey. Obey. Obey. I had to obey.

Moving swiftly and with what I hoped passed for some amount of grace, I took up the spot Sora had indicated, and Chase slid over to the chair. His movements were so smooth that they were nearly liquid. He didn’t move. He flowed. Chase may have made progress in learning to control what he was, but he still wasn’t able to hide it. I didn’t think anyone could look at him and not know that there was something different. That he was more.

“So … ummmm … how’s it been?” I asked.

I cursed Ali for snapping me back into myself enough that the words didn’t come automatically, that my first instinct was entirely human: to make small talk. I wanted answers. I wanted to push at his bond with the pack, to explore it, to get inside his head and absorb everything he knew, but I didn’t.

I pushed down the desire and absorbed what my instincts were telling me instead. At some point, Callum had made Chase Pack. He was Stone River the way Lance was Stone River, the way I was, but until we were here, in the same room with each other, I’d never felt him. I hadn’t realized Callum had brought him into the pack at all.

“I can’t complain.” Chase’s voice was completely dry as he answered my question. “There’s food. There’s a television. We run through the forest at night. I have superhuman strength and don’t particularly miss the foster-care system.”

“You were in foster care?”

Focus, I told myself. Ask the important questions. But the human in me insisted that these were the important questions. That I’d been right all along to feel that Chase and I were the same.

“From the time I was eight. Dad took off. Mom died when I was little.”

“My parents did, too. They died, I mean.”

“You don’t need to talk about that, sweetheart,” Casey said, and for a split second, the fact that he’d used an endearment masked his words enough that I didn’t realize that he meant them as an order. “Leave that subject alone. You don’t want to get upset,” he explained.

Part of me wanted to point out that in the time that Casey and Ali had been married, he’d pretty much steered clear of playing Daddy. Now was an awfully convenient time for him to suddenly become concerned with my mental well-being. Especially considering the fact that I had to obey.

Fine. I wouldn’t talk about my dead parents. About how I didn’t remember them. But if Casey thought that he was going to keep me from asking hard questions, he was wrong.

“What were you like, before?”

Okay, so that wasn’t exactly a hard question, but I needed to know.

“Different,” Chase said. “Quiet. Hard. Angry.”

“And now you’re …?”

“Angry, quiet, and hard?” he suggested with a quirk of his mouth that drew my eyes to a small crescent-shaped scar at one corner of his lips.

“Angry, quiet, and hard,” I repeated, a smile tugging at the edges of my own. “Because that’s so different.”

“Everything is.” He paused. “That night, when you came for me—”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry I, you know …”

“Wanted to eat me?” I suggested.

He nodded, and even that relatively benign motion was filled with eerie grace. I stared at his face, captured for a moment by the way the power of his wolf seemed to emanate from his skin. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn that he was glowing, but luminescence wasn’t a part of the werewolf package.

“You confused me,” Chase said. “You’re …”

“Different?” I suggested.

He nodded.

“It’s kind of ironic.” I tried to sound offhand. “You were raised by humans and now you’re a Were, and I was raised by Weres, but I’m human.”

“You’re Bryn,” he said, and the way he said my name made me think that in the past couple of months, he’d been indoctrinated into werewolf culture enough to know who and what I was. Little Orphan Annie. Oliver Twist. Bryn.

We were iconic, really.

“I want you to tell me what happened to you,” I said, half sure that the others would step in, that they’d stop us from talking about anything I really needed to hear.

“It’s really not that long of a story. I was working late, got off my shift, walked home in the dark, and this guy cornered me. One second he was a man, and the next, he wasn’t. I kind of lost it and grabbed a pipe, I tried to beat that thing off me, but …”

“Didn’t go so well?” I ventured to guess.

He nodded. “I got bit.”

This time, the words didn’t have the same effect on me. Maybe that was the point behind all of Callum’s training. He’d been systematically working the fear out of me. He’d said it was so I wouldn’t be scared of Chase, but I was starting to wonder if it was because there was a part of me that had been scared for way too long.

“Most people who get bitten die,” I said, willing Chase to look at my face and read in it the meaning that I couldn’t say out loud. “When Rabids attack, humans die. They don’t change. They just …”