Lake, playing it cool, pushed back the feeling of awe that I could feel from her end of our connection. “There’re four of us. Does that mean we qualify as a pack now? Because if we do, we need to think of a seriously killer name for ourselves.” Devon opened his mouth and Lake cut him off. “No allusions to musicals, Broadway boy.”

“The lady doth offend my ears,” Devon said. “Begone, foul witch!”

Lake snorted. “I’ve missed you, too, Dev.”

I barely registered the interaction between the two of them, because I was stuck on what Lake had said about Chase and I being able to do something that nobody else could do.

On an unconscious level, I’d assumed that what I’d done with my pack-bond, I’d been able to do because I was human and Pack, connected, but different. I’d spent years manipulating my own bond, protecting my mind from Callum’s pack. And maybe I’d made Chase different, too, or maybe being a turned werewolf instead of a born one had something to do with it. But maybe not. Maybe what it really boiled down to was what I’d known from the moment I first saw him, sprawled in a cage.

Chase and I were the same.

Enough with the philosophizing. Lake’s voice. Inside my head—and somehow, it didn’t sound the way it did when she spoke out loud. It was quiet. Unassuming in tone, if not in words. Not timid, but understated and cautious.

Vulnerable.

Focus, Lake told me, and I could feel her taking a step back from my mind, folding herself inward and concentrating—to the extent that she could—on hiding from me the things that I didn’t normally see.

I nodded and took the reins. “Rabid. Here, in Alpine Creek. There’s a cabin in the woods. We’ll only have one shot.”

Chase pulled me close to him, and I wondered if he’d even realized he’d done it. And then I realized that my hand was on the top of his hipbone, but somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to remove it as I continued speaking to my friends. My pack.

“The last time I messed with someone’s pack-bond, it set off a psychic flare that brought the entire pack straight to us.” I paused, letting my words take hold, my grip on Chase tightening. “If what Chase and I just did has the same effect, we’re working under a time limit here, so let’s move. Lake and I are set for an attack. I have a plan. Boys, it’s hunting season. Weapon up.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

NOBODY LIKED MY PLAN.

“You want us to split up?” Chase asked, his brow wrinkling in obvious bewilderment.

Lake echoed the sentiment, her voice flat. “Why would we split up? There’s four of us and one of him.” After a brief moment’s pause, she amended her head count to better reflect our real odds. “Three and a half of us, one of him.”

Three and a half, as in three werewolves, one human. I narrowed my eyes. “For your sake, Lake, I’m going to pretend that Devon is the half.”

Dev, unquestionably the strongest person in this room, just shrugged and let me keep my delusions. “It’s because of my petite stature,” he said. All 6′ 4″ of him.

My sensibilities halfway appeased, I turned my attention back to the crux of Lake’s point. “Yes, we have stronger numbers, but we have no idea how old this guy is! Do any of you think for a second that the four of us together could take Callum?”

The fact that Callum was still my point of reference and would probably always be the standard to which all others compared was less than comforting.

“We can take him.” Chase said the words quietly, but an echo of them, silent and whispered from his mind to mine, lingered in my thoughts. “Not Callum. Prancer. The four of us together, I think we could take him.”

I paused for a single moment before thrusting that idea into the guillotine and dropping the blade. “And how many of us would make it out of that kind of confrontation alive?”

I felt their collective hackles go up all around me. For better or worse, this was our pack now. We couldn’t afford to lose each other. I’d die if anything happened to a single one of them.

“Our best chance to get out of this unscathed is to split up. One person goes in and plays sniper. The others rush in once the target is hit.”

I could see the logic worming its way into their thick skulls, and I pressed on. “If we all go, the Rabid will know it’s an attack. There’s no other reason three werewolves would show up unannounced in his woods. If one of us goes in and the others fall back, it won’t be considered as much of a threat.”

Lake ran a hand through her blonde hair, twisting her ponytail around her wrist. “He won’t expect us to be armed to the hilt.”

That was a near certainty. Lake was the only Were I’d ever met with a fondness for weapons. Weres rarely fought in human form, and with any luck, the Rabid wouldn’t be expecting a long-range attack. One werewolf killing another with a series of well-placed bullets would have seemed as absurd to most Weres as the idea of natural wolves settling dominance disputes with pistols at dawn.

“I’ll go,” Chase said quietly. “He won’t consider me a threat at all.”

It cost Chase to say those words, to know that they were true. To the Rabid, Chase would never be a real person, let alone one who deserved to be viewed with any kind of wariness or respect.

“He might not perceive you as a threat, but he’ll know you’re coming,” I said, my voice matching Chase’s for lack of volume. “He’ll smell you a mile off, and he’ll know it’s you. He’ll be waiting. He’ll have something planned.”

“He won’t expect me to have a gun.”

At the word gun, Lake leaned back against the dilapidated nightstand, crossing her right foot over her left. “Do you know how to shoot?” she asked Chase.

He shrugged. “Point. Pull trigger. How complicated could it be?”

Dev reached out one arm in a show of holding Lake back, even though she hadn’t moved a muscle. “Down, girl! The boy knows not what he says!”

“I’ll go,” Lake said, rolling her eyes at Devon’s theatrics. “I’m the best shot.”

Devon echoed her eye roll with one of his own. “And I stand the best chance of coming out of this alive if Mr. Crankypants catches on to the fact that someone has him in their sights.”

Dev was young, but he was purebred, and Lance had trained him to fight the same way that Callum had trained me.

For a moment, I let the three of them stare each other down, and then I put an end to it.

“It has to be me,” I said.

All three of the others looked at me like I’d suggested inviting Prancer to a Very Special Tea Party.

“If any of you get close to him, he’ll know that there’s a Were here,” I said. “If he senses me, he’ll sense a human. Outside of the Stone River wolves, most people can’t tell that I’m Pack from a distance.” The distinction between my scent and the others’ was the difference between someone who’d spritzed themselves with body splash and someone who sweated it from their pores. “I won’t even register on this guy’s threat meter. He’ll probably just assume that I’m some kid from town, poking around the woods on a dare.” I knew better than to pause and give them a chance to interject. “Besides, next to Lake, I’m the best shot. If I go, the Rabid won’t be on guard, he won’t be expecting me, he won’t recognize me, and I can hit him first try.”

Every single one of my friends knew that I had the best argument, but none of them wanted to admit it.

“And besides,” I added, “it’ll take me three times as long to get to the cabin as it would any of you. If I stay out of range and someone needs me, they’re out of luck. Any of you could get there in seconds.”

Through the bond, I got the feeling that none of them would mind keeping me out of the range of fire indefinitely.

“No.” I said the word and spoke it into their minds at the same time. “I’ve got guns, I know how to shoot, and I’ll be careful. If I can’t get him in my sights, then I’ll come back. He’s not going to want to attack a human in his own backyard. None of his previous victims have lived within a hundred miles of Alpine Creek. He’s lived here for more than a decade. He has a vested interest in going on vacay to snack. Unless he realizes that I’m there to attack him, he won’t attack me.”