Taken by Storm

That wasn’t what I’d expected him to say. In retrospect, math had never been my strong suit.

“Since Shay is the one calling the meeting, the rest of the alphas will be expected to go to him.”

As far as I knew, the Senate normally met in Callum’s territory, at Callum’s house.

Callum shrugged in response to my unasked question. “Normally,” he said, “I’m the one who calls the meetings.”

Most of the other alphas probably would have been happy to stay in their own territories and forget that Callum existed altogether. For that matter, they’d probably have been happy if I didn’t exist. The last time I’d been in a room with the entire Senate was the day I became an alpha myself. None of them—save for Callum—had seen it coming. None of them had been pleased.

More than one alpha would have enjoyed bathing in my blood.

“The Senate is meeting,” I said slowly, “and I have to go.”

I was an alpha. The Senate was composed of the alphas of all of the North American packs. Eleven dominant werewolves and me. In one room.

This could not possibly be good.

“What does Shay want?” I asked. Beside me, Devon stiffened at the mere mention of his brother’s name.

“Shay wants what Shay always wants,” Callum replied calmly, his voice washing over us, understated and warm. “Trouble. Power. Females. Take your pick.”

“So this is a power play?” I asked. “Shay’s calling the Senate just because he can?”

I could tell by the look on Callum’s face that the answer to that question was no. Shay had a reason for calling the Senate—but Callum wasn’t sure I was ready to hear it.

“Tell me.”

Callum’s lips quirked upward at my no-nonsense tone, more like his than either one of us would have cared to admit. After another long pause, he answered my question. “Whatever Shay’s going to tell us at this meeting, there are bodies involved. Human bodies.”

Those words hit me like a physical blow. Callum must have known the effect this would have on me, the memories his words would drudge up.

Human lives would never be mere collateral damage to me, but the last time the Senate had met, they’d voted to make a deal with the psychopathic werewolf who’d killed my parents, a monster who had been hunting and killing human children—and Changing Resilient ones into werewolves—for years. If Shay was concerned about a few dead bodies, it wasn’t because he recognized a value to human life. It was because the Senate’s highest priority was keeping the human world from finding out that werewolves existed.

That was the reason werewolves didn’t attack humans.

That was the reason a Were who hunted without authorization was normally executed, no questions asked.

I met Callum’s eyes, and this time, neither one of us looked away. I knew then what he wasn’t saying, why he’d risked trespassing on my territory to give me warning that Shay was about to call.

“It’s happening again,” I said, my mind going back to the last time, to a werewolf who hunted humans and the things that he had done to my family, to the kids in my pack, to Chase, and to me. “Shay isn’t calling the Senate as some kind of power play.” The words stuck in my throat, but I pushed them out. “He’s calling this meeting because there’s a Rabid.”

CHAPTER FOUR

HOURS LATER, WHEN I CREPT INTO THE BATHROOM and shut the door behind me, a sense of overwhelming relief flooded my body. Around the others—around Callum—I had to be strong. Showing weakness to a member of another pack was not an option, and I couldn’t afford to let my feelings about this development infect the rest of my own pack, either. Devon would be accompanying me to the Senate meeting as my second-in-command. Coming face-to-face with Shay, knowing his brother wanted me dead—that would be hard enough for Dev. He didn’t need my emotional baggage making it any worse.

Besides, with werewolves, control was the name of the game.

Never flinch.

Never show your anger.

Never let them see you cry.

It was disgustingly easy for me to shove my emotions into a box in the back of my mind, to slip into alpha mode and mimic Callum’s facial expressions, his posture. But now, with the bathroom door standing in between me and the others, I could finally let myself breathe. I could remember.

I could feel.

Flipping on the shower, I let the sound of water beating against marble drown out my jagged breathing. I slid slowly to the floor, a mess by every sense of the word. My hair was tangled and matted to my forehead. My feet were streaked with dirt, my earlier wounds ugly and scabbed. Beneath my year-round suntan, my face was pale, and when I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror, my lips were pressed into a thin and colorless line.

For a few seconds, I thought I might actually cry. That was so unlike me, I wasn’t sure how to respond. Bronwyn Alessia St. Vincent Clare didn’t get sad. She got mad. Or better, she got even.

Why was I letting this get to me? I’d known from the moment I’d survived Shay’s last attempt on my life that he would have another plan, and another, and another. I’d known I’d have to see him again face-to-face, that I’d have to play politics when I wanted nothing more than to tear out his throat. But the idea of doing it in a room full of alphas who felt the same way about me that Shay did, who had voted to let the last four-legged psychopath get away with it because human lives—my life, Chase’s, the lives of innocent children, my parents’—weren’t worth much when you stacked them up against the secret to making female Weres?

That made me sick.

Natural-born female werewolves were rare enough that the other alphas would have let the rabid wolf who killed my parents keep right on killing, so long as he delivered on his promise to supply them with a constant flow of girls who’d been born human and Changed into Weres.

Now both the Rabid and the secret to pulling off that trick were buried, and as far as Shay and the other alphas were concerned, that was my fault. If they’d had any idea I knew what the last Rabid had known, that Callum knew—

Bryn.

I heard Chase in my mind long before I sensed his physical approach. The closer he got, the further away everything else seemed—the knowledge that this time tomorrow, I’d be headed for a Senate meeting; the unwanted memories; the frustration and rage and worry that wouldn’t do me a speck of good. Instead, I felt Chase. His presence. His

thoughts.

Even when I shut my mind off to the rest of the pack, Chase was there.

He wasn’t strong the way Devon was, or as brash and fearless as Lake. He didn’t understand me—or my priorities—the way someone with alpha instincts would have, and if it hadn’t been for me, he would have left our little pack long ago—but Chase excelled at being there. Physically, emotionally, he was there and he was steady, and I didn’t question, even for a second, that he’d love me just the same no matter what I said or did or felt or didn’t feel.

Sitting very still, I closed my eyes and waited. Waited until Chase’s presence wasn’t just a shadow over my mind. Waited until I could feel his breath on my face, until I could smell him, cedar and cinnamon and home.

I opened my eyes. There he was, inches away from me, close enough to touch. The constant hum of the shower faded into the background. I let go of the barriers in my mind. In an instant, everything that had happened passed from my mind to Chase’s. My hands found their way to the sides of his face. My palms were warm with the heat of his skin, and I concentrated on that—on feeling him, touching him—and not thinking about what tomorrow might bring.

“Shay’s going to call?” Chase asked, leaning into my touch.

I nodded. “Callum said we’ll have a few hours after the call comes in before we’ll need to leave. Sora will be joining him at the edge of Snake Bend territory. I’ll be taking Dev.”

Chase didn’t stiffen, didn’t react in any way, but I could feel in the pit of my stomach that he hated not being the one to go with me. He had no desire to fight Devon for dominance; he would never treat me as if I were some kind of prize to be won, but Chase didn’t like the idea of my walking headlong into danger without him.