Archer and the old woman closed in on me from either side, the snake slithering from Grandma’s neck down her shoulder, poised to strike.
For a second, a split second, the sound stopped as the woman who was whistling took a breath, and I had a moment of clarity, a moment when I could think and move and realize exactly how bad this situation was, before the sound started again.
A feeling, alien and familiar all at once, crackled through my body. The sound pushed back against it, willing me to relax, to forget, to just stand there and let the psychics have their way with me, but this time, I heard a lower sound, an older one, a whisper from the most ancient part of my mind, from my gut, from the core of what it meant to be me.
Threat, threat, threat, it seemed to be saying. Survive.
My body was relaxed, my limbs frozen in place, but that single word was enough to free my mind. My vision blurred. Darkness began to close in from all sides, and even before I saw red, I tasted it, the color tinny and electric on my tongue.
This was what it meant to be Resilient. The taste, the color, the rush of adrenaline into my bloodstream. The fury and power and uncompromising need to escape. To fight back.
To survive.
Instinct took over. One second I was standing there, and the next, the roar inside me was deafening, drowning out anything my external senses had to offer. I leapt forward, the world colored in shades of black and blood, blood-red, and by the time I came fully back into myself, the sound had stopped, and everyone who wasn’t me and wasn’t Ali was on the ground.
I couldn’t remember how they’d gotten there, or what I’d done, but whatever it was must have sent a message, because as they climbed to their feet, the woman who’d been whistling kept her mouth closed, and the other two kept their distance.
“Easy there, mutt-lover. If we wanted to fight, you’d be dead right now.” Archer gave me a genial smile. Like he knew me. Like we were friends. “I’m not much of a fighter, but even I could have slid a knife between your ribs in the time it took you to fight off Bridget’s hold.”
Having said his piece, Archer glanced pointedly to his left, at the old woman, who was stroking her snake’s triangular head like it was a kitten. The suggestion was clear—if Grandma had wanted me dead, her pet could have seen to that just fine.
“You should know what you’re up against.” Bridget’s speaking voice was absurdly plain compared to the sound she’d made before. For some reason, that didn’t surprise me, but the note of kindness in it did. “If we fight you, really fight you, there will be casualties on both sides, but we will win. Your people will fall, some of them”—she glanced at Ali—“without ever realizing there’s a battle they should be fighting.”
Bridget’s warning sank in.
Being Resilient meant being resistant to dominance and having a knack for escaping even the direst situations. If I could fight my way through Bridget’s hypnotic hold, chances were good that Chase, Maddy, and the other Resilients could do the same.
Eventually.
I tried not to think about what the rest of Bridget’s coven could do in the time it took us to combat her ability. I tried not to think about the fact that Ali, Mitch, Devon, and Lake might not be able to fight it in the first place.
Lucas hadn’t.
“You’ve seen Caroline,” Bridget continued softly. “You know what she can do.”
Darkness flecked across Bridget’s eyes when she said Caroline’s name. Fear, thick and uncompromising, with a life of its own.
For a moment, the same expression descended over the others’ faces, like Caroline was their bogeyman as much as she was ours.
Archer recovered first. “This shouldn’t be your fight, Bryn,” he said softly. “Sometimes, backing down is the right choice. The smart one.” Archer reached out to tweak the end of my hair, but Ali caught his hand in hers.
“You don’t talk to my daughter,” she said. “You talk to me.” She looked from Archer to Bridget to the old woman cooing at the snake. “Is this how your coven operates? You send a child out to issue your threats? You torture teenagers and play mind games with little girls?”
I hadn’t been a little girl in a very long time, but Ali on a rampage was a thing to behold, and far be it from me to interrupt.
“You make me sick.” Ali spat out the words, and Archer faltered, his smile replaced by something uncertain, some measure of loathing for himself and what he was doing, but as quickly as the emotion had come, something else replaced it.
Anger.
Bloodthirstiness.
Disgust.
The same expression overtook the whistler’s face and the old lady’s, as potent as the fear they’d shown at Caroline’s name. The emotions writhed beneath the surface of their flesh, so vivid it looked like it might at any moment take on a life—and an agenda—of its own.
“Did Lucas do something to you?” I asked, floored by the depth of their hatred, but unable to keep the doubt that Lucas was actually capable of doing anything more than annoying them out of my tone.
“He’s a werewolf,” Archer said finally, his voice venomous, but somehow dull. “They’re animals—all of them.”
The woman with the snake shook her head. “Not natural,” she murmured. “Not animals. Worse.”
I bristled. Nobody knew better than I did what a werewolf could do, if he chose to cross that line. I’d spent my entire childhood aware that my life could have been forfeited the minute any one of them lost control. If Callum hadn’t made my safety a matter of Pack Law, I might not have survived to adolescence, and I still dreamed about the sound human flesh made when canines tore it apart.
But that kind of werewolf was the exception, not the rule. Alphas didn’t allow their wolves to run wild. We killed our own if they hunted humans. We weren’t—my family and friends, they weren’t monsters.
Werewolves were people, too.
“You’ve had a run-in with a Rabid,” Ali said, judging their reactions. “Your coven has lost someone.”
Her words were met with steely silence, and I braced myself for another attack as Ali kept pushing at it, kept pushing them.
“He or she must have been very important. You must have loved whoever it was very much.”
Bridget quivered like a rabbit facing off against a fox and then snapped. Her hand connected with Ali’s cheek with a loud crack. I was already in motion, retaliating, when Ali smiled. She’d gotten a rise out of them, and for whatever reason, she was happy about it.
Trust me, Bryn. It’s a good thing. That was the first time I’d ever heard Ali through the bond she shared with my pack, and I went into a state of immediate shock, stopping all onslaught. Being human allowed Ali to keep her bond shut, the way I had for most of my life in Callum’s pack. That she’d opened it, even for a second, told me it was crucial that I keep calm and let her continue playing her current game.
“You must have loved him,” Ali repeated. “Whoever it was that you lost. It makes me wonder, though—if a werewolf did that to someone you loved, if you hate their kind so much, why would you trust one to give you a gift? Why make a deal with the devil?”
Ali’s words didn’t permeate the loathing the trio wore on their faces, as permanent and striking as some kind of tattoo, but I registered their meaning instantly.
Shay had sent Lucas to the coven.
Lucas had said it was part of some kind of deal.
So what had the coven given Shay in exchange? And why would they have agreed to give him anything in the first place?
“We should probably be heading home,” Ali said, tucking a strand of my hair behind my shoulder, in a maternal gesture that would have been a lot more appropriate if the two of us had been out shopping. “We’ve been standing here awhile, and unless one of you is still actively blocking it, I think we’ve probably put on enough of a show for the rest of the town, don’t you?”
I glanced around and realized that more than one shop owner was watching our exchange with feigned disinterest, and a couple of people were gawking in a way that suggested they might have seen me lash out and put the newcomers on the ground.
In retrospect, it was probably a very good thing that I’d already decided to withdraw from the local high school.