If there was a Rabid in our territory, I needed to know.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE NEXT FULL MOON WAS A SUNDAY IN MID-APRIL. Even though it felt like I’d been waiting forever, when the big day finally arrived, a thin cord of dread looped itself around my neck like a hangman’s noose. Growing up, I used to fake the stomach flu on the day before a full moon. I’d retch and moan and concoct secret mixtures of just the right texture to throw into the toilet in order to make it sound as if I was blowing chunky chunks. Ali was never fooled, but sometimes she’d let me stay home from school anyway. I always thought that it bothered her, too—watching them lose bits and pieces of their human façades as the day wore on. I’d seen Weres Shift hundreds of times, but it was different when the moon was full. Even in their human forms, they exuded unnatural energy, adrenaline and hormones battling inside their body to determine whether they’d turn into a lover or a fighter. They oscillated from one end of the spectrum to the other, snapping and snuggling and just generally driving any humans in the near vicinity crazy with the unpredictable bipolarity of it all.

For them, moonlust was a natural high.

For me, it was a hum. A high-pitched, disturbing hum of power, and the creepy, crawly feeling of someone watching me from the shadows. In fact, Callum had probably decided to make me wait until the full moon to hear the conditions of my visit with Chase because he’d hoped that I’d withdraw the request rather than venture directly into the belly of the beast on my least favorite day of the month.

But even with the noose tightening moment by moment and my stomach flipping itself inside out, I wasn’t backing down. There would be no fake chunk-blowing today.

“Can I make you something for breakfast?” Ali pulled a kitchen chair away from the table, her subtle way of telling me that I would be eating breakfast whether I wanted to or not. I considered arguing, because my stomach was knotted up enough that the idea of jamming food down into it seemed ill-advised, but the expression on her face told me that she’d probably been up late with the twins, and that she’d waste no time putting the fear of God (and sleep-deprived mothers) into me if I balked.

“Cereal?” I asked.

Two minutes later, like magic, a bowl of cereal appeared in front of me on the table, and Ali took a seat, her eagle eyes watching as I swirled my spoon around in the bowl before taking a bite.

“Callum said you asked for permissions,” Ali said, her casual tone belied by the fact that she’d known for weeks and hadn’t mentioned it until now. “To see the new boy. Chase.”

I shrugged and took another bite of cereal, my stomach clenching in protest.

“You’ve never played by their rules before,” Ali continued on, leaning over and snagging a marshmallow out of my bowl and popping it into her mouth. “You don’t ask permissions, you don’t acknowledge dominance, and by the time you were in kindergarten, you’d clamped down on your end of the bond so hard that I thought you’d break it.”

She made another grab for my cereal, and I pushed the bowl toward her. “Knock yourself out,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”

Ali pushed the bowl back my way and tilted her head toward mine. “Eat.”

I ate. She watched, and finally, I realized that she was waiting for me to say something.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I want to understand why it is that the girl who has never met a rule she hasn’t broken would voluntarily agree to give the local patriarch the power to set her limits in absolute stone.”

“Patriarch? Puh-lease. It’s Callum.”

“Your words, not mine. And you’re dodging the question.”

The thing about asking permissions was that it required Callum to interact with me officially. I’d taken away his option of phrasing orders as requests, and I’d appealed to him as part of the pack, not as me. It had been a huge gamble, because if he’d turned down my permissions, and I’d gone to see Chase anyway, I’d have broken Pack Law and opened myself up to Pack Justice.

But Callum hadn’t turned me down. He’d accepted my request, and whatever conditions he laid down today, I’d abide by them.

“I needed to see Chase, and this was the only way.” I turned my head away from Ali but snuck a peek back at her out of the corner of my eye. “I couldn’t have gotten anywhere near Callum’s house on my own, not after last time. At least this way, I’ll get to see him.”

The visit would be supervised, and it would happen on Callum’s terms, whatever those were, but by the time it was over, I’d have answers. Or possibly more questions.

I’d have something, and that was infinitely more than what I had now.

“Why this boy, Bryn? Why do you need to see someone who would just as soon eat your calf as look you in the eye? What could he possibly have to offer?”

Whoa. Ali was sounding suspiciously anti-Chase. Ali wasn’t anti-anybody. I said as much out loud, and she shrugged.

“Casey doesn’t trust him.”

“Casey doesn’t trust anyone,” I replied. “He’s paranoid like that. I mean, come on, he’s a werewolf who installed a nanny cam in his kids’ room.” I pointed my spoon at Ali for emphasis. “A nanny cam.”

Like anyone would hurt Kaitlin or Alex. The worst Casey had to worry about was me telling them things they wouldn’t understand until they’d been verbal for at least a couple of years, and I knew (a) where the nanny cam was, and (b) how to disable it. Fatherhood had turned Ali’s husband into a suburban soccer mom.

“Forget about Casey and promise me you’ll be careful, Bryn. Callum isn’t Callum when he’s the alpha, and there isn’t a single one of them that isn’t dangerous.”

This was our family she was talking about. Callum. Devon. Casey, Sora, and Lance. My age-mates. The twins.

“I’ll be careful.”

From the look Ali gave me, it was almost like she didn’t believe me. How insulting.

“I can be careful,” I said, somewhat disgruntled.

“Bryn, when you were six years old, you tried to bungee jump off a jungle gym by connecting the straps of your overalls to the bars with your shoelaces. Caution has never been your strong suit.”

“And yet, I always seem to come out of it without a scratch.” I smiled winningly. Ali gave me a look.

“You’re a survivor,” she allowed grudgingly. “And you’ve been lucky. That doesn’t mean you have to press your luck.”

I answered Ali’s pointed stare with one of my own. “You worry too much.”

“I’m your mother. It’s my job.”

From upstairs, a noise somewhere between an ambulance siren and a banshee’s howl announced that at least one of the twins was awake for the day. For a few seconds, Ali remained seated, looking at me, and then she sighed. “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid,” she said as she stood up and took my empty cereal bowl over to the sink.

“I promise I won’t do anything stupid,” I said. “I know what I’m doing.” Kind of. “I have to do this, Ali. And I’m trying really hard to do it right.”

Ali nodded and, as she walked back by me to head upstairs, pressed a single kiss to my part. “You do what you have to do, Bryn. Just come home in one piece.”

Those words were less than comforting, and for the briefest of instants, I considered giving up. Withdrawing my request. Falling prey to Ali’s and Callum’s best-laid plans to convince me that this wasn’t the path down which I wanted to tread.

And then I cursed under my breath, stood up, and thanked my lucky stars that Ali didn’t have super-hearing. The twins, on the other hand, had probably heard my epithet but wouldn’t know what it meant or the fact that I wasn’t allowed to say it. And hopefully, they wouldn’t say it themselves, because it would make a poor entry in their baby books under “baby’s first word.”

“I’m going out, Ali. I’ll be home …,” I started to say that I’d be home soon, but in reality, I had no idea when I’d be home, because I had no idea what Callum would ask of me in return for the permission to see Chase. It could take all day, all night, all week …