I wondered what it said about my life that I could listen to my best friend calmly discussing dispatching his brother to the great beyond, without having any emotional reaction other than an acknowledgment, deep in my gut, of the fact that Dev could do it, would do it, was probably meant to do it.

According to Pack Law, if Devon killed Shay, he’d be the alpha of the Snake Bend Pack. He’d have to transfer packs first, and Shay would have to accept him, but given Shay’s ego and what Devon meant to me, Shay would probably allow it. For a moment, I almost felt like Callum, looking over the years to come and seeing the likelihood play out, right before my eyes.

Someday I would lose Devon.

Someday Dev would kill Shay.

Right now, however, thinking that far ahead was a luxury I couldn’t afford. The coven had us in their sights, and Jed’s warning that Valerie would repay my visit to her house in kind meant that I needed to be prepared for some sort of attack. Not five days later. Not after the deadline had passed.

Now.

Worse, if Shay wanted what I had badly enough to make deals with humans, I wasn’t entirely certain that Senate Law and the threat of Callum’s reprisal would be enough to keep him—and his men—on their side of our invisible line.

The phone rang, jarring me out of my thoughts and sending my heart pounding. Keely answered it, then turned toward me.

“It’s for you,” she said, holding the phone out across the bar. “It’s Shay.”

“I sent you an email.”

Of all of the things Shay could have opened with, that wasn’t one I’d expected at all.

“Does this email happen to explain why the entirety of the Snake Bend Pack is playing peekaboo across the border to my territory?”

Shay laughed, and it was a horrible, genial sound that made me want to put a fist through his trachea and pull out his spine. “I know you’re new at this,” he said, condescension and sly, understated viciousness fighting for control of his every word, “but there is a simple explanation for this kind of thing.”

He paused, and I pushed back the urge to bang the receiver into the wall over and over again until there was nothing left of either one of them.

“My pack goes where I go—within my own territory, of course. We’ve been in our current stronghold a long time, and quite frankly, I’ve been considering a move. To decrease the chance of exposure, of course.”

“Of course,” I replied dully. Shay’s picking up and moving his entire pack to the border between our territories could not possibly bode well for us, but there was no law against it.

He’s doing this by the book, I thought. I wasn’t sure whether the realization was comforting or not. The Senate wouldn’t be fond of the idea of an alpha aligning himself with a coven, but it wouldn’t give Callum the kind of justification he’d need to take Shay out of the picture without declaring himself the alpha of the entire North American continent. There was nothing in Pack Law to say that Shay couldn’t abuse his own subordinates, nothing to say he couldn’t bat me around like a cat with a mouse. But there was a law that said that Shay couldn’t step a foot on my territory without asking permission, and just like that, I knew why he’d called.

“Do you actually think I’m going to agree to let you and the little foot soldiers you’ve got peppered up and down my border cross over into Cedar Ridge territory?”

He had to be actually, clinically insane.

“Of course not,” Shay replied smoothly. “If you read the email I sent, you’ll see that I only requested passage for myself and one guard to assess the situation with the Snake Bend wolf you’re currently holding at your compound.”

He made it sound like I was keeping Lucas hostage.

“I think you’ll find that the other alphas consider my request to be quite reasonable. A few of them may have even chimed in to say as much. You’ve had the boy for days. Whatever justice you were going to impart on the trespassing matter should have been carried out immediately. Indecision,” he said, savoring the word, “is a sign of weakness.”

“Cut the crap, Shay,” I said, only I didn’t use the word crap, and I didn’t call him Shay. There were so many other names that seemed more appropriate. “You don’t want Lucas.”

I could practically hear him smiling on the other end of the line. “Do you?”

He’d backed me into a corner, and now he was dangling a carrot just out of reach. I recognized the tactic. There was only one person at the top of a werewolf pack—good cop, bad cop all rolled into one.

“Are you saying you’d consider cutting ties with Lucas?” I couldn’t keep myself from asking the question. Before I’d gotten bogged down in psychics and conspiracies, getting Shay to relinquish his claim on Lucas had been the goal. I hadn’t been within a hundred yards of Lucas for almost forty-eight hours, but I could still see him kneeling on that bed, baring his scars.

I could hear him telling me that if I couldn’t help him, he wanted to die.

“I’m willing to entertain the idea,” Shay replied, “if you’ll give me a little something in return.”

“I’m not giving you any of my wolves.”

“Pity,” Shay said. “I do think the boy actually believed you could save him, that you cared.”

I didn’t rise to the bait, but knowing he was doing it on purpose didn’t take the sting out of his words. I wanted to help Lucas, and I couldn’t. If a loophole existed, I hadn’t found it.

I’d lost.

“I also hear you’ve got yourself into a sticky situation with a coven of psychics.” Shay reverted back to bad-cop form. “If you could be persuaded to part with one or two of your little ones, I might be able to help you with that, too.”

“The answer is no.”

“No, you won’t consider my offer, or no, you really don’t care about the safety and longevity of your pack?”

I hated Shay—hated him more than I’d thought I could hate anyone.

“I will not, under any circumstances, give you any of my wolves.” My voice echoed with more than my sixteen years of experience, and I wondered if this was what it felt like to issue a decree as an alpha, the kind of promise I couldn’t have broken even if I’d wanted to.

“Well, if you’re not open to the idea of a trade, perhaps you’d prefer a wager?”

I would have preferred Shay be abducted by aliens and vaporized at the molecular level—but if Shay was telling the truth, if the other alphas were backing his request for entry into my territory, I couldn’t imagine that they’d react well to my holding Lucas much longer.

Across the room, Chase met my eyes, and I didn’t need the pack-bond to know what he was thinking.

Sometimes, at the end of the day, you had to take care of yourself.

“No wager?” Shay said, and I tore my eyes away from Chase’s. “In that case, bring Lucas to the border—unless you’d prefer to give me your permission to come collect him myself. There’s a thing or two I’d like to say to the boy, and I believe the psychics want a word as well.”

While Shay blathered on, I used the bond to ask Devon to check my email. Dev confirmed everything Shay had told me and informed me that in the time that Shay and I had been talking, another alpha had replied, asking that I either permit Shay access to my territory or send Lucas back to Shay.

That might not have sucker punched me the way it did but for the fact that the alpha was Callum.

Time was running out. I had to make a decision, but the only thing I could think about was Callum, teaching me how to throw a knife. Callum, running a hand over my hair. Callum, trading away a portion of his territory to save Marcus, who hadn’t deserved it.

I knew then that I couldn’t do the safe thing. I couldn’t hang Lucas out to dry, not if there was a chance—even a small one—that I could save him without endangering the rest of my pack.

I knew what Callum would do, and I had to try.

“Shay, you, and only you, have permission to come into my territory for exactly three hours.” The moment the words were out of my mouth, I could feel Devon on the other side of the bond, sending an email to the other alphas that said the same thing.