One Deadly Bite

Chapter 17

“You’ll see Ink once you’ve convinced me that you can defend yourself from him should things get out of hand. Until then, I’ll expect you to double your normal training regimen, and I want you sparring with partners of my choice on a regular basis.”

The idea of fighting someone who wasn’t Callum didn’t sit well with me. I would have been lying if I said that I’d never fought anyone else—I had, on occasion, handed touchy, grabby humans their butts on a variety of platters, but I was too smart to go around fighting Weres.

Besides Callum, there were only a few that I’d tangled with physically, even as practice, and I tried not to think about what it would be like fighting someone who I trusted less than Callum.

“Consider it done,” I said out loud. “What else?”

We weren’t exactly using the formal language of permissions and conditions, but we were both on edge—Callum because sparring under the influence of moonlust was no walk in the park, and me because being sparred with by a werewolf under the influence of moonlust sent a cold chill down the length of my spine.

Come out, come out, wherever you are. …

“In addition to increasing your training regimen, I have four conditions for the permissions you seek.” Callum transitioned to alpha-speak, and I could feel the formality of it building a barrier between us.

“I’m prepared to hear your conditions, Alpha.”

My words, every bit as formal as his, solidified the wall that held us apart, and if this hadn’t been so important to me, that would have forced me to crumble. Losing Callum, even for a second, was worse than any condition he could possibly lay down.

Or at least, that’s what I thought at the time.

“Once I deem you ready for your visitation or visitations—the number and times of which will be set in accordance with me—I’ll select three members of the pack to accompany you and serve as chaperones.”

Chaperones … or bodyguards? It was so like Callum to insist that I kill myself preparing for defensive maneuvers that he had no intention of ever allowing me to make.

“You will not see Ink with fewer than three members of the pack present, and during the course of your visitation, you will yield to their dominance on all matters.”

Dominance. I hated the word. I hated everything it represented, and in that moment, I hated Callum for forcing it on me. The idea of letting three random Weres tell me what to do, of submitting to them in all things without an argument, made me consider blowing real chunky chunks right there on the spot.

“You’re selecting the members of the pack to whom I have to submit,” I said, restating his words as my own.

Callum didn’t reply to the question in my voice, or say anything to assuage my reluctance. Instead, he just stood there, looking at me from the other side of that invisible wall.

“I agree to this condition, Alpha,” I said, forcing the words out of my mouth.

“My next condition …,” Callum started to say, and then he looked at me, for real. “You’re not going to like this one, Rose-girl.”

Uh-oh. Being Rose-girl was a magnitude worse than being Rossetta. When I was Rossetta, I was in trouble, but I was only Rose-girl when Callum was cushioning an otherwise deadly blow. The last time he’d called me that, someone in the pack had accidentally eaten an injured rabbit I’d nursed back to health.

I waited for Callum to elaborate, refusing to let him know the effect his words had on me.

“For the duration of the permissions,” Callum said—and I took that to mean from the moment I started in on the extra training until my last visit with Ink was complete—“you’ll acknowledge the pack. The bond,” he clarified.

My adoption into the pack—though Callum had taken steps to make it legal in the human world—was more than just words on a sheet of paper. I smelled like Pack. I lived like Pack. And, if I had let myself, I would have felt like Pack. I would have been bonded to them the way they were bonded to each other—supernaturally, psychically, instinctually.

I cursed. Callum waited.

He thought I’d back out. He couldn’t imagine that seeing Ink meant enough to me that I’d give up being myself—and only myself—for any amount of time. But what Callum didn’t understand was that I wasn’t interested in seeing Ink the boy, or even Ink the werewolf. I needed to see Ink the hunted. And I needed that because without it, I was already incomplete.

I needed my memories back. I needed to know what it was like for Ink, so I could know what it had it been like for me, and I needed to know if there was a Rabid in our territory, because if there was, the only way I’d ever really be myself again was to know that he was dead and that he’d paid for doing to Ink what someone had done to my entire family.

Ink had survived. My parents hadn’t.

“I agree to this condition, Alpha.”

Callum visibly winced. If this had been any other power struggle between us, I might have felt victorious.

“Fine.” Callum hadn’t expected things to go this far. Or maybe he had, but he’d hoped very much that they wouldn’t.

“My penultimate condition is that, in service of making this interaction official, you accept my conditions in front of the pack, at our moonlight congregation tonight—”

“I accept—”

“I haven’t finished yet, Rose. You have to stay for the Shift. You have to run with the pack.”

Humans didn’t run with the pack.

“You do realize that request is made of crazy, right?” I couldn’t help shedding the formal dialogue for this one. Weres maintained their faculties when they Shifted. Most of the time.

“I’ll have the pack in control, Rose, but you can’t see the boy if you’re afraid of him. I’ve been working with him nearly every day, and his control is progressing rapidly, but he’s too young to deal with the smell of your fear. You’ll run with the pack tonight, and you’ll continue to do so until the bond is strong enough that there’s no room for your fear.”

I’d heard of psychiatrists treating phobias by making people do things like put their hands into a pit of snakes, but this was just ridiculous.

“The bond protects you, Rose. Once you open it, none of the others will see you as human. You’re Pack and you’ll run as Pack.” He smiled, his lips quirking upward just the tiniest bit. “I think you’ll like it, once you get past wanting to kill me for it.”

“What’s the final condition?” I wasn’t agreeing to this one until I knew what he’d force on me next. For all I knew, he’d demand I cut off my foot, because if I couldn’t maintain my composure as one-legged human among four-footed Weres, I couldn’t possibly talk to one juvenile werewolf locked in a steel cage.

Callum said, “I’ll tell you the final condition tonight.”

I growled at him, taking some satisfaction out of the way the inhuman snarl felt working its way from my throat to my lips.

“Most pack members wouldn’t have gotten forewarning on any of the conditions,” Callum said, and then he reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. That simple motion was enough to completely pulverize the barrier between us.

“You’re doing this to me on purpose,” I said. “You’re trying to torture me because you’re still mad that I managed to ditch my bodyguards, break into your house, and uncover your secret basement boy.”

“I’m doing this,” he corrected, “because you’re mine.”

His.

I would never know how literally he meant the words until a long time from now. He would never tell me anything because Callum knew very well that he was not the first stop that I would ever make. I had never even thought that when he uttered the words that you are mine what he meant by them.

“You think that everyone in your pack is yours. And I accept that it is a good thing maybe for you to have my back. To know that you are taking care of my safety. But that doesn’t mean that you will keep on doing this always, does it Callum?” I asked him.

“That means always, Rose. It means always. Pack means for life. And it would be a good thing that if you remember that tonight as well.”