Chapter 20
Frankie woke with a start, the feel of her pack mates in her head. Normally that would reassure her, but this time, she felt their aggression, knew they were angry, and all of them were very close.
“Easy. You’re safe.” Ryan’s words rumbled through his body into hers. He was lying flat on his back and she was wrapped around him.
“My pack is near,” she said. “And they’re pissed.”
She started to get out of bed. She had to go downstairs and warn—
“We know,” he said as he tightened his hand on her shoulder. She could have broken his hold, but didn’t want him to strain his injury.
“How? I just started feeling them.”
Ryan’s expression eased into a smile as he held up his phone in his free hand. “Simon just texted me. Told me to keep my ass in bed or he’d personally kick it back up here and he can’t afford the distraction.” He arched a brow. “Yours, too, by the way. Nothing you can do but make it worse.”
Unfortunately, that was probably true. Still, the need to go burned in her. From the feel of them, her pack was hopped up on the serum and ready to eat bear. Literally. “You don’t know what you’re up against.”
“Simon knows. He’s got surveillance cams and nonlethal surprises. Plus, the police on speed dial.”
She frowned. “You’d bring cops into shifter business?”
He arched a brow, not even bothering to respond, and she felt her face heat. Of course, he’d bring cops into their business. He was a cop.
“Look, the bears aren’t doing anything but hanging out and respecting your brother’s wish to talk in the morning. If he wants to attack us unprovoked, then he can explain to the police why he’s creeping through the streets with cherry bombs and rabid wolves.”
“They’ll say it’s because you bears poisoned the city.”
“And the cops will say, they already suspect us, and that vigilante justice is a crime.”
She winced and looked out the window at the dark night.
She couldn’t see anything. Just a haze of light over the city streets and the shadows of nearby buildings.
First thing her brother would have done is kill the electricity to the block.
“How come the lights are still on in here?” She could see the red numbers from a clock on the nightstand. 2:48 a.m.
“Building has its own generator.” He arched a brow. “Got a black bear security expert and a grizzly bear electrician.” He tilted his head. “Don’t you wolves have people?”
She nodded. “My brother loves electronic toys.” God only knew what elaborate stuff he’d set up around the mansion and the community center.
She’d been involved in every aspect of the construction process, but Raoul had added all sorts of special stuff at night.
At the time, she’d thought it a good idea.
Now she wondered if he’d doctored the water pipes so he could easily dose the pack with serum.
Not to mention what he could have done to the electricity, the air vents, and she had no idea what else.
Before she could comment, floodlights kicked on all around the neighborhood.
What had been dim or shadowed a second ago, now stood out in stark relief.
And inside, she felt the collective surprise ripple through her pack.
As best she could make out, they were coming from all sides, intending to surround the bears as they stormed the former hardware store.
But with the sudden flood of lights, they all seemed to pause.
“Can you send them a message?” Ryan asked. “Through the pack link?”
She shook her head. “It’s not a verbal thing. We get each other’s emotions and sometimes a general sense of direction. No words.”
“Then there’s nothing you can do.” He said it as a statement, and she wanted to argue.
She was an alpha’s daughter. She ought to do something, but what?
Usually she would send support vibes through the link, but she didn’t support what they were doing.
“Go away” would likely inflame things. At best, she should stay quiet and pretend she wasn’t even here.
Few people in the pack could get a directional sense from the pack link, but those who could would know she was sitting here with the bears.
She sighed and dropped her head on his shoulders, feeling frustration eat at her. The drive to do something—anything—to save the ones she loved from disaster churned like acid in her gut.
“Simon won’t hurt them unless he has to.”
She tried to take comfort in that. Maybe the pack would get spooked by the floodlights and turn around.
Except the moment she thought the words, she felt the wolves stir.
Anger surged quickly followed by defiance.
It was a madness she hadn’t felt from her people ever.
Normally the pack link calmed and soothed, but this link stirred to violence, and she felt her own blood surge with the connection.
Worse, she felt a single, strong vibration through the link. A dark mind pushing the rest to madness.
Raoul. What the hell was wrong with her brother? Why would he push the pack to madness? Unless he was already there, and he was just bringing everyone else along with him.
“He’s going to get them killed.” People she’d known all her life, pack mates who were good people, though maybe not very discerning when it came to complicated issues.
They didn’t know how to think logically, to separate emotions from passionate words to look at the sense of things.
She’d tried to reason with them, but they moved with the crowd without thought or discretion.
She bit her lip, beating her brain for something—anything—that she could do to stop them. They had to think. But she could already tell from the link that there wasn’t a soul among them who would listen to reason now. Not with Raoul stirring them up.
She pushed up from Ryan, breaking the restraint of his arm with an impatient growl. “I have to stop them.”
“You know you can’t.”
“I have to try. It’s what an alpha does.” She said the words with conviction, knowing that it was the first time she’d called herself an alpha. Not just the daughter of one, but a leader of a werewolf pack. It didn’t matter that her pack wasn’t following her right now. She was an alpha inside.
He pushed up on his elbow, wincing as it pulled at his side. When the pain built to excruciating, he flopped back down and looked at her. “You have to think. They’re not, but you can.”
She went to the hallway and looked into her father’s room.
He was resting peacefully, the shallow lift and fall of his chest the only indication he was alive.
She thought about waking him, but the doctor had told her the longer he slept, the better.
If he hadn’t woken from the mental turmoil of the pack outside their window, then he wasn’t strong enough to do anything even if she could manage to rouse him.
He had to rest, which meant it was up to her to do… what?
She paced back into Ryan’s bedroom, crossing to the window to stare down. She saw the naked street, empty of everything except a few parked cars. She felt her people out there, hovering on the edge, slinking through the shadows as they hugged the buildings.
“You’ve talked to them already,” Ryan pressed. “You’ve told them everything they need to know.”
“Yes,” she acknowledged. Then she bit out the word in fury. “Yes!” Why wouldn’t they listen?
“So you’ve given them all the information, but they’re choosing Raoul anyway.”
She dropped her head against the cool windowpane. They were right there on the edge of her awareness. So close. So bitter. Was that Raoul? Or was that seething resentment inside everyone?
“They’re going to die.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But you can’t stop them from making bad decisions.”
She spun around, her agitation making her voice sharp. “I’m an alpha. I may be just a hybrid, but I’ve always taken care of the pack. Everything I’ve done is for their good.”
“You are not God. And you wouldn’t want to take away people’s free will anyway.”
She threw up her hands. “This is not a philosophical debate. Raoul is going to get them killed!”
He just looked at her, his blue eyes practically luminous in the floodlights. She read compassion in his expression, and an implacable steadiness in his eyes. Firm, calm, and cold. Like a steel blade honed to a razor’s edge.
“There is nothing you can do,” he said.
“Stop saying that!” There had to be something.
He sighed. “You’ve done everything you can. Now it’s up to them to choose.”
“But they’re choosing wrong!” she huffed.
“And that’s their right.”
He was right. She knew he was right, but God she hated it.
To the depths of her soul, she despised what her brother had done.
Somehow, he’d subverted the pack, put her on the outside when all she wanted was to help them.
It was her right to serve and protect the pack, and yes, she felt the irony in those words.
Ryan’s job was to serve and protect all of Detroit, and she’d fought him every step of the way.
Pack business. Shifter politics. Hell. And now she felt just as he did. Sitting outside when the very people he was spending his life trying to help cut him out, ignored him, or worse, hated him for doing his job.
“How do you stand it?” she whispered. “You’re on the gang task force. You work with kids. How do you make them listen?”
He lifted his hand in a vague gesture before letting it drop. Then he sighed. “Same way you have. I talk and talk. I reason, I plead. I even apply pressure when I can. But in the end…”
“You have to let them choose.”
“You know a teenager who isn’t hell-bent on deciding things for him or herself?”
No. She sighed and crossed back to the bed. Nothing was happening out there right now. Her people had the place surrounded, but they hadn’t yet stepped into the light. And thankfully, Simon wasn’t pushing things but sat waiting for the pack to decide what it wanted to do.
“I hate this.” Her body twitched as she looked at the door. She almost went straight for it because, come hell or high water, she needed to be with her pack. But that was stupid, and she knew it. They’d chosen Raoul. All she could do was inflame matters—and emotions—even more.
So she sat and entwined her fingers with Ryan. “How’d you get so wise?”
“I work with teenagers. It’s the only way to keep sane.”
“But the stakes are so high. A wrong choice—”
“Gets people killed. Yeah, I know. And the bystanders are the worst casualties. They haunt me at night.”
Yet one more reason why he couldn’t sleep.
The hollow note in his voice pulled at her.
Especially since it was an echo of the pain she felt now.
If the pack chose to fight, there would be casualties on both sides.
Bear, wolf, human bystander. She’d remember every one and feel the loss until the day she died.
“How many bystanders?” she asked. “How many souls haunt you, Ryan?”
“After three years working in gangs? Seven. Two were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Five were too young to have a chance to think on their own. They were just used by the people who said they’d protect them.”
She touched the worry lines on his face, smoothing them gently with her thumb. “You can’t hold on to them. It wasn’t your fault.”
“You can’t go out there. You’ve done everything you can.”
She looked at his face and saw the pain etched in every line.
He wasn’t hiding his feelings from her. Right now, he was showing her the path she was on.
He was letting her see the pain that came from not letting go of what you couldn’t control.
It was eating him alive, and she was a few hours away from that exact same place.
“I’ll make you a deal,” she said softly. “I’ll stay right here, right now, if you forgive me for not knowing how to do better. I’ve failed to convince my own people to see reason.”
“You can’t convince people who won’t listen. What is happening is not your fault.”
She nodded, knowing it was true. “So am I forgiven?”
He smiled. “Of course.”
“Then you have to forgive yourself, too. I don’t know what happened to those seven people, but I know you did everything you could.”
He blew out a breath as he looked away. “You don’t know the mistakes I’ve made.”
“And you don’t know how I might have stopped it weeks or maybe months ago.” She leaned forward. “Did you forgive me for skipping out at the restaurant?”
His gaze cut to hers. “You know I did.”
“Then why don’t you deserve the same respect?” She stroked his very rigid jaw. “Tell you what, I forgive you for not being a superhuman God who can control teenagers bent on destruction.”
His lips curved at that, and she felt the tightness in his jaw ease. “And I forgive you for loving your brother so much that you forgave him for the unforgiveable, and you still love him despite him leading your people into madness.”
Her chest squeezed at that. The grip was so tight and so painful that tears sprang to her eyes.
He had pegged her straight on. He understood exactly where her mistakes were and the error she was still making.
She hoped that somewhere, somehow Raoul would turn away from the darkness.
And if he did, then the pack could find the right path.
But so far, it wasn’t happening. And she couldn’t forgive herself for allowing him to drag the pack into insanity.
But apparently Ryan could. He could forgive her and, in that moment, she felt the guilt ease. If nothing else, the burden was now shared with him, and she felt so much better for it.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Thank you,” he echoed. And in those two words, she heard the same relief that she felt.
The same whisper of surprise and awe that echoed in her soul because they had helped each other.
And together, they breathed out their pain.
A moment later, she dropped forward until they were forehead to forehead.
“I wish you were better,” she said. “I’d really like to make love with you right now.”
The words hadn’t even finished. Their sound still hovered in the air when she felt the tingle.
Magic. Shifting.
She jumped back. Grizzlies needed a lot more room on the bed than an injured man. She saw the golden light and felt the abrupt coolness in the air. Ryan was a vague shape of grizzly mixed with the lines of a man.
He shimmered there on the bed, the glow neither man nor bear but part of both.
And best of all, as she watched, his bandages lost traction on his skin and floated down to the bed.
She held her breath, watching, and then the glow contracted.
It pulled together into one body, one man, whole and complete.
And he was grinning.