He used to try to look at my paper during history tests ....
They were her people—or they were supposed to be. They always had been before.
It was hard to get angry at them whentheydidn’t look angry. They didn’t seem mutinous or fed up with her. They looked tired, that was all. Tired and drained and sick of worrying, like her. They’d lost hope, and she couldn’t blame them.
And they’d lost confidence in her. Did that give her permission to walk away? Did shewantto walk away?
For a second, Lydia let herself imagine it. No more grinding pressure. No more responsibility. She could finally see something of the world and find out who she was outside of Mountainview.
Maybe she could even hitch a ride with Case, once he was back on his feet. They could have that dinner date without anything else hanging over them, and then—
Yearning made her chest tighten up.
But realistically, she knew how she would finish that sentence she’d left dangling. If she abandoned her pack and ran off with Case, they wouldn’t even get through the salad courseof that dinner date before she started worrying about everyone she’d left behind. She would remember that fear made people irrational and desperate to seize on any way out, and she’d know that it wasn’t fair to abandon her pack because Reeve had some of them on edge. Even the scared pack-members were good people, and they’d raised her as much as Ruth had. They deserved a little bit of grace.
That wasn’t how she wanted that night with Case to go. If she ever got to be with him like that, she wanted the focus to be on the two of them, not on everything she’d given up to get there.
Also, fuck Reeve Steele. He didn’t get to drive her away from her home.
“I’m not stepping down,” Lydia said, locking eyes with Reeve.Hewas her opponent here, not the pack. She wouldn’t let him turn them against each other. “And it wouldn’t make any difference if I did. The rest of you know that, deep down. He didn’t come here to offer peace. He’s the one starting a fight. We don’t need him, but he thinks we should turn Mountainview over to him, and then he’s trying to make it sound like he’d be gracious enough toletus give him what he wants. He’s a manipulative, power-tripping asshole. If you give in to him, maybe he’ll be generous for, oh, a week—as long as you keep thanking him for it, and you bow and scrape enough. But then he’ll get over it. You know that ... and so does he.”
Reeve’s eyes flashed, and his self-assure smirk finally twisted into an openly nasty scowl.
“All I know,” he said in a low growl, “is that you’re in my way.”
Lydia squared up to him. “And I’m going to keep being in your way. I’ll die in your way if I have to.”
Reeve leapt at her, changing mid-lunge from human to wolf. Lydia was honestly stunned to find that her reflexes were sharp enough for her to shift before he collided with her. If he’d hit herhead-on like that while she’d been in her human form, he might have killed her.
And he still knocked her over. She was on the small side as far as wolves went, and he washuge.
Maybe he’s secretly half-bear, Lydia thought, dazed and breathless from getting slammed into the porch.That wouldn’t surprise me.
He was going to kill her right here and now, on her own front porch. It was against all human and wolf laws, but who was going to stop him? Clearly not her. And even though she could see a few people shifting to come to help, she already knew they wouldn’t get here in time.
She’d done everything she possibly could, and this was how it was going to end. It had come down to brute force, and she was the loser. It didn’t matter how hard she’d tried. It didn’t matter that she was smarter than Reeve, or that the people of Mountainview had chosen her, not him. He was bigger than she was, and that was it.
And he’d knocked the wind out of her, so she couldn’t even go down fighting.
Lydia was about to close her eyes and let it go when a black blur sailed over her and careened into Reeve, knocking him aside.
What the fuck?
A tall, lean wolf stood above her, his hackles bristling. He’d planted himself in front of Reeve without a moment’s hesitation, and his growl made his stance very clear:Get away from her.
Who was he? Where had he come from? From ... the house?
She knew she’d gotten her bell rung, as her grandmother would say, but that didn’t make any sense. There was no one in the house but Ruth and Case. And Ruth was dying, and Case—
Case?
It couldn’t be. He’d been twisted up in agony when she’d left him. Her bite hadn’t transformed him, it had poisoned him.
She’d never heard of someone coming back from a failed transformation. Never. And when she’d come up with the idea of changing Case, she’d done her research. People’s bodies didn’t reject the transformation and then ... un-reject it. It just didn’t happen.
But now, apparently, it had, because she couldn’t think of any other explanation. The wolf in front of herwasCase.
No one else would come to protect me.
