I was still alive. Alive and free.
Paddy leaned against the car and consulted his cellphone for messages. I’m pretty sure he didn’t expect to find any, but the rest stop’s scenery did not seem to enthrall him as much as the highway’s.
Murphy watched me pace for a moment then, with a resolute shift of his shoulders, he joined me.
He made sure not to touch me—of course he wouldn’t—but he was near enough that I was comforted. I wanted to touch him but I didn’t. My emotions were shredded.
Fear, bottomless and dreadful, whipped through my body and snagged in my brain where it turned my thoughts into a whirling mass of fleeting impressions—the cold of the gurney against my bare skin—the stink of Bethany’s fear and unwashed, infected body. Nate’s laughter in the wood shed as I swung the wrench ineffectually at his head.
Then the tribunal. The relentless damnation of my poor, damaged wolf.
“God, I wish I were anywhere else but here,” I whispered. Murphy gave me a sympathetic smile.
“Not too late to turn the car around and go back to Boston.” He was so close I smelled his cologne, but so far away he might have been on the moon.
I wrapped my arms around myself and walked toward a chain link fence that separated the rest stop from a small stretch of pine trees. The crisp scent of evergreen was pungent in my nose and I drew deep breaths in an attempt to cleanse myself. My head hurt again and, when I touched the sort spot at the base of my skull, I winced.
Murphy waited patiently but, after a moment, Paddy stalked over and assessed the situation.
“She wouldn’t suffer half so much if she had the pack bond to fall back on.” Paddy glared at Murphy as if to accuse him of something. Murphy’s jaw tightened but he didn’t say anything.
“Pack bond?” With reluctance, I turned away from the pine trees. My fingers were hooked in the spaces between the chain links so hard the wire left indentations. My brain was less fuzzy and the awful memories had retreated. For the moment, anyway.
“That’s right, you’ve been in small packs all your life,” Murphy murmured. The May sunshine illuminated his brown hair and brought out the gold highlights.
“Sure and you’ve heard of it, though.” Paddy was astonished and almost angry. His different-colored eyes bored into my face as if he could find the knowledge buried in my brain somewhere if he only probed hard enough.
“You need at least forty people in a pack to do it, otherwise the Alphas have too much control.” Murphy spoke again as Paddy stared at me.
“I know what it is,” I told them both. Did they think I was an idiot—ignorant of the Pack’s history? “I just didn’t think any pack did that anymore.”
The pack bond was mind control pure and simple. Blood from both Alphas was mixed with an herbal concoction then consumed by each pack member. Through the Alphas, the pack as a whole was connected. The Alphas could exert subtle control over individual pack members. I hesitated to call it magic, it was more instinct—an innate ability unique to the Pack akin to the fusion that occurred during group sex before a hunt.
Generally it was used to bring harmony into a large, diverse and potentially dangerous group. It also sped up the healing process in injured pack members. Pack healed more rapidly than Others, but with a pack bond the healing was supposedly even more accelerated.
“We have the Councils to oversee us now,” I argued, although neither man with me said a word. “We don’t need some barbaric method of mind control from the Dark Ages.”
Paddy began to quietly fume.
“Nobody uses it to control and dominate anymore,” Murphy said hastily. “It’s meant to help, Stanzie. When someone in the pack is hurt—physically or mentally—the Alphas can use the pack bond to speed up healing. That’s all. No Alpha in Mac Tire has abused that sacred trust in centuries. In big packs like Mac Tire, we have to have it to keep the peace.”
“Then you do use it to dominate and control,” I said. “I’m not going to do it.”
“Friggin’ Americans. One by one you bloody idiots have discarded the old ways until the Pack is a fucking shadow of what it used to be.” For some reason Paddy was really angry. The scent of his fury coated my tongue and clogged my sinuses. Alphas were intimidating as hell when they really got pissed.
His words sent a paralyzing shot of ice through my veins. Paddy. Defending the old ways? Could his anger have made an idiot of his tongue? Or did he think Murphy and I weren’t aware of the conspiracy within the Pack?
“In Europe packs less than forty are almost never allowed to form and if accident reduces the numbers somehow, two packs are blended together. How can you have a proper pack with only seven or eight frigging people? It doesn’t work. You bounce the Alpha status between yourselves like a bloody rubber ball and nobody respects anybody. You have to work to be Alpha of Mac Tire and other packs in Europe. You have to fight and prove yourself. You don’t just get handed the baton because there’s only the seven of you.”
“Alpha pairs are mainly for procreation,” I responded before I saw Murphy’s warning shake of the head. I ignored him. I wouldn’t have shut up anyway.
Paddy’s withering glare made me stiffen.
“Now there speaks a truly ignorant American.” He raked a hand through his curly hair and grimaced when his fingers got stuck. “Oh for fuck’s sake. Can we please get on our way? We’re going to hold up the entire friggin’ funeral debating pack culture. And you’d lose, Constance Newcastle, because you haven’t got a friggin’ leg to stand on.”
Without waiting for us, he stomped back to the car.
“Do you think—” I began in a scared voice.
“No,” Murphy said sharply.
“Just because he’s your friend doesn’t mean he can’t be a part of it, Murphy.”
“He’s not just a friend. He’s bonded to my twin sister. And he’s my Alpha.” Murphy’s expression made it clear he was finished with the conversation. “Let’s go.” He stalked toward the parking lot and I was forced to follow, although I was far from done with the subject.
Paddy waited in the car which smelled like coffee, doughnuts and his anger. I buckled my seatbelt and avoided his eyes. Murphy slid behind the wheel and started the engine.
“I’m sorry I lost my temper,” said Paddy after we’d merged onto the highway. “Now’s not the time to discuss it, but the pack bond is a fact of life for members of Mac Tire.
“Later,” he insisted when Murphy opened his mouth to say something.
I didn’t bother to argue but there was no way in hell I was taking a pack bond. We did not live in the Dark Ages anymore, no matter what some people wanted to believe.
* * * *
My body understood where we were before my brain did. The moment we crossed the border into the small town of Easton, Vermont—Maplefair territory—I broke into a cold sweat.
Murphy’s GPS device directed him to turn right and when he did, I realized we were on the pack’s road and in less than two miles we’d pass a small blue mailbox and a dirt driveway that led straight to hell. And it was on my side of the damn car.
“Fuck.” I spoke the word aloud before I could call it back.
“What’s wrong?” Paddy had never been here before so he didn’t