Raised by Wolves Read Online Free

Nobody but Ali and me.
    “Close the door and hang up your jacket,” Ali called the orders to me from the kitchen. She had an uncanny sense for knowing what was happening in her house even if she couldn’t see it. Before she’d bellowed, I’d been microseconds away from dumping my coat on the floor.
    I followed her orders to a T and then walked into the kitchen, following the sound of Ali’s voice and the scent of cooking food. I had a good nose—a matter of necessity in the pack, human or not—but I couldn’t quite parse what I was smelling into its component parts. “Marinara sauce,” I mused out loud. “Peanut butter. Onions. And …”
    “Oreos,” Ali declared, popping one into her mouth. “You want?” she asked after she’d gulped hers down.
    I took the proffered Oreo and surveyed the rest of the kitchen. “Cravings?” I asked.
    Ali shrugged hopelessly.

    “Where’s the steak?”
    It didn’t matter what Ali was craving, there was always meat involved. The baby had turned her into a carnivore, and Ali, who couldn’t stomach even the sight of a rare steak eight months ago, ate them daily now. Such was the price of a Were pregnancy. That, and the fact that instead of kicking, like normal babies, Ali’s son Shifted forms. A couple of months ago, I’d joked about selling tickets to watch her stomach during the full moon. Now, with the baby’s birth closer all the time, it really wasn’t funny anymore.
    “I’m going to be fine,” Ali said, reaching up to rub my shoulder with one hand.
    “You always do that. It’s like you can read my mind.” I meant it as a complaint, but it came out nostalgic, like part of me was preparing to look back fondly on that habit when she was gone.
    “I’m going to be fine,” Ali said again. “You know me, Bryn. Have I ever backed down from a fight?”
    Never. Before Callum had thrust me into her care, she hadn’t even been a part of the pack. She’d only just found out that werewolves were real and that more often than not, they took human women as their mates. For an orphaned kid she’d never even met, Ali had abandoned her own life and risen to the challenge. She’d taken Callum’s Mark and mastered it, insulating herself—and me—from most of what it entailed. There wasn’t a Were within a hundred-mile radius that she hadn’t stood up to on my behalf, Callum included. I thought that was why he’d given me to her, instead of to one of the other Weres. He’d made her Pack so that she could take care of me, knowing that she’d be unaffected by dominance hierarchies, knowing that she wouldn’t put up with someone giving me crap just because they were dominant enough to think that they could.
    “You’re going to be fine,” I said, repeating Ali’s words. I believed it. I really did. I just forgot that I did sometimes. I’d seen too many women die in childbirth. Female werewolves were extremely rare, and human bodies weren’t meant to carry werewolf pups.
    “Where’s Casey?” I asked, changing the topic of conversation and hoping that my thoughts would follow suit. “It’s not like him to miss a meal.” Ali’s husband was an eater. And for the past eight months, he’d been quite the hoverer as well.
    Food plus Ali meant that he should be here, and even though I hadn’t quite gotten used to the fact that it wasn’t just me and Ali anymore—or the idea that when I slept, there was an adult Were sleeping down the hall—Casey’s absence struck me as fundamentally strange.
    “Casey’s eating out tonight,” Ali said. “Here, taste this.”
    I was so caught up in trying to figure out why Casey was “eating out” and what Ali wasn’t telling me that I almost took the bite she offered me. At the last second, I came to my senses and realized that whatever concoction Ali’s cravings had led her to create, I really, truly didn’t want any part of it.
    “Your loss,” she said, spooning the goop, which definitely contained both the peanut