Raised by Wolves Read Online Free Page A

butter and the marinara sauce I’d smelled, into her mouth. She followed it with an Oreo.
    “I’m going to throw up,” I said, gagging—and not just for show.

    “It’s all part of my master plan,” Ali replied. “Cravings are just the pregnant woman’s excuse for making everyone around her as nauseated as she is.”
    “You’re evil, Ali.”
    She smiled and serenely took another bite. “I know.”
    I took refuge in the refrigerator and nosed around until I found something edible. Popping the container into the microwave, I turned my attention back to Ali, who was very good at distracting me—just not quite good enough.
    “Your husband’s not home for dinner, even though he hasn’t gone more than ten feet away from you since you hit seven months. Callum decided to start enforcing my curfew and assigned an entire team to keep an eye on me. You’re making pregnancy jokes to distract me from asking questions.” I ticked the observations off on my fingers as I spoke out loud. “Something’s going on.”
    “If I asked you to please, as a personal favor to me, stay out of it, would you?” Ali asked.
    I busied myself by checking on my microwavable mac and cheese and didn’t reply.
    “Didn’t think so,” Ali sighed. “What if I told you that I was tired and cranky and very pregnant, and that I needed you to do this for me, because I can’t take the extra stress right now?”
    Now that was a low blow, and Ali knew it. I didn’t want to be worried about her, and she didn’t want me worrying about her. “You’re going to be fine,” I said, trying to respond the way I would have if I really wasn’t concerned at all. “And telling me to stay away just makes me want to know more. It’s obviously pack business, and there must be some danger involved, otherwise Callum wouldn’t be pulling his ‘trouble’s afoot’ routine. But it can’t be too dangerous, because Casey’s involved, and Callum would never risk him this close to your due date.”
    Ali didn’t say a word. I tried to read her face, but she had an ability matched only by Callum’s to hide her emotions completely.
    “Do you really need me to leave this alone?” I asked softly. I couldn’t risk hurting her, even if we both wanted to pretend that there was nothing—and could be nothing—wrong.
    “Yeah, Bryn, I think I do.”
    “Fine,” I said. “I’ll leave it alone—for now. But I’m not going to like it, and once that kid is born, and you’re fine, I’m getting a tattoo, piercing my belly button, and eloping to Mexico with someone you’ve never met.”
    She laughed and then stuck another Oreo in my mouth. As I was chewing, she tweaked my hair. “Bryn, Callum’s got you under surveillance. You wouldn’t make it a foot into a tattoo shop before someone yanked you back out.”
    “You never know,” I replied. “Tonight, my guard was Devon, and I happen to know for a fact that he thinks tasteful body art is quite the thing.”

    Ali responded to my retort with one of her own, and we went back and forth for so long that it didn’t occur to me until much later that she had assumed that my security team would still be in place by the time the baby was born. And that really made me wonder, because our pack had a tendency to take care of trouble very quickly. Threats were eliminated the instant they were identified. Callum ran a tight ship, and I couldn’t imagine what kind of pack business would necessitate my being inside by dusk every night for a month or more.
    Despite my promise to Ali, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and by the end of the week, I’d come to the realization that the weirdest part of all of this wasn’t that something had everyone on edge. It was the fact that nobody would tell me what it was. The pack didn’t just want me safe. They wanted to keep me in the dark.
    And ever since the night the Big Bad Wolf had come knocking at my parents’ door, I hadn’t been overly fond of the dark.
    Not