Raised by Wolves Read Online Free Page B

metaphorically. Not actually. I liked seeing what was laid out in front me. And if Callum and Ali and Devon thought they could keep me blindfolded indefinitely, they were wrong.

CHAPTER THREE
    TWO WEEKS TO THE DAY AFTER CALLUM TOLD ME to stop slacking in algebra, I got a C-minus on a quiz. It seemed like a good counterstrike at the time. After our little encounter in my workshop, the almighty alpha had pretty much disappeared, but true to his word, bodyguards materialized every day like clockwork to escort me home by dusk, willing or not. My promise to Ali meant that I couldn’t do more than keep an ear to the ground to figure out why, and everywhere I turned, there were unspoken whispers, the kind that pulled at my pack-bond and made my hipbone itch, just below the Mark.
    “Callum’s going to kill you, you know,” Devon said as I tucked the quiz into my backpack with a quick, vicious grin.
    Technically, it wasn’t found material, but I thought it would make a rather fetching rosebush all the same.
    “I’d like to see him try.” I’d given up on the idea that Devon might crack and give me some hint about what it was that had every wolf in a hundred-mile radius teetering on edge, gnashing their teeth, and closing rank around their females like we’d spontaneously combust the moment they left us to our own devices. “In case you haven’t gotten the memo, I’m not so easy to kill.”
    Devon didn’t flinch, but the fact that he didn’t counter my words with a pithy quote from the Bard and/or Dirty Dancing told me that my words had sent his mind down the same paths that I tried my best to avoid. His pupils didn’t dilate. His jaw didn’t clench, but I felt a hum of energy like the striking of a tuning fork in the air between us.
    It didn’t take a genius to infer that Devon’s inner wolf disliked the idea of anyone trying to hurt me. Plain old Dev didn’t seem too fond of the possibility, either, and I knew from previous experience that neither boy nor beast particularly cared for being reminded that if things had gone differently the night Callum had brought me home, I might not have lived long enough to be a thorn in anyone’s paw.
    Blood. Blood-blood-blood-blood—
    I stopped myself from thinking about it and helped Devon to do the same by jabbing his left side with my index finger. If we’d been alone, I might have butted him gently with my head, but this was high school, and the good people of Ark Valley had enough reasons to think that those of us who lived in the woods were just a little bit off.
    “Ten-to-one odds Callum has either Sora or Lance on Bryn-duty tonight,” I said, changing the subject with an unspoken apology for bringing up the previous one at all. “You Macalisters seem to be Team Bryn favorites at the moment.”
    Devon’s lips settled into an easy, practiced smirk, and the nearly imperceptible tension in his neck and shoulder muscles receded. “If there’s any justice in this world, watching you should convince them how lucky they’ve been to be blessed with a son such as myself.”
    “He says with patented Smirk Number Three.”
    Devon shook his head and made a sound somewhere in the neighborhood of tsk-tsk. “You’re getting rusty, Bronwyn.
    That was clearly Smirk Number Two: sardonic with a side of wit.”

    I breathed an internal sigh of relief that Devon was fully himself again. All Weres felt the tug between their human sides and their wolves, but Dev fought it more than most. He danced to his own drummer and dared the world to tell him that a purebred Were should have better things to worry about than what he was wearing. All things considered, Devon was almost as much of a rarity as I was. The only difference was, his particular oddity—being the son of a female werewolf rather than that of a male Were’s human mate—gave him the advantage over other werewolves, while mine meant that I’d always be the slow one. The weak one. The one who needed protection from