Free Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology by Jennifer Lynn Barnes Page A

and the whimpers to the occasional sniff. Expertly, Callum got her into a fresh set of clothing, since Shifting had destroyed her Baby Gap bodysuit and booties. Already, the twins were wearing clothes made for much older infants, and Katie, with her penchant for spending time in an animal form that aged much more quickly than she did, was growing even faster than Alex.
    I’d never realized how fast Weres grew when they were thissmall. We’d only had one or two live births since I’d been with the pack, and I’d never been up close and personal with those. I knew that Devon had always looked at least a couple of years older than I did, even though we were the same age, but the older we’d gotten, the more natural that difference had seemed. A six-week-old infant who looked like a six-month-old was much more bizarre than an almost-sixteen-year-old who could have passed for twenty. At this rate, Ali’s babies wouldn’t stay babies for long.
    For some reason, that thought made me look at Callum again, and I wondered if he realized that inside, I was changing even quicker than the twins were on the surface. I think he knew, the way he always did. The heavy sadness of his eyes as he looked back at me glowed with something akin to premonition. In Callum’s gaze, I saw the reflection of my own sudden self-awareness that I was barreling toward adulthood, and that the next words out of my mouth would be my first running leap in that direction.
    A leap that even five minutes before, I would have fought tooth and nail against taking.
    “I need to register a request for permissions,” I said, using the officially sanctioned language for approaching the alpha as one of his pack. This time, I needed to do things right. Callum, his expression completely masked, set Katie back down in her crib and nodded to Devon, who left the room.
    My stomach flip-flopped with the fear that he would sayno, but I made myself stand tall as he followed protocol to a T. “Your request has been registered. Define the terms of the permissions you seek.”
    I was suddenly very aware of the fact that I was in the room with Callum the alpha, not Callum who scolded me about algebra. My heart started beating faster and my mind went again and again to the beast inside him and from there to the things that a wolf as strong as Callum could do, if you tempted his ire and he were so inclined.
    “I need to see Chase,” I said, my voice quiet but firm. “I request permissions to have a supervised visit with him.” About then, I started losing my rather tenuous grip on the control I was aiming for. “I’ll do whatever you want, I’ll follow every rule you set down, but I need to see him.”
    Callum looked at me and into me, his eyes steely and sharp. His poker face wavered for a split second when I voluntarily promised to follow the rules—a completely unprecedented event that would, in all likelihood, never happen again.
    After roughly two and a half eternities, Callum finally nodded. “I’ll grant your request, with conditions to be set down by the next full moon.”
    I hated the idea of waiting even a second longer than I had to, but I wasn’t about to argue or look a gift wolf in the mouth.
    “Thank you,” I said, bowing my head, the way I’d seen other Weres do in the past. Callum stepped forward and pulled me into a hug, running his hand over my hair again, the sameway he had when I was four and looking for solace after skinning my knees. At that moment, part of me didn’t want to see Chase, because I didn’t want to remember anything outside of the here and now, where I was safe and loved and part of something bigger than myself.
    But another part of me knew that wasn’t an option, not for me, because there were bad people in the world who did bad things, even to kids, and I wasn’t the type who could stand by and pretend that there weren’t.
    If there was a Rabid in our territory, I needed to know.

CHAPTER SEVEN

    T HE NEXT FULL MOON WAS