Free Raised by Wolves by Jennifer Lynn Barnes Page A

crazy with the unpredictable bipolarity of it all.
    For them, moonlust was a natural high.
    For me, it was a hum. A high-pitched, disturbing hum of power, and the creepy, crawly feeling of someone watching me from the shadows. In fact, Callum had probably decided to make me wait until the full moon to hear the conditions of my visit with Chase because he’d hoped that I’d withdraw the request rather than venture directly into the belly of the beast on my least favorite day of the month.
    But even with the noose tightening moment by moment and my stomach flipping itself inside out, I wasn’t backing down. There would be no fake chunk-blowing today.
    “Can I make you something for breakfast?” Ali pulled a kitchen chair away from the table, her subtle way of telling me that I would be eating breakfast whether I wanted to or not. I considered arguing, because my stomach was knotted up enough that the idea of jamming food down into it seemed ill-advised, but the expression on her face told me that she’d probably been up late with the twins, and that she’d waste no time putting the fear of God (and sleep-deprived mothers) into me if I balked.
    “Cereal?” I asked.
    Two minutes later, like magic, a bowl of cereal appeared in front of me on the table, and Ali took a seat, her eagle eyes watching as I swirled my spoon around in the bowl before taking a bite.
    “Callum said you asked for permissions,” Ali said, her casual tone belied by the fact that she’d known for weeks and hadn’t mentioned it until now. “To see the new boy. Chase.”
    I shrugged and took another bite of cereal, my stomach clenching in protest.
    “You’ve never played by their rules before,” Ali continued on, leaning over and snagging a marshmallow out of my bowl and popping it into her mouth. “You don’t ask permissions, you don’t acknowledge dominance, and by the time you were in kindergarten, you’d clamped down on your end of the bond so hard that I thought you’d break it.”
    She made another grab for my cereal, and I pushed the bowl toward her. “Knock yourself out,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”

    Ali pushed the bowl back my way and tilted her head toward mine. “Eat.”
    I ate. She watched, and finally, I realized that she was waiting for me to say something.
    “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
    “I want to understand why it is that the girl who has never met a rule she hasn’t broken would voluntarily agree to give the local patriarch the power to set her limits in absolute stone.”
    “Patriarch? Puh-lease. It’s Callum.”
    “Your words, not mine. And you’re dodging the question.”
    The thing about asking permissions was that it required Callum to interact with me officially. I’d taken away his option of phrasing orders as requests, and I’d appealed to him as part of the pack, not as me. It had been a huge gamble, because if he’d turned down my permissions, and I’d gone to see Chase anyway, I’d have broken Pack Law and opened myself up to Pack Justice.
    But Callum hadn’t turned me down. He’d accepted my request, and whatever conditions he laid down today, I’d abide by them.
    “I needed to see Chase, and this was the only way.” I turned my head away from Ali but snuck a peek back at her out of the corner of my eye. “I couldn’t have gotten anywhere near Callum’s house on my own, not after last time. At least this way, I’ll get to see him.”
    The visit would be supervised, and it would happen on Callum’s terms, whatever those were, but by the time it was over, I’d have answers. Or possibly more questions.
    I’d have something, and that was infinitely more than what I had now.
    “Why this boy, Bryn? Why do you need to see someone who would just as soon eat your calf as look you in the eye?
    What could he possibly have to offer?”
    Whoa. Ali was sounding suspiciously anti-Chase. Ali wasn’t anti-anybody. I said as much out loud, and she shrugged.
    “Casey doesn’t