Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology Read Free

because Callum had likewise forbidden them from killing me.
    Framing my orders as requests let Callum keep the pack out of it, and that left him free to deal with me on his own terms, which was sometimes a good thing and sometimes not.
    “Bryn?”
    “Your request has been noted,” I said, my lips twistinginadvertently into an easy grin. “I don’t anticipate there being any motorcycles in my future.”
    I was pushing him again, but I couldn’t help it. You didn’t get to be alpha of the largest pack in North America by winning popularity contests, and Callum was so dominant that the day I stopped pushing back would be the day that I was a member of his pack first and myself second.
    To Callum’s credit and my relief, he didn’t push for a firmer promise—probably because there were still two major items left on his Bryn Agenda.
    “Your algebra grade is lower than it could be. Education is important, and I’d not have you slacking off, sadistic teacher or no.” His voice took on that odd, old-fashioned lilt he sometimes adopted, a mere remnant of the accent he’d had before coming to this country.
    “Right. Algebra.” With the spring semester a month under way, I was getting a solid B-plus, but it could have easily been an A, and Callum had all kinds of lofty ideas about the importance of my living up to my potential. It was impressively modern of him, considering that he predated Women’s Lib by a couple of centuries—at least.
    “Did you tell Ali on me?” I asked. When the pack had adopted me, Callum had Marked a second human as well. Alison Clare had come to Ark Valley in search of her sister, who’d left their human family behind when she’d married into the pack. No one had counted on twenty-one-year-old Alitracking her sister to Ark Valley and unraveling secrets best kept in the woods. Any other alpha would have killed Ali the moment she saw her brother-in-law Shift. Callum had given her a choice.
    And then once she’d chosen, he’d given her me.
    At present, Ali was thirty-two, 100 percent human, recently married to one of the pack’s males, and my foster mother. Adopted mother. Whatever. Putting a label on Ali’s role in my life was somewhat difficult. I used her last name and had lived in her house for almost as long as I could remember. Despite the fact that she’d been practically a kid herself when Callum had initiated her into our world, Ali was the one who’d hugged and scolded and raised me from a pup (figuratively speaking, of course). Callum was my guardian on paper, but it was Ali who fed and clothed me, Ali who’d set up this studio so that I could have a place that was purely mine, away from the constant pull of the pack, and Ali who would ground me quicker than Callum could say my full name if she thought for a single second that I deserved it.
    “Ali has her own concerns at the moment,” Callum said, and I saw the faint ghost of worry on his otherwise unreadable face. Ali was eight months pregnant with her first child. Werewolf births were notoriously difficult, and many human women didn’t survive.
    Ali’s sister hadn’t.
    I was not willing to consider the possibility that the same thing might happen to Ali. Ali was strong. She’d make it, and the baby would, too, and then he’d outlive her by, oh, say a thousand years.
    Darn werewolves and their ridiculously long life spans.
    “Was that it?” I asked Callum, hoping he’d get the message loud and clear that I wasn’t going to spend a second worrying about Ali, who would be just fine-fine-fine.
    “You on a schedule here, Bryn?”
    I gave an exasperated huff. “No.” I hoped he’d smell the half-lie for what it was. Just before he’d interrupted me, I’d been working on a new piece, and I was anxious to get back to it. Found art was all about the process, and His Royal Highness, the Werewolf King (and Grand Poobah of Pains in the Butt) was seriously disrupting mine.
    “You broke curfew last night,” Callum