vulnerable because of forcing the shift so fast, and I took advantage of it.” Chaz shrugged, grimacing as he held up his free arm to look over the deep scratches. “I’m just glad he didn’t hurt you. I might have had to do some real damage if he had.”
Nick laughed, and some of the tension eased from Chaz’s too-tight muscles. “You are such a show-off.”
“Part of what makes him a good pack leader,” Sean said, clapping Chaz lightly on the shoulder as he came up beside us. “You had me worried for a second. I wasn’t sure what you were waiting for when Seth started to change.”
“Timing is everything,” Chaz said, rubbing his hand up and down my arm as I shivered and leaned into his warmth. It was dark between the trees, and I didn’t like the idea of having a bunch of unfriendly werewolves behind us, possibly planning revenge. “I hope he learned enough of a lesson not to push his luck and try me again for a while.”
“He didn’t,” Sean said flatly, ducking a low-hanging branch. “He’ll lick his wounds for a bit, and then figure out some other way to try to get you out of the way. He won’t accept that he lost so badly with grace.”
Simon snorted. Dillon shook his head and rolled his eyes. Chaz remained thoughtful.
“I don’t know. He barely scratched Chaz, and he’s not stupid. He’s got to know that means he’s lost some face, and that no one will follow him now,” I said, glancing at Sean.
“That’s true. Curtis, Gabe, and Richard have to know they aren’t going to be welcome back into the pack without making some amends for snubbing Chaz.” Nick rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, looking back over his shoulder. “Not that they were very welcome to begin with, but they’ll either take the fall back to the lowest of the low with Seth, or they’ll try to save face by ignoring him now.”
“There’s nothing saving them from the fall they’re about to take,” Chaz said, fingers tightening briefly on my shoulder as I stiffened at the mix of anger and fierce satisfaction in his voice. “I was giving this some thought earlier. Alec Royce offered to pay a pretty hefty sum to have a couple of the pack work for him as bodyguards and to possibly act as the occasional donor. It’ll help out the rest of the pack overall, improve relations with the leech, and teach them a lesson in one fell swoop.”
My jaw dropped in shock. It took a second for me to realize I wasn’t the only one shocked speechless. Relations between vamps and Weres just didn’t account for something like this. It just wasn’t done. Chaz would be making inroads to a place that didn’t bode well for anybody; it would either make his pack respected and feared as much as the Moonwalkers, or backfire and result in the Sunstrikers being social pariahs to the other packs.
“That’s pretty harsh,” Dillon muttered, the first to find his voice.
“Yes, but it will be worth it. They’ll be out of my hair, and learn a lesson in the process of doing the whole pack some good.”
“I didn’t take you for a player in politics,” I said, hiding the tremor in my voice with bravado. The fact that he was talking to Royce without my knowledge worried me a great deal, even more so now that he was planning on farming out some of his wayward pack members to the vampires. I knew Chaz could be cold, but I hadn’t thought he could be this ruthless. It bothered me more than I would’ve thought, especially considering what those boys had done. Yes, I wanted them to pay for it, but not necessarily like that. The rest of the pack would be scared shitless that the same might happen to them, I was sure. Not to mention that Royce often had other reasons behind why he did things, reasons you wouldn’t find out about until it was too late and you were in too deep to pull yourself out again.
“Don’t worry,” Chaz said, eyes bright as he looked down to me. “Think of it this way. They’ll never bother you again, and anybody else who might have thought to try something will have to think twice. If they even consider doing anything, they know it’ll mean going back to the vamps. That should be enough to stop anyone in the pack from messing with either of us.”
“Yeah,” I