So why was Bran issuing a warning now?

“Make her declaration real,” Bran said in a low voice. “Give us grounds to make some places safe. Let us be heroes as well as monsters.” He looked at me then. “And do not make this into a full-scale war.”

“Unless you can’t help it,” murmured Charles.

“You know what this means,” said Bran.

“I do,” agreed Adam.

The two of them stared at each other for a moment, then Bran said, “I repudiate you and your pack. You are sundered from me and mine.”

Something happened to the pack bonds, a shivery pain slid through them into my head and was gone a moment later. It hit Adam harder; he took a deep breath, and his whole body broke out in a light sweat.

Bran’s eyes caught mine. He started to say something, then shook his head.

The monitor went blank for a moment, then the familiar Skype screen reappeared.

“He had to do that,” Adam said. “Or else there would have been a war between werewolves and the fae. By cutting us off, by making us a rogue pack, he made sure that this stayed a local matter. We should expect that he will get word to the other packs and to the fae immediately, or else there would be no point.”

He waited, then said in a soft voice, “Mercy, he had to do this.”

“Of course he did,” I said, still frozen on Adam’s lap.

He leaned sideways and grabbed his cell phone off his desk. I started to get up, but his arm wrapped around my middle. He hit a button on the phone.

“Yes,” said Darryl.

“We’re on our own,” Adam told him.

“I felt that,” Darryl said, “and you warned us. I’ll let the pack know.”

“Tell them they can leave if they want to,” he said.

Darryl laughed. “Like that will happen. After your performance tonight, you couldn’t pry anyone out of this pack with a crowbar and a bucketful of dynamite, as Warren would say. No worries, we’ve got this.”

Adam disconnected and set the phone back on the desk.

“I suppose,” I said, my voice more wobbly than I liked, “that it’s a good thing you yanked the pack’s chain. If it’s going to be us against the world, we better all be fighting the enemy instead of each other.”

My stomach felt like I’d been kicked. Bran wasn’t my father, wasn’t even my foster father, but he had raised me just the same. “You knew this was going to happen?”

“I thought it might.” Adam relaxed back against his seat and pulled me more tightly against him.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“Not your fault,” he said.

“Uhm.” I considered the progress of events again. “Yes, it is.”