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had to ditch a sim card and replace it with a burner card so
that you could throw someone off of your trail.
    "Who
is this?"
    I
tried to keep the exhaustion and borderline hostility out of my
voice. I hadn't slept since the attack down in New Mexico. It was
dangerous and I was going to have to stop and rest soon, but I hadn't
been able to shake the feeling that I had a target painted on my
back.
    Apparently
I did a worse job disguising my state than I thought because the
voice that responded to me sounded like its owner was only a
heartbeat away from breaking into hysterical laughter.
    "You
really should have taken a nap earlier, Jasmin."
    "Rachel!
Where have you been and why haven't you called before now to tell me
what's going on?"
    "I've
been going where I was needed, Jasmin. I thought you, of all people,
would understand that."
    "Ben
needs you. Hell, I need you."
    "Yes,
I'm afraid you're right about that, but you're not ready yet."
    I
fought down a wave of anger, but it was hard. My beast spent more
time in the driver's seat than I would have admitted to any of my
friends. It was like I was thirteen again all over and trying to
adjust to having an alien presence inside of my head, a violent
presence that I wasn't completely sure I could control.
    Things
had been bad enough after Chicago, when Alec had killed Agony. There
wasn't any reason that my beast should have gotten more difficult to
control at that particular point, but she had. I'd struggled with my
temper almost as soon as we flew back home, but it had gotten twenty
times worse since I'd manifested my hybrid form. I liked Rachel, most
of the time at least, and once upon a time my beast had taken a
pretty laid-back view of her too. Right now my beast was pissed. She
didn't like anyone telling her what she was or wasn't ready to deal
with, but it was even worse coming from someone my beast viewed as
being weaker than us.
    I
knew that there was more to being strong than just who could hit the
hardest, but my beast didn't think like that. I told myself for the
thousandth time that I controlled us, not her. If I hadn't learned
anything else from my dad, I'd learned that you had to maintain
control.
    He'd
been the perfect example of what happened when you let the beast run
unchecked. Donovan said that my father hadn't ever really recovered
from what happened when Agony tore through the pack the first time.
    The
way that Donovan said it always made me feel like he was trying to
cut my dad slack, like he was trying to make excuses for him. The
truth was I knew there wasn't any kind of justification for what my
dad had become.
    He'd
lost a lot when the pack was shattered. My mother, his wife, had been
killed by some anonymous Coun'hij enforcer that night. He'd lost
nearly everything he cared about when she bled out on the rocks, but
so had everyone else. Some people had lost even more. James' mom had
lost a spouse, Andrew had lost his wife and been crippled to the
point where he was confined to a wheelchair. Neither of them had
turned into a child-abusing monster.
    I
knew I had my own set of problems, but I wasn't my father and I
forced my beast back into the darkest corner of my mind where she
would have a harder time influencing my thoughts and feelings. From
the outside all I did was take a couple of deep breaths, but that
didn't do justice to the sheer amount of effort involved. It was like
dragging an elephant through a field with nothing more than my
fingernails and sheer willpower to see the job done.
    There
wasn't any way that Rachel could have known what I was doing. Once I
spoke she'd be able to hear the difference in my voice, but she
didn't wait for that before speaking herself.
    "Good,
Jasmin. You're going to need more of that control if you're going to
be able to save Ben."
    "I
thought you said I needed my rage."
    "I
did, and you do, but you're past that now. Your rage helped you get
where you are today, but now it's just going to get in the way unless
you