Pride

My dad strolled through the living room and into the kitchen, where we all watched him pour the last of the coffee into a clean mug, as if his authority wasn’t being questioned in front of Alpha and enforcer alike.

Malone followed him, stopping on the worn linoleum. “This is free territory. Of course there are strays here. We put them here!”

Daddy poured a packet of sugar into his coffee and stirred, looking no more annoyed than he might be by a fly buzzing near his ear. Malone seethed. “You cannot seriously be asking us to set aside your daughter’s criminal behavior in favor of chasing a few stray cats up the side of a mountain.”

That did it. My father brought the mug slowly to his lips. He sipped from it, eyeing Malone with all the patience in the world, and I understood in that moment why my father was the head of the council, and Calvin Malone never would be: Malone had no patience. No sense of timing. He wanted instant gratification, even on little things like getting a rise out of my father.

“No,” Daddy said. “I’m not asking you to do anything.” With that, he turned his back on Malone, showing the entire room that he had nothing to fear from his fellow Alpha. For toms like Malone, fear was synonymous with respect, and my father had just insulted him on a massive scale.

I think I was starting to rub off on him.

My father set his mug on the counter and turned to face the room. “We’ll send everyone we can spare. Jace, will you round them up, please?”

Jace was out of his chair and through the back door in less than a second.

As the first of the enforcers straggled in, I rose to refill my mug and found the pot empty. I had a fresh pot going when Marc followed the last tom in, at which point my father finished his coffee and cleared his throat for our attention. “In case anyone’s eavesdropping efforts failed—” quiet chuckling echoed across the living room “—we have agreed to investigate a matter brought to our attention by Elias Keller, the bruin we all just met. Mr. Keller says a group of strays has been making trouble near his home. You should be able to pick up their scents at a pond about six miles north of here.”

Excited murmurs rose throughout the room as anticipation of the chase swelled. I shared the guys’ eagerness, but knew without being told that I would not be participating. The council would never let me run free—even on an important assignment—while the hearing was in progress, and once it was over, the point would likely be moot. I might never run anywhere again.

That thought sent a jolt of fear through me, and the coffeepot shook in my grip, clattering against my empty mug. Marc lifted it from my hand, filling first my cup, then one for himself. I met his eyes—and he didn’t look away.

“I want you in pairs,” my father called out from the living room, drawing my attention back to the hunt I would take no part in. “One man from each team on two feet, the other on four paws. Stay ten yards apart, and head north to start. Check in with your Alpha by cell phone every hour. Got it?”

Several toms nodded, but Brett Malone—he of the unaccepted proposal—spoke up with a question, drawing a scowl from his father. “What should we do with the strays, if we find them?”

“Bring them back. Alive. Unconscious, if necessary.”

Brett frowned. “Should we use tranquilizers?”

My father’s brow rose in mild surprise, no doubt only a fraction of what he was truly feeling. Then his mouth turned down in what I knew from experience to be extreme displeasure. “We have tranquilizers?” He glanced at his brother-in-law for confirmation, and Uncle Rick nodded.

“Yes,” Malone chimed in, a slimy smile taking over his face as he glanced pointedly at me. “We have plenty of tranquilizers.” His implication was clear. They hadn’t come expecting trouble from strays, but they’d obviously expected some from me.

Fortunately, my father knew how to roll with the punches. “Then yes. If any of the strays are in cat form, tranquilize them and bring them back. We’ll have more than a few questions for them to answer.” He looked at Marc, who nodded in acknowledgment of his role in the process. Marc was the enforcer’s enforcer. He was my father’s big gun, the one in charge of convincing unruly cats to do what they should. He was also our executioner, when the situation called for one.

Which meant that if Calvin Malone got his way, Marc’s would be the last face I ever saw.

But my dad would never let that happen. Hell, I would never let that happen. And neither would Marc.

“Any more questions?” my father asked. When no one spoke up, he waved one thick hand toward the front door. “Good. Stay in sight of your partner at all times. Use your head, as well as your nose.” One corner of his mouth quirked up in an amused smile. “And see Brett for a tranquilizer before you go.”

Brett was already on the job. He’d just come in from the hallway with a big cardboard box, from which he pulled a handful of preloaded hypodermic needles, capped in red plastic. “You’ll have to get close to use these, of course,” he said, handing the first two needles to Jace, and the next two to Blackwell’s young grandson. “But they’ll work pretty fast.”

Frowning, I settled back into my chair at the table, thinking of where I’d like to shove Malone’s hypodermics.

In the living room, my father leaned against the wall next to his brother-in-law and both Alphas eyed the absurdly large box of sedatives. “Expecting trouble, were you?”

Uncle Rick chuckled. “Malone’s a frugal bastard, and they’re cheaper in bulk.”

“I bet.” But Daddy smiled. He was amused by all the needles, and so was I. The fact that they were prepared to sedate me—for the rest of my natural life, apparently—meant that they took me seriously. Were maybe even afraid of me, just a little bit.

Fear wasn’t quite as good as respect—but I’d take it.

My father cleared his throat, and everyone stopped what they were doing to look at him. “I’d like to speak to the council members in the dining room, please.”

Malone frowned and jerked his head in my general direction. “What about her?”

“She’ll have to come along.”

Oh, goodie! Insider information… I sipped from my mug to hide my smile.

“No.” Malone said, and I twisted to look at him so fast a jolt of pain shot through my neck. He shook his head firmly.

Blackwell stood. “She cannot sit in on council meetings, Greg. Not before we have a verdict. She hasn’t earned enough trust.”

My father nodded in concession, and a pang of disappointment leached through me. More sitting around, bored. I should have packed more books.

“Someone will have to watch her,” Blackwell continued, and I stiffened. The tribunal had put me under round-the-clock guard until the hearing was over, like I was some psychopath who might run off to infect and murder more humans if they lost sight of me for more than a five-minute bathroom break.

“Fine,” my father said, because he clearly had no choice. But there were only two toms left to watch me: Brett Malone and a Nordic-looking Canadian transplant named Colin Dean, who’d been hired by Paul Blackwell a few months earlier. I’d never said a word to him, and wasn’t eager to, based on the sheer number of times I’d caught him staring at my chest.

I turned from Colin to look at my father, pleading with him with my eyes to give me an out. “I can help. Let me help.”

“No.” He didn’t even hesitate.

“I’ll hunt with Brett and Colin, and I won’t Shift.” Being trailed through the forest by strange men was much better than being cooped up in a small cabin with them. “You can call me anytime you want.”

“No,” my father repeated, and Malone smirked, the arrogant bastard.

“You’re wasting your resources.” I pushed back my chair and followed my father down the hall. “You could have three more noses out there looking!”

“That’s enough, Faythe.” Three feet from the dining room, he spun in midstep, frowning at me in warning. “Don’t make this worse. Go wait at the cabin. I’ll be there when we’re done here.”

At home, I probably would have argued further, but I wasn’t going to embarrass my father in front of his fellow Alphas. Not while he was trying so hard to maintain his authority. The last thing he needed was me making more trouble.

“Fine.” Brett and Colin waited by the front door while I gathered what I’d brought to the main lodge—a novel, a bottle of water and a bag of Chex Mix. Before I left, I drained my mug, and as I set it in the sink, snatches of conversation floated to me from the dining room.

“You let him run wild, Greg, and it has to stop.”

Marc. Malone was complaining about Marc.

With nothing left to do in the lodge, I headed for the front porch, and the last thing I heard before the door swung shut behind me was my father’s reply. “He runs no wilder than your mouth, Calvin, and no one’s tried to muzzle you yet. But I promise you this, if you don’t get control of your tongue right now, I’ll make sure it never gets you in trouble again.”

A smile bloomed on my face as I bounded down the front steps. I couldn’t remember ever being so proud to call myself my father’s daughter.

Three

My father had rented cabin number four, a quarter-mile walk from the main lodge. On the way, as I stomped through dry brown grass, sandwiched by Tweedledee and Tweedledum, I nursed serious resentment toward both the Alphas, who’d made me stay behind, and my fellow enforcers, who’d gone on without me. I hadn’t done anything more exciting than brush my own teeth for more than two months, since I’d been suspended from active duty as an enforcer in September. And now I was missing an opportunity that might never come again: the chance to take a run through bruin territory. To sniff out scents foreign to East Texas. To the entire southern and eastern sections of the country, for that matter.

From the woods to the north came the sounds of tomcats making their way through the forest—twigs breaking, leaves swishing, and entirely too much gallivanting to be productive. The racket—probably barely audible to the human ear—had to come from the enforcers walking on two feet, because when a cat stalks on four paws, he makes no sound. Not if he knows what he’s doing, anyway.

I knew what I was doing. But I was not doing what I wanted.

Stifling a frustrated sigh, I wedged my novel into the crook of my left arm and opened the squirt cap on my water with my teeth. “Why don’t we blow off this whole ‘house arrest’ thing in favor of a rousing game of touch football.” I gulped from the bottle, then wiped my mouth on my sleeve. “You guys look like you could use the exercise.”

I was kidding, of course. Brett was slim but well toned, and Colin looked like a towheaded Rambo. Or that Russian boxer from Rocky IV. He scowled down at me from at least six inches over my head. “If you’re looking to get tackled, I’m sure we can work something out.”

My temper flared, but then Brett made a strangling sound, and I glanced at him, expecting to see him choking back a laugh. To my surprise, he looked nervous rather than amused, his focus shifting back and forth between me and Colin, as if he expected me to explode any second, raining blood and guts all over them both.

I turned back to the Nordic giant. “You even try to tackle me and I’ll hang your favorite parts from my rearview mirror in place of my fuzzy black dice.” Okay, I didn’t actually have a car—or a pair of fuzzy dice—but Colin didn’t need to know that.

He laughed, and a snarl rumbled its way from my throat.

“You think I’m kidding? Try me.” When he didn’t answer, I jogged up the steps of cabin four and shoved the door open. I dropped my armload on the coffee table, then plopped onto the couch, where I stared out the front window at the beautiful fall afternoon wasting away without my participation.

Brett dropped onto the armchair to my right, and Colin headed straight to the kitchen to forage.

For several minutes, Brett and I sat in silence, listening to cabinets slam and pots clang in the kitchen. Twice his lips parted, as if he might say something. But each time, a single glance at my expression—a carefully crafted scowl—changed his mind.

Finally, around the time sizzling sounds floated in from the kitchen, along with the aroma of melted butter, Brett worked up the courage to speak. “You wanna play cards?”

“No.” Instead, I stared out at the line of trees two hundred feet from the cabin’s front door.

Ten minutes later, Colin lowered himself onto the cushion next to me, holding a paper plate piled high with western scrambled eggs. Brett sat straighter, his nose twitching. “Got enough to share?”

Colin shook his head, and several strands of straight, whiteblond hair fell over his pale blue eyes. “You’re on your own,” he said, barely sparing his fellow tom a glance. Then he favored me with a satisfied smile, set his plate on the woodplank coffee table, and slid one arm across the back of the couch behind my head. He held a forkful of eggs inches from my lips. “You, I’ll share with.”

Clearly my reputation had yet to spread to Canada.

“If you want to keep those fingers, I suggest you pull them back. By about five feet.”

Colin laughed, under the mistaken impression that I was joking. I snatched the fork from his hand and hurled it end over end across the room. Chunks of egg and vegetable dropped to the ratty carpet. Stainless-steel tines sank into the fake oak paneling. The handle was still vibrating from the impact, Colin’s wide-eyed gaze glued to it, when I twisted his entire arm with a grip on his first two fingers.

“Ow, shit!” he shouted, leaning toward me to ease the pressure on his shoulder.

“You come within two feet of me again, and I’ll break the damn things off. Understood?”

Fury rushed in to cover the pain on his face, and for a moment it looked as if he’d make trouble. I twisted harder.

“Fuck! Yes, I got it! Let go!”

I released his hand, and Colin launched his bulky frame off the couch with a werecat’s peculiar grace and flexibility. On my right, Brett laughed. He’d seen the show once before, years earlier.

“You could have warned me,” Colin grumbled. He snatched his fork from the wall, then sank into the only other chair in the room and reclaimed his meal.

Brett huffed, and shot me a blatant look of approval, which I hadn’t expected. “She’s on trial for murder. I figured that was explanation enough.”

Colin focused on his eggs, steadily whittling away the yellow mountain, glaring at me like a spoiled child the whole time. Brett stared out the window in silence, because the television didn’t get cable and we hadn’t brought any movies. I ignored them both and picked up my novel.

When he finished his meal, Colin stood to take his empty dish into the kitchen. I glanced up to see him balance the paper plate on top of the full trash bin, rather than emptying it. I started to berate him for being lazy, but stopped when I realized he’d just given me the perfect excuse to go outside. Not for long, granted, but it would be worth playing nice for even a few minutes of fresh air and privacy.

“That needs to go out, before it starts stinking up the cabin,” I said, careful not to voice my offer too soon.

“It can wait.” He pulled open the fridge and snagged one of Marc’s Cokes from the top shelf. Normally I would have warned him not to do that, but I was trying not to piss him off at the moment. Plus, I kind of wanted to be there when Marc found out.

“No it cannot wait. That’s disgusting. You filled it up, you take it out.”

Colin glared at me over the top of Marc’s Coke. “I’m not taking out your trash. If you want it out, take it yourself.”

And just like that, Tweedledum had told me to do what I wanted to do in the first place. Idiot.

“Lazy tom…” I muttered, stomping past him as if in aggravation. I was three feet from the back door, garbage bag in hand, when he caught on.

“Stop. Nice try, but the council doesn’t want you out alone. Brett, you take it.”

Damn it.

Brett started to complain, but Colin was bigger and stronger, which meant he called the shots, in the absence of a higher-ranking enforcer or an Alpha. Grumbling beneath his breath, Brett plodded into the kitchen and took the bag from me. He headed into the backyard, and I returned to the couch and my novel, fuming silently.

A minute later, something heavy thumped at the rear of the cabin. Probably the trash bag hitting the bottom of the metal can. But then I heard another thump, and a wave of alarm surged through me. I looked up from my book and froze, listening. There were no more thumps, but I picked up a muted whispering sound, too soft for a human to have heard.

I jumped up from the couch and bolted into the kitchen to peer through the window over the sink. At first I saw nothing, but by the time Colin joined me, leaning much closer to me than necessary, the source of the sound had come into view. Sort of.

It was a tail, solid black and twitching in nervous excitement. I smiled. One of the guys had returned from the hunt and was obviously trying to cheer me up with a game of stalk-and-pounce. It wasn’t Marc or Jace; I knew that even at a glance. Maybe my cousin Lucas?

But as the hindquarters wriggled farther into sight, I realized they didn’t belong to anyone I knew.

“Who’s that?” Colin asked, and as I took in the confused look on his face, my apprehension deepened. My pulse pounded. An instant later, the cat came into full view, and I gasped, startled into inaction for a moment longer than I should have been. He was no one I knew. But he was dragging someone I knew: Brett, unconscious and bleeding from his stomach, the starched collar of his shirt clamped between the cat’s sharp front teeth.

“Shit!”

The cat started at the sound of my voice. He dropped Brett’s collar and met my stare through the window. His fur stood on end. He hissed, baring two-inch canines, white whiskers standing out against the black fur on his face.

“Who the fuck is that?” Colin demanded, louder that time.

I glanced around the kitchen, searching frantically for something to use as a weapon. “It’s one of the strays, genius. Who else could it be?” My focus settled on a block of knives near the stove, and I pulled the butcher knife free, hefting it in one hand to test its weight. Not bad.

“What are you doing?” Colin stared at me like I’d lost my mind.

“Hurry, before he gets to the woods.” I was halfway to the door when my gaze caught an ice pick lying on the counter by the refrigerator. I grabbed the pick and dropped the knife in its place, sparing time for another glance out the window. The cat and his prey were now a third of the way to the tree line.

Colin hesitated, then his head bobbed in reluctant concession. “Just give me a minute.” He bent to take off his shoes. Then he unbuttoned his pants.

“What the hell are you doing?You don’t have time to Shift.” Werecats have very powerful jaws and legs. I’d once seen a tom haul an entire deer into the branches of a tree to protect it from scavengers. Once he got into the forest, the stray could drag Brett anywhere he wanted and we’d never catch him.

“We can’t go out there like this. He’ll shred us. Unless you can use that partial Shift trick to come up with a quick set of claws…” The bastard actually smirked at me, like we had all afternoon to trade insults.

“That’s not how it w—” I stopped, sucking in a deep breath. There was no time to argue, much less to defend my partial Shift claims. “Get your ass out there and help me, or I swear I’ll tell the entire council that you’re a spineless, dickless fur-ball whose dam should have eaten him at birth.”

Colin’s smirk faded into cocky sneer. “Like anyone listens to you.”

Disgusted, I turned my back on him and caught sight of the meat mallet stuck upright in the dish drainer. It was bulky, with a sharply textured, two-sided aluminum head, a one-and-a-half-pound monster, which I could attest to, having taken out my frustration on a couple of sirloins the night before. Dropping the ice pick into the sink, I snatched the mallet and ran for the back door. My left fist closed over the doorknob as Colin grabbed my right arm, halting my progress and nearly pulling my shoulder out of its socket.

I whirled on him, fury and fear battling for control of my expression. The left hook flew out of habit; I’d been practicing with my southpaw during my recent period of unemployment. The practice paid off.

My fist hit Colin’s chin. His head snapped to the side with a grunt of pain and surprise. He stumbled backward several steps, then tripped over his own foot. Colin’s skull hit the countertop, then his back hit the linoleum. His eyes fluttered, then closed. He was out cold.

Shit! I needed his help. Good going, Faythe!

Flustered and out of time, I waited a second to make sure he was breathing, then shoved my way through the back door before I had a chance to consider my odds and chicken out. I raced across the grass toward the cat, now less than twenty feet from the tree line. A shriek of fury split my skull as I ran, and it took me a moment to realize it was coming from me.

When I reached Brett’s feet, the stray dropped his prey and bared his canines at me. His fur stood on end, gleaming in the midafternoon sun. His tail swished back and forth in equal parts fear and aggression. He was going to attack.

So was I.

I planted one foot on the ground and knelt as I swung the mallet. The stray hunched, preparing to pounce. My scream became a cry of triumph even before the hammer made contact. And it did make contact.

The mallet slammed into the left side of his skull.

A sickening thud-crunch raised goose bumps all over my skin. Blood and fur flew from the point of contact. The impact traveled up the handle to vibrate in my arm. The cat fell over sideways. Then there was silence. And stillness. Nothing moved, other than the rise and fall of my chest on the bottom edge of my vision as I sucked in air and spit it back out, over and over again.

Sound came back slowly, and the first thing I heard was my own rasping breath. The cat didn’t breathe. I knew he was dead without checking for a pulse. I’d caved in his skull. Ripped flesh and fur from bone. Whoever the bastard was, he’d never bother Elias Keller again. Or anyone else.

After several seconds of shock, my senses came back enough that I knew I should check on Brett. At first I couldn’t bring myself to touch him. Blood had soaked through his shirt, drenching his torso and crotch so badly that I couldn’t find the wound. I saw no movement from him at all. No breathing. No pulse jiggling in his throat.

Then, suddenly, he seemed to be moving everywhere all at once. Shaking.

No, wait. He wasn’t shaking. I was shaking. I was shivering all over.

I dropped to the ground on my knees, and my left hand landed on Brett’s chest. And that’s when I realized he was moving after all. Breathing shallowly, but steadily. Thank goodness.

My fingers uncurled, and the mallet fell onto the grass. I explored his stomach with both hands, and found several deep gashes across his abdomen. They were bad, and he’d bled a lot, but he was still alive. And so was I.

My eyes closed, and I sat still next to Brett, my hands covered in his blood. And that’s how my father and the other Alphas found us, minutes later.

Four

“Here. This will warm you up.” Something soft and heavy slid between my back and the spine of the kitchen chair, and Jace leaned over me from behind to drape the material over my shoulders.

“I’m not cold.” Yet I clutched the blanket anyway, because it was chenille, and it felt good, while I felt like shit.