Alpha

My temper spiked just thinking about it, and some dark voice deep inside me insisted that if our evidence against him failed, we should simply screw the vote and bring on the pain. We’d been ready—even eager—to fight for weeks,

But Paul Blackwell, the elderly interim head of the Territorial Council, had convinced my father to give peace a chance, as cheesy as it sounded. If we could possibly avert full-out civil war and the inevitable casualties on either side, we owed it to the entire werecat population to try. Even I couldn’t argue with that. In theory.

However, in my experience, the concept of peace had a lot in common with the Loch Ness monster—I found both elusive and difficult to believe in. So, I would hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

Marc popped the trunk, then slammed the driver’s-side door and I jumped, startled from my own thoughts. “Jace, run up to the lodge and get the key.”

Jace went stiff, and I spoke up before he could growl. “I’ll get it.” As tired as I was of standing between them, it was safer to play peacekeeper than to break up the fight that would result if I didn’t. Safer physically and politically. The whole world would know about me and Jace soon enough—two of Malone’s men had figured it out and would surely disseminate the information whenever it would most damage our cause—and I wasn’t eager to clue anyone in early via a Marc-Jace death match.

“You can’t go by yourself,” Marc insisted. “Malone and his men might already be here.” And they were gunning for all three of us, after the trespassing/kidnapping/ assault crime trifecta we’d pulled off the week before. Not that we’d had any other options.

“Blackwell came down yesterday, so even if Malone’s here, he’s not alone,” I responded. “And he’s not going to make trouble just hours before the vote.” But the truth was that both Jace and Marc had more to fear from the Appalachian Pride than I did. Malone still needed me alive, but since the council had yet to officially recognize Marc’s readmission into our Pride, he technically had no rights within our society. Which meant that his word alone would not stand against his attacker’s, should it come down to that.

And Malone was just looking for an excuse to get rid of Jace—his stepson—without witnesses.

“You guys stay and wait for my dad. Please.” Our Alpha had ridden from the airport with Umberto Di Carlo and his men, so they could talk strategy on the way. “I’ll be right back.” Then, before either of them could argue, I shoved my bare hands into my coat pockets and took off at a brisk walk with them both staring after me.

We could all three have gone together, but frankly, after hours spent on the plane, then in the car with both Jace and Marc and the choking amounts of testosterone they were dumping into the air, I really needed a little time to myself, to clear my head.

To think about my decision. And the fact that I didn’t want to choose. Or tell anyone else what was going on. But the expiration date on that option was rapidly approaching, even if Alex Malone and Colin Dean hadn’t been telling stories yet.

My father was definitely suspicious. If we weren’t in the middle of the biggest series of catastrophes ever to hit the south-central Pride in a single month, he’d have already figured it out. We’d delayed telling him before to keep from adding to his stress level, but now our time was up. I’d planned to tell him on the drive from the airport, but I lost that chance when he rode with Di Carlo instead, so now I’d have to make time to get him alone and try to explain. Before he heard from anyone else.

Jace was sure my dad would throw him out. Marc was worried about the same thing. Or rather, he was worried that if Jace got thrown out before I’d come to a decision, my father would pressure me to choose him in Jace’s absence, even if that wasn’t what I really wanted. Marc didn’t want to win by default. He wanted to win for real. Forever.

But my dad wouldn’t kick Jace out. Not now. Not with everything else going on. Probably not ever. Jace was a part of our family and, like Marc, he had nowhere else to go.

“Damn, somebody sure did a number on your face,” a familiar voice called, drawing me from my thoughts.

My hand flew to my left cheek and my pulse raced so fast my heart felt stressed by the effort. I looked up to see a tall form in the shadow of the cabin ahead. His clothes were a dark blur, but his height and shockingly white hair were unmistakable. As was his voice. Colin Dean.

Damn, damn, damn.

“I was gonna say the same to you.” I forced my hand back into my pocket without letting my fingers trace the thin, straight scar running from my left cheekbone to the corner of my mouth. Dean had put it there. He’d carved up my face slowly while I’d stood frozen, afraid to breathe too deeply for fear of pushing the blade farther into my skin. But in the end, he’d gotten the worst of our little exchange—I’d buried the knife in his gut and left him bleeding. But not before Marc had broken his nose and one cheekbone, and Jace had sliced the side of Dean’s face wide-open.

Surely his scars were worse than mine.

Dean stepped into the light, and for the first time since we’d met, his face made me smile. His scar was thick and knotty, and unlike mine, he could trace it from the inside with his tongue. His nose had healed straight, but was still kind of swollen, even after a full week and ample time to speed his recovery by Shifting. But the faded yellow bruises around his eyes and the darker one on his cheek only made Dean look scarier and more pissed off than I’d ever seen him.

Maybe my father was right. Maybe we should have killed him.

For a moment, I regretted my decision to come by myself. I’d assumed Malone and his men were staying in the cabin on the other side of the main lodge, where they’d stayed last time, in which case I wouldn’t have run into any of them alone.

Either I was wrong, or Dean had come looking for me.

He stalked toward me, and my options raced through my head. I could run, but then he’d chase me, either for fun, or because he truly couldn’t control his cat’s instinct to pounce on anything resembling prey. Or because he didn’t want to control it.

I could stand up to him and fight. But that would be stupid with the vote coming up. I couldn’t risk doing anything that would make my father look bad.

I could yell for Marc and Jace, but that would label me even more a coward than running would.

Or I could keep walking and hope Dean had orders not to touch me—surely Malone wouldn’t want to get his hands dirty, either, this close to the election.

I walked on, and Dean altered his course to intercept me. “How many stitches did it take to hold your guts in?” I asked, clenching my fists in my coat pockets as he fell into step beside me, like we were old friends.

“Nowhere near what it’ll take to sew you back together when I’m done with you.”

“That sounds like a threat.” My voice came out cool and confident, and I hoped my racing heartbeat didn’t ruin the impression. Yes, I was a damn good fighter, but Dean outweighed me by more than a hundred pounds and had been training at least as long as I had. Probably much longer. And his grudge against me had moved far beyond the desire to see me dead—he wanted me broken and humiliated first. If he wasn’t under orders to play nice, we were both going to walk away from this one with new scars. Assuming we walked away at all.

“Caught that, did you?” His shadow stretched past mine on the brown grass crunching beneath our feet. “Sooner or later, you’re gonna find yourself alone with me, and I’m gonna find out what it takes to make you scream like the bitch you are.”

I shrugged without pulling my fists from my pockets, relieved to see that we were now within sight of the main lodge. “We’re alone now. What’s stopping you?” Aside from the dozen or so enforcers in the lodge ahead, well within hearing range, should one of us shout.

“Formalities…” Dean growled, stepping in front of me to block my path. “But after the vote, the council’s gonna put you in your place, and I’m one of the toms who’s gonna keep you there.”

I raised both brows in silent challenge, confident now that if he was going to throw a punch, he’d already have done it. “You have no authority over me, and the council can’t change that.” Even if Malone became council chair, he couldn’t reassign me to his own Pride, nor could he make my father hire Dean as one of our enforcers. No council chair had ever even tried anything like that. There was no precedent to support it.

“In case you haven’t noticed, things are changing around here, and Cal knows exactly how to purge the impurities your Pride breeds so the rest of us can live clean.”

Impurities? Motherfucker was talking about Marc! I pulled my fists from my pockets, but before I could act on my rash impulse, Dean was talking again.

“Cal has plans, including consequences for little girls who step beyond their boundaries. And I just might be one of those consequences.”

I laughed out loud. I couldn’t help it.

Dean’s eyes flashed in anger and suddenly I realized his fury was completely impotent. He was goading me because Malone had him on a tight leash, at least for the moment.

My fists relaxed. I propped my hands on my hips and looked up at him. “Can I see it?”

He blinked, still scowling. “See what?”

“Your scar.” His expression darkened like a sudden eclipse, and I let my gaze grow cold. “You want to hear me scream? Give it your best shot. But until then, every time you take off your shirt, you may as well be handing out my business card. I shoved my blade deep inside you and loved every single inch of it. When I can’t sleep at night, the memory of you screaming like a little bitch is my lullaby. And everybody knows exactly what that scar means—that you got your ass handed to you by a little girl. Again.”

“You fucking bitch…” Dean picked me up by both arms, and my toes barely brushed the ground. It took every ounce of self-control I had to let myself hang there, instead of kicking.

“Do it,” I said, staring straight into his eyes. Daring him. “Hit me. Throw me. Pick a fight, hours before the vote. I’m sure Malone will understand.”

Dean growled. His hands tightened around my arms, and my fingers twitched when he squeezed a nerve.

“You fucking moron, put her down!”

I couldn’t see the speaker—couldn’t make myself look away from Dean while he held me like a rag doll—but I’d know Alex Malone’s voice anywhere.

“You put a single bruise on her, and my dad will find new ways to skin a cat.”

Dean dropped me, but his furious glare never left mine. I landed with my knees bent and barely resisted the urge to rub my arms where he’d held them. “He won’t get the chance. Touch me again, and I’ll gut you. And I don’t need a knife to do it.” Thanks to the partial Shift of one arm.

Alex stepped around the Nordic-looking giant and sneered at me, then whirled on Dean. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Before Dean could answer, movement over his shoulder caught my eye. “Faythe?” Marc called, jogging toward us with Jace on his heels.

“I’m fine,” I insisted, as they barreled to a stop on either side of me. “Dean and I were just comparing war wounds. He won. Someone cut him up pretty badly, huh, Colin?”

Dean growled again. “Stay out of my way, bitch. Or I’ll make that scratch on your face look like a mercy.” He and Alex stomped back toward their cabin.

“What the hell was that?” Marc demanded once they were gone.

I shrugged. “Dean’s playing games, so I tried to draw a foul.”

Jace frowned. “You wanted him to hit you?”

I tossed my head toward the main lodge, where several forms were now visible in the windows. “With an audience to see him throw the first punch? Hell, yeah. We need every advantage we can get over Malone.”

“Well, let’s aim for advantages that don’t involve any more stitches or bruises for you, okay?” Jace smiled, and Marc scowled, and as had become my habit, I stood between them. Alone, among company. Untouched, and frankly missing the easy physical contact most werecats thrive on.

“Let’s just get the key.” Marc shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and headed for the lodge. “Your dad’s waiting,”

Jace and I followed without a word, but that brief, awkward silence couldn’t compare to the one that greeted us when Marc pushed open the front door of the lodge. The main room was crowded with toms, and I didn’t find a friendly face among them. Milo Mitchell and Wes Gardner—Alphas of the northwest and Great Lakes Prides, respectively—sat opposite each other in worn armchairs, a battered coffee table separating them. Three of their enforcers sat on the matching couch, all glaring at us with identical expressions of disgust.

We’d lost Gardner’s favor when we failed to execute Manx for killing his brother Jamey. Traumatized from having been kidnapped, raped, and held prisoner, Manx was on the run and pregnant at the time, and the fact that no other Alpha in the world would have killed a pregnant tabby did little to mollify Wes. He’d felt excluded from the process and had resented my father ever since.

Milo Mitchell’s son Kevin was exiled from the south-central Pride around the same time, for sneaking strays into the territory for money. Mitchell’s hatred of all things Sanders was cemented when Marc killed Kevin during a fight in the free zone less than a month before the scheduled vote.

I hovered in the doorway, overwhelmed by the waves of hostility crashing over me. Nearly everyone in that room hated me, and some of them hated Marc even more. Jace’s real enemies were in his birth Pride, but his stepfather’s allies were more than willing to dislike Jace based purely on his association with me and mine.

“You have a lot of nerve showing up here,” a new voice growled from my left, and I turned to see Jerald Pierce—Parker’s father and Alpha of the Great Plains territory—stalking toward me from the kitchen.

“Thanks, I guess.” I shrugged and tried to let the animosity roll off my back, but it’s hard to stand tall in the face of pure loathing. Especially when so much of it is coming from a close friend’s father. No wonder Parker had opted to stay at the ranch, in the company of a growing collection of bottles. “Though I tend to think of it as a sense of duty and obligation to my Alpha.” My father. The strongest, most even-tempered and noble man I’d ever known.

“What about honor?” Pierce demanded. “Aren’t you the one always talking about doing the right thing? Where the hell was that sense of honor when you were handing my son over to be slaughtered by a flock of dirty thunderbirds?”

Well, at least it’s out in the open now…Though that did nothing to break the tension in the room.

“Faythe did what she had to do to save an innocent tabby’s life,” Marc insisted, flushed with anger, but obviously trying to keep his temper in check. “She made a decision only a real leader could have faced, and—”

“Bite your tongue before I rip it out of your mouth!”

Pierce roared, and Marc bristled like a tiger on alert. I moved closer to him, and to my relief—and surprise—Jace stepped up on his other side, ready to defend his Pridemate if necessary, in spite of their personal rivalry. “I always gave you the benefit of the doubt,” Pierce spat. “I even defended you when they said a stray could never be as good an enforcer as a Prideborn cat. But then you helped her lead my boy to the slaughter! What the hell is wrong with the bunch of you? How could you hand over a member of your own species to be pecked to death by a bunch of giant buzzards?”

I wanted to argue. To defend myself and my actions. But we’d discussed it with my father and had agreed not to comment on what happened to Lance Pierce. Including the fact that I’d ordered Marc to execute Lance to spare him from being eaten alive by the birds. Malone was sure to declare that a murder, rather than a mercy.

“I guess Cal’s right about strays. You’re genetically inferior. You didn’t give a damn about my son because you’re not even the same species. And you!” Pierce turned his dark-eyed fury on me, and I almost took a step back, floored by the depth of his hatred. “You’re an abomination. Turning your nose up at your real duty and obligation to hand over one of your own in cold blood. I feel sorry for your father, saddled with such a self-righteous whore for a daughter. Refusing to give him any heirs, yet flaunting two lovers in front of the whole world. You truly have no shame.”

I reeled like I’d been slapped. My cheeks flamed. I could actually see bright red patches of skin at the bottom of my field of vision. And the double standard burned like hellflames. If there was an enforcer in the room who’d only been with one woman, then I was Garfield.

“Jerald.” Paul Blackwell didn’t even raise his voice, but every head in the room turned toward him, and Pierce went silent instantly. The senior Alpha and acting council chair stood in the kitchen doorway, leaning on a worn cane, looking every bit of his seventy-something years. “You’ll have a chance to air your grievances, but this is not it.”

Pierce nodded angrily, but refused to back down, so I had to step around him to accept the key ring Blackwell held out to me. “Tell your father we vote at seven sharp. If he has any preliminary business, he’ll need to present it before that.”

The slight arch in Blackwell’s brow was so subtle surely no one else noticed it. But I knew what that meant. If we were going to play the ace up our collective sleeve, we’d have to do it soon.

I nodded, clenching the key ring, then turned and marched out the front door with Marc and Jace on my heels.

“If this doesn’t work, we are so fucked,” Jace whispered, as we walked across the grass in a straight line. “They’d string us all up now, if they could. There’s no way any of those three are gonna switch sides.”

“It’ll work,” Marc insisted, for once forgetting to growl at his rival. “It has to.”

I could only nod, still stunned by Pierce’s speech. My hand strayed to the left side of my coat, beneath which I could barely feel a long, straight ridge. Two thunderbird feathers, stained with Lance Pierce’s blood. Evidence that Lance had killed the young bird, and that Malone had tried to frame us for the crime, simultaneously weakening our defenses and diverting the aftermath from his own Pride.

Those feathers were the key to our preemptive strike. We hadn’t come for the vote. We’d come to prevent it—by charging Calvin Malone with treason.

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