“Greg…” Blackwell hedged, but my father’s footsteps never paused, and Blackwell had to either keep up or be left behind. Both men stopped in front of the dining room—no doubt strategic positioning on my dad’s part.
“Marc is my best enforcer, Paul.” My Alpha turned with his back toward the kitchen, putting me and Marc in Blackwell’s direct line of sight, over his shoulder. “I can’t in good conscience send you off with anything less than my best.”
I glanced at Marc and found him watching in silence, his every muscle tense, his breath apparently frozen in his lungs.
Blackwell looked our way and sighed, then his focus shifted to my dad. “Of course. I’m sorry for the trouble, but I do thank you for the escort.”
I might have been the only one who saw the almost imperceptible ease of tension in my father’s shoulders. But then again, my mother probably saw it, too.
Marc stood when our Alpha motioned for him and Vic. They would drive Blackwell and his two toms to the airport in their rental car, then ride back with my oldest brother, Michael, who would be landing in a couple of hours, back from a business trip.
Michael had been out of town for the past three days, and he knew nothing about the thunderbirds or the damage they’d done, because he was out of touch while his plane was in the air. So my father had left him a voice mail telling him where to meet Vic and Marc, and that they’d explain on the way home.
Several minutes later, I watched through the front window as the four younger toms hastily escorted the elderly Alpha down the steps and into the rental car, where he squeezed into the roomy backseat between his own men. Vic drove down the quarter-mile driveway and out of sight, and though the thunderbirds launched dramatic—and frankly, scary—dives toward the car, they made no physical contact. Probably because the car would have emerged the clear victor over feather and bone in any kamikaze mission.
Moments after the rumble of the car’s engine faded, the birds came swooping back into sight, then over the house, where they no doubt perched on the roofline, waiting for some foolish cat to come out alone.
But—as badly as we hated being prisoners in our own home—that wasn’t going to happen.
Dinner was miserable, even with my mother’s chili and homemade corn bread muffins. Jace sat across the table from me, staring into his bowl, aimlessly stirring its contents. I wanted to say something to him. To apologize for getting Brett involved, or lend him a tear-proof shoulder. After all, I’d just lost my own brother. But memories of the last time we’d grieved together stood out in my mind like a big, flashing “danger” sign, so I settled for meaningful looks of sympathy every time our gazes met, wishing I knew what to say.
I forced down two bowls of chili to encourage Kaci to eat, though neither of us had any appetite. In spite of a house full of guests, there were several empty chairs, and my gaze was drawn to them over and over as I ate. Marc and Vic wouldn’t be back for several hours. Manx was still tending Owen in his room, and Jake and Charlie were gone for good.
After supper, Kaci went to help with the baby and some of the guys invited me to share a bottle of whiskey and a game of spades. But I was restless and out of patience, so I excused myself and headed to the basement. I couldn’t take any more communal mourning. And the current of rage running beneath our common grief? Riding that was like sitting on a drum of gasoline, holding a lit sparkler. Eventually one of those tiny flames would fall in the right place, and my whole world would explode.
Part of me felt like that had already happened.
“You’re distressed,” Kai said as my left fist slammed into the big punching bag.
“No, I’m pissed off.” I threw another punch, concentrating more on power than on form, and my shoulder ached in protest. I bounced on the balls of my feet, as I’d been taught, both fists held ready, though my broken right arm would not see active duty.
“Does that help?”
“Yes.” But that was a lie. Usually, hitting something put me in an instant good mood, but punching one-handed only made me feel awkward and infuriatingly powerless.
Hopefully our unwelcome guest was suffering similar frustrations. The thunderbird stood with his own broken arm cradled to his bare and still-bloody chest. His good hand—fully human for the moment—clutched a steel bar at the front of the cage, through which he watched me vent my grief, anger, and frustration on the equipment in our homemade gym.
Upstairs, I could hardly breathe without wanting to kill someone, just from inhaling all the tension. But like the office, the basement was practically soundproof, by virtue of being underground. The small, high windows and the door at the top of the stairs were the only weaknesses in the sonic armor, and you’d have to be very close to them to overhear anything clearly. So my solitude would have been nearly complete, if not for the human-form bird studying me as if I were the circus oddity.
“What happened to your arm?” Kai asked as I threw another punch. I’d skipped the gloves, but what were skinned knuckles compared to torn flesh, bruised hearts, and everything else my fellow cats were suffering upstairs?
I swiped my good arm across my sweaty forehead without looking at him. “I broke it.” And that reminder sucked up what little joy remained in my useless punching, so I shifted my weight onto my left foot and let my right leg fly. I hit the heavy bag hard enough to make it swing sluggishly, and the blow radiated into my knee and beyond. A tiny spark of triumph shot through me. Kicking was better. There was nothing wrong with my legs.
“How did you break it?” Kai asked, obviously unbothered by my pointedly short answers.
I steadied the bag with my good hand and faced him, hoping I looked fierce in spite of the scribbled-on cast. “I broke it dispatching of the bastards who tried to kill several of my Pride mates.”
I expected Kai to flinch, or laugh, or show obvious skepticism. Instead, he only nodded solemnly. Almost respectfully. “So you understand our need for vengeance.”
“No.” I whirled again and grunted as my left leg hit the bag. “We deal in justice.”
“Justice and vengeance are the same.”
“Now you’re just lying to yourself to validate blood thirst.” I kicked again, and the bag swung harder. “Justice is for the victim.” Kick. “Vengeance is for the survivor.” Kick. I stopped to steady the bag again and glanced at the bird now watching me in fascination. “You’re not doing this for Finn.” I threw a left jab and had to stop myself from following it with a right out of habit. “You’re doing it for yourselves, and that’s anything but honorable.” Contempt dripped from my voice, and blood smeared the bag when my knuckles split open with the next punch.
“We punish the guilty as a warning to future aggressors,” Kai insisted, and I turned to see him scowling, small dark eyes flashing in the dim light from the dusty fixture overhead.
“There was no aggression!” I threw my hands into the air. “Your boy tried to take a werecat’s kill. That’s fucking suicide. Don’t you harpies have any instinct? Or common sense?”
Kai drew himself straighter, taller, though the movement must have stung in every untreated gash spanning his chiseled stomach. “We are birds of prey, but carrion will suffice in a pinch. The kill was abandoned in our hunting grounds. Finn had every right to a share.”
“It wasn’t abandoned. The hunter—” I was careful not to give out Lance’s name “—just went to tell the group he’d brought down dinner. And for the record, a werecat is only obligated to share his meal with higher-ranking toms and his own wife and children, should he have them. Our custom says nothing about donating to any vulture who swoops out of the sky.”
“He wasn’t in werecat territory.”
Okay, technically Kai had a point, but that was only by chance. In many cases, territories of different species often overlap, mostly because what few other species have outlasted werewolves exist in such small numbers as to be inconsequential to us.
Or so we’d thought.
“You know what? N
one of that matters.” Frowning, I kicked a boxing glove across the floor and crossed my arms over my chest, annoyed that they didn’t fit there, thanks to the cast. “The cat who killed Finn wasn’t one of ours. If he had been, your bird would have died in our territory. But you just said he didn’t.”
Kai’s scowl deepened, and his good hand tightened around the bar until his knuckles went white, the muscles of his thick hands straining against his skin. “If your people are innocent, where is your proof?”
Incensed now, I stomped across the gritty concrete into the weak light from the fixture overhead, careful to stay well back from the bars. “Our proof was murdered this afternoon. By your honorable informant.”
The bird only stared at me, probably trying to judge the truth by my eyes. But I couldn’t read his expression. Couldn’t tell whether he believed me, or even cared one way or the other. “You need new proof.”
“No shit, Tweety.” I turned my back on him and stalked across the floor, then over the thick blue sparring mat to the half bath on the back wall. “Do you even care that while you guys are out here slaughtering innocent toms, the man you’re after is hundreds of miles away, laughing his ass off?”
Okay, Lance probably wasn’t laughing, but he had to be at least a little relieved that he wasn’t the one being dropped from thirty feet in the air by a vengeful, overgrown bird.
I squatted and dug beneath the small, dingy sink until I found a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a gallon-size bag of gauze squares and medical tape. We had hydrogen peroxide, but frankly, I wanted the walking eight-piece dinner to sting in every single cut.
“Here.” Back on the mat, I tossed the alcohol underhanded. It landed a little harder than I’d intended, then slid until it hit the bars, evidently undamaged. “I can’t do anything for your arm, but maybe this’ll prevent gangrene. Or whatever.” While Kai stared at the bottle, obviously confused by my compassion, I tossed the bag of bandages, which smacked the bars then fell to the ground.
Kai bent awkwardly—and hopefully painfully—to pull the bottle through two bars. His gaze shifted from me to the alcohol, then back again, and his head tilted sharply to the side—a decidedly avian motion, which implied a very detached curiosity. “Why do you care?”
“For the same reason I don’t go around killing innocent toms. Because my human half understands that sometimes compassion is the greater part of honor.”
Ten
Sweaty from my workout, I headed for my shower, but I knew something was wrong the moment I closed my bedroom door. The door to my bathroom stood open and an amorphous shadow lay across my carpet, cast by the brighter light from within.
I held my breath but couldn’t stop my heart from pounding. My first thought, as ridiculous as it would seem in hindsight, was that Malone had somehow breached not only our territorial boundary, but our home. I hated feeling unsafe in my own house.
Furious, I grabbed a hardbound book from my dresser—the only potential weapon within reach—but before I took the first step, a familiar voice called softly from the bathroom. “Relax. It’s me.”
“Jace?” I wasn’t sure that was much better. My pulse slowed, but only a little, and a tingly feeling began deep in my stomach—half dread, half anticipation. “You shouldn’t…”
“I know. Sorry.” His shadow stood from the side of the tub and he stepped into the doorway. “This was the most private place I could find.” And that’s when I realized he’d been crying.
Sympathy rang through me, softening the sharp edge of my irritation and melting my willpower like chocolate in the sun. “Oh. Yeah, I guess it is.” Because no one else—other than Marc and Kaci—would venture into my room without permission.
After Charlie died, the Alphas had banned trips to the guesthouse, even in groups, until we figured out how best to fight the thunderbirds. So we were packed into the main house tighter than clowns in a Volkswagen.
“Are you okay?”
He shrugged and wiped moisture from his cheeks with both bare hands, but his eyes were still red and swollen. “It just kind of hit me all at once. About Brett.”
“And your mom?” I stood near the bed, afraid to move too close to him. Being near him made my heart beat too hard and my throat feel too thick. I was acutely aware of every tingling nerve ending, even under such grave circumstances.
Jace looked surprised for a moment, then he shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and nodded. “She knows what Cal’s doing. She has to know. But I think it’d be easier if I could believe she doesn’t.”
“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know how to comfort him. I wanted to hug him. To hold him, like I would if it were any of the other guys in pain. Werecats tend to relax in big piles and to relate to each other through touch. But Jace wasn’t just one of the other enforcers anymore, and the last time we’d tried to comfort each other, things had gotten out of hand. Waaay out of hand.
Brett’s face flashed through my mind, and I had to concentrate to keep from imagining his last moments, wondering if they had looked anything like Ethan’s. My eyes watered and I sank to the carpet, leaning against my footboard. “It’s my fault. I got Brett involved, and now he’s dead. I’m so sorry.”
“No.” Jace strode forward and dropped smoothly onto his knees, inches from me. His cobalt eyes shone with unshed tears and flashed with resolve. “Brett was already involved. He kept those feathers for a reason. And if he wasn’t willing to take the risk, he would have hung up on you the moment he heard your voice.”
“But…”
“This is Calvin’s fault, Faythe. Not yours, and not mine. Cal’s going to pay for this. I’ll make sure of that.”
I nodded. Staring into his eyes, I believed him. I believed we could make Calvin pay, because Jace couldn’t live with the alternative. And he wasn’t the only one.
But killing Malone wouldn’t make everything okay again. No amount of justice—or vengeance—would bring back Ethan or Brett, or make us miss them any less. Nothing could erase Kaci’s trauma, or give me back the time I’d lost with Marc.
“We’re gonna be fine, Faythe,” Jace insisted, but that time I didn’t believe him because his voice shook. He didn’t truly believe himself. “You’re strong, and so determined. Nothing ever knocks you down. People try, but you just get up swinging.” He braved a grin in spite of obvious grief. “You’re going to take over for your dad when he retires, and you’re going to be an amazing Alpha.”
“What about you?” I asked, and the room seemed to fade around us then, as if nothing else existed in that moment.
A pained shadow passed over his eyes, like clouds in front of the sun. He scooted closer and leaned against the footboard next to me. “I’ll be happy if I’m still a part of your life.”
I didn’t want to ask, but I couldn’t help it. “What part?” My voice cracked on the last word, and I blinked back more tears. Why was I crying? Why did my heart ache, like it was going to collapse in on itself?
“This part…” Jace whispered. Then he kissed me.
I tried to fight it. I tried to think about Marc, and how much I loved him. But Jace was everywhere in that moment. He was everything. Our pulses raced in unison, and the hollow ache in his heart echoed in my own. His lips were warm, but his hand on the side of my neck, his thumb brushing the back of my jaw—they were hot.
I couldn’t pull away. And the truth was that I didn’t want to.
That kiss went deeper than I’d been prepared for. Longer. It lit tiny fires within my veins, dripping little bits of flame that trailed to burn low in my body. When our kiss had finally run its course, Jace leaned back a few inches and my eyes watered as my tortured gaze met his. “Why is this so hard?” I whispered.
His pulse leaped crazily at my admission. “Everything worth fighting for is hard.”
My hand trailed down his arm. “When did you get so smart?”
That shadow passed over his eyes again. “When I realized that nothing else matters. There’s only my job, and y
ou, Faythe. All the other stupid, petty shit is gone. There’s killing Calvin and earning a place in your life. That’s it. That’s my whole world now.”
No. It’s too much. My head shook slowly. It was hard enough being the almost-constant focus of Marc’s attention. I couldn’t be fully half of Jace’s world, too. That was too much attention. Too much pressure. Too much…trouble.
“Jace, this can’t happen.” I closed my eyes, thinking it would be easier to say without him looking back at me. But it wasn’t. “This isn’t just about us. I can’t leave Marc.” I opened my eyes again, hoping he’d believe me if he saw the truth in them. “I love Marc.”
“I’m not asking…”
“I know.” I let my hands uncurl uselessly in my lap. “You’re not asking me to leave him. But he won’t share. And I can’t ask him to.”
“Do you want him to?” Jace tried to don his blank face, but it didn’t work. Maybe I was too close to him now, and could see past it. Or maybe he could no longer defend against me. Either way, I saw what it cost him to ask me that, and it broke my heart.
“I don’t know.” Frustrated, I let my head fall back against my footboard. “I don’t know what I want, but I can’t lose Marc, and I will if you…if we…”
“Fine.” He frowned, and his suddenly hard gaze searched mine. “Tell me you want me to go, and I’ll walk away. I swear.”
“Jace…” But I couldn’t say it. And he knew it.
“You can’t, because you don’t want me to go.” I tried to argue, but he cut me off. “You feel something for me, and it’s not brotherly, and it’s not sympathy. It’s not even curiosity. Not anymore.” The suggestive spark in his eye sent flashbacks racing through me.
Me and Jace, on the floor of the guesthouse.
Intertwined in mutual pain and need.
Easing fresh grief the only way we knew how.
“Jace, this isn’t right. It’ll mess everything up.” It would tear the entire Pride apart.
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