“No…” I began, but Jace spoke over me, his voice calm and firm.
“That’s not your call.”
Marc growled again and dug in his pocket. “Fine.” He dropped his phone in my lap. “Call your dad. Let’s get his opinion.”
“Marc, please don’t do this.” I wiped tears from my eyes with my jacket sleeve, flinching at the sting in my cheek. “Don’t drag everyone else into this. Not now. Think about the good of the Pride.”
“Is that what you were thinking about?” He demanded, and the speedometer crept toward eighty-five. “Are you thinking about the good of the Pride when you’re fucking him?”
I glanced at Jace, and the car lurched forward again—Marc’s temper directly affected the weight of his right foot. “It’s not like that,” I said finally. “It was only once.”
“I knew something was different.” He punched the dash again, and a new dent appeared, with even more blood. “But I never thought you’d go that far…” Marc ground his teeth together so hard I could hear them over the road noise, and I cringed. “And you told Dean about it?”
Jace huffed, and the wheel groaned beneath Marc’s hands. “Alex made a lucky guess.”
“And now the whole world will know,” Marc spat.
I felt my face flush. He was right. Malone would use my infidelity against my father, and against our entire Pride.
“Marc, I’m so sorry.…”
“Save it,” he snapped. “We’re going to concentrate on getting Kaci back for now. But after that, we will deal with this.” He glared into the rearview mirror again, and Jace nodded firmly.
“Looking forward to it.”
Twenty-Nine
We drove in miserable silence for nearly two hours, exhausted, angry, and tense beyond words. And to say that I got the least of the physical pain would be putting it mildly.
The gash on Marc’s left side was nasty. Not as long or as deep as my arm had been, but much worse than my cheek.
Jace’s head was still swollen and discolored, and he moved stiffly, trying to spare his ribs from any unnecessary movement. I turned to check the dilation of his pupils every fifteen minutes or so. I also kept the music cranked and my window cracked, hoping the cold and the noise would keep him awake until I was sure he didn’t have a concussion.
In spite of our injuries—or maybe because of them—we didn’t feel safe enough to stop for first-aid supplies until we were more than a hundred miles from Malone’s property. And even then, we hesitated, both because we were still in the heart of enemy territory and because none of us was exactly presentable.
In the end, we decided Jace should do the shopping, because with the bill of his hat twisted to cover the side of his head, he was the one least likely to prompt a call to the authorities. Marc’s wound had bled through his shirt, and I had a cut-up face, a sliced-open top, and finger-shaped bruises around my neck. If we were seen, some kind stranger’s concern could end in a call to 911.
But that was only part of it. Marc and I needed time to talk. Alone.
He parked near the back of a Walmart parking lot as the sun began to go down, and I jotted a list on a scrap of paper I found in the glove compartment. As soon as Jace was gone, Marc turned to me. “You should have let me kill him.”
At first, I thought he meant Jace. But then Marc’s gaze strayed to my cheek, and I understood. He meant Dean.
I ran one finger carefully over the cut. The pain had dulled a bit, but my anger had not. “Maybe so. But I think he’ll suffer more now.”
“If I see him again, I’ll kill him.”
Too tired to argue, I let my hand fall into my lap. “Fair enough.” With any luck, the next time we saw Dean would be during full-scale war. His death would be justified. “If I don’t kill him first.”
After another minute of silence, Marc glanced into the empty backseat. “You know it’s all I can do to be in the same car with him. Every instinct I have is telling me to kill him.”
Clearly, we’d moved on to Jace.
“I know.” My heart felt as bruised as my throat. “What about me?”
“I’m trying really hard not to hate you right now, Faythe.”
I blinked back fresh tears. “I hate myself right now.”
“Then why did you do it?” His teeth ground together audibly. “Just…why?”
I tried to speak and choked on a sob instead. There was no simple answer. No logical reason. Jace and I had connected in a moment of heart-wrenching grief, and no one was more surprised than I was to discover that that connection went beyond the physical.
“Do you love him?” Marc asked, each word harsh, like he’d almost gagged on them.
I forced myself to look at him. To give him eye contact, at least. “Yes.” And that realization made my head spin violently. “I don’t want to, but I do.”
Marc fell back against the door, like I’d punched him, and that ache in my chest settled a little deeper.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen. Any of it.” I didn’t want to make excuses—he deserved much better than that—but he obviously wanted an explanation. “You were missing, and Ethan had just died. His blood was still wet on the couch. And we were all hurting so much. Jace, just as badly as the rest of us. Maybe worse, because he didn’t have anyone to turn to, and at the time, neither did I. Everyone was handling it differently, and I didn’t know what to do.”
I paused for a deep breath, and to gather my thoughts. The words weren’t coming quickly or easily, but they were the truth, and that seemed to be more important to Marc than my apology. Even if it didn’t make things any better.
“I went to check on him.” I couldn’t make myself say Jace’s name. Not then. Not to Marc. “He’d gotten hurt in the fight, and he’d closed himself up in the guesthouse, all alone. He was already drinking, and I had some, too. I wanted to make the pain go away, just for a little while.” Silent tears pooled in my eyes and I wiped them away, hoping Marc hadn’t seen.
“So, he gets you drunk, and you just lie down for him?” Marc spat, and I flinched at the venom in his voice, though I knew I deserved it. “Better not let that little secret out, or every tom in the country will show up on the doorstep with a bottle and a condom.”
I shook my head slowly, sniffling. “It wasn’t like that, I swear. He said he loved me. He said he needed me, and I…I made a mistake. Sleeping with Jace was a mistake. I know that, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I wish I could take it back. But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t mean anything. It did. It does. It changed both of us and made me face the truth about…about how I feel about him.”
“You love him.” That time it wasn’t a question. That time his voice sounded dead, like I’d killed the part of him that supplied emotional resonance for Marc’s voice.
I could only nod miserably.
“Do you still love me?”
“Yes! Desperately,” I said, hoping the truth of my statement shined in my eyes. Hoping he could see it in the near dark. Or at least hear it in my voice. “I know I’ve messed this up, and I honestly don’t know where to go from here. But I don’t want to lose you.”
His eyes glazed over in anger. “Then you have to choose. It’s me or him, Faythe. Once this is over, he and I can’t exist in the same Pride. Not with you. We’d kill each other.”
“I know.” I’d known that all along, but that didn’t make the choice any easier.
“Don’t make this a political decision,” Marc said, and even in the dim light from the parking lot, I could see what it cost him to say that. “I’m the better choice to help you run the Pride, when that time comes, but I’d be lying if I said that mattered. The truth is that you’ve learned a lot this year. With the rest of the guys at your back and your father as an adviser, you can run things just fine on your own. So you owe it to yourself to listen to your heart on this one.”
I gaped at Marc. “You’re serious?” I’d expected him to try to beat the shit out of Jace, or at least lobby ha
rder to have him expelled.
He glanced down, and when he looked up again, the gold in his eyes glittered coldly. “I’m not being selfless. I don’t have that in me right now. I can’t stand the thought of living the rest of my life without you, even after all this. But it would hurt worse to wake up with you every morning for the rest of my life, knowing you regretted your decision. Knowing you settled for me.”
“I wouldn’t…” I began, but Marc cut me off with a look so fierce I lost my breath. His eyes had Shifted.
“I’m not done,” he growled; something in his throat had Shifted, too. “If I see him touch you again before you make your decision, I’ll break every motherfucking bone in his body. Or die trying. I swear I will.”
I believed him. And then we’d have two more toms out of commission, because I wasn’t the only one who’d grown up. Jace was no longer the low-ranking enforcer Marc had kicked the shit out of the summer before.
Before I could figure out how to respond, Jace thumped on the windshield, then got in the car with three bags full of stuff. He’d only been gone fifteen minutes, but had apparently bought out the entire store. Including the deli, based on the scent wafting from one of the sacks.
He tossed an exaggerated glance at the back of Marc’s head, then shot me a questioning look, silently asking me how it went. I could only shrug. We were all still breathing, and at the moment, that was all I could ask for.
Marc drove to the back of the building and parked behind the massive Dumpster, and we worked quickly, temporarily hidden from the rest of the world. Every tube of ointment and bottle of peroxide they shared came through me. I was afraid to let them have direct contact. Jace’s hair trigger was only slightly less sensitive than Marc’s, and every look he shot my way was intense. Searching.
He was afraid Marc had convinced me to get rid of him, and he was ready to fight that decision.
Jace scrubbed blood from beneath his fingernails while I cleaned the gash on Marc’s side. It probably needed stitches, but since we were in a hurry and my needlework left much to be desired, he settled for three Steri-Strips and antibiotic cream, all covered with a square of sterile gauze taped into place.
I helped him into a plain black tee, then tried not to squirm while he cleaned the cut on my cheek. It was straight and clean and shallow, and the wound had already scabbed over, so there was no need for stitches, though it would no doubt leave a thin scar. I left my cheek uncovered, because a bandage would only have drawn more attention to it.
When we were dressed, bandaged, and as clean as we could get without a shower, Marc pulled us out of the parking lot, and Jace passed out fried chicken strips, potato wedges, and bottles of water while I called to give my dad an update. We’d agreed to leave out our personal business, to keep from overloading our Alpha when he already had his hands more than full.
“Hello? Faythe?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” I said around my first bite of chicken. I was starving, and chewing on the right side of my mouth was the only concession I was willing to make toward the pain in my cheek. “We have Lance, and we’re about a hundred miles west of Malone’s property.”
The relief in my father’s sigh revealed the truth: he hadn’t expected good news. His footsteps echoed across the floor of the office. “Prospects?”
“Lookin’ good so far, but we’re not out of the woods yet.”
“How’s Lance?”
“Unconscious but breathing. I’m crossing my fingers against brain damage.” We’d need him healthy and coherent to testify before his execution.
“Blood loss?”
“Nope.” I swallowed my mouthful of chicken before elaborating. “Hiking boot to the side of the head. Plus tranquilizers. Malone really shouldn’t leave loaded syringes just lying around.”
“Mmm. Casualties?”
“None,” Marc said from the driver’s seat. And he looked decidedly unhappy with that particular detail.
Springs creaked as my father sank into the rolling chair behind his desk. “You snuck into the heart of Malone’s territory and made it out with one of his enforcers without a single casualty?”
“Not for lack of trying,” Marc mumbled, flicking on his left blinker.
I sipped from my water bottle. “We were lucky.”
“Don’t discount your own skill,” my father insisted, and I nearly fainted from shock. He didn’t hand out compliments lightly. “Injuries?”
“On their side? Five toms bound and gagged. One ruptured scrotum…”
My father nearly choked. “I assume that would be your handiwork?”
I shrugged, though he couldn’t see me. “He got grope-y. Anyway, one ruptured scrotum, two broken noses, several concussions, one slashed cheek, a knife to the lower chest—don’t worry, he’ll live—and one amputated thumb.”
Another moment of silence. Then, “Do I even want to know?”
“That one was me,” Marc growled. “He got grope-y.”
“Oh. What about the three of you? Everyone okay?”
I answered with another chicken strip halfway to my mouth. “Marc has a gash on his side, but nothing a few Steri-Strips won’t fix. Jace nearly got his skull bashed in. I’m watching him for swelling and signs of a concussion.”
“I’m fine, Greg,” Jace insisted, around an entire potato wedge.
“Faythe, what about you?”
I hesitated, and might not have answered at all, if I wasn’t sure either or both of the guys would do it for me in the event of my silence. “I got cut. On the face.”
“How bad is it?” my father asked without missing a beat.
That time, Marc spoke for me. “Colin Dean marked her from her cheekbone to the corner of her mouth.”
Silence. Horrible, heavy silence, while I waited for his reply. Then, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. It’s a shallow cut. Once it heals, the scar will be thin.”
“The bastard did it on purpose,” Marc repeated, and my father made no comment about his use of profanity in front of an Alpha; there was no question it fit.
The chair creaked, and paper shuffled on my dad’s desk. “What is Dean doing in Appalachian territory?”
“Enforcing for Malone.” I seized the opportunity to change the subject. “And he’s not the only one. Malone’s been on a hiring binge, and I didn’t recognize most of the faces.” Which meant they either came from territories I’d had little contact with, or he was seriously recruiting from north of the border, in areas with little distinguishable accent. But, based on their scents, none were strays.
“Well, I wish I could say that was unexpected, but honestly, it’s the most predictable move he’s made so far.”
Jace took a deep breath. “Dean’s gonna be a problem, Greg.”
I whirled on him, begging him with my eyes to keep his mouth shut. But he wouldn’t meet my gaze. Nor would he keep something he considered important from his Alpha. At least, something that didn’t involve him sleeping with the Alpha’s daughter.
“How so?”
Jace sighed and forged ahead, staring at his hands in his lap. “He went home from Montana disgraced. His dad kicked him out and told the Canadian council he’d been exposed as a coward. That a tabby beat him up and caught him in a lie. Dean blames Faythe for the whole thing. He cut her where it would show to humiliate her.” He sucked in another breath and continued, while I ground my teeth at the memory. “When he recovers, he’ll be gunning for her. Even more than he already was.”
“Why didn’t you kill him?” My father was clearly talking to Marc and Jace.
Both of them looked to me for a response, and I rolled my eyes. “I wouldn’t let them. After he got a taste of his own knife, he was no threat to anyone.” Physically, anyway. His mouth had done plenty of damage.…
“His very existence is a threat to yours,” my father insisted. I closed my eyes and let my head fall against the headrest. Was I being scolded for not killing someone? “Faythe, being a leader means making to
ugh decisions. Often. You may think you can take Dean again, if it comes to that, and you may be right. But if you’re not…it would be devastating for the entire Pride. Not to mention you personally.”
We are not having this conversation.…
“Sometimes one person has to die to preserve the greater good.”
I opened my eyes just to roll them again, having reached the end of my patience. “You think I don’t know that? It was my decision to turn Lance Pierce over to be executed. I’m very familiar with the concept of ‘greater good,’ thanks.”
“Good. If you’re in a situation like that again, I expect you to eliminate the threat. Or at least let one of the guys do it.”
“That won’t be necessary.” My teeth ground together so loudly I was sure he could hear it. “I can eliminate my own threats.”
My father exhaled slowly. “Faythe…it is self-defense, because he will hurt you if he gets the chance.”
“He already has. But I hurt him back.”
“I know,” he said, and I could practically hear the smile in his voice. My father was satisfied that I would do as I was told. And I would. But the matter sat on my conscience like a stone at the bottom of a river.
“Call me when you get close to the nest.”
“Okay.” I raised my hand to stifle a yawn.
My dad sighed. “Boys, make sure she gets some sleep.”
“No problem,” Marc said, though he was at least as tired as I was. Maybe more.
Half an hour later, Lance woke up, his consciousness heralded by a series of angry grunts and kicks against the side of the van. Jace raised a single brow in grim amusement, then leaned over the back of his seat to peer into the cargo hold. “Hey.”
I twisted in my seat to watch, and Marc kept glancing in the rearview mirror until I smacked his shoulder and pointed out the windshield. He was dangerous enough with his eyes on the road.
Jace glanced at me and I shrugged, so he leaned over Lance, then came up a moment later with a strip of duct tape.
“Where am I?” Lance demanded. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
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