Pride

by Rachel Vincent

  Her gaze shifted to take in the sweater, and she must have caught sight of her arm, or some other obviously human part of her body, which ushered in memories from earlier in the day.

  Kaci’s head whipped up, her eyes studying me with a bit of cautious recognition now. Then suddenly they narrowed, and her forehead wrinkled in a frown. “Where were you? You said you’d be right back, but you were gone for hours! You lied.”

  “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. I…got in trouble.” May as well tell her the truth. Part of it, anyway.

  “I know. I heard them yelling at you.” Her face relaxed a little, and she tugged the sheet up to her neck. “What did you do?”

  I shoved hair back from my forehead and leaned against the mattress, wondering how much she’d already overheard. “I wasn’t supposed to come talk to you without asking first.”

  “Asking who?”

  “My dad, or one of the other Alphas.”

  Her brows dipped low in confusion, reaffirming my theory that she hadn’t the slightest idea what I was talking about. But while I was dying to find out what she did know, I tucked my questions away for the moment. I would ask them once she was dressed and warm, and comfortable with me again.

  “Um, I brought you some clothes.” I held the sweater out toward her. “Why don’t you put them on and we’ll talk.”

  Kaci looked curious in spite of the distance she’d put between us. She peered at the bed over my shoulder, and I smiled as I pulled the rest of the clothing into my lap. She dismissed the black cotton pj’s at a glance, but her eyes lingered on the cream-colored angora.

  Smiling, I carried the whole bundle closer, expecting with each step that she would tell me to stop, or warn me off with another growl, but her attention never left the sweater. When I was close enough, she reached out and ran her fingers slowly across the material, clearly savoring the feel. Fear faded from her face and was replaced by…eagerness?

  She wanted that sweater, and I’d gladly give it to her. If my two-hundred-dollar angora sweater was the price for whatever secrets had turned her out in the world alone, I was willing to pay. My mother had bought the damn thing anyway.

  “Go ahead. Try it on,” I urged, turning to face the door to give her privacy.

  A minute later, she cleared her throat. “Okay. You can look now.”

  I turned to see her and couldn’t believe the difference. She was still too thin, collarbones showing clearly above the neck of the sweater, and her hair was still matted with dirt and cockleburs. But donning clothes had changed her every bit as dramatically as Shifting had earlier. Maybe more.

  Where before she’d been shy and scared, except during brief moments of fierce self-defense, now she seemed…content.

  “You look beautiful. That looks like it was made for you.” And it did, even though it was several sizes too large. Unfortunately, the pants were also too big. “Here. Let me help you tighten the drawstring.”

  A frown creased her forehead, and Kaci glanced at her tiny waist. I knelt in front of her and she held the black top and sweater out of the way while I showed her how to adjust the waistband.

  “There.” The pants still pooled around her feet, but they’d stay in place now.

  Pleased by the progress she’d already made, I sat on the nearest bed, tucking my feet beneath me yoga style. Leaning to my left, I grabbed a pillow from the head of the bed and pulled it into my lap, hoping that if I looked relaxed and comfortable, she’d follow my lead, and we could have a nice tabby-to-tabby chat.

  It worked.

  As she perched hesitantly at the head of the bed, leaning against the sun-warmed windowsill at her back, I pictured her doing the same thing at some point in the past. Only then she would have been surrounded by girls her own age, at a slumber party, dressed in pink-and-purple pajamas and sharing a big bowl of popcorn or ice cream.

  I shook the image off, bothered more than I wanted to admit by the thought of the normal life she’d probably never have again.

  “So…” Who are you and how did you get here? But that was too direct, even by my own standards. Maybe we should start with something simpler. “Are you hungry?” If no one had brought her the clothes, she probably hadn’t gotten lunch either, though it was nearly two in the afternoon.

  She nodded shyly.

  “I think we’re out of chicken, but I’m sure we can come up with something else. You like frozen pizza? Warmed up, of course.”

  Her eyes lit up like an old-fashioned flashbulb. “I love pizza. And I haven’t had any in, like…forever.” Agitation flashed across her face as an old memory surfaced, but it was gone in an instant, likely buried by whatever inner strength had kept her going during all that time on her own. “Domino’s is my favorite, but I guess frozen will do.”

  Spoken like a true teenager. Which I considered a very good sign.

  Unfortunately, the goob at the door was under the council’s orders not to leave his post, so I had to run downstairs and coerce Jace into warming up the pizza. I made him put it in the oven instead of the microwave to give me more time to talk to Kaci before food occupied her mouth. And because it would taste better that way.

  Back in the upstairs bedroom, I shut the door behind me, cutting off the guard’s curious look before he got more than a glance at Kaci. She was not going to come out of her shell so long as everyone kept treating her like an oddity.

  “Pizza’s on the way.” I leaned against the closed door. “Should be here in about twenty minutes.”

  Kaci still sat at the head of the bed with her arms crossed over her chest, almost hugging herself. As I watched, unsure how to start the conversation we needed to have, Kaci’s right hand left her arm and slid into the hair at her scalp, combing it in what was obviously a habitual gesture. But she got stuck less than a quarter of the way through, mired in tangles and dirt.

  Kaci frowned and tugged her fingers free from the knot, then let her hands fall into her lap as she turned to stare out the window at the tree line, and the mountain rising in the distance. “Where are we?”

  “In a private cabin complex. This is the main lodge, and there are several smaller cabins on either side.” I crossed the room and settled onto the other end of the mattress.

  “But where is this cabin complex?”

  “Montana.”

  “Montana?” She twisted to look at me, and her eyes seemed to double in size. “Are you sure?”

  I couldn’t hold back a grin at her surprise. “Pretty sure. Why? You’re not local?”

  She shook her head and picked up a strand of her hair to peer at, as if checking for split ends.

  “Me, neither.”

  Kaci plucked a cocklebur from her hair and dropped it onto the nightstand at her side. “Where are you from?”

  “Texas. How ’bout you?”

  She hesitated, frowning at the cocklebur for a minute before finally answering. “I’m not from anywhere anymore. I just…go wherever I can find food.”

  The crack she’d put in my heart widened a little more, and I ached to tell her she could stay with us as long as she wanted. But I knew better than to assume the council would honor any promise I made her. “Hey,” I said, when her hand strayed to her hair for the third time in as many minutes. “The pizza won’t be done for a little while. Would you like to take a shower before it gets here?”

  “A shower?” She frowned for a moment, as if trying to pair the concept with the word, and again I wondered how long she’d been living in the wilderness. Then her eyes lit up at the prospect of doing something so…normal. “Yeah. I’d love a shower. And I really have to pee.”

  Twenty-Two

  When I tried to take Kaci down the hall to the nearest bathroom, the guard at the door stepped into my path, refusing to let her out of the room. Kaci’s eyes widened in panic at his less-than-gentle announcement that he was under orders to keep her inside. I cursed myself silently for not anticipating that little complication, then I cursed him aloud for being such a s
tupid asshole.

  “She’s a guest, not a prisoner!” I snapped, and my anger only grew when he told me to take the issue up with an Alpha. What made it even worse was that I couldn’t blame him. He was just following orders.

  It took me five minutes to calm Kaci down and convince her that she was indeed free to go if she really wanted to, all the while knowing that if I let her run, I could kiss my own freedom—and maybe my life—goodbye.

  Once Kaci was calm, I had to run back downstairs, this time in search of an Alpha who could grant the tabby clearance to take a shower.

  My father was still at our cabin with Michael, who was doing an Internet search for information about Kaci Dillon. Calvin Malone was seated at the head of the dining-room table, ostensibly going over his notes from my trial, but I didn’t even bother asking him. Malone wouldn’t push me out of the path of a speeding train, and I knew better than to expect his help in a less-than-critical situation.

  Fortunately, my uncle walked through the front door just as I settled into the armchair across from Paul Blackwell, preparing to swallow my pride and ask the sexist old coot for some help.

  Though he was probably still mad at me from earlier, Uncle Rick told the toy soldier upstairs to let me take Kaci to the second-floor bathroom, where he was to wait outside without bothering us. Then, before he went downstairs, my uncle shot me a conspiratorial wink from the end of the hallway. Evidently we were friends again.

  Kaci followed me across the hall into the bathroom. I’d expected her to hide behind her hair and clutch at my arm, but to my surprise, she walked with her spine straight and proud, her head held tall. The only sign of discomfort I saw was the way her eyes rolled from side to side, constantly watching for anyone who might be lying in wait to attack her.

  That was survival instinct, well developed during her time alone, and I wasn’t going to discourage such impulses. They’d kept her alive, and they would continue to do so, which put her one step ahead of my brother Ryan in the game of survival. Ryan’s idea of self-preservation was to suck up to our mother in hopes of keeping her checkbook open. Not that she was financing him anymore. He’d been locked in a cage in our basement since June, and he wasn’t getting out anytime soon.

  The upstairs bathroom was done in mountain-rustic decor, complete with framed black-and-white pictures of log cabins and shower-curtain hooks adorned with little brown plastic pinecones and moose antlers. I offered to wait outside with the guard, but Kaci asked me to come in. I think she was eager for company—not to mention security—after having been on her own for so long. So I stared at the fish-shaped coat hook on the back of the door while she stripped, then stepped into a separate cubicle to use the restroom.

  I folded her—my—clothes, then set them on one side of the counter. She’d have to put them back on after her shower, since we had nothing else for her to wear at the moment, but at least she’d be clean.

  The toilet flushed, then plastic rattled against metal as she opened the wilderness-themed shower curtain. A moment later, water burst from the tap to patter against the plastic-walled enclosure. Kaci squealed, then laughed at herself, and I smiled at the simple pleasure in her voice. “Okay, you can turn around.”

  I shoved aside an array of disposable razors, shaving cream, toothbrushes, and trial-size bottles of mouthwash littering the countertop, then hopped up to sit with my legs dangling. This is definitely a guy bathroom.

  The cadence of the spray changed as Kaci moved beneath it, and after a moment she spoke, as if reading my mind. “I smell several…scents in here.” At first I thought she meant shampoo, soap, and toothpaste—and maybe urine from whoever had splashed the rim of the toilet—but her next words set me straight. “Who are they?”

  Oh. Personal scents. She smelled the other toms. And just like that she’d opened the very conversation I’d been struggling to start.

  “They’re enforcers. Several of the guys have been sharing this bathroom.” I held my breath in anticipation of her response, and I honestly had no idea what to expect.

  Kaci stepped out from under the flow of water, probably reaching for something at the end of the tub. A moment later the splatter of water was muted against her flesh again, and the aroma of soap flooded my senses. Irish Spring.

  “What’s an enforcer?” she asked, her tone as light as I’d ever heard it, giving the question no more significance than when she’d asked where we were.

  But to me, her question spoke volumes. She hadn’t known how to Shift, or even what the word meant. And now she didn’t know what an enforcer was. Those concepts weren’t foreign to a Pride cat, and again my focus centered on the possibility, however slim, that she might be a stray. I could see no other explanation for her ignorance.

  “Enforcers are…like policemen. Or maybe soldiers. They protect their Alphas and defend their Pride’s territory. And they protect their Pride’s tabby, too, at all costs.”

  Wet sliding sounds told me Kaci was lathering soap in her bare hands, since I hadn’t thought to give her a rag.

  “Tabby…” The word lingered on her tongue, as if she were tasting it, and by the sound of things, she didn’t find it unpleasant. “I heard you talking in the hall earlier. That’s what you called me, right?”

  “Yes. You’re a tabby, and so am I.” I couldn’t see her through the curtain, but I felt her go still with some part of my mind that was more cat than human.

  “You’re…like me?”

  “Very much so.” I slid off the countertop, moved by the breakthrough I could sense coming. “Can’t you smell me? Can’t you detect the similarity in our scents?”

  Silence settled beneath the harsh patter of water, and I pictured her inhaling deeply. “Yes. I can.” Amazement layered her voice the way steam coated the mirror. Then Kaci was quiet for at least a full minute, and I heard her feet slosh on the tub bottom as she washed herself. When she finally spoke, she’d gone still again, and the scent of soap faded as fresh water rinsed it down the drain. “What are we?”

  My breath caught in my throat and silent vindication coursed through me. I was right. She was a stray. There was no other way she could not know what she was.

  I found myself in front of the sink, leaning with my palms flat on the counter as I stared into the fogged-over mirror. “Kaci…we’re werecats.” It sounded ludicrous coming from my lips, and I’d known what I was all my life. I could only imagine how it must sound to her, not having been born into our culture. Because I was sure now that she hadn’t been.

  But she took it better than I expected. “Werecats.” She paused while she thought it over, and I glanced at the curtain, as if the opaque vinyl would show me what she was thinking. “Like werewolves in movies, only cats, right?” I opened my mouth to answer, but she wasn’t finished. “That makes sense.” And she lathered up again for a second scrub.

  “It does?” Surprised, I turned to lean against the countertop, my arms crossed over my chest, ignoring the sharp edge of Formica that bit into my hip through my clothes.

  “Yeah.” Another pause as she moved out from under the water again. “Hey, can I use this shampoo?”

  I shrugged, then remembered she couldn’t see me. “Sure.” Though I had no idea who it belonged to.

  “The bottle smells kind of like us. And kind of like a man.”

  Yup, that sounds about right. “You’re smelling tomcat—one of the enforcers. They’re werecats like us, only male.” And messy, sometimes smelly, and often immature, just like human men.

  Plastic clicked as she uncapped the bottle. “Like the guy in the hall?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And those…cats in the woods?”

  My heart stopped as a painful jolt of surprise lanced my chest. Cats in the woods? Had she seen the strays? Or had she seen our guys out looking for the strays?

  “What cats? You saw tomcats in the woods?” My pulse raced, and I hoped fervently that she hadn’t yet learned to listen for things like that.

  “A f
ew times.” A new scent permeated the room, clean like soap, but threaded with a much heavier, musky chemical signature. Definitely a man’s shampoo. “But I mostly smelled them and heard them.”

  Hmmm. “Did they smell like the guy in the hall?” Who was a Pride cat. “Or did they smell a little…different?” I didn’t know how to vocalize the difference between the scent of a Pride cat and that of a stray, especially considering she probably didn’t know what either of those labels meant.

  “I don’t know. They smelled like a man and like a cat. I tried not to get too close.”

  Good girl.

  “At first I thought it was all a dream, all that walking in the dark. All the running… And that you’d woken me up from some kind of nightmare. But it wasn’t a dream, was it?” Her voice quivered, even over the steady noise of the shower, and she took a moment to collect herself. “It’s all real, isn’t it?”

  My hand tightened on the rim of Formica behind me. “’Fraid so.”

  A second later, the water cut off, and the sudden silence felt heavy with her disappointment, though that seemed too mild a word to describe the despair she must have felt upon discovering that her nightmare was real.

  “Can you hand me a towel?”

  “Oh. Yeah.” I glanced around the bathroom for a clean towel, but had to dismiss the one hanging on the rack with one sniff. Not even kind of fresh. Fortunately, the cabinet over the toilet yielded several clean, folded towels. I shook out the one on top, then shoved it behind the shower curtain with my face averted.

  Kaci took the towel, and the cheap cotton whispered against her skin as she dried. Then her thin, pale fingers—now immaculate—curled around the edge of the curtain and pulled it aside to reveal a thin, wide-eyed, towel-wrapped tabby, more little girl than young woman. Her hair hung past her elbows in a thick blanket of loose brown waves, struggling to curl on the ends in spite of the weight of the water soaking them.