That wrinkled old bastard! I was actually on my feet for nearly a second before Owen pulled me back down.
My father turned around so fast his chair rolled backward to smack the display cabinet behind him, rattling the glass in its frame. “My daughter is none of your business!” he roared, so loud I could swear I saw pencils shake in the marble jar on his desk. On my right, Owen was breathing hard, and Dan’s pulse was racing. Our Alpha was throwing large doses of anger and aggression into the air, and we were breathing it in like secondhand smoke. The buzz was just as addictive, and every bit as dangerous.
And if it didn’t stop soon, our high would end in a serious case of community bloodlust.
But even with his face violently flushed and his fists clenched, my father seemed unaware of the tension building in the room. “And you know damn well that if it weren’t for Faythe, both Abby Wade and Carissa Taylor would be dead by now. Or worse.”
Was I the only one who felt like applauding?
“That may be,” Blackwell conceded softly. “And I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say how grateful we are for the tabbies’ well-being. But that doesn’t change any of this, Greg.”
My dad inhaled slowly, obviously trying to regain his composure as his colleague continued.
“The fact remains that two days ago, five members of the Territorial Council met and decided unanimously to remove Kaci Dillon from your care. That decision was based on your own most recent report on her deteriorating health. We sent her with you in the first place because she seemed to have bonded with your daughter, but if that bond cannot keep her healthy, we would rather see the kitten placed with an Alpha who can be counted on to raise her in accordance with the ideals of the council.”
My father’s next words were menacingly soft, and I recognized the current of danger running through them. “Kaci is getting the best possible care here, Paul. Faythe is sure she will Shift very soon—today—and Dr. Carver assures us that once she has, her health problems will clear up almost immediately.”
Blackwell sighed. “I’m sorry, Greg, but that’s too little, too late. We’ve already voted to remove her.”
“Did you vote to kill my son in the process?” our Alpha demanded, and the tension in his office ratcheted up another notch. I couldn’t help wondering if Councilman Blackwell could feel it from his end of the line.
“Of course not. And Calvin will be reprimanded for his entire approach.”
“Reprimanded?” I squeezed Owen’s hand when he took mine to quiet me. “Ouch,” I whispered furiously, half hoping Blackwell could hear me. “Careful you don’t slice him open with your sharp words!”
“Don’t bother!” my father snapped into the phone. “I’ll deal with Calvin Malone myself. And let me tell you something else, Councilman…” Daddy’s words dripped with venom, and as badly as I’d wanted to see him confront the other Alphas over the past few months, I couldn’t shake the certainty that threatening the current head of the council wasn’t the best way to go about that.
But as usual, my opinion was unsolicited.
“Malone has obviously decided that full-scale war is the most expedient way to put himself in charge of the council. Maybe he’s hoping the threat alone will be enough to make me bow out, or maybe he truly believes the rest of you will fight with him. I’d like to think you all understand that fighting amongst the North American Prides will only show our neighbors to the south that we have neither the time nor the resources to deal with the threat they represent.”
My father sucked in a deep breath and closed his eyes briefly before continuing. “But if I’m wrong, if you’ve bought into Malone’s propaganda—his vision of the council as his own person kingdom, with him on the throne—then heaven help us all.”
He paused, rubbing his forehead as if to stave off a headache. “The time for diplomacy has ended, Paul. Now is the time for action, and if a war is what you want, the south-central Pride can damn well deliver.”
With that, my father hung up on Paul Blackwell, dropped the phone back into its cradle, and sank into his chair so wearily he seemed to have no bones left to support his weight.
“Damn…” I whispered, watching as our Alpha wheeled his chair forward and propped both elbows on his desk, burying his head in his hands. He sat like that for several seconds, and I was about to ask if he was okay when he suddenly launched himself from his chair. His hand shot out almost faster than I could track its movement, and a moment later his marble pencil holder slammed into the concrete wall above the bar.
The jar broke into three uneven chunks, raining pens and pencils all over the bar. One piece of marble shattered the glass in which it landed. Another knocked a half-empty bottle of Scotch to the floor, where it remained miraculously unbroken.
Owen rose to clean up the mess, but I couldn’t tear my gaze from my father. Until my mother spoke.
“Greg?”
I turned to find her standing in the doorway, wearing a fresh blouse and pair of slacks, as if it were two in the afternoon, rather than seven-thirty in the morning. She stared at my father for a moment, and when his eyes met hers, something passed between them. Something I couldn’t understand. Something born of thirty-three years of marriage and more shared crises than I could remember, or even imagine.
“Could we have a moment please?” she asked in as reasonable a tone as I’d ever heard, yet there was no question she expected to be obeyed. I headed across the hall into the kitchen, and Owen and Dan followed me. The office door closed softly behind us as I settled into a chair at the breakfast table, suddenly hating the floral-print tablecloth for no reason other than that it was cheerful when I wanted to cry. Or break something.
Owen sat next to me, and Dan took the seat across from him. “Damn,” Dan whispered, rubbing one hand through his thick brown hair. “Do your Alphas always fight like that?”
“Lately? Yeah.”
Owen sighed and set his cowboy hat on the table, which he would never have done in front of our mother. “You think he was serious?”
“Without a doubt.” I was starting to wish I’d snagged a bottle of something strong on my way into the kitchen.
“So…what happened to Ethan? That had nothing to do with Kevin Mitchell, and Marc being missing. Right?” Dan’s eyes pleaded with me to confirm his assumption, as if a connection between the two tragedies would have made the whole thing entirely too complicated to deal with.
“Not that I know of. I think this was just about Pride politics. Calvin Malone trying to gain control of as many tabbies as he can.”
Five minutes later, my mother emerged from the office, leaving silence in her wake. She crossed directly into the kitchen and pulled the teapot from the stove. I thought I was the only one who noticed her hand shaking until Owen rose to take the pot from her, dropping his hat in his chair on the way.
“I’m sorry, hon,” she whispered, stroking his arm as he set the pot on the tile countertop. I think she just wanted to touch him. To reassure herself that he was real. Because Owen was now her youngest son.
When she stopped shaking, my mother served us tea in tiny china cups that looked like toys in the guys’ huge hands. I sipped something spiced with cinnamon, but the ten minutes it took for me to drain my cup were pure torture. Dan kept glancing at the doorway, as if he wanted to leave but didn’t want to be rude. And didn’t know where to go. And it occurred to me then that he was stuck there with us, an outsider in our private hell.
My mother and Owen stared at the tabletop, occasionally wiping their eyes with a tissue from the box she’d put in the middle of the table, apparently content to suffer quietly.
I couldn’t take it. I could do silence on my own.
When my first cup was empty, I set it in the sink and announced that I was going to go check on Jace. No one even looked up.
My father was still alone in his office, staring down at his desk blotter, sipping from another short glass. Jace wasn’t in either the dining room or the liv
ing room, so on my way to the back door, I checked the room Ethan and Owen had shared, just in case. It was empty, thank goodness. I wasn’t sure I could handle being in there just yet.
I also checked on Kaci, who seemed to be sleeping now, rather than truly unconscious. She was even snoring lightly, and had turned onto her side, while Dr. Carver dozed in the chair beside her bed, his mouth hanging open. Now that I knew the kitten was okay. I couldn’t help hoping her nap would last a little while. I had to get myself under control before I could explain Ethan’s death to the thirteen-year-old he’d died defending.
I headed into the backyard, where the frozen grass—stubbornly resisting the weak warmth of the winter sun—reminded me that I’d forgotten my shoes. Instead of going back for them, I raced across the yard toward the guesthouse. The frigid air and bright morning light were invigorating, but did nothing to alleviate the black mood that had enveloped me with Ethan’s death and showed no sign of fading.
The rough wood planks of the guesthouse porch were a relief to my feet after sharp, icy blades of grass, and I paused to gather myself before going in. But my thoughts weren’t clear enough to truly organize, so I opened the door and stepped inside anyway. I’d have to wing it.
The door creaked and gave away my presence, but Jace didn’t look up. He sat on the floor, leaning against the beat-up couch with his knees bent in front of his chest, his heavily wrapped right arm draped over them. His head hung low, as if his neck would no longer support it. His shirt lay on the floor against the opposite wall, where he’d obviously thrown it after the doc had cut it off to tend to his injury.
In that moment, for the first time in my life, I wished I was older. Wiser. I wished desperately for the words to comfort us both. But I didn’t have them. I had only my own misery, and the willingness to keep his misery company.
The door squealed again as I closed it, cutting off the icy draft, and I crossed the scarred hardwood to sink cross-legged to the floor next to him. “Hey.”
“Hey.” His voice was gruff, as if he had a cold. But he didn’t look up.
I inhaled deeply and nearly choked on the scent of tequila, though a glance around the room revealed no bottle and no glasses, other than the usual sticky, half-empty ones standing on cheap, scarred end tables around the room. But when I leaned forward and looked around Jace’s legs, I found a bottle of Jose Cuervo, a third of the way gone, no lid in sight.
“How’s your arm?”
“All sewn up, but even after Shifting twice, it looks like chopped sirloin. Still hurts like hell, but this works better than the doc’s big white pills.” He held up the bottle briefly.
“You probably should have taken the pills.”
“They only work on my arm,” he whispered, and I didn’t need to ask where else he hurt. The doctor’s pills couldn’t touch a broken heart. I knew that better than most.
I sighed and leaned against the couch, forcing my gaze back to my brother’s lifelong best friend, who was hurting every bit as much as I was. “Pass the bottle.”
He finally looked up, frowning. “You hate tequila.”
“I hate this more.” Surely a drink would quiet the incessant buzz of angry questions swarming my head so I could concentrate on one at a time.
Or so that maybe—for just a little while—I could think about nothing.
He passed the Cuervo with his good hand, and I guessed by the absence of a glass that we were drinking straight from the bottle. I turned it up without hesitation and made myself swallow twice. The alcohol burned bitterly going down, but if anything, it seemed to bring feeling back to my insides, which had been numb for the better part of the morning.
Jace took the bottle back and gulped from it, besting me by at least three swallows. This time he set it between us and met my gaze. Brown waves fell around his forehead, framing reddened eyes that blazed bright blue, shimmering with tears. “Why the hell would Calvin risk all-out war to snatch Kaci?”
I let my head fall back against the couch and stared at the opposite wall. “Because my dad wouldn’t hand her over peacefully.” And because he was probably counting on all-out war. But I didn’t want to mention that possibility to Jace just yet.
“What?” His eyes widened, and his hand clenched around the neck of the bottle.
“I heard him on the phone with Milo Mitchell, and Mitchell was clearly speaking on your stepfather’s behalf. He said that because of the allegations against my dad, and Kaci’s failing health, several of the council members voted to remove her from the ranch.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Yeah.” I took the bottle and tipped it back again. “Hardly matters now, though, does it?”
Jace didn’t answer, so I lifted the bottle one more time. I took three more swallows of tequila and knew I was done. I wanted to be numb, not drunk, and if I kept drinking so fast, even with my enhanced metabolic rate, I’d be risking impaired judgment.
But Jace took another long drink. “Why did he do it, Faythe?” he demanded, and I knew we were no longer talking about Calvin Malone. Jace put the bottle down and covered his eyes with one hand, his jaw trembling with the effort to hold back tears. If he cried, I’d begin all over again.
I started to tell him I didn’t know. But I did know. “Because that’s who he is.” Was, my brain insisted, but my heart rejected the internal edit. “Ethan lived larger than life, and it kind of makes sense that he’d die that way. Protecting someone else.”
But it did not make sense that he’d die at twenty-five years old.
Jace nodded but looked less than convinced. He stared into my eyes from inches away, his focus shifting from one to the other, as if he were searching for some great truth deep inside me. But whatever that truth was, I didn’t possess it, and finally he gave up looking. He blinked, and when his eyes opened again, they were full of tears, magnifying the rings of cobalt that made up his irises.
“What am I going to do without him?”
My heart broke, not just because of the words, but because of the earnest despair with which he spoke them.
I inhaled deeply, and when that didn’t help, I reached for the bottle again. One more wouldn’t hurt, and I couldn’t stand the pain in his eyes without it. So I took a long gulp. Then another, just for good measure.
It didn’t burn so much that time. Which was probably a bad sign.
“You’re going to do the same thing I’m going to do,” I said, trying to project strength I didn’t feel. “The same thing we’re all going to do. Today, you’re going to cry, and scream, and hit things if you need to. Let it all out now. Because soon we’re going to make them pay, and for that, we’ll need everyone in top form.”
Especially with so many of our men out looking for Marc. Our forces were split, and our numbers were dwindling faster than we could replace the missing members. And the truth was that we didn’t want to replace them. We wanted them all back. Including Marc. I wouldn’t be able to stand losing him so close to losing Ethan.
“Count on it.” Jace closed his eyes briefly, as if whatever he had to say next would be especially painful. “I’ll have to go after that. After we make Calvin pay.”
“What? Why?” I sat up too fast, and the entire room spun around me, my pulse racing in alarm. Would he really desert us when we needed him most? When we were already crippled by a double loss?
Jace frowned, like his logic should have been obvious. “I’m here because of Ethan.” He raised the bottle again, as if those very words hurt. “He’s more of a brother to me than my own brothers, and he was the only one who ever really gave a damn about me after my dad died and my mom married Calvin. He got your dad to take me on as an enforcer the day I turned eighteen, to get me away from Cal. But now Ethan’s gone, and it’s my stepfather’s fault. You think Greg’s still going to want me around? To remind him every day of how his son died?”
He gulped from the bottle again, and I was shocked to see that it was now more than half-gone. How much had he had?
How much had I had?
“Okay, give me that.” I took the tequila, and he let me because he thought I was going to drink from it again. Instead, I reached back to set it on the nearest end table. But the table seemed to tilt away from me, and I almost missed.
“Listen to me, Jace,” I began, but by then his eyelids were heavy and his eyes were starting to look glazed. It was too late for much real listening on his part, and soon I might be past the point of rational speech. But I had to try.
“Look at me.” I held his chin, short stubble rough beneath my fingers, and made him meet my eyes. “Daddy’s not going to kick you out. He wouldn’t let you go if you tried to. And neither would I. We need you.” My own eyes filled with tears, my recent losses threatening to overwhelm me. “Please don’t go. I can’t handle losing you, too.”
Jace blinked and his expression shifted, his focus narrowing on me, as if everything else had ceased to exist. On his face, I saw only pain and need, and I dropped his chin, nearly scalded by the look in his eyes.
His good hand rose slowly, and when his fingers touched my cheek they were warm. So warm. “You’re all I have left.”
Oh, no. He would never have said that if he were sober. He might have thought it, but wouldn’t have vocalized.
But before I could respond—and I had no idea what to say—his hand slid back to cup my head, and he kissed me.
Nineteen
Jace’s mouth was soft and warm, and damp with tequila. He tasted like the numbness I craved. Like comfort, and shared pain. I could have become mired in that kiss like quicksand—unaware I was sinking until it was too late to fight. And for a moment I was. I got lost in mutual, inarticulate grief and the promise of a temporary respite.
And I kissed him back. Simply because it felt good. Everything around me was falling apart. Ryan was missing, Manx had been declawed, and my father was being impeached. Kaci was slowly killing herself, and Ethan was dead.
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