Stray

  Marc had never hit me, and he never would, not just because the council frowned heavily on hitting tabbies, but because he knew better. I wasn’t a turn-the-other-cheek kind of girl. But mostly he wouldn’t hit me because he’d never hit a woman. Even one who’d nearly bitten his foot off.

  Anger at me had driven him to put his fists through walls, to rip doors from their hinges, and to pick fights with other toms out of frustration. On one memorable occasion, he threw my mother’s solid-oak dinner table across the room and into a wall, leaving a dent four feet long in the Sheetrock. But the word dent didn’t do justice to the damage. It was more like the wall buckled. The table actually snapped one of the studs, its splintered edges protruding through the wall into the next room.

  As well as docking Marc’s paycheck, Daddy had taken away my allowance for eight months to help pay for the repairs, though I hadn’t even touched the table. He’d blamed me for pushing Marc’s buttons on purpose. Like that was fair.

  Marc sighed and shook his head slowly. “What am I going to do with you, Faythe?”

  Not a damn thing, I thought. But I knew better than to dare him. If I claimed to be beyond his authority, he’d do something to prove me wrong, just to make a point. “You sound like my mother,” I muttered, tossing the bra into the suitcase as I bent to grab a dog-eared copy of Sense and Sensibility. I was intentionally ignoring my resemblance to my mother as I tidied up to keep my nervous hands busy. When left empty, they tended to form fists.

  Marc’s eyes tracked me as I moved to place my copy of Beowulf on the shelf. “I feel more like your father,” he said.

  “Well, you’re not my father.”

  “Thank goodness,” he muttered, shaking his head. I had to agree. I crossed the room again with a small stack of books clenched to my chest. Marc stepped into my path. “Come on, Faythe,” he said, taking the books from me. He set the entire stack on my desk without breaking eye contact. “Tell me what happened out there.”

  Forced back to the topic at hand, I closed my eyes as fresh pangs of guilt and confusion coursed through me. I turned away from him, sinking onto the side of my bed with my hands loose in my lap, breathing deeply to try to calm myself. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking. I was upset, and frustrated, and worried about Sara and Abby. Then, when I Shifted, it all changed. My anger felt different. It felt…productive. Almost cathartic. I thought if I could just slash something, or bite something, I’d feel better.”

  His eyes softened almost imperceptibly, and I knew he understood—from very personal experience. “Bloodlust?” he asked, and I nodded, holding back tears with sheer willpower. “The deer didn’t help?”

  “Not much.” I pressed my fingertips against my eyelids, as if I could physically stop the tears from coming. “She was too easy.”

  Marc sat next to me on the bed, his leg brushing mine. He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me toward him. I let him. I shouldn’t have. Any other time, I wouldn’t have. But as soon as my head touched his shoulder, tears blurred my vision, scorching their way down my cheeks.

  Horrified, I pulled away from him, wiping furiously at my face with clenched fists, trying to erase the evidence of my emotional outburst before he noticed. I worked so hard to make everyone take me seriously, to make them treat me with the same respect they’d give a tomcat, the same respect they gave each other. And my little waterworks display would ruin it all, exposing me as the emotionally fragile little girl they’d always assumed me to be inside. Before I knew it, I’d be in the kitchen at my mother’s side, wearing one of her aprons as I learned the difference between baking powder and baking soda.

  That thought only made me cry harder.

  “It could have been worse,” Marc said, putting his arm around my shoulders again. I let him. What did it matter, now that I’d already embarrassed myself? “You didn’t actually attack him, and he didn’t see anyone Shift. All he has is a crazy story about huge wild panthers. No one will believe him.” He squeezed my shoulders, and I sobbed out loud. I’d liked it better when he was mad. I knew how to deal with anger, but I was terrible with sympathy, both giving and receiving. “And anyway, we all know how you feel. We all wanted to shred something, and the truth is that if we hadn’t been busy trying to find you, one of us might have done the same thing.”

  He was lying. It was a sweet lie, but a lie nonetheless. None of the guys had so little control.

  “You don’t understand,” I sniffed, sitting up straighter as I wiped tears from my face. “I wasn’t just mad. I was scared.” I whispered the last word, ashamed. With the admission of fear came humiliation, and I avoided his eyes, afraid I’d find scorn in them if I looked.

  But then I had to look. I had to see what he thought of me, because for some stupid reason it still mattered. A little.

  I looked up into his eyes from inches away, and what I found was not contempt but understanding. Not intellectual comprehension but actual empathy. He knew what I felt because he’d felt it too. I remembered the fear I’d seen on his face the night before and knew that he understood mine.

  I took a deep breath, preparing to explain myself. The words tumbled from my mouth in an untempered surge, determined, once they were free, to keep coming. “Somebody took Abby and Sara, and if it happened to them, it can happen to me.” Marc shook his head in denial, but I ignored him. “I just kept thinking that if they’d been faster, or stronger, they could have gotten away. I guess I was trying to prove to myself that I’m fast enough and strong enough. Then I just lost control.”

  He held out his injured leg, and I noticed the bandage hadn’t survived his Shift. Luckily, he didn’t really need it anymore. The wound was jagged and inflamed, but the worst of the damage had already healed, probably during his recent Shift back to human. Either that, or I hadn’t hurt him as badly as I’d first thought. Even so, it would leave a thick scar. I’d permanently marked him as punishment for him trying to scent-mark me. How’s that for irony?

  “You’re too fast for me, that’s for sure,” he said, eyeing his own injury.

  I smiled ruefully. “Yeah, but Daddy’s going to kill me for that.”

  “Speaking of which…”

  I looked up, already suspicious. “What?”

  “There’s no reason to tell him about the hunter,” Marc said, and I held my breath, waiting for the catch. “After all, no one got hurt or exposed, so there’s really nothing to tell.”

  My eyes narrowed. “You trying to get back on my good side?”

  “You have a good side?” He grinned, and I glared at him as he held up two hands in defense. “All I’m saying is that—assuming you can behave yourself from now on—there’s no reason to mention something that only almost happened.”

  I reached up to pull a T-shirt from the bedpost where it hung like a white flag signaling my surrender. “And let me guess, you’re doing this because you’re such a nice guy.”

  “That, and because I like having you in my debt.”

  “Debt?” Now, that sounded more like Marc. “I’d say we’re even. You keep your mouth shut about the hunter, and I won’t mention you and the flock of airheads in the cafeteria.”

  He cocked one eyebrow at me, as if impressed in spite of himself. Then he frowned. “That won’t make us even. I owe Ethan and Parker for you. You’re at a deficit.”

  Damn. And Ethan was likely to ask for something big in return for his reluctant silence. I folded the shirt, mentally weighing a debt to Marc against facing my father’s wrath. Talk about a rock and a hard place. Groaning in resignation, I dropped the folded shirt onto the bed. “Fine. Within reason.”

  “Agreed.” He grinned again. “Should we shake?”

  I shrugged; he could have asked for a lot more. He took the hand I held out and kept it for a moment, as if he might kiss it rather than shake it. Or maybe he was considering biting me. His fingers were warm against mine and comfortably familiar. I smiled, but Marc didn’t notice. He was staring intently a
t his injured ankle, as if trying to figure something out.

  He let go of my hand, and his towel gaped, exposing a wide slice of bare thigh as he pulled his wounded leg onto the bed between us, turning to face me. His eyes were somber, his frown intense. “Faythe, listen.” He grabbed my arms as if to shake me, but he wasn’t mad this time. He was worried.

  “Sara and Abby weren’t just tossed into the back of someone’s car. They couldn’t have been. You know how hard it is to catch a cat. We twist, and scratch, and yowl. And we bite.” His eyes dropped to his ankle between us on the comforter. “Even in human form we fight. Remember when Ethan turned twenty-one? It took five of us to wrestle his keys away from him.”

  “Yeah.” The bite mark on my left arm guaranteed I’d never forget it.

  “How easy do you think it would be to subdue a scared cat, even a seventeen-year-old tabby?”

  I thought about it. I really, seriously thought about it and decided it would be nearly impossible to do without attracting unwanted attention, even in the dark. We’re strong, we’re stubborn, and we fight when we’re cornered. My hands clenched around handfuls of my rumpled comforter, my arms tightening beneath his grip. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying they were probably disabled. Maybe shot.” He let go of me but his eyes never left mine. “Faythe, no matter what anyone else says today to make the Wades and the Di Carlos feel better, there’s a good chance Abby and Sara are dead.”

  I stared at him, numb. I was tingling all over, trying to swallow my own pulse. I’d heard what he said, and I understood it. But I just couldn’t believe it, even though I’d been thinking the same thing right before my hunt. They couldn’t be dead. Abby was barely seventeen years old, and Sara was only twenty. Death just wasn’t an option for people that young.

  But it happened to cats in the jungle every day.

  “I’m not trying to scare you,” he said. “I just want you to be prepared.”

  I nodded, but my head barely moved. It felt like it weighed fifty pounds.

  Two short, sharp knocks came from the hall, and we turned to look as my door opened. Parker stuck his head in, drawing my attention away from Marc and from thoughts I didn’t want to think. “Faythe, your dad wants to see you in his office.”

  “Now?” Marc snapped.

  I glanced at him, surprised by his tone.

  “Yeah. Now.” Parker pushed the door open farther and tossed Marc a bundle of clothes. “I’m leaving to pick up the Di Carlos, but I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” He looked at me with something bordering on sympathy. I guess he thought being chewed out by both Marc and my father in the same hour was enough punishment for anyone. I had to agree. “Your mom set up a buffet in the kitchen. She says you should eat before everyone gets here.”

  Yeah, that sounded like my mother, more worried about my stomach than my head. Or my hide.

  I glanced at my clock radio, surprised to see that it was nearly three o’clock. Marc and I had been talking for ages. Or maybe my run in the woods had taken longer than I’d thought. My stomach growled, as if to highlight the passage of time, and I realized I hadn’t eaten anything since I’d Shifted. No wonder I was starving.

  “Any word on who’s coming?” Marc asked, reaching down to grab his jeans from the floor where they’d landed.

  “Yeah.” Parker leaned against the door frame. “Michael said all ten Alphas are coming. Apparently they all want a say on how we handle this. Four are bringing their wives, and Nick Davidson’s bringing his daughter.”

  All ten? I thought, wondering if I’d heard him wrong. Wow. That was every Alpha from every territory in the country. We hardly ever had perfect attendance, even at scheduled meetings.

  Marc stood up, one hand holding his pants by the waistband, the other on the towel around his waist. “Where are they staying?” He gave the towel a tug, and it dropped to the floor.

  I jumped up fast enough to get a head rush, and scurried over to my dresser, slipping my watch over my wrist to avoid staring at him.

  Parker cleared his throat, disguising a chuckle at my reaction. “Michael made reservations for everyone in town, but Mr. Davidson asked if Nikki could stay here.”

  “Mom will love that.” I turned to face the room again, my blushing under control. My mother loved all kids, especially dainty little girls like Nikki Davidson. As a child, I was a constant source of frustration for her, with my skinned knees and torn skirts. When I was nine, I blew up a Laura Ashley doll with one of Ethan’s firecrackers. That was the last time she ever tried to make a lady out of me. At least openly. She’d resorted to passive-aggressive tactics ever since.

  Marc zipped up his pants, and my eyes were pulled toward the sound. The waistband of his jeans left the top curve of his hipbones exposed, and those masculine points seemed to hold me captive for a moment. When I could, I jerked my eyes away, and they landed on his shirt, crumpled at the end of my bed, abandoned. He’d been tossing shirts there for years, since long before his clothes had any business being on my bedroom floor. My theory was that he liked having me return them. He took advantage of any occasion that required me to seek out his attention. But it was hard to get mad this time. The missing shirt definitely improved the view.

  Marc was one of those naturally well-built men, for whom weight training merely added definition to an already impressive physique. I could count each ripple of his abs, and had done so on more than one occasion in years past, trailing my fingers lightly down his stomach until…Well, never mind that.

  But the memory came just to spite my floundering willpower. I’d almost forgotten there had ever been a time when we could touch each other without one of us tensing, but there had been, once.

  I read somewhere that most girls either fall in love with or grow to hate the man who takes their virginity. For me, it was both. I hated Marc’s cocky assurance that I would eventually want him back, but I couldn’t imagine him not being there every time I came home. He had been my first everything. My first boyfriend, my first kiss, my first real confidant. And that was most of the reason I hated him, on those occasions when I did. He knew me too well. But I knew him, too.

  “See anything you like?”

  I blinked, my cheeks flaming. I’d been staring, and for a while, apparently. Parker was gone, and I hadn’t noticed him leave. There was no one left to shield me from the heat in Marc’s eyes.

  I sighed, knowing his question was far from rhetorical. “Seeing something I like isn’t the problem, Marc. It never was.”

  “What is the problem?” he asked, his voice thick with yearning. I had my hand on the doorknob, and I fought the urge to turn and look at him. I lost. And there was that expression on his face again, that fear I’d had trouble placing the day before. It still looked all wrong, like Christmas lights in June.

  “I’ve changed, and you haven’t.” I left the room before he could ask me to elaborate, because I wasn’t sure I could. Not until he put on a shirt, anyway. I couldn’t even think until then.

  Twelve

  The twenty feet of plush beige carpet between my room and my father’s office might as well have been a bed of hot coals. Each step hurt a little more than the last, and the distance seemed to swell with each painful thump of my heart. Growing up, I’d feared nothing worse than being called into the office. Going on my own was one thing, but being summoned was quite another. Like Marc, Daddy never yelled, but unlike Marc, he would not be moved by my tears. Not that I planned to shed any.

  My father was more than just my sire. He was my Alpha, and because I was a girl, that wouldn’t change until I got married, which I’d spent the last few years avoiding. As a child, I’d owed my father obedience and respect, but as an adult and a member of the Pride, I owed him even more: lifelong loyalty. Everything I did, even away from the ranch and the rest of the Pride, had to be done with the safety of our secret existence in mind. The mistake I’d almost made in the woods might have gotten anyone else, even my brothers, expelled fr
om the Pride. But Daddy wouldn’t expel me. Ever. Tabbies are too valuable to be discarded for any reason. At least until they’ve borne a daughter.

  No, Daddy couldn’t afford to oust me, but he could take away my freedom. He’d certainly done it before.

  I stared at the door, postponing the inevitable for another few seconds of torturous anticipation. Ethan used to say that waiting to be punished is always worse than the punishment itself. But Ethan had never been grounded. At least, not like I had been.

  The house was a collage of sound around me; I could hear people going about their business in nearly every room. My mother puttered around the kitchen, wiping down counters and rewarming food, in blissful ignorance of my emotional turmoil. Ethan was in the shower; I could hear him humming the theme to Gilligan’s Island as he lathered and rinsed. And repeated.

  But in front of me was an auditory vacuum, a white spot on the canvas of chaos that was my home. Daddy’s concrete-walled sanctuary was scary in a way no dark alley could ever be. Anything could be happening in there—anything at all—and no one would know it. But then, that was the whole point.

  I knocked on the door and opened it without waiting for a reply. I probably wouldn’t have heard one anyway. Daddy sat hunched over his desk, talking on the phone, but when he saw me, he said goodbye and hung up. It wasn’t a good sign.

  “Close the door, please, Faythe.”

  I pushed the door shut, and took a seat on the couch. I knew the drill. I even folded my hands on my lap like a good little girl. But it had been years since my father bought that act.

  Daddy pushed back his chair and stood, leaning on the desk with both hands while he looked at me with an expression I couldn’t quite place. Exasperation? Dread, maybe? But it definitely wasn’t the fury I’d expected.

  “Tell me about Andrew.”

  “What?” I gaped at him, so surprised by his request that at first I actually couldn’t process what he’d said.

  “Your boyfriend at school.”