“I promise.” She smiled at me in the mirror. “Now go have Christmas with your family.”
Christmas with my family.
My mother would hover over me and analyze everything I said for evidence that I hadn’t recovered from that summer four years before. My father would watch me out of the corner of his eye and not so subtly mention what an accomplished enforcer Brian had become, looking for any sign that I was ready to settle down and turn my parents into grandparents.
My brothers would follow me into town so I couldn’t get snatched off the street during any last-minute Christmas shopping, and they’d mentally dismember any guy who had the balls to even look my way, in spite of my large fraternal guard detail.
Going home for Christmas sounded about as pleasant as Thanksgiving spent in prison.
On the bright side, there’d probably be ham.
“So, what’s the big emergency?” I threw my duffel onto the rear floorboard, then slid into the passenger’s seat of Jace’s SUV. His gaze landed on my thighs, where my skirt had ridden up, and the sudden jump in his pulse was…gratifying.
He’d seen me naked—and I him—a million times, but nudity means little to most shifters because it’s required for the transformation to and from feline form. Shifters are aroused by what they don’t see. What they almost see. By the intent implied by flesh displayed behind or beneath strategically placed panels of lace or silk. Flesh that is put on display in private, for a specific intended audience.
Jace had never looked at me like that before. As if he wondered what my underwear looked like. As if I might be something other than a child in need of protection.
I desperately didn’t want Jace to think of me as a child. I was old enough to hold his attention. I was old enough to warrant his attention.
Wait.
I shook my head, jarring loose dangerous thoughts and foolish desires. An Alpha held an authority equivalent to a corporate manager, a parent, and a ruler all rolled into one, and even if dating an authority figure wasn’t completely inappropriate, Jace was too old for me. Too experienced for me.
And then there was Brian.
Not that any of that mattered. One glance south of my neck didn’t mean Jace was actually interested. It just meant he was a guy.
I shifted in my seat and Jace’s gaze snapped up to my face. He looked flustered for a moment, then he stared straight out the windshield and made an obvious, concerted effort to slow his pulse.
I decided to call that a compliment, even if it didn’t really mean anything.
“Jace?”
“Hmm?” He slammed the gearshift into reverse and made a production of looking into the rearview mirror as he backed out of the parking space.
“The emergency? Why are we going to the ranch?”
“Oh. Someone’s killing humans, and the local news has picked up the story.”
“Local?” I fought to control my own racing pulse. “How local?”
“For us? Very. The victims have all been killed in the Appalachian territory.” Jace checked both directions on his way out of the parking lot. “Right now, the cops think there’s a wild animal on the loose, but if we don’t find the rogue and take him out, they’re going to start suspecting foul play. Or they’re going to shoot one of our guys while they’re out hunting this mythical black cougar, then they’ll have biological proof that humans aren’t the most dangerous thing out there. The council’s in self-defense mode. They’ll do whatever it takes to keep us from being outed.”
My mind raced as the details began to coalesce into something that almost made sense. “You’re sure the killer’s one of ours? Couldn’t it be a thunderbird or a bruin?” Please let it be a thunderbird or a bruin. Bird- and bear-shifters could be every bit as vicious as werecats, and if it wasn’t a cat, it wasn’t our responsibility.
“Definitely a cat.” Jace took a turn too hard, and I had to grab the door handle to keep from landing in his lap. He still didn’t drive like an Alpha; all the rest of them were old. “But probably not ours.”
“You think it’s a stray,” I said, as more of the pieces fell into place.
“We didn’t get to examine the bodies, because the cops got there first, and we don’t have anyone on the inside. But we know for a fact that there are no natural wildcats in Appalachia.” Or anywhere else heavily populated with shifters. Natural cats avoided us like the plague. “So, it better be a stray,” he continued. “Because if one of our own’s gone rogue, we’re all in big trouble.”
But what he didn’t say aloud—what I could see etched into the brand-new Alpha lines on his otherwise youthful forehead—was that we couldn’t afford for it to be a stray either. Not when they were so close to voting on the resolution he and Faythe had sponsored in the territorial council.
For the first time in US history, the council was being asked to formally acknowledge a Pride made up entirely of strays who wished to carve out a territory of their own in one of the free zones. Faythe’s husband Marc, a stray adopted as a teenager by her father, had been acting as ambassador to the potential new Pride, helping them get all their t’s crossed and their i’s dotted, in order to present themselves at the next meeting.
If the council discovered that the murderer was a stray, that resolution would never pass. The project Jace, Faythe, and Marc had hoped would bring lasting peace between strays and Pride cats would fail before it ever even had a chance.
“That’s why I have to go with you to the ranch,” I guessed, and Jace gave me a small nod. With a murderous stray loose in the Appalachian territory, my dad wouldn’t want me to stay at the lodge for the holidays, even though Jace had probably tripled his security measures to protect his mother and sister.
Tabbies were too rare and too precious to risk and having two of them of childbearing age in the same house would only strengthen the temptation for a stray who’d probably never even met a female of his own species.
“So, this is history repeating itself? The big, strong tomcat has come to drag the helpless council chairman’s daughter home from school for her own good?”
“It was the right thing to do for Faythe, and it’s the right thing to do for you. But you’re far from helpless.” Jace’s voice rang with admiration that warmed me all over. “I know a few hunters rotting in shallow graves in the woods who could attest to that.” His pride in me morphed into misplaced nostalgia, and alarms went off in my head. “Faythe taught you well.”
The warm smile he gave me would have felt wonderful—if it were meant for me. “Jace, I’m not Faythe.”
He laughed again, and those inner alarms began to fade. “Glad to hear it. Things never seem to work out in my favor when she’s involved. You, however…” He aimed another blue-eyed glance at me, and I caught my breath. “You’re my new lucky charm. Kiddo.”
TWO
Jace
During my first four years as Alpha of the Appalachian Pride, I’d struggled with many things. Expelling my own half brother. Convincing my baby sister that she doesn’t have to voice every thought that pops into her head. Assembling and training my own team of loyal enforcers from scratch. But sitting next to Abby for hours at a time had turned out to be its own special challenge.
She’d transferred into my territory as a withdrawn but determined college freshman interested in nothing but personal barriers and schoolwork. Which made sense, considering what she’d been through. But at some point since, little Abigail Wade had come out of her shell.
I’d first noticed her new grit during her fall break, when she took out three homicidal human hunters without waiting for backup. But it wasn’t the reckless disobedience that stood out. It was her relentless insistence that she’d done the right thing. The thing I would have done in her situation. She wasn’t afraid of the hunters, and she sure as hell wasn’t afraid of me, and I found something captivating in her unflinching confidence. Something exciting.
Even if it led her to question every decision I made.
Her disposition wasn’t the only part of her that had come out of its shell. After hours in a car and on a plane with her, I still couldn’t decide whether she had no idea how amazing she looked in that skirt or she knew exactly how amazing she looked in that skirt.
It only took me five minutes to realize I had no business knowing which of those was true.
We were three miles from the ranch, stuffed into the cramped front seat of my rental car, when Abby turned to me with a familiar look in her big brown eyes. That look said she knew that curiosity would eventually kill the cat, but she really didn’t give a damn. “When was the last time you saw her?”
I squinted at the windshield as a car passed us with its brights on, though the sun hadn’t quite set. “Saw who?”
As if I didn’t know.
“Faythe. You guys have been working together to present this new resolution, right? To officially recognize a Pride made up of strays?”
A long rope of red curls fell over her shoulder, and I had to stop myself from reaching out to touch it.
“They prefer to be called ‘wildcats.’” Even though Pride cats had a slightly different definition for the same term. “But yes. Most of that’s been done over the phone, though.” Thank goodness. “If the resolution passes, we’ll be making history.”
For the first time ever, strays—werecats infected by a scratch or a bite rather than born into our world—would have a place to go for help, sanctuary, and company. They’d have an official presence and a voice. And their Pride would have a vote on the council, of equal worth to that of all the other Prides.
This potential new Pride wouldn’t have an official name until it was formally recognized, but unofficially, we were calling it the Lion’s Den.
“Working with her must be difficult for you,” Abby said.
Understatement of the millennium.
As the first female Alpha in history, Faythe was practically a legend in every shifter society on the planet. She’d shattered the glass ceiling with her notoriously hard head and ripped the no girls allowed sign from the council’s clubhouse. Faythe had paved the way, at least in theory, for every tabby who would come after her.
I, on the other hand, was the only tom in the world ever to have been dumped by a female Alpha, which had left certain members of the Territorial Council less than confident in my ability to lead. In a society where the respect an Alpha commands is crucial to the authority he wields, how were they supposed to have any confidence in me when she’d found me lacking?
Not that any of that would matter for long. My sister, Melody, was nineteen. When she married, I would be expected to train her husband so he could take over the territory with her at his side. Matrilineal inheritance had always been the norm so that our few tabbies could stay in their birth Prides, which would be run by the Alphas they chose as husbands.
Faythe had opened up new possibilities for female leadership, but the percentage of tabbies who would naturally develop into Alphas was no greater than the percentage of toms who would, and Melody… Well, my sister couldn’t even pick a bottle of lotion without asking for a second opinion.
Regardless, I was little more than a temporary guardian of my future brother-in-law’s territory.
But that was nothing Abby needed to be reminded of.
“The truly hard part is getting the other Alphas to understand the relevance of electronic communication in modern Pride leadership.” I shrugged and forced a laugh. “You’d think email was synonymous with witchcraft, if you took Paul Blackwell’s word for it.” The old fart still hand-wrote letters to his fellow Alphas on honest-to-goodness carbon paper.
“That’s not what I meant.”
She’d meant that it must have been hard having to talk to Faythe so often after she’d picked Marc over me. Abby, like everyone else, was wondering if I’d gotten over losing the love of my life. Or whether I ever would.
According to the gossip from my own enforcers, the answer was no, and it always would be. But then, according to those clowns, Faythe had only picked Marc because she couldn’t have any of them.
“So, you haven’t seen Faythe in a while?” she asked.
I turned to see that the setting sun had turned her curls into living flames. “Um, it’s been about three years, I guess.”
Three and a half, but who was counting?
“Seriously? But aren’t most council meetings still held at the Lazy S?”
I nodded, and she frowned with the realization that I couldn’t have gone so long without seeing Faythe unless I was consciously avoiding her. And that was true, but it wasn’t just Faythe I was dodging. I was avoiding every memory I’d ever made at the Lazy S, because even the good ones were bittersweet in retrospect.
Especially with Ethan gone.
“About time,” I mumbled as the gate appeared ahead, beneath a familiar capital S lying on its side. “I swear, the drive from the airport gets longer every time.”
Abby groaned, as if she’d suddenly remembered something important. “Slow down!” She dove between our seats headfirst, placing her very well-shaped and barely covered hindquarters inches from my face.
“What the hell are you doing?” I pressed on the brake as I turned off of the highway, and it took every bit of willpower I could summon not to peek into the rearview mirror for an even more intimate viewing angle of what her skirt didn’t cover. As the vehicle came to a stop, Abby settled back into her seat holding a small square box she’d dug from a bag in the back.
A ring box.
“I almost forgot,” she mumbled, as she pulled her engagement ring out and slid it onto the fourth finger of her left hand. It was a single round diamond mounted high on a slim gold band, and the damn thing caught the dying light like rays from Heaven. I had to squint to see through the reflected glare.
“Why don’t you wear it at school?” I was caught strangely off guard by the rare reminder that she had been spoken for a long time ago. Not that it mattered.
Abby frowned at her hand, which somehow looked completely different with that one simple addition. “Because Brian… It’d be hard to explain to humans.”
Hell, her engagement would be hard to explain even to most shifters, who grow up knowing about the expectations placed upon a tabby at birth.
After narrowly surviving abduction, captivity, and gang rape the summer she was seventeen, Abby’s senior year in high school was very difficult for her. A few weeks in, she’d dropped out in favor of homeschooling with her mother, and shortly after that, she’d gotten her GED. Around April of that year, her parents had sent her to the ranch to spend time with Faythe and Manx, who’d both survived similar trauma—a little less in Faythe’s case, and significantly more in Manx’s.
Faythe taught Abby to fight and talked her into starting college. Manx kept Abby from withdrawing from the world physically and helped her deal with nightmares.
That summer, she also got to know Brian Taylor, Faythe’s newest enforcer at the time. Brian was young, and nice, and interested—I’d known him for years by then—and to everyone’s surprise, Abby didn’t shy away from his reportedly sweet and patient pursuit. By the end of the summer, she’d accepted his ring, to her parents’ delight, on the condition that the wedding be put off until she finished college.
Brian was amenable and that was no surprise. Engagement to Abby meant that he would be trained to take over her birth Pride. He would be an Alpha, a husband, and a father—opportunities rarely available to toms, because of the severe gender imbalance. Though their engagement was preposterously long by shifter standards, Brian was the envy of his peers.
But other than a few summer weeks spent on the ranch, he and Abby had hardly seen each other since she’d started school, and she only wore the ring when she went home. She was clearly no longer the shy freshman who’d joined my Pride, but neither did she act like a young woman eager for her wedding night.
Hell, my sister had subscriptions to three different bridal magazines, even though the
face and name of her potential groom changed on a monthly basis, yet I’d never even heard Abby mention the ceremony her mother had been planning for years.
For his own sake, I hoped Brian was a very patient man, because no matter what she wore or how good she looked in it, Abby clearly wasn’t ready for a physical relationship. And she had five huge brothers perfectly willing to break all two hundred and six of his human-form bones before they buried him in a shallow grave, if he so much as thought about breaching the clothing barrier without express invitation.
Five huge brothers and me.
My rental car’s tires crunched on gravel as we drove through the gate, and my own troubles came into sharper focus. Unease sat like lead at the bottom of my stomach, yet somehow, returning to the ranch felt more like a homecoming than returning to my birth Pride had, four years before. Probably because I’d always been happy at the Lazy S, whereas taking over my birth Pride after I’d killed my stepfather had felt like launching a hostile conquest.
We passed the old barn, and even in the dusk, I could see that it had been repainted. It was still red, of course, because Faythe would want to create continuity between her father’s reign and her own to counterbalance the contrast in their leadership styles by keeping familiar landmarks familiar.
Smart. Greg had taught her well.
In front of the barn was the apple tree, naked for the winter season, and beneath it stood three headstones. They were equally weatherworn because both Ethan and Ryan had died within weeks of their father, the year of the revolution.
That’s what people called it because we’d changed the world that year. Our world, at least.
Humanity was still mired in the same old shit because they did a lot more talking than acting. But as a political science major, Abby was more qualified to expound upon that truth than I would ever be.
I sat straighter when the main house came into sight, and for a second, déjà vu was strong enough to be disorienting. Had it really been eleven years since I’d driven that same path, both eager and terrified to pledge my service and loyalty—hell, my very life—to Greg Sanders and the South-Central Pride? In retrospect, my seven years as an enforcer felt like both an instant and an eternity, as if I’d somehow stuffed a lifetime’s worth of experience and memories into a single bursting moment.