Lion's Share

  “Wait, Abby only killed one bad guy.” Robyn’s heart beat so fast, I was afraid she was about to keel over. “I killed four of them. Does that mean I’m in the same trouble?”

  “Yes.” My father stepped into the kitchen from the hall with my mother on his heels. “But I believe the council will go easy on you, considering the mitigating factors, if you’re willing to make a serious concession of your own.”

  My dad pulled me into a hug, then held one hand out for her to shake, with his left arm still around me. “It’s nice to see you again, Robyn, though I am sorry about the circumstances.” They’d met a few times before when my parents had come to see me at school.

  Robyn took his hand, and for the first time since she’d been infected, she bowed her head, as if the urge felt completely natural. She could not have picked a better time to display her new respectful instinct. “Nice to see you,” she said. “I think.”

  “Robyn, this is a man you want to have on your side,” Jace said as she took my mother’s hand. “Abby’s dad is the council chairman, and if he says he can help you, he can. If you cooperate.”

  “What would I have to do?” Robyn asked as Patricia handed fresh mugs of coffee to each of my parents in greeting.

  My father nodded to thank Jace’s mom, then turned back to Robyn. “You’d have to agree to remain in one of the US Prides voluntarily and to let our doctor run a few simple tests. And you’d have to undergo training with one of our Alphas until you learn to control your new urges and instincts.”

  “I don’t have to have any babies?” Robyn said, obviously relieved.

  My father chuckled. “Of course not. Though no one would object if you were to change your mind. I’m not going to lie—there are council members who see your existence as a precious opportunity for that very reason.”

  “So, if I agree to belong to one of your Prides, you won’t try to execute me? Or lock me up? Or break off my teeth or anything?”

  My father nodded. “That’s the gist of my offer, assuming it gets enough support from my fellow Alphas.”

  Robyn looked to me for an opinion, and I nodded. That was the best offer she was going to get. “Okay, then.” She held her hand out for my father to shake again, and that time, he looked relieved.

  “Now, let’s talk about what you can do to help my daughter…”

  NINETEEN

  Jace

  Ed Taylor gripped the arms of his chair and glanced at the Alphas seated on either side of him at the Lazy S’s formal dining room table. Then he turned back to the woman sitting at the far end, her hands clasped nervously in her lap. “And is it your sworn testimony that Abigail Wade never scratched or bit you, nor injured you in any way that broke the surface of your skin?”

  “That’s right.” Robyn Sheffield took a sip of water from the glass on the table in front of her, then met Taylor’s gaze. “Abby would never hurt me.”

  I exhaled softly from my folding metal chair against the wall. The infection charge was Abby’s biggest obstacle, and even though I’d known how Robyn would answer, hearing her official statement was a big relief. She’d been prepped for the hearing, but there was no way to truly prepare someone who’d been born human to sit in a room full of people her brand new-instincts labeled as dangerous, powerful, and commanding.

  The Territorial Council was the shifter equivalent of the United Nations—except that our leaders could rip each other’s throats out with the flick of one wrist.

  “Ms. Sheffield, would you please tell the council how and when you were infected?” Rick Wade followed up, from Taylor’s right.

  Abby’s dad had appointed Ed Taylor as the acting council chairman for the duration of his daughter’s trial to avoid any appearance of nepotism, so for the first time in more than four years, he was not sitting at the head of the table. The chair to Taylor’s left was occupied by Paul Blackwell, who’d made a rare trip to the ranch in spite of his advanced age and failing health.

  The entire council had shown up to meet the first female stray ever confirmed to exist in the US. Robyn was a miracle. A violent, largely feral—in feline form, anyway—miracle.

  And since I wasn’t allowed to participate in the hearing, due to both my involvement with Abby and my responsibility for what had gone down in my territory two weeks before, the council sat at nine members, which meant a tie was impossible. Abby’s fate would be decided by the end of the day.

  Abby sat several feet from me in another folding chair, but I couldn’t see much of her because Michael Sanders—Faythe’s oldest brother and an attorney—sat between us. I hadn’t seen or spoken to her since her father had taken her from my house twelve days before, and every hour that had passed without her felt like an hour without oxygen. She’d left a hairband and a tube of lip balm on my nightstand, and I stared at them every night as the minutes ticked past on my alarm clock.

  Her father had insisted that the council could view any private contact between me and Abby as an attempt at collusion. As if we were getting our blatantly false stories straight. Even worse—Michael and Rick had decided that I should not testify on her behalf, because the truths I’d be forced to tell would only make things worse for her.

  She actually was guilty, so their strategy was to elicit sympathy for her and for her motives, rather than falsely claim that she hadn’t done anything wrong. Which was where Robyn came in. Our new stray’s testimony was supposed to establish the extenuating circumstance that had prompted Abby’s actions.

  As spectators, Abby and I weren’t allowed to speak during the hearing lest we influence the testimony, but Michael, as her advisor, could offer Robyn any help she needed.

  “Tell you how I was infected. Sure.” Robyn took another sip of her water, and that time, her hand was shaking. Physically, she’d held up well over the past twelve days, though the council had forbidden her to shift except under the supervision of an attending Alpha. But the trial was a source of stress all on its own. “In October, I was abducted from a campsite by three human men who’d come to hunt Abby. Though I didn’t know that at the time.”

  Faythe and Michael had gone over and over Robyn’s testimony with her. Her story hadn’t changed, but we’d needed to be sure she could tell it under pressure, without forgetting anything.

  “Then what happened, Ms. Sheffield?” Bert Di Carlo asked.

  “They took me to a cabin in the woods.” Robyn paused for another sip, and again her hand shook. “They kind of dragged me there. To this horrible room where there was a big black cat dead on a table, being skinned. I didn’t know it was a shifter. I didn’t know there were shifters. Abby had never told me any of that, because she was following your rules. Even though that meant keeping secrets from her best friend.”

  Faythe smiled encouragingly from her seat on the left side of the table. As the junior-ranking Alpha—since I’d been excluded—she sat closest to Robyn and farthest from the council chair position. “Please go on.”

  “There was another cat—a live one—in a cage, and when I got too close to it, he sort of swiped at me with one paw. With his claws out, you know? I think he was scared and just lashing out at anyone who came close. He was already dying from a wound to his stomach. I think he was shot.”

  Ed Taylor nodded. “And it is your testimony that this scratch from a dying stray is what infected you, triggering your transformation and later your first shift into feline form?”

  Robyn shrugged nervously. “I guess. I didn’t know any of that at the time, though. I just… Someone knocked me out, and when I woke up, Abby said that the police had come for the men who took me. I was in shock, and I felt sick, so I didn’t really question any of it. We stayed in that awful cabin because I didn’t feel well enough to travel.

  “That night, I got a really high fever and I started hallucinating. Abby took care of me. She explained what was happening, but I wasn’t really processing much of anything. Then I started hurting all over, like my body was ripping itself apart. It was excr
uciating. She stayed with me through that first shift, and she talked me through shifting back into human form.”

  Paul Blackwell leaned forward with his cane propped on the floor between his knees, both gnarled hands gripping the knob at the top. “And she never told you anything about us? About the council, or her Alpha, or about the rest of our society?”

  His skepticism made Robyn bristle. “No. I mean, she told me there were others, but she said I didn’t need to meet any of them yet. That I wasn’t ready.”

  “And do you know what she meant by that?”

  “Objection!” Michael Sanders stood from his chair against the dining room wall, and I got a peek at Abby behind his back. Her hair was pulled back and she wore a soft green dress, but her hands were clenched so tightly in her lap, she looked like she might snap her own fingers off. “Ms. Sheffield cannot be expected to know what Ms. Wade was thinking,” Michael elaborated.

  Blackwell scowled. “Mr. Sanders, this isn’t a trial.”

  “But his point is valid,” Ed Taylor declared. “We’ll ask Ms. Wade about her motivation when she sits in that chair.” Blackwell frowned again, but remained silent. “Ms. Sheffield,” Taylor continued, “why did you kill Joe Mathews and the other human hunters?”

  “Objection!” Michael stood again. “Ms. Sheffield has already been pardoned for her crimes, as part of an agreement she made with the council in advance of today’s hearing.”

  “We are aware, Mr. Sanders,” Taylor said. “I’m trying to establish her frame of mind as it pertains to Ms. Wade’s motivation.” He tossed a glance at Abby, then his gaze slid my way, and it was less than friendly. Brian’s father blamed me for ending his son’s engagement. He wasn’t the only one.

  Michael nodded curtly. “Withdrawn.” He sat, gesturing for Robyn to go ahead, now that he was sure the council wasn’t going to revoke its promise.

  Robyn’s leg began to jiggle beneath the table. “I don’t know. It wasn’t a conscious decision. I never really decided to kill anyone.” She frowned. “Dr. Carver said my cat half was in charge of my brain when those things happened, which means they weren’t my fault. I was dissociated from my conscience and my human decision-making process. Didn’t you guys talk to him?”

  “We did.” Blackwell trained his habitually skeptical focus on her. “Why did you go looking for those men in the first place, Ms. Sheffield? I assume that part was done while you had full use of your human faculties?”

  Robyn nodded hesitantly. “Well, the first of those men found me. Abby had taken me to the woods so we could run in cat form, and I picked up a scent I hadn’t even realized I’d smelled at that cabin the day I got scratched. It belonged to a man those hunters worked with who hadn’t been there that day. He was following us, and when I smelled him, I just sort of…lost control. My teeth needed to break through flesh. I needed to taste his blood. I couldn’t think about anything else.”

  She was describing bloodlust; we all knew the symptoms well.

  “When it was over, I shifted back into human form and went through his stuff, trying to figure out who he was. Why I knew his smell. I found a disposable cell phone that only had a few contacts in it. One of the names was Steve’s—he’s one of the men who took me from the campsite—so I knew the rest of those names were other hunters. Other men out there killing and skinning shifters.

  “I texted the addresses to myself, but I didn’t tell Abby.”

  “Why not?” Gerald Pierce asked, from the left side of the table.

  “Because she kept telling me how important it was for me to keep the whole thing a secret and to never go anywhere without her. I thought she’d think it was too much of a risk, but I had to make sure they weren’t doing to someone else what they did to me.” Robyn took another sip of her water. “I went to the first address to make sure they weren’t holding any more prisoners. I was just gonna wait until the house was empty, then break in and take a look around, but…I don’t know what happened. I don’t remember shifting, but I must have, because I woke up later, naked and covered in blood.”

  “You killed those men in a dissociative state, brought on by severe trauma?” Faythe said, reiterating the facts for our fellow Alphas to remind them of Robyn’s deal.

  “Yeah, I guess. And now I have to have an Alpha, who gets tell me what to do whenever he wants. I have to tell him where I’m going, and I can’t leave his territory without getting permission from him and from the Alpha of whatever territory I want to go to. And if I want to go to one of the free zones, it’s this whole big organizational challenge because I can’t go by myself, in case I get kidnapped and sold into marriage somewhere in South America. That really wasn’t much of a risk for me before I started sprouting fur and claws, you know,” Robyn said.

  I had to stifle a smile, in spite of the circumstances. In granting her immunity, they’d unmuzzled the new tabby, and several of the older council members were obviously having regrets.

  “This system you guys have set up is really anti-American, but it turns out that’s not the right opinion for me to have. I’m supposed to be a shifter first, and an American second, but when I do that—when I give in to my cat instincts and urges—you guys threaten to execute me if I don’t go along with this bullshit deal you offered me.”

  Michael stood, unsure what to do, since Robyn had veered off course. “Um, may I have a word with Ms. Sheffield in private, please?” he said, and she turned to glance at him in surprise.

  “No,” Ed Taylor barked. “Let’s let her speak. Ms. Sheffield, what would your reaction have been if Ms. Wade had told you all of this when you were first infected?”

  Robyn gave him a bitter huff. “I’d have fucking defected to Canada.”

  There was a collective gasp from most of the council, who probably hadn’t been cursed at by a tabby since Faythe’s pre-Alpha days.

  “You would have run?” Faythe said, but she already knew the answer. We all knew the answer. She was just trying to drive home the gist of Abby’s defense.

  Robyn nodded. “You would have had to hunt me down and drag me back by force. You might have had to kill me. I wasn’t ready to hear all this then, and if Abby had told me, you guys might be hunting my pale ass all over the great white north right this very minute.”

  Several of the older Alphas scowled, but Robyn had done her job. As the new stray stood to be dismissed, Faythe caught my gaze, and I knew exactly what had dulled the shine in her eyes and stiffened her posture. The hard part was yet to come.

  Abby smiled at me behind Michael’s head, and I knew at a glance that she thought we were winning. None of her political science classes had taught her what angry Alphas were like when they felt scared, threatened, and betrayed. She didn’t know about behind-the-scenes phone calls or under-the-table deals, or how brutal the survival instinct could be when it applied to an entire species, rather than to an individual.

  Abby had no idea what she was walking into, and I’d had no chance to warn her.

  All I could do was return her smile and cling to my backup plan. Abby had made herself a target, and I would do whatever it took to draw the council’s aim from her.

  TWENTY

  Abby

  Robyn gave me a sympathetic look as she left Faythe’s dining room, but I could tell she was relieved. Her part was over. She’d done what she could to help me, swimming upstream in a political current she’d never even known existed until days before, and I was proud of her. Jace was right. She was strong. She’d be fine.

  When I stood to take my seat, every gaze in the room followed me. The ambient tension was thick enough to choke me with every breath I took. My father had chosen Ed Taylor to lead the inquisition to show that my broken engagement to Brian had left no rift between the two Alphas, but based on the gruff look Taylor gave me when I sat, he didn’t seem to have gotten the memo.

  For four years, he’d believed that his son would take over my father’s Pride. That I would give him grandchildren. That Brian would follo
w in his footsteps and maybe ask for fatherly advice. I’d taken all that away from him. I understood his anger. But it had no relevance to my hearing.

  “Hi, Abby, and thank you for coming today,” Faythe said as I pushed my chair forward. But the encouraging smile she’d had for Robyn was gone. Faythe’s obvious anxiety popped my bubble of optimism like a balloon under too much pressure, and all at once my worst-case-scenario fears felt more like an inevitability.

  For the past week and a half, I’d lain awake in my childhood bed at night, thinking about Jace. Missing his grin, and his laugh, and that sound he made deep in his throat when he was really turned on. Remembering what it felt like to be touched by him and know that the same hands capable of ripping apart every threat he’d ever faced could also bring comfort, and support, and the most blisteringly intimate pleasure I’d ever felt in my life.

  My dad had spent those same nights on the phone, having a series of arguments that were evidently well above my need-to-know level. I couldn’t identify any of the voices on the other end of the line, and I only caught small bits of what was said, but the gist was clear—everyone was pissed at everyone else.

  The thick tension during my hearing supported that conclusion and made me wonder what was going on behind the scenes with the council. Was my trial actually the backdrop for some larger political clash?

  If so, was this about the Lion’s Den resolution, or about my broken engagement?

  Either way, did I really even have a shot?

  I twisted in my chair to face Jace, and he gave me a smile, his blue eyes bright with the spark that blazed between us. But his jaw was tight and his arms were tense. He might not have been on the panel, but he knew what was going on behind all the cordial smiles and formal behavior. And he did not look happy.