Lion's Share

  “Slim turnout,” I said with a pointed glance around the room as Abby’s dad, Council Chairman Rick Wade, came to greet me.

  He shook my hand for the first time since I’d been confirmed as an Alpha, with his support. Wade was my unofficial—yet very real—ally on the council. “We only need six for a quorum.”

  And that was all we had since, as co-Alphas, Faythe and Marc had to share a single vote.

  “How’s school, Abigail?” Ed Taylor rose to engulf his future daughter-in-law in a hug. As unwise as I thought the union was, Abby’s marriage to Brian Taylor would create a genetic, personal, and political alliance between her birth Pride and his. Their parents would share grandchildren. Brian would someday run Rick Wade’s territory. When problems arose on the council, Ed Taylor would go to bat for Rick and vice versa.

  “School’s good,” Abby said. “Just one semester to go.”

  I frowned at the reminder of how quickly time had passed. If she only had one semester to go, then she was, what? Six months from being married?

  She wasn’t ready. She still hardly wore the ring.

  I made a mental note to talk to Rick about postponing the wedding on Abby’s behalf in light of the fact that she clearly needed more time. And the equally important fact that her fiancé was a gutless asswipe.

  Wait, that wasn’t fair. Brian wasn’t a coward. He just wasn’t an Alpha. But my point would stand.

  “Well, I have one semester left for my bachelor’s,” Abby qualified, and her father looked up in surprise.

  Ed laughed, but he didn’t sound truly amused by the implication that his son’s wedding might be postponed for another two years. “Sounds like she has plans for some more of your money, Rick.”

  “It’s not my money.” The council chairman smiled at his daughter, practically swollen with pride. “She’s on a full academic scholarship.”

  “Three-point-eight GPA,” I added.

  Abby glanced at me with both brows raised, obviously surprised that I’d been listening to her chatter on the plane.

  “That’s our girl!” Marc called from the hall, and I turned as he strode through the doorway with a giggling, dark-haired toddler tucked under one arm like a sack of feed. “Clearly, spending summers on the ranch has paid off!”

  “Are you seriously claiming credit for my academic accomplishments?” Abby demanded, but we could all hear the smile in her voice. She was happy to see everyone, even if the Lazy S was just a layover on an unexpected trip home to South Carolina.

  “I claim only what belongs to me.” He swung the toddler upright and the child squealed in delight as his father tossed him into the air, then caught him in both arms. “Go say goodnight to your mom!” Marc ordered with false sternness, setting his son on the ground. After a moment of wobbling on both feet, the child tottered toward Faythe.

  He had her beautiful green eyes, but I could tell from the flecks of gold sprinkled through the striations that when he hit puberty and shifted for the first time, his eyes would look just like Marc’s in cat form. It was kind of amazing how the boy could look so much like each of them, yet entirely like himself at the same time.

  For one brief, unguarded moment, I wondered what a son of my own might look like. But that would never happen. I wouldn’t be running the Appalachian Pride forever, and Owen and Manx’s non-Alpha-marriage was an anomaly in our world.

  Faythe hung up the phone and swiveled in her chair to face her son. She brushed a lock of dark hair from his forehead, then hoisted him up to sit on the desk in front of her, where tiny stuffed animals vied with pens, notepads, and a wireless mouse for the little available real estate.

  “No bed!” the boy said, and from the corner of my eye, I saw Abby watching them. Her expression said she wanted to rescue the boy from both his parents and his bedtime. As if maybe she’d done that frequently when she was a guest at the ranch.

  “Yes, bed!” Faythe laughed, then held up a pink striped tiger and a purple polka dotted bear for her son’s consideration. “Who gets to sleep with Greg tonight? Felix or Fuzzy Wuzzy?”

  “Fuzzy!” little Greg shouted, plucking the bear from his mother’s grip so he could clutch it to his chest.

  “He always picks the bear.” Marc elbowed me with a grin. “Elias Keller gave it to him.” Keller was a good friend of Marc’s and the only bruin I’d ever personally met.

  Marc pulled me into a hug as if he’d actually missed me, and before I could extricate myself, Logan flew past us with Des on his heels.

  “Whoa!” Marc let me go and grabbed the back of Des’s shirt as Rick Wade scooped Logan up on his rebound from a leather couch cushion. “Everyone under the age of…” Marc glanced at Abby. “Twenty-one?”

  She nodded, and I frowned. Abby was legal for everything?

  “Everyone under the age of twenty-one, out!” Marc called. “Manx is going to kick off this sleepover with a bedtime story in Greg’s room.”

  “No bed!” the toddler shouted when Faythe set him on the floor.

  She frowned at him firmly. “Gregory Sanders, if you’re not in your room in two minutes, you can go straight to sleep with no story.” She handed him the bear he’d dropped, then spun him around by both shoulders and gave him a little push toward Marc. Greg toddled off with his arms crossed over his small chest and his tiny lips turned down in a pout.

  Abby’s dad put Logan down, and the older boys reluctantly followed little Greg into the hall in the direction of his room.

  “We have Logan for the week,” Marc explained. “Angela gets him for Christmas morning but promised to bring him over that night, then he’s all ours again for the New Year.”

  “That’s great.” I watched as Ethan’s son disappeared around the corner. “He needs to spend time with his own kind.”

  “We don’t even know if he’s a shifter yet,” Abby pointed out.

  “He is,” Marc and I said in unison, and she laughed. Probably because he and I rarely agreed on anything.

  “Abby, give me a hug!” Faythe stood, and my eyes widened at the sight of her small but distinctively rounded stomach as she pulled Abby closer.

  She laughed at my expression. “Did I forget to tell you?”

  I nodded, and I could tell from Abby’s face that she hadn’t known either.

  “Dr. Carver says it’s another boy. Due in April. We want to call him Ethan.” She watched me from across the room, and everyone was silent, waiting for my response.

  “No better name in the world,” I said at last, and Faythe visibly relaxed as she pulled me into a hug.

  “It’s good to see you, Jace. I hope you know you’re always welcome.”

  When I hugged her back, I found that leadership, marriage, and motherhood had changed her scent as much as they’d changed the rest of her life. She smelled like Marc now, even more than she used to. She smelled like the droplets of little Greg’s apple juice on her blouse, and like whatever prenatal vitamin supplements she was taking, and like the earthy, healthy hormones her second pregnancy was producing.

  And she felt strong. Steady. Resolute, as she always had, but now her determination was backed by four years of peaceful and successful leadership.

  Faythe was gorgeous, as always. But she was no longer mine, and for the first time since she’d chosen Marc over me, I was okay with that, because I had truly let her go. Finally, it felt less like I had lost her than like the rest of the world had gained her.

  “You look terrific. Healthy and happy,” I said.

  She let me go, grateful tears standing in her eyes. “Thanks. As it turns out, a woman really can do it all—if she’s willing to give up sleep almost entirely.”

  I laughed, as I was supposed to, and we were making our way toward the center of the room when Kaci stepped into the office in snug jeans, a long sweater, and a cropped leather jacket.

  “I’m leaving,” she announced, jangling a set of car keys in one hand, and again the subversive passage of time smacked me over the head. How the hell
could she be old enough to drive?

  Of course she was driving. She had to be…seventeen?

  “Hey, Kace.” I braced myself to be attacked with another homecoming hug, but her gaze hardly even skipped over me.

  “Hey.” Then she turned back to Faythe. “Can I take your car? Marc’s still smells like feet.”

  “Sure,” Faythe said, while Marc grumbled something he probably wouldn’t have said in front of the toddler.

  “Kace.” I ducked into her field of vision, trying to catch her eye. “When you get back, you wanna—”

  “Don’t wait up.” Kaci shrugged. “I’ll be late.”

  “No, you’ll be back by midnight,” Marc called over his shoulder from the couch.

  She heaved a dramatic sigh, and I was all but forgotten. “My friends don’t have curfews!”

  “Your friends don’t have claws, either,” Marc pointed out, and Abby glanced back and forth between them, as if she wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to identify with the oldish teenager or the youngish adult.

  “That is neither relevant nor fair!” Kaci snapped, but Faythe only smiled, as if maybe she agreed. Secretly.

  “Midnight,” Marc insisted. “That’s an order.”

  Kaci growled and clutched her keys, then slammed the office door and stomped out of the house. Marc chuckled when the car started, then tore out of the driveway as if the gravel were on fire.

  Faythe gave me a sympathetic look. “Don’t take it personally. It was hard for her to lose both you and Ethan so close together.”

  Lose me? Kaci hadn’t….

  But hadn’t she? It had been three years since I’d visited. That was an eternity in teen-time, and her crush on me hadn’t exactly been a secret. She’d probably felt abandoned—an innocent casualty of my avoidance of Faythe and Marc.

  I was almost relieved when Rick Wade cleared his throat, calling the meeting to attention. “Now that we’re all—”

  Light footsteps clacked from the hallway, then the door opened and Karen Sanders backed into the room, carrying a silver tray loaded with full mugs and a pot of coffee. A chin-length strand of gray hair fell across her face, and when she tried to blow it out of the way, Marc rose to take the tray from her.

  “You don’t have to do that, Mom,” Faythe chided. “We can all get our own coffee.”

  “I’ve never had to do it,” Karen—Rick’s sister and Abby’s aunt—said. “And I really don’t mind.” She distributed mugs and poured coffee but gave a Faythe a paper cup instead, with a glance at her daughter’s pregnant belly. “But you only get hot chocolate.”

  “Because baby Ethan already has a sweet tooth?” I mock-whispered to Abby, who sat next to me on the leather couch.

  She rolled her eyes and leaned closer. “Caffeine isn’t good for a developing fetus.”

  “You know there’s caffeine in chocolate, right?” I said as her father stood to address the room. Abby stuck her tongue out at me.

  “Okay.” Rick Wade cradled his full mug in both hands. “We’ve come together to discuss the recent rash of human murders in the Appalachian Territory, and with six council members present, we have the quorum required to put a plan into action.” He turned to me. “How many murders have there been so far?”

  “Three.” I was acutely aware of each gaze trained on me. I’d arrived at the meeting with one strike already against me in the minds of my fellow council members. Even those who’d supported my takeover of the Appalachian Pride. After all, how good can an Alpha possibly be if he doesn’t realize there’s a serial killer loose in his territory until the bastard’s already slaughtered three humans?

  “And we’re sure the killer is a stray?” Marc asked.

  “Actually, we’re not sure, because we haven’t been able to inspect any of the crime scenes yet.” I set my mug on the end table to my left, then leaned forward with my elbows resting on my knees. “The first two victims were killed last month, but the first didn’t get much press until the second established a pattern. Until then, the first victim was assumed to have been mauled by one of his own dogs.”

  “How can we be sure that’s not what happened?” Ed Taylor asked.

  “The claw marks on first and second victims match, which means they were inflicted by the same animal. The state medical examiner ran some tests and realized the wounds are from feline claws, not canine.” I shrugged. “We all know cougars won’t settle into any region inhabited by shifters, and jaguars don’t live as far north as Kentucky.”

  Abby’s eyes narrowed as she thought aloud. “So, we know for sure that the killer is one of ours, but not whether he’s stray or Pride?”

  I nodded, and her father frowned. For a second, I thought he’d ask her to leave the room because she was neither an Alpha nor an official advisor to the council, like Karen. But before he could make up his mind, Faythe leaned forward, one hand resting on her stomach. “I assume the plan is to ID the killer and take him out?”

  “ASAP. Assuming the vote tonight supports execution,” I added. “The third murder took place three days ago, and that scene’s the only one still fresh enough to be of much use. Now that the cops are done with it, I’ll be checking it out personally as soon as I get home.”

  “In Manchester?” Abby sounded like something was stuck in her throat, and though she was staring at the rug, her eyes were unfocused.

  Burt Di Carlo frowned. “What?”

  “Manchester is where the third murder took place.” I turned back to Abby. “How did you know that?”

  “Um…TV.” She met my gaze but seemed to struggle to pull my face into focus. “It must have been on the news. You’re going there, what? Tomorrow?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  Rick took a sip from his mug, his focus still trained on me. “Just tell us what you need.”

  “If I recognize the killer’s scent, I won’t need anything. Mateo, Chase, and I will find him.” I glanced at Bert Di Carlo, Mateo’s father, in acknowledgment of his son’s skill. Teo was the first enforcer who’d signed on with me, and he’d been my right-hand man since I took over the Appalachian Territory. “If I don’t recognize the scent, I’ll overnight each of you a sample for help with the identification and we’ll proceed from there. Objections?”

  I glanced around the room, waiting for an argument, but everyone seemed satisfied with the plan. Faythe looked almost as relieved by that as I felt.

  Rick stood again, and every gaze followed him. “Sounds good, Jace. All in favor of capital punishment for the killer or killers, whenever he or they are found?”

  I stood, and one by one, my fellow Alphas joined me. The sentence was unanimous.

  “That went a lot better than I expected.” I glanced at Abby, expecting to see her I-told-you-so face, but she looked away as soon as I made eye contact. She looked worried.

  No, she looked scared.

  I ducked to catch her eye, trying to decide whether I should ask her what was wrong in front of the crowd or wait for privacy. Then Jerald Pierce clapped me on the back, and the moment was over. “These meetings go pretty smoothly when we all have the same objective.”

  But I understood the part he’d left unspoken. The last time the council disagreed on something serious, my stepfather had started a war as an excuse to have Marc and me executed, and Faythe forced into marriage.

  “Okay!” Karen stood and began gathering empty coffee mugs, and I noticed for the first time that I could see her veins through the skin of her hands. My mother’s looked much the same. “Who wants chili?”

  Anticipatory chatter accompanied the general movement toward the office door, and my stomach was already growling. I hadn’t had Karen’s chili in years.

  “Wait.” Abby spoke so softly that at first no one else seemed to hear her. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Wait. Dad, I can’t go home with you tomorrow.”

  “What?” Rick Wade arched one brow at me, as if I had any idea what she was talking about, but I could only shrug. Sud
denly, I had an all-new respect for the late Greg Sanders, who’d constantly been left out of the loop by the only young tabby in his Pride—Faythe, of course.

  Wade turned back to his daughter. “Why not?”

  “Because I belong with Jace.”

  My pulse jumped. Everyone turned to stare.

  Abby’s face flushed as red as her hair. “That came out wrong. I meant that Jace will need all his enforcers to catch the killer. Including me.”

  “What?” Rick turned on me, anger flashing bright in his eyes. “You hired my daughter?” “You had no right—”

  “Hold on a minute,” I growled as fire surged through my veins in response to the challenge from a fellow Alpha. I had no intention of fighting Rick Wade, but my body didn’t know that. I had no idea what Abby was taking about, but there was a reason conflicts between Alphas escalated quickly—we were hardwired to exert our dominance whenever it was challenged. “In fact, I do have the right. Abby isn’t yours anymore. She’s mine.”

  Abby’s eyebrows shot up and her flush deepened.

  Damn it. “I mean, I’m her Alpha, and I don’t need your permission to hire her.” I would only need his blessing if I tried to hire a member of his Pride. Which Abby no longer was.

  Shock rippled across his angry scowl, and I could see the brutal realization as it dawned on him. Abby was an adult and a member of someone else’s territory; he no longer held any authority over his own daughter.

  That had never happened before, because in the history of the US Prides, Abby was only the second tabby to leave home, and she was the first to actually transfer into another territory.

  True, her membership in my Pride was intended to be as temporary as my leadership of it, but that didn’t change the fact that she was now under my sole authority. Just like all the male members of my Pride.