Pride

  “Anything else?”

  “Nope. Hurry, please.” Jace took off down the hall at a jog, bare feet silent on the hardwood, and when he reached the top step I remembered the last crucial detail. “Jace!” I hissed, hoping not to wake the rest of the lodge.

  He stopped, one hand already on the banister. “Yeah?”

  “Please don’t wake up my father. Or Michael.” Nothing in the world could make my father’s firstborn keep a secret from him.

  “No worries,” Jace said with that irresistible grin, his blue eyes sparkling like the sea at midday. Then he bounded down the steps, and out the front door a moment later.

  “Get her name,” Marc said, his voice the very essence of authority. “You need at least that by the time everyone wakes up, if you don’t want to get us all in serious trouble.”

  “I know.” Boy, did I know.

  My hand was already on the doorknob when Dr. Carver spoke up for the first time. “You really believe she didn’t know how to Shift?”

  I met the skepticism in his eyes with certainty in my own. “Yes. I don’t know why yet, or how it’s even possible, but I believe she has no memory of ever having Shifted. Her reactions are too genuine. She was legitimately scared to Shift.” Which I knew because I’d heard her heart beat harder and smelled fear in her sweat as she’d prepared for the transformation.

  My eyes were drawn to Marc’s when I felt him watching me. He knew what I was thinking: that Elias Keller might well have stumbled upon the first female stray in recorded history. At least, the first verifiable female stray in history.

  But neither of us said that. My reputation wasn’t solid enough for me to start spouting the werecat equivalent of conspiracy theories and alien-abduction stories. I’d need concrete proof before making such claims.

  “Go on,” Marc said, telling me with his eyes to keep quiet.

  I stepped back into the tabby’s room and closed the door, and the first thing to catch my eye was not the small girl still huddled beneath a blanket in her corner. It was the window over the closest twin bed. Or rather, the first rays of sunlight peeking through said window.

  Oh, shit. I glanced at my watch, dismayed when the time confirmed my suspicion. Our privacy was about to expire. Marc probably wouldn’t let any of the tribunal members into the room, but he wouldn’t even try to stop my father.

  In a blink, my focus shifted from the window to the girl curled up in the corner. My opening line was already on my lips when I saw her mouth stretch open in a yawn much too big for such a small face. She was about to fall asleep. Again. She’d been out cold for hours, but I knew better than most that being unconscious isn’t the least bit recuperative. You need actual sleep to feel alert and rested.

  “You want to lie down?” I sank onto my knees in front of her.

  She shook her head adamantly, and the harsh motion seemed to wake her up a bit. But it was only a matter of time before sleep would claim her. I didn’t think anyone would wake her intentionally once she passed out, but I had to find out her name before then.

  “I sent one of the guys to get some clothes for you. When he gets back, you can get dressed and curl up in the bed.” She shook her head again, and I conceded. “Or, you can stay awake. But before he gets here, we need to talk. You can talk, right?”

  She nodded solemnly, and one thin hand went to her throat, as if checking to make sure it was still there. “I thi—” Her voice broke into a hoarse croak after only two syllables. “I think s—” But again her effort ended in a dry strangling sound.

  “You need something to drink?” I asked, and she nodded, her hand still pressed to the base of her dirt-streaked neck. Lucas hadn’t brought a glass of anything along with the plate of chicken, and I wasn’t sure we had time to send him to the kitchen again now. But surely one of the first things a doctor would offer a newly awakened patient was something to drink…

  I scanned the room, but saw nothing to drink from. No paper cup, no coffee mug, and certainly no nice tall glass of ice water.

  The tabby cleared her throat for my attention. “There,” she croaked, pointing toward the foot of the nearest bed. I followed her finger to find the edge of something white and round sticking out from under one corner of the bed. I lifted the sheet to reveal a white plastic cereal bowl, about one-third of the way full of water.

  A bowl. Of course. The tabby had still been in cat form when he’d visited.

  When I pulled the bowl out, my hand landed in a small, cold puddle on the floor, and I understood where the rest of the water had gone.

  “Here you go.” I held the dish out, and she snatched it from me with both thin hands, exposing the stark lines of her collarbones, a nearly flat chest, and more ribs than I cared to count when the blanket slid from her shoulders.

  The tabby drained the bowl in a blink, then held it out to me, her eyes flashing bright in satisfaction. “Thank you,” she said as I took the bowl from her.

  “You have a lovely voice,” I said, and I meant it. Her voice was clear and young, as was her complexion, in spite of having spent at least the past few weeks without access to soap and showering facilities. Her voice, skin and manners gave the only hint that her life had once been something else. Something pure and good, and completely unrelated to the wilderness nightmare that had become her reality at some point.

  The tabby didn’t return my smile. She blinked, and that gleam in her eyes was gone. She wrapped the blanket around her torso, tucking it beneath her arms like a towel, likely a habit left over from her life before…whatever had brought her here.

  From downstairs came the sound of water running. Someone was taking a morning shower. I had to get her talking posthaste.

  Struggling to maintain a smile that now felt painted on my face, I set the bowl on the floor and faced the tabby. “Feel any better now?”

  She shook her head. “Not much.”

  “I’m sure you’re exhausted. But if you can answer a couple of questions for me, I’ll go away and let you sleep for a while.” Just as soon as the doc has examined you…

  That time she didn’t deny her exhaustion—a definite step in the right direction. “What kind of questions?”

  I smiled encouragingly. At least, I hoped it was encouraging. “Your name, for starters.”

  “Kaci Dillon,” she said, and my heart tried to burst straight through my sternum.

  Success! I’d now gotten the tabby to eat, Shift, talk and tell me her name, when she wouldn’t even tolerate the doctor’s presence. No matter what happened next, the Alphas couldn’t deny that I’d gotten the job done. That I had value as something other than an incubator.

  But the tabby wasn’t done. “Kaci-with-a-K-and-an-I.” She said it as if the whole phrase was one word, and her speech had the distinctive cadence of long-term habit, as if she’d said that same thing nearly every day of her life. I could sympathize. No one ever spelled my name right the first time either.

  “Nice to meet you, Kaci. I’m Faythe-with-a-Y-and-an-E.” My smile widened, and I was delighted to see a tiny echo of it on her face. She was happy to have made me happy. Or else she was laughing at me silently.

  Hoping fervently that it was the former, I said, “You look pretty young.” Hopefully much younger than you actually are. I inhaled slowly, then asked the question before I could chicken out. I needed to know, whether I wanted to or not. “How old are you, Kaci?”

  “I’m not that young.” She twisted her face into a look of displeasure; it was a bit like watching a pixie frown. A very thin, dirty pixie. “I’m just a late bloomer. At least, that’s what my mo—” She stopped in midword and looked away, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out how the sentence ended in her head. “Anyway, I’m not as young as I look.”

  Thank goodness. But her reassurance wasn’t enough to unclench my hands in my lap. “So? How old are you?” Please, please, please say seventeen. Sixteen, even.

  “Thirteen. And a half.”

  Shit. Ohhhh, shit. Thir
teen and a half was too young for…anything. There was no way any enforcer worth his own canines would let a tabby that young out of his sight. Especially with her parents dead.

  “Thirteen and a half?” I heard the flat, shocked quality of my own voice and winced at it, even as Kaci frowned. How the hell had a thirteen-year-old survived on her own long enough to become so thin and malnourished? It just wasn’t possible, even if she had been stuck in cat form the whole time, which was how the story seemed to be shaping up.

  “Where are you from, Kaci?” I tried to hide the horror in my voice, without much luck. But before she could answer, a loud, persistent knock came from the other side of the door.

  Knowing none of the toms I’d left in the hall would interrupt us, I sniffed in that direction and felt the blood drain from my face, even as the voice bellowed from the hallway.

  “Katherine Faythe Sanders, get your tail out here now!”

  Damn!

  “I’ll be right back,” I whispered to Kaci. Swallowing thickly, I started to stand, but then sank back onto the floor when I noticed that Kaci’s eyes had gone huge. “Don’t worry,” I mumbled, shoving sleep-tousled hair back from my face. “It’s just my dad.”

  Seventeen

  “What were you thinking, disobeying a direct order?” my father demanded, and I had to stand on my own foot to keep from scuffing my bare, freezing toes in the dirt. I hadn’t even had a chance to put shoes on before he marched down the stairs and out the back door, his very posture an unspoken command for me to follow. All the way to the woodpile stretched between two trees behind the main lodge.

  “I was thinking about what Marc said earlier. Right now the council has no use for me—no reason to keep me alive. The best way I can help myself is to prove them wrong. To prove myself useful. Indispensable. So when Dr. Carver said she might calm down for another woman…”

  My father’s scowl deepened.

  Shit. I shouldn’t have mentioned Dr. Carver’s part in the whole thing. Now he would get his ass chewed, too.

  “It’s not his fault, Daddy. He didn’t make me do it. No one did.” But that wouldn’t matter. If I went down, the doc would go down with me. And we probably wouldn’t be alone.

  I stared into the skeletal branches overhead, trying to remember what I was originally getting at. Oh, yeah… “But my point is that I finally had something to offer. Something no one else could do.”

  Early-morning sunlight highlighted the gray patches at his temples as he shook his head, mouth already open to interrupt. I rushed on before he could. “No one else could have gotten her to Shift, Daddy, much less talk. She was too afraid of the guys to relax enough to even listen. She split Dr. Carver’s arm wide open!”

  “Which is exactly why we said no one was to go in there alone! We’re all here trying to keep your head attached to your shoulders, yet for some reason, you feel the need to flaunt your disobedience in front of the very tribunal demanding your life! Not to mention how badly hurt you could have been. You had twenty stitches removed from your stomach not ten hours ago. We cannot afford to have you injured again.”

  “I’m fine.” I spread my arms, showing him how perfectly intact I was.

  “You could have been mauled.”

  “Yes. I could also be struck by lightning on my way back to the cabin. Or I could be hit by a falling tree. Or run over on the crosswalk. Life isn’t safe, Daddy. Not for your little girl, and certainly not for one of your enforcers. I saw an opportunity to prove my own worth and help that poor child, and I took it. I stand by my decision.” Though I was so nervous about it my hands were starting to sweat in spite of the cold…

  “And furthermore…” I rushed on, ignoring both my own nerves and whatever he’d been about to say. “I think you should be proud of me, instead of mad. I think I did exactly what you would have done in my place.”

  My father’s face turned purple faster than I could backtrack. “What I would have done is irrelevant.” He stepped into my personal space and I backed up instinctively, groaning inwardly when my spine hit the tree trunk. “I am your sire and your Alpha. I do whatever has to be done, in large part because whelps like you can’t remember to follow orders!”

  “Okay, yes. You’re right.” Like he needed me to tell him that. I exhaled slowly, gathering my wits as I grounded myself with the feel of the bark beneath my fingers. “But what you would have done is not irrelevant. It’s imperative. You’re training me to take over for you one day, right? To be as good a leader to the Pride as you are now.”

  I probably shouldn’t have played the successor card, especially coupled with a heavy helping of sycophancy. But if the ends justified the means… “How can I do that better than by emulating you?”

  His scowl deepened. “You’re not going to get out of this with flattery, so don’t even bother.”

  Damn. “Fair enough.” I sighed and made myself meet his angry stare. “But can you honestly tell me you would have let that poor girl—that child—suffer alone out of fear for your own safety, when you could help her and everyone else by simply showing a little courage and compassion?”

  For a moment, my father only looked at me, and I held my breath in anticipation of his reaction, mortified to realize I was scolding my-Father-the-Alpha. Oh, shit.

  Then, to my absolute amazement, my father crossed his arms over his chest and nodded, by all appearances conceding my point. “Well said.” His face showed no hint of a smile, meaning that while he might—by some miracle—be proud of me, he was far from happy. “I hope you can say it again just like that, because no matter how good your intentions were, they don’t excuse you disobeying a direct order. The tribunal is going to want a word with you.”

  “Yeah, I figured.” I closed my eyes for a moment, thinking. When I opened them again, I found my father watching me, still in that same closed-off posture. “I’ll do whatever I have to do. Apologize, take another suspension, or even a night in the cage.” Since we both knew there was no cage here. “All I ask is that you protect Kaci.”

  His brows rose in surprise, and his expression softened ever so slightly. “She told you her name?”

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you. I was in there working, not goofing off with my girlfriend. We didn’t paint a single toenail!” Not that I’d ever done that in my entire life.

  He actually smiled at that one briefly before recomposing his business face. “What did she say?”

  “Just her name and age. She was about to say more when you…arrived.” My father scowled again, and I rushed to fill the pause. “Her name is Kaci Dillon, and she’s thirteen and a half years old.”

  “Thirteen…?” His words faded into horrified silence and he reached for the woodpile, as if to steady himself. “That isn’t possible.”

  “That’s what I thought.” I glanced at the lodge, where several gaps had appeared in the blinds covering the windows—toms watching us from relative safety. Evidently everyone was awake now, which made me really glad my father had posted Marc and Jace at the tabby’s door with orders not to let anyone in—or out—until further notice from him. Including the other Alphas.

  It was a risky move, and they wouldn’t be able to hold the door themselves if the entire tribunal decided they wanted in. But that wasn’t likely to happen, thanks to Uncle Rick, and even if it did, we’d hear the ruckus from outside and come running to straighten things out. So for the moment, I was confident that the tabby was safe.

  “Who is she?” my father asked, now pacing the length of the woodpile, crunching dead leaves beneath his feet. The question was rhetorical, fortunately, because I certainly didn’t have the answer. “I’ve never heard of the Dillons, or their Pride. How could I never have heard of them?”

  No, we didn’t know every Pride in the world personally, but my father knew every Pride in North America, by name and reputation at least, and several of those in Middle and South America, as well as Europe. And Kaci spoke English. American English, as far as I could tel
l, with no accent I could discern in what few words she’d said so far. It made no sense.

  “It gets even weirder than that. She didn’t know how to Shift. I had to talk her through it step by step.” I rocked on my heels, my hands clasped nervously at my back. “You know, there’s a possibility no one else seems willing to say out loud…”

  “No.” He stopped near the far end of the woodpile, to glare at me over one shoulder. “She was probably too nervous to Shift on her own, which makes sense considering how young she is. She is not a stray, Faythe.”

  “Why? Because we’ve never seen a female one? There’s a first time for everything, Daddy.”

  His eyes glazed over and the pacing recommenced, and just like that, I was dismissed, along with my theory-threatening, comfort-zone-shattering, too-new-to-be-considered yet perfectly-possible idea.

  Irritation clenched my jaws, so I spoke through them. “Why is it that when Manx claims to have met a female stray, everyone smiles and says anything’s possible, but when I merely mention that very possibility, the same people roll their eyes and laugh in my face?”

  My Alpha reached the end of the woodpile and turned. “They’re humoring her. They expect more of you. You’re well educated, well trained, and even well respected in certain circles.”

  I was? Cool. A tingle of pride shivered its way through me, though I knew the downside was coming…

  “Spouting nonsense like that makes you sound like those idiots who turn up in the woods with their cameras every year hoping to spot Bigfoot.”

  “You know, they’re not completely off base.” I plucked a lone brown leaf dangling from the branch over my head and broke off the first lobe. “Someday one of them might get lucky and capture a shot of Elias Keller.”