As difficult as that concept sometimes was to define, Calvin Malone made it easier by constantly taking the low road. By lying, and cheating, and manipulating, and kidnapping, and murdering. Right had become easier to recognize, against the backdrop of Malone’s absolute wrong. So we’d done what was right—and paid a terrible price.
“Faythe, what are you saying?” Michael knew. I could hear it in the flat, dead quality of his voice, a defensive mechanism to keep me from hearing what he was really thinking. What he was feeling. He knew someone had died, and since our father hadn’t called with the news, he probably knew who we’d lost. But he wouldn’t believe it until he’d heard it. Maybe even until he’d seen for himself.
“Malone brought guns. Ten of them. We confiscated nine, but Colin Dean still had his. He…” I took a deep breath, then forced out the single most hateful words I’d ever uttered. “He shot Dad, Michael. Dean shot Daddy in the chest.”
“No.” That dead quality was gone. His voice now overflowed with pain, an echo of my own. “No. Is he…?”
“He died about twenty minutes ago.”
He was crying now, and the sound of my oldest brother’s sobs, broken by short bouts of stubborn stoicism, of strength, was more than I could take.
My own tears flowed silently, and I swiped at them as I spoke. “He said to tell you how proud he is of you. You and Owen. And to tell Mom…” My hand clenched around the phone, and I had to use my other arm to wipe my face, because the first sleeve was soaked. “I have to tell Mom. Can you get her?”
“She’s going to…” He sniffled into the receiver. “Faythe, I don’t know what she’s going to do.”
“Me, neither. Could you get her?”
“Just a minute.” I heard more footsteps, then the door squealed open again. “Mom?” he called, and his nose sounded just as stuffy as mine.
She was there in an instant. “Michael? What’s wrong?” The door closed again, and she came closer to the phone. “Is it Faythe?”
“She’s fine. It’s Dad.”
“What happened? Is he okay?” she demanded, and I could hear panic building in the voice I knew by heart. If my father was my strength, she was his. A steel backbone in satin wrapping.
Instead of answering, Michael must have given her the phone. “Faythe? What happened? Is your father okay?”
I couldn’t stand the tremor in her voice. Couldn’t stand being the reason it was there. I shook my head, though she couldn’t see it. “I’m sorry, Mom. They had guns. There was nothing we could do….”
The phone crashed to the floor, and the impact resonated deep within my brain. But the next sound completely overpowered it. “Nooooo…!”
Sixteen
My mother’s screams cut through me like a sword through my heart, and I wanted to drop the phone. But I didn’t. I would not push away her anguish. It was ours to share, and the ringing in my ears was fitting penance for failing to save him. Though it was nowhere near enough.
It would never be enough.
The phone clattered against wood, and Michael was back. “Faythe, hang on. Let me get Owen.” Michael took the phone with him and though I couldn’t hear the door squeal open over my mother’s hysterical screaming, I heard Michael shout for Owen. As would everyone else in the house.
He was there in an instant. He’d probably started running the second he’d heard our mother scream, because our mother never screamed. Not when she was angry, not when she was hurt, not when she was excited. She was as steady as the earth’s rotation, if a bit less predictable lately, and I’d just thrown her completely off her orbit.
I was hurting, too—we all were—but I knew I could never completely understand the depth of my mother’s pain until I’d lost the love of my life, my husband of thirty-three years and the father of my five children.
“What happened?” Owen’s normally soft voice was almost unintelligible, and it faded into nothing as he moved away from the phone Michael still held, probably to comfort our mother.
“Michael, what the hell happened?” Owen repeated, louder this time.
My mother was still screaming, and now starting to go hoarse. I couldn’t stand it. Hearing her agony—and being unable to ease it—sent biting pain through my chest, like my heart was literally being shredded.
“Here, I’ll take Mom,” Michael said. “Talk to Faythe.” Something scratched the receiver as the phone was passed, and my mother’s cries changed when Michael held her. I wished I was there with them. We should have been able to grieve together. They should have been able to talk to my father before he died.
My father should not have died.
“Faythe?” Owen’s voice was thick with dread. “It’s Dad, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” I’d buried my face in one hand, but looked up when the door opened. Marc came in wearing a fresh shirt but still barefoot, carrying our bright red first-aid bag. He knelt on the floor in front of me as Owen’s breath hitched in my ear.
“How did it happen?”
I sighed, wishing I were anywhere else, doing anything else. I’d rather fight a dozen rogues at once than have to tell anyone else about my father’s death. “Malone brought guns.”
Marc tugged my robe hem open to expose one leg, and I jumped when his hand settled on my thigh. His palm was rough and warm. I wanted to melt into his touch—into his comfort—until there was nothing else in the world. But then liquid sloshed and something cold touched my leg. Flames scorched a path through my skin, tracing gashes I’d almost forgotten about, in light of the more immediate, emotional agony.
I forced my attention back to Owen as Marc continued to clean my exposed wounds. “He arrested me, Marc, and Jace, and we had to either fight or run. We got rid of most of the guns, but Dean still had his. He…he shot Dad. In the chest.”
For a moment, there was only silence over the line—Michael had quieted our mother somehow—and I refused to break it by hissing over the vicious sting in my leg.
“When?” Owen asked finally.
“Just a few minutes ago. He wanted me to tell you how proud he is of you and Michael.” And Ryan? He’d said to tell “my brothers.” Did Ryan even count anymore? “He gave me a message for Mom, too, but I’ll wait until she’s…ready to hear it.”
“That may be a while….” Owen sniffled, and because he and Ryan had inherited our mother’s fair coloring, I knew his face and eyes would already be red from the tears I could barely hear. “I can’t believe this. It doesn’t feel real.”
“I know.” It didn’t feel real to me, either. Not yet.
“So…now what?”
Owen was the first to ask aloud the question that had been chasing its own tail in my head. “We’re still figuring that out. Uncle Rick thinks he can work out a cease-fire. Then I guess we’ll bring Dad home and talk about the rest of it when we’re all together.” I twisted to one side, wincing over the stiffness settling into my overworked body as Marc stood to pull down one shoulder of my robe, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in hand. “We have a lot to decide, but it can wait a couple of days, I think. Dealing with this is enough for now.”
“Yeah. I guess I better go…help Michael. And tell everyone else.”
“Okay. Listen, tell Kaci that if she needs to talk, she can call me. And with any luck, we’ll be home tomorrow.”
“I’ll tell her.”
In the background, my mother was crying again. Heavy, full-body sobs, which were somehow worse than the heartrending screams. Sobs spoke of the beginnings of acceptance, and I knew from experience that it was usually easier to wallow in denial.
After Owen hung up, I slid my phone into my pocket, and Marc settled onto the mattress next to me. “They’ll be okay,” he said, as I pulled my right arm out of my robe so he could reach the lowest gashes.
“No, they won’t. None of us will. We’re still not okay with Ethan dying. How the hell are we supposed to handle this?” Not that I expected an answer. Marc lifted my arm by my elbow, and this time w
hen he pressed peroxide-soaked cotton to my cuts, I welcomed the sting. Pain was infinitely better than numbness. Pain proved that I was still alive, in spite of the gaping hole in my chest where my heart used to be.
“They’re going to handle it because they have one another. And because they have you.”
When I looked into his eyes, I could almost believe it, because he believed it, but when I blinked and he refocused on my arm, that confidence drained from me, leaving me cold. I couldn’t escape the truth. “I’m not what they need. They need a real Alpha.”
He screwed the lid on the bottle of peroxide and set it on the floor, then faced me on the bed, as grave as I’d ever seen him. “You are the Alpha now, Faythe. And that’s very real.”
I shook my head slowly and said to him what I couldn’t have said to anyone else in the world. “I’m not ready.”
“If you weren’t ready, he wouldn’t have named you.”
I sighed and blinked back more tears. Would they never stop? “He was wrong. He didn’t have any other choice.” This rarely happened—an Alpha dying without a qualified son-in-law to leave in charge of his Pride.
Marc took my hand, stroking the back of it with his thumb, and I tried not to read too much into that. He was upset about my dad, too, but that didn’t mean he’d forgiven me. “He had choices.”
“He should have named you.” Marc had more experience, as well as the respect and loyalty of the entire Pride.
“The council would never stand for that. Naming me would have caused more problems than it would solve, and more problems are the last thing this Pride needs.”
“Yeah, like the council’s going to be thrilled with me.” No woman had ever been more hated in U.S. Pride history. But I couldn’t argue with his point. It wasn’t fair that my father was limited—even in the afterlife—by stupid, pointless bigotry. “So why didn’t he name Michael? He’s the oldest. And the smartest.”
Marc actually laughed. “Michael is great at gathering information and he throws a mean punch, but he’s not a leader, Faythe. And he likes the law too much to leave his practice. His heart wouldn’t be in it, and an Alpha without heart is… Well, an Alpha without heart is Calvin Malone. A soulless megalomaniac who abuses his power to keep everyone else from having any.”
So true, but… I stared at my lap, horrified to see that my hands were actually shaking. “What if I don’t have it, either? What if my heart’s not in it?” What if my heart died with Ethan and my dad? And with the part of my mother we would never get back? What if they were the heart of the Pride, and I was just the impulsive, stubborn bits of cardiac pulp left over in their absence?
That soft chuckle was back. “Oh, don’t even start.” Marc rolled his eyes, but when his gaze met mine again, his shined with sincerity. “You’re all heart, and we both know it. You care about the people in this Pride more than you’ve ever cared about anything else in your life, and even when you mess up, you do it trying to defend one of them. One of us.”
When I tried to look away, he turned my face so that I had to look at him, or make an issue of my refusal. “You’re in this for the long haul, and you have been since the first time the council tried to force you into a marriage and kids before you were ready. Since you figured out they’d do the same thing to Kaci and Manx, and that neither of them would be able to fight for themselves. You belong here, Faythe. You have purpose, and you have vision, and you have exactly what it’s going to take to see both of those through to the end. You know things have to change, and you know exactly what those changes should be. And the only way any of that’s going to happen is with you leading the call to action.”
He reached out to run his thumb over my bottom lip. “Besides, this mouth was made for shouting the truth and demanding justice. Among other things…”
I wanted to return his smile. Hell, I wanted to pull his thumb into my mouth, just to have a taste of him. But our problems now transcended our personal relationship, and I couldn’t afford to lose focus.
Marc was right. He was right about all of it. But that didn’t change the bottom line: the south-central Pride deserved the best, and I wasn’t there. Not yet. “Marc, I can’t do this on my own. I’m not ready.” And it hurt to admit that, a pang of angst that echoed the trail grief had already clawed through my center. But painful or not, it was the truth—my calling, according to him.
“I know.” Marc’s smile was smaller now, and bittersweet, like he’d swallowed a memory that didn’t taste good. “That’s why he asked me to help you. He made me promise to, even if…” He closed his eyes, took a breath, and the soft smile was gone. “Even if you and I don’t wind up…together.”
My heart thumped so hard I was sure he could hear it, and this time I didn’t even know which one of us I was hurting for. “And you did it? You said you would?”
“Yeah.” He blinked again, and his jaw clenched. “I swore to a dying man. And I meant it. I’ll be there for you, Faythe. No matter what happens. You can do this. He believed in you, and so do I. And if you give them half a chance, so will everyone else.”
I threw my arms around his neck and held on like he might dissolve in my grip. After a moment, Marc returned my embrace, lightly at first, and though his hesitance stung, I understood it. I deserved it.
But then he hugged me for real, his chin resting on my shoulder, his stubble rough against my exposed skin. “Thank you.” It came out half whisper, half sob. “I can’t do this without you.”
“You can once you get your feet beneath you. But you won’t have to.” He pulled away, but didn’t get up. “And it won’t be just me. I’m sure your uncle would be happy to serve as an adviser, and so will your mom, once she’s had some time to deal.”
I nodded, but deep inside I wondered if it would be enough. Could one young, stubborn, impulsive woman and several part-time advisers possibly fill my father’s enormous shoes? Should we even try?
Yes. There was no other option.
“So, are you ready?” Jace asked, and we both whirled to see him standing in the half-open doorway, watching us. He swallowed thickly, and I understood that only part of his pain was from the loss of our Alpha. From the living room beyond came a soft background of muted voices. When had everyone gotten back? While I was on the phone?
I’d have to start paying better attention to my surroundings, or I’d be the shortest-lived Alpha in history.
“Ready for what?” I said, as Marc stood and pulled me up with him.
“For orientation.” Jace shrugged apologetically, his eyes still red from his own recent tears. “Apparently Alphahood is one of those jobs where you have to hit the ground running.”
“Why don’t you put some clothes on…” Marc bent for the bottle of peroxide. “And we’ll get you fixed up in there.”
Jace opened the door and stepped out of the way, still watching me as Marc headed into the living room. “Your allies await….”
Five minutes later, I sat on a kitchen chair someone had pulled into the living room, uncomfortably aware that every eye in the room was aimed my way. That wasn’t unusual, of course, but I was pretty sure I was the first Alpha in history to address her allies and enforcers wearing nothing but a crimson halter and a matching pair of boyshorts. Marc was going to sew up my gashes during our little powwow, so I couldn’t wear anything that would cover my limbs.
Lucas had laid my father on his bed, but the fresh, raw memory of his death still drew my gaze to the couch even though four enforcers now sat where he’d died, each covered in various cuts and nasty-looking bruises, as well as an assortment of bandages. Except for Elias Keller, we were a ragtag crew at best, and our Pride was now leaderless, unless I could get my act together.
“What did they say?” I asked, as my uncle sank into the chair closest to me. “Did they agree to a cease-fire?” At least long enough to arrange a funeral…
He frowned and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, focusing his attention on me completely, as if we were
the only two people in the room. That couldn’t be good. “They want you to make the request yourself.”
“Why? So they can try to arrest me again? Or just outright kill me?” Like I was going to willingly walk into a trap.
“It’s possible, but I don’t think that’s what they’re going for this time.” Uncle Rick paused long enough to scrub both hands over his face. “I told them your dad named you as his successor, and my guess is that they want to give you enough rope to hang yourself with. Or else they want to humiliate you. This is about power. Right now, they have it….”
“And they want to see me grovel for mercy long enough to bury my father.” The words tasted bitter—all of them—and I wanted to spit them out.
“Yes. But I think we can make this work for us. If you go in there with your temper in check and your feet on the ground, you have a chance to convince a couple of the other Alphas that you actually belong where your father’s placed you. And that you deserve a seat on the council.”
“But isn’t that kind of meaningless at this point? I mean, even if I wanted to be on the council—” and I wasn’t exactly eager to watch Malone pervert justice and promote himself in the name of “purification” “—they’re never going to let me in. Hell, they may not even let you guys back in.” I glanced from my uncle, to Umberto Di Carlo, to Aaron Taylor, a bit overwhelmed to be meeting with them without my father. I kept expecting him to walk in, apologize for being late, then take over. “We just started a war, and so far they’re winning. Why wouldn’t they want to press their advantage?”
“Because a cease-fire benefits them even more than it benefits us,” Di Carlo said from across the room, holding a short glass with an inch of whiskey in the bottom. “Malone’s grand scheme only works if he’s in charge of the whole council, not just one battered half of it. He’s going to want to put his little kingdom back together so he can wear the shiny crown. And he might even lose one or two of his own allies if he refuses to grant a respected fellow Alpha a proper burial. Though he probably has no intention of letting the council acknowledge you as an Alpha.”