Rogue

  Executed.

  How could he even entertain such a thought? My shock gave way to anger that my own father could know so little about me. That he could accuse me of infecting someone. Anyone. Much less someone I’d once cared about.

  “Fuck you!” I shouted, jumping to my feet as outrage surged through my veins, a thousand times hotter than blood.

  My father—no, my Alpha—nodded to Michael, and he stood calmly, crossing thick arms over a broad chest. “Sit down,” Michael said. He didn’t tell me to watch my language, which said more than I could ever have hoped for.

  I hesitated, standing only because sitting would be admitting defeat, no matter how minor.

  “Sit, Faythe, and rein in your temper,” my father said. He drained the last of the whiskey from his glass and leaned forward to set it on the table at my end of the couch. When he leaned back, his eyes were calm, and still determined. “I have to ask. You know that. So just answer the question.”

  “Fine, but I’m not going to sit.”

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  Damn it. Standing with his permission didn’t satisfy my massive need to piss him off in return for insulting me. Stupid reverse psychology. I sank back onto the couch, and Michael followed my lead.

  “Hell no, I never Shifted in front of Andrew. And he never saw me in cat form, either. To my knowledge, no human has ever seen…” My words trailed off as I realized I’d been about to lie. Accidentally, of course, but that wouldn’t matter.

  A human had seen me in cat form once. A hunter, three months earlier. Nothing had come of it, other than a series of Bigfoot-esque news reports on the local stations, but I wasn’t about to bring up something I hadn’t been accused of. No sense borrowing trouble, right? Besides, some of the guys would get into trouble along with me. Ethan, Jace, and Parker had all promised Marc they wouldn’t tell.

  “No, he never saw me in cat form,” I finished weakly, meeting my father’s gaze to lend credibility to my statement and distract him from what I’d almost said.

  His eyes narrowed, but if he suspected anything, he’d either decided to let it go, or to address it later, because he didn’t challenge my statement. “To your knowledge, has Andrew ever come into contact with another werecat?”

  “Yes,” I said, without thinking. The answer seemed pretty clear to me, but based on Michael’s surprised expression, my phrasing needed serious work. “He’s obviously come into contact with a cat,” I amended. “Unless the ‘virus’ is now airborne, in which case public panic seems inevitable.”

  My father nodded again, this time with a hint of a smile. That hint—that tiny upturn of one corner of his mouth—set me at ease as no mere drink could ever have done. He would never have smiled if he were planning to have his own daughter put to death.

  “Yes, clearly he has come into contact with a cat. I meant to ask if you know the identity of that cat.”

  “No.” I shrugged, rolling my head on my neck to release some of the built-up tension. “I have no idea. And just to speed things up, I’m not intentionally withholding any information from you. Well, no information pertinent to this case, anyway,” I corrected myself. And there was that tiny smile again. “I don’t know who infected him. Or when or how it happened. Or how long ago.”

  “And he’s called you three times?”

  I shrugged, trying hard to appear casual. “Yeah. He was really angry, which I understand now. And he seemed to think I already knew he’d been infected, though I have no idea why he would thi—” My hand flew to my mouth, cutting off my words even as I choked on them. My heart slammed against the inside of my chest as a sudden realization singed through me like an electrical shock, setting off pain sensors I hadn’t even known I had. My skin tingled. My head ached. My stomach heaved. I clamped my jaws shut to hold back half-digested halibut and scalloped potatoes.

  I knew who had infected Andrew. I even knew how it had happened. He’d only had contact with one werecat.

  Me.

  Eighteen

  “What’s wrong?” Michael leaned forward, as if to catch me if I fell off the couch. I barely heard him. I was too busy hearing Andrew.

  You didn’t tell them about me. Andrew’s words played in my head, his voice reproduced in my mind with frightening accuracy. You owe me, Faythe.

  What I’d said to my father was accurate—for the most part. I’d never intentionally or knowingly Shifted in front of Andrew. But I hadn’t meant for my eyes to Shift an hour earlier, either. And they weren’t the only part of my face to ever experience an unexpected partial Shift.

  My teeth had done it, too.

  I’d bitten Andrew’s ear the very day I left school, not two hours before Marc had shown up in the quad. I’d broken the skin. Just barely, but enough to draw a single drop of blood. Apparently that was enough.

  I’d infected him. I hadn’t meant to. I hadn’t even known I’d done it. Or that it was possible. Yet I’d accidentally made him one of us, then left him, abandoning him to pain, fear, and incapacitating disorientation during his transition. It was a miracle he’d survived.

  Huh. Look at that, I thought, teetering on the razor-sharp edge of hysteria. I committed a capital crime after all. No wonder Andrew wanted to kill me. I couldn’t really blame him.

  “Faythe, say something,” Michael urged, and it took me a minute to realize I’d gone completely silent. “If you don’t start explaining, Dad’s going to draw his own conclusions.”

  “Too late.” My father eyed me with frightening intensity, and it took every ounce of willpower I had to keep from squirming where I sat.

  “I think I know who infected Andrew,” I whispered. It was the best I could do.

  The Alpha sat straighter in his chair, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. If he didn’t know exactly what I was going to say, he must have been pretty close. And he was no longer eager to hear it. “What happened?” he said at last. “And consider your words very carefully.”

  Suddenly the silence in the soundproofed office seemed dangerous, and somehow wrong. I felt compelled to fill it with a blurted confession, followed by babbling apologies and tearful explanations. But I didn’t. I wouldn’t have shamed myself with such a display before I became an enforcer, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to do it now.

  But I had to say something.

  I hesitated one last time. I’d let my father down more times than I could count, but this was the Big One. This was humiliation, disappointment, and disillusionment all wrapped up together, tied with a big red bow of disgrace. The gift that keeps on giving.

  “It was an accident,” I said, continuing calmly but quickly, before he had a chance to interrupt. “I didn’t understand what happened until just now.”

  Michael nodded, urging me on. He seemed to be the only one who really wanted me to continue.

  My heart thumped painfully, and my hands connected in my lap, my fingers twisting and pulling one another mercilessly. “I bit him. Accidentally.” I couldn’t help repeating that last part.

  “You bit him? Accidentally?” My father’s green eyes hardened. I knew that look. The Alpha had arrived, and he was angry. “Explain yourself. Now.”

  I nodded, grateful for the opportunity in spite of the rage in his eyes. “I was in human form. It should have been safe. I swear I didn’t know what was happening.” My hands moved wildly, punctuating each sentence, and I couldn’t seem to stop them. “At the time I had no clue this was even possible, but now I think my teeth Shifted. They couldn’t have changed much, because I didn’t notice it, and neither did he. But that’s the only way it could have happened.”

  My desperate, babbling excuses faded into silence, and still my father stared at me. As did Michael. His eyes burned into me, seeing right past my defensive explanation to the truth. The whole truth, which our father obviously didn’t understand.

  “You bit him in human form?” For one long, torturous moment, confusion replaced the anger in the Alpha’s expression. “Why? Why
would you bite him?”

  Well, hell. He was going to make me say it. This is not a conversation I want to have with my father. Ever. But it was much too late to back out, so I took a deep breath and plunged forward into the dark abyss. Melodramatic? Hell yeah.

  “We were…you know. Together.”

  “I see,” he said, after a long, tense silence. But I had my doubts. He didn’t look like he saw.

  My father stood, retrieving his glass from the end table, and crossed the room to his desk. As I sank deeper into the couch, he opened his bottom desk drawer and pulled out a half-empty bottle of Scotch. The good stuff.

  Seated now, he poured two inches of amber liquid into his glass, hesitated, then poured a third inch. As I watched my father drink, it occurred to me that the testimony I was about to launch resembled a kamikaze’s final flight. It would be a sickeningly fast and exhilarating plunge, executed with the greater good in mind. And it was virtually guaranteed to end in death. Mine.

  Martyrdom always seems so daring and courageous from an outsider’s perspective, but from the cockpit of the kamikaze’s plane, with the earth racing up to meet you, the view sucks.

  My father screwed the lid on his bottle and set it in the drawer. He slid the drawer shut and took another drink. Then he started across the floor toward me, walking slowly, as if he were stiff, or achy. With a deep, weary sigh, he settled back into his chair. His eyes rose to meet mine, and they were completely empty. Blank.

  Damn, he’s good.

  For almost a complete minute, my father stared at me, sipping from his glass. Silence closed in on me, and I wanted to look away from his eyes, but I couldn’t. If I broke eye contact, he might think I was hiding something, and I desperately needed him to believe I was telling the truth. Now, more than ever. So we both sat still and silent, ignoring Michael.

  Finally, he spoke. “I’m going to give you a chance to rethink what you just told us. That’s more than I would give any other cat in the world. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  I nodded. He was giving me a chance to save myself. To take back what I’d just said. To decide I’d made a mistake—that I hadn’t infected Andrew. He was looking for a justifiable excuse to spare my life, at least until after the official inquisition the council would demand if he refused to have me executed. He’d have a good reason for that—if I was willing to lie.

  But I wasn’t. I couldn’t. Lying about what I’d done would mean becoming the selfish, heartless monster Andrew must already think I was. The monster who’d turned him into what he’d become, then left him to die.

  “Do you want to…rephrase your statement?” my father asked. “For the record?”

  Slowly, regretfully, I shook my head. It was the single hardest thing I’d ever had to do. Harder than fighting for my life. Harder than leaving Marc years before. Harder than coming home.

  But it was right. I knew that with every frenzied beat of my heart. In every shadowed corner of my soul.

  I was doing the honorable thing. Just as my Alpha had taught me.

  “Faythe…” My father’s voice shook, in fury and in…terror. He was afraid. For the first time in my life, I saw fear in my father’s face, lining his forehead, glazing his eyes.

  “I can’t do it, Daddy. I’m telling the truth. I did nip him, but the infection was an accident. It’s not supposed to happen that way. It shouldn’t be possible.”

  My father hurled his glass across the room. The movement was too fast for my eyes to track. I didn’t understand what had happened until glass shattered against the wall and the biting scent of Scotch permeated the air. I jumped, whirling to see the wet smear across the oak paneling.

  He shot out of his seat. His armchair fell over backward, slamming against the hardwood floor. “I give you the opportunity to save yourself, and you give me this partial-Shift nonsense? Again?” His face was flushed, his eyes blazing.

  “It’s the truth.” I fought the need to pull my feet up onto the couch and curl into a protective ball. “You taught me to tell the truth, to take pride in doing the right thing, even when it’s hard. And now you want me to lie, because it’s easier?”

  “I want you to save yourself, whatever that takes!” He dropped to his knees on the floor in front of me, taking my wrists in his hands. He stared into my eyes from inches away, pleading with me to listen. To understand. “We’re talking about your life, Faythe. Our future. Not who lost the croquet ball, or who broke the antique vase. You’re not eight anymore, so don’t throw your damned honor in my face. What good is honor when you’re dead?”

  I swallowed thickly. “What good is the truth, if you only use it when it doesn’t matter?”

  His eyes burned into mine. “Damn it, Faythe!” Dropping my arms, he leapt to his feet, storming past an astonished Michael, who could do nothing but watch. “We all know you went through something horrible in that basement, and you’re entitled to believe whatever helps you cope with killing Eric. But now you’re taking it too far. This isn’t a game. It isn’t therapy. It isn’t truth-or-dare. It’s your life.”

  “I know,” I whispered miserably, wishing I could do what he wanted. Wishing it was that simple. But it wasn’t.

  “I don’t think you do!” He whirled on me from across the room. “My job as Alpha is to rid the Pride of any threats. But my job as a parent is to protect you at all costs. What am I supposed to do when you are the threat? Why are you making it so hard for me to protect you? You have to give a little, Faythe. You have to meet me halfway.”

  “For the last time, Daddy, I’m telling the truth. The partial Shift is real. Abby saw it. Hell, Marc saw it. You know that.”

  He shook his head, pacing back and forth in front of the fallen chair. “Abby doesn’t know what she saw. It was dark, and she was upset and confused. She said the shadows scared her, for crying out loud.”

  My palms began to sweat as I realized what an unreliable witness my cousin was. The council didn’t really disbelieve her. They believed she thought she saw my partial shift. But they also thought I was responsible for planting that belief in a traumatized, impressionable young mind.

  My head spun like a tilt-a-whirl, possibilities flying past too fast for me to catch. “What about Marc?” I asked at last, clinging to the only other witness I had. “He’s seen it. Ask him.” Surely the Alpha wouldn’t doubt his own right-hand man.

  My father paused in his pacing to stare at me in surprise. “Marc would say anything to protect you,” he said, as if I should have already known that. “He was humoring you before because you were devastated by Sara’s death, and this time he’d lie to save your life. Not that I blame him, but the council will never believe him. He’s a stray. Half of them think his word is worthless, anyway. If you ask him to back up a story like this, his credibility will be shot for good. As will yours. This Pride can’t afford to lose your credibility any more than it can afford to lose you.”

  No. I shook my head, denying that the council would discredit Marc. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. And even if it was, so long as my father—my Alpha—believed me, the council would have to. Wouldn’t they?

  And that’s when I realized it didn’t matter. None of it mattered, because he didn’t believe me.

  My head fell in defeat. If my own father didn’t believe me, who would? “What do you want from me?” I asked, staring at my hands, where they lay limp in my lap. “You want me to lie?”

  My father was in front of me before I could blink. He bent over, his nose inches from mine. His forehead was red and wrinkled, his brows dark and furrowed in fury.

  I tried to pull away. He grabbed my chin, squeezing it between his thumb and forefinger. Pain shot through my jaw. Tears formed instantly, blurring my vision. His eyes swam before me, pools of green even brighter than my own, magnified by the lenses of his glasses. I whimpered, too terrified to be embarrassed by the sound of my own weakness.

  “Dad—” Michael began.

  “I want proof!” my fa
ther roared. He actually roared at me. From inches away. My sensitive ears rang from the abuse. My hands shook uncontrollably. I blinked as his Scotch-breath puffed in my face. I’d never seen him so mad. So scared. So terrifying.

  I couldn’t do it on demand. I’d tried—over and over again—but it never worked when I was relaxed and calm, so what were the chances that I could do it now, when I was half-hysterical and scared shitless?

  “Do it,” my father ordered, giving me a sharp shake with the grip he had on my chin.

  My brain rattled in my skull. I blinked, and tears fell from my eyes.

  “Show me,” he hissed. “Or I swear I’ll have you declawed myself to save the council the trouble.”

  My chin still pinched in his grasp, I closed my eyes. Tears spilled over again, running down my cheeks. He couldn’t be serious. He wouldn’t have his own daughter declawed. Or maybe he would, especially if he thought that would satisfy the council and keep them off my back.

  But I couldn’t lose my claws. Without them, I couldn’t defend myself. I’d be dependant on my father and his enforcers for the rest of what passed for my life. And I certainly couldn’t go back to school with my deformed, nail-less human fingers.

  Panic clawed at the inside of my throat, trapping my breath. My heart raced, and more hateful tears ran down my face to drip on my father’s hand. I couldn’t live with that kind of damage. I wouldn’t live with it.

  I squeezed my eyes shut as the first lick of new pain shot through my jaw. I recognized what was happening immediately; evidently the list of emotions that could trigger a partial Shift included mind-numbing panic.

  Popping sounds filled my ears, my bones crackling like pop rocks. My father gasped, and his hand fell away from my face. I opened my eyes to see him backing away from me, still on his knees. His eyes were wide, his brows arched high in surprise. And in shock.

  My gums began to throb and burn. My tongue started to itch. I clamped one hand over my mouth to muffle a moan as the pain intensified. The roof of my mouth seemed to buckle, and I tried to grit my teeth against the agony. But my teeth no longer fit together right.