“Yeah, about that…” My hands twisted together, in spite of my own best efforts to keep them still. To remain calm. Then I forged ahead before I could back out. “Dad, I need to talk to you.” I half whispered, hoping the others wouldn’t hear. Though they’d find out soon enough, anyway. “In private.”
Jace glanced at me on his way to the first bedroom, carrying four suitcases at once. My father took one look at my face and nodded. “Outside?”
“Sure.” I hunched into my coat and followed him back into the February cold, so much sharper and bitterer than it had been in November.
My dad clomped down the steps in hiking boots and jeans. It was too cold for his traditional suit and dress shoes, though he’d probably change before heading to the main lodge. “What’s wrong, kitten?” He slid one strong arm around my shoulders, and I leaned into him as we walked, treasuring the voluntary physical contact after spending most of the past week virtually untouched.
But I waited until we were on the edge of the tree line—out of casual earshot—to answer, trying to come up with an acceptable opening line while we walked. When my dad finally stopped and faced me, I made myself meet his gaze. Long gone were the days when I would stare at the ground and whisper confessions like a naughty little girl, even if that’s exactly what I felt like. I’d made a very adult mistake—which necessitated a very adult decision I had yet to make.
“Faythe…?” My father prodded, and I could read growing concern in his crinkled forehead and the tense line of his jaw. He even seemed to have more silver in the gray streaks at his temples. “Is this about Marc?”
“Yeah. Um, things have gotten a little complicated between me and Marc.” I crossed my arms over my chest to hold my coat closed. “And Jace…”
“Jace?” My dad blinked, and I saw the exact moment understanding surfaced behind his eyes. He closed them, and his next exhale was long and very, very heavy. He glanced at the cabin, then motioned for me to follow him into the woods, where he stopped before we lost sight of the van. “How long?”
“Since the day Ethan…” I leaned with my palm on a bare tree trunk. I couldn’t finish that sentence. “But I’m not… We’re not… I don’t think we need to get into details here, Daddy, but Jace and I…connected, and it’s not… Okay, it is physical, to some extent, but it’s more than that. A lot more.”
He sighed again and looked at me with his poker face in place, and something in my chest tightened. I desperately wanted to be able to read his reaction. “And Marc knows?”
“Yeah.” I took a deep breath, preparing to say the worst part. “As does half the council.”
“What?” His poker face collapsed beneath bold lines of anger and bewilderment.
“Dad, we were going to tell you when things got a little calmer and we’d had a chance to sort it all out. But when we went to the lodge to pick up the key, Jerald Pierce called me a whore in front of half the council, so I think it’s safe to say that this particular cat is out of the bag. And they’re probably going to try to use it against us.”
“How on earth did Jerald find out?” my father demanded softly, but I knew what he was really asking: How the hell can the entire opposing half of the Territorial Council know something so intimate about three of his enforcers, when he didn’t know?
“Alex Malone figured it out last week, while Dean was using my face for a cutting board. Then Dean told Marc. And evidently anyone else who would listen. But I wanted you to hear it from me. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. We didn’t want to give you one more thing to worry about.”
My father glanced at the forest floor, then sank onto a thick, dry fallen log. “How is Marc?”
I closed my eyes against the burn of fresh tears. “He’s pissed, and hurt, and about a dozen other complicated, volatile emotions he has every right to feel. He’s fighting his instinct to kill Jace, and he’s not exactly happy with me, either. Though for the record, I’m not even sure he could kill Jace. He says I have to choose. Soon.”
“He’s right. This could get ugly, Faythe. Marc’s thought of you as his since you were sixteen years old, and temporarily losing you to the human world was hard enough for him. But to another tom? One who’s shown some serious grit lately? I’m guessing he’s juggling a lot of pain and humiliation, and coming from a potential Alpha, those are both likely to look a lot like anger.”
“I’d call it more of an encompassing, blinding rage.” I swiped one sleeve across my eyes and sat next to him. The bark was cold and rough, even through my jeans, but the trees blocked most of the frigid wind.
“And do you understand why?” My father’s voice was soft, his gaze calmly searching.
The answer seemed obvious, but the quiet intensity with which he asked told me that this was important enough for me to dig deeper than my impulse answer. I was the first potential Alpha in history who didn’t have a personal understanding of the tomcat’s position in our world, and how tenuous that status really was.
“Because this is about more than me hurting him. More than our relationship.” Shit. My heart crumpled as the system of dots began to connect in my head, illustrating for me the complicated connections and hierarchies that defined a tomcat’s rank within our world. “I’ve damaged his status. They already see him as an outsider, as inherently weaker. Lesser. They’ll see this as me rejecting Marc on some level, and if he’s not good enough for me, why would he be good enough for them?” My father nodded, and I hated myself a little more.
I’d insulted Marc personally and politically. I’d stabbed him in the back and in the heart at the same time. And considering how very public our troubles were about to become, I now considered myself lucky he was even speaking to me.
“Is this going to hurt us, politically?”
“You’re not on trial this time, Faythe.”
But we both knew I was. We all were. Everything a Pride cat does reflects on his Alpha, and all of it was fair game during the vote. Which is what we’d been counting on, with respect to the bloodstained feathers still in my inside jacket pocket.
Unfortunately, that sword sliced both ways.
“Are you mad at me? Or disappointed?” Somehow, that mattered more to me than the collective opinion of the entire council.
My father took off his glasses to polish them on the tail of the shirt showing through his open coat. “I would have been both, if this were just a game. If you were trying to make Marc jealous, or rebelling out of boredom. But if this is really more than that…I don’t see how I could be mad without calling myself a hypocrite. You can’t help who you love, Faythe. No one can.”
I blinked, confused. “You mean Mom…?”
He put his glasses back on, and a wistful smile stole over his lips. “She was engaged to Bert Di Carlo first. But then I came to the territory to enforce for your grandfather the summer after my freshman year in college, and we both fell, hard and fast.”
I sat stunned into silence. I knew my parents were still crazy in love—how else could any marriage last so long?—but I’d had no idea there had ever been such complications in their relationship. “How have I never heard this?”
“Why open old wounds? The past is the past, and it worked out for the best for all of us, in the end.”
“Was it hard?”
My dad shifted on the log to face me, and I could see the pain on his face, still very real even three decades later. “I’m not going to lie to you, Faythe. Bert didn’t speak to either of us for two years.”
“But now…”
“Now he’s one of my best friends and biggest supporters.”
And if it worked out for them, it could work out for us, right? No matter who I chose. Except… “Do you think he would have gotten over it if he hadn’t found Mrs. Di Carlo?” I fiddled with the zipper tab at the hem of my coat. “If he hadn’t fallen in love with someone else?”
“I honestly don’t know. He might not have. New love can help heal some pretty big wounds.”
; Jace and I knew that better than most. But love could also open wounds. Big, gaping, gory ones.
“I don’t know what to do.” The ache in my chest was as strong as ever, and it deepened at the thought of letting either of them go. “I know I’m too old to be coming to you with boy trouble, but I’m lost, and I’m pretty sure that whatever I decide, I’m only going to make things worse. But Jace loves me, Dad. For real.”
That time, his bittersweet smile was equal parts angst and sympathy. “First of all, you’re never too old to ask your father for advice.”
I forced a smile with tears still standing in my eyes.
“And second, I have no doubt that Jace loves you. He’s been watching you like you hung the moon from the day you came back to the ranch. I just didn’t realize he’d gone beyond staring. I didn’t think he would, after Marc got ahold of him last time.”
“Jace is changing. He’s…challenging Marc, and not just over me.”
He nodded slowly, staring into the branches as if he were seeing something else. “I saw that, too. Ever since Ethan… I just hadn’t put two and two together.”
I swallowed thickly and bark cut into my palm when I gripped the log beneath me. “I think he could be an Alpha. He could be a good Alpha, Dad.”
He nodded hesitantly. “Maybe so, with some training aimed at leadership. But that’s not the most important question right now. What I need to know is, do you love him?”
More tears came, and this time I let them fall, hot on my frozen cheeks. “Yeah.” I blinked, and my father’s face blurred. “I don’t want to love him—this would be so much simpler if I didn’t. But I do. He’s funny, and passionate, and strong, and he believes in me more than I even believe in myself. When he looks at me, I feel like I could take on the whole world and come out standing tall. I like myself better when I’m with him, because of how he sees me. He makes me feel beautiful and powerful, like I’m the most important thing in the world, and I don’t know how to walk away from that. I don’t know how to walk away from him.”
Jace was like a drug, steadily, stealthily subverting my willpower. And there was serious heat between us. The kind that can knock down buildings or make a person spontaneously combust.
My father looked stunned, and it actually took him a moment to recover from my discourse on new love. “And you still love Marc?”
“More than I can even explain. He’s my rock—strong and steady, and ready for anything. He knows what I need before I know it, and he pushes me to work harder, and look deeper, and be better. He challenges me, and infuriates me, and he lights me on fire, deep in my soul. And he has never, ever let me down. Sometimes it feels like he’s the only thing keeping my heart beating. I love him so much that it feels like I’m dying a little bit every day that he won’t smile at me. Or touch me. Not even a hug. He keeps this distance between us now. And Jace has to do the same, because they have this weird, fragile truce that isn’t quite working, but I know better than to make them break. But this truce is going to break me.”
The tears fell faster, and a truly pathetic sob followed. “I love them both, and they both love me, but neither of them will even hold my hand, and I’m more alone now than I’ve ever been in my life, and it’s all my own fault.” I sniffled, my nose running from the cold and from the tears. “It’s not supposed to be like this. Love isn’t supposed to break your heart. Or anyone else’s. There aren’t supposed to be two of them. How did this even happen? I mean, I know how this happened, but I can’t make any sense of it. Even if I hadn’t…connected with Jace the night Ethan died, this all would have surfaced eventually, and I can’t think of any less painful way it could have played out.”
He pulled me close, one arm around my back, and I put my head on his shoulder like I hadn’t done since I was a child. “Faythe, your heart doesn’t answer to your brain. And neither do theirs. If that were the case, do you think Marc would still be waiting for your answer?”
“Of course not. If his head were in charge, he’d have kicked me to the curb years ago.” I sobbed again, and this time my father chuckled. “What’s so funny?” I demanded, tilting my head when my cheek got his coat wet.
“You didn’t cry when Kevin Mitchell broke your arm, or when you got stabbed in the hip the last time we were here. But boy troubles are still enough to reduce you to tears.”
“I think this runs a little deeper than ‘boy troubles,’ Daddy.”
“Yet I’m reminded of your freshman year in high school, when you sat in your room crying over…what was his name? Chad Baker?”
“How on earth do you remember that?”
“You’re the only daughter I have, Faythe. I remember everyone who’s ever hurt you.”
I pulled away to stare at him in awe, still wiping sloppy tears from my increasingly cold-numbed cheeks. He was serious.
“Anyway, on the bright side, you do have one advantage most other tabbies don’t.”
“I do?” I blinked, thoroughly at a loss.
“This doesn’t have to be a political decision. In fact, it shouldn’t be. You don’t have to marry an Alpha, Faythe. You’re going to be an Alpha. I have no doubt in my mind that by the time I’m ready to retire, you’ll be ready, no matter who you choose. So you have to follow your heart on this one. You owe that to yourself, and to both of them.”
“That’s what Marc said.”
My father’s eyes widened, and I saw unmistakable respect in his small smile. “He did?” I nodded. “Then he must really mean it, because though I see great potential in Jace, right now Marc’s better prepared to help you run this Pride.”
“I know.” My brain was whirring, while my heart only beat sluggishly in protest. “But I don’t need to run it right now. Right? And in a few years, that could change?”
“Of course. That’s why the only advice I can give you is this…” He sat up straight and twisted on the log to face me, his gaze boring into mine. “Don’t confuse the issue by trying to figure out who loves you the most, or who needs you the most. In the end, it only comes down to one thing: choosing the one you can’t live without.”
Five
“How’d it go?” Jace whispered, standing next to me at the counter as I poured Coke into a glass of ice. The cabin was crowded now, but the kitchen was empty. Still, werecats have amazing hearing, even in human form.
“He’s not mad.” I lifted the glass for a sip, and soda fizz sprayed my nose. “I thought he’d be furious, but he… He said you can’t help who you love.” I looked up at Jace, and his cobalt gaze seemed to burn right through me. “It turns out my mom used to be engaged to Bert Di Carlo. I think… Jace, I think he really understands.”
Jace smiled, and his whole face lit up. “Should I go say something? Make some sort of formal declaration?” He leaned closer to whisper into my hair. “Or thank him for not ripping my lungs out through my throat for sleeping with his daughter?”
I grinned. I couldn’t help it. I hadn’t seen him look truly happy for more than a minute at a time since Ethan died, and I wanted so badly to make him happy. To keep him smiling. When Jace smiled, I felt warm inside. He took the edge off the winter-in-the mountains chill. “I think that would be a little awkward right now. He’s telling them.”
I nodded toward the living room, where my dad sat with Di Carlo and all three of his enforcers. As humiliating as it was for me—and even more so for Marc—my dad’s allies needed to know what was going on, since it would probably be used against us in the vote. Full disclosure to our allies—that was one of the things my father offered, but Malone did not. Surely once we’d disclosed Malone’s crimes, those Alphas who didn’t already know about them—we were pretty sure Wes Gardner and Nick Davidson were completely in the dark—would jump ship. How could they vote for a traitor and a murderer?
“I want to kiss you.” Jace’s whisper pulled me from my thoughts and I glanced up to find his eyes blazing with raw need. “Just because Marc won’t touch you doesn’t mean I shouldn’t. Ri
ght? I don’t have that kind of self-control, and honestly, I don’t see the point in it. Are you supposed to be impressed by how long we can go without touching you? ’Cause if that’s the game we’re playing, I think I’d rather lose.”
I almost melted from relief at his declaration, even with the wash of guilt that followed it. I was tired of being untouched. Alone in a room full of people. How was I supposed to choose who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, if I couldn’t be alone with either of them, allowed to feel anything that wasn’t pain and regret? How was denying everything that felt good about love supposed to help me make my choice?
Jace saw my indecision and tugged me into the hall, out of view from the living room. He pressed me against the wood-paneled wall, and my hands found his chest on their own, before I even realized what I was doing.
“It’s not wrong, Faythe,” he whispered, and my heart ached from wanting so badly to believe him. “This is what we’re supposed to be doing. Exploring our relationship. Helping you choose.” He ran his hands lightly over my arms, raising chill bumps the length of my body.
“You think my decision should be based on who kisses best?” I barely breathed the words, my eyes closed, trying to resist what felt so wrong, yet so right.
“We both know it’s about more than that, but it’s physical, too, and I don’t want you to forget what I feel like.” Jace leaned into me, sliding one knee between mine, and his skin was hot, even through our clothing. “What I taste like… But if this is a contest, that makes you the judge.” One side of his perfect mouth turned up in a wicked grin. “So how ’bout it? Who’s better?”
“Mmmm…” I purred as he rubbed his cheek along my temple. “It’s been a while. I’m not sure I remember.”
His breath brushed my cheek from centimeters away. “Let me remind you. Let me kiss you, Faythe.” His voice was low and gravelly, almost broken with need for me, and I was overwhelmed by the power of that need.