But I’d put myself in this mess.
“Give them a chance,” Abby whispered as she let me go. I tried not to panic as the men around me shouted out jovial goodbyes.
Chewing my first bite of a truly spectacular waffle, I listened to Abby’s and Jace’s footsteps fade as they headed down the long main hallway toward the front of the house. Only once the sound of Jace’s engine had faded from my ears did I notice that the Alpha was missing.
“Where’s Titus?”
“In the infirmary,” Lochlan said from his seat at the bar while he pulled his long blond hair back and secured it with a rubber band.
“Still? Doesn’t he ever…delegate?”
“I’ll go down to give him a break soon, but he tries to stay with new strays as long as possible,” Spencer said. “It lets the stray form an immediate connection and establishes Titus as an authority figure from the beginning.”
“Does that help?” I asked.
Drew shrugged from the chair to my left. “Natural-born cats rarely question the societal structure and authority figures they’re raised with. Titus is trying to replicate that by being present in the infancy of a stray’s transition. I guess time will tell if it works. He’s only been doing this for about a year.”
Drew stood to get a second helping, but I could only stare at my plate as his words played through my head again. I’d totally lost my appetite.
“What’s wrong?” Naveen slid into the vacated chair on my left. “You look like you were personally betrayed by that waffle.”
“I…” I shook my head and stabbed a chunk of pecan with my fork. “It’s nothing.” My complaints would sound like spoiled whining to men who wanted nothing more in the world than to gain official standing in the council’s eyes. To truly belong in a world that’s held them at arm’s length for generations.
A smile lingered at the corner of his beautiful, full mouth. “You’re a really bad liar, Ms. Sheffield.”
“I don’t get much practice,” I admitted. “My thoughts typically pour forth like Niagara Falls.”
Naveen laughed. “What’s holding you back today?”
We’d just established how bad a liar I was, so… “I’m afraid you’ll all hate me if you knew what I was thinking.”
“Unless you’re about to say you’re a UNC fan, I don’t think you have much to worry about.” When his eyes went wide, I realized he’d misinterpreted my silent confusion. “Oh shit, you are a North Carolina fan!” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Loch bleeds Duke blue and white, so let’s keep this between the two of us.”
Finally, I understood. He was talking about a college sports rivalry.
Naveen laughed again at my expression. “Not much of a basketball fan, huh? So then what’s the big secret?”
“There’s no secret. I just…” I stabbed at another pecan and broke it into three chunks. Then I dropped my fork and looked him straight in the eye. “I don’t understand why you guys are trying so hard to turn yourselves into something you’re not, when what you are right now is awesome!”
Naveen gave me a baffled frown. “What we are right now?”
“Free,” I said. “Independent, and of no real interest to the council. They don’t care what you do, as long as you’re not killing or infecting people, so you could do whatever you want out here. Why form a Pride and pay dues, and conform to their rules and archaic social conventions if you don’t have to?”
For a moment, my soft outburst met with surprised silence. Then Naveen smiled. “First of all, we don’t pay dues. Titus is a billionaire. He doesn’t need to tax Pride members to pay his enforcers, like the other Alphas do.”
“Oh. Well, that’s…”
Billions? My cheeks felt like they were on fire.
Naveen studied my face. “You didn’t know?”
“I knew he ran some big corporation, but no. I didn’t know that.” And I wished he hadn’t told me.
His frown deepened as he studied me. “Knowing about the money makes you uncomfortable?”
I shrugged. “In my experience, money gets in the way. People who have it think everyone and everything is for sale.”
Naveen chuckled softly as he cut another bite from his waffle.
“What’s funny?”
His fork paused on the way to his mouth. “You’ll understand once you get to know Titus.”
“I know what I need to know. Wealthy or not, Alphas are all cut from the same cloth. They have a pathological need to issue orders and to…procreate.”
Naveen leaned back in his chair, studying me with a new intensity, as if he suddenly understood…something. “You think Titus wants to, what? Father your kids?” He laughed again, as if the concept were truly ridiculous. “You have a very robust self-esteem.”
“That’s not—” My face was on fire. “It’s not that I think Titus can’t resist me. It’s that Alphas are driven to reproduce—I learned that, if nothing else at the Di Carlos—and I’m the only eligible tabby around.”
“Sorry.” Now Naveen looked embarrassed. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. You’re totally hot, and if Titus—if any of us—were looking to start a family, you’d be at the top of the spousal wish list. But that’s not something many of us think about, out here in the free zone.”
“But this won’t be the free zone for long. And that’s what all Alphas want,” I insisted, as my cheeks continued to burn. “They’re biologically driven.”
His smile returned, and somehow, despite the mortifying turn our conversation had taken, there was no patronization or teasing in his expression. “Robyn, I don’t think you fully understand the goal. We may be modeling our Pride after the others, but we have no desire to replicate their system exactly. With a few exceptions, Pride cats have always held themselves above us. The last thing any of us wants is a gaggle of natural-born princes and princess running around, looking at us as if we’re subjects sent to serve them in the family castle.”
“But if Titus doesn’t have a daughter…?” Shifter society was patriarchal, but matrilineal. The men were in charge, but control of a territory was passed from the Alpha to his daughter’s husband. At least, until Faythe. And Abby.
Which was why the loss of Sara Di Carlo—and now Abby—was devastating for the US Prides. Their territories now had no dam to give birth to the next generation.
Naveen seemed to understand what I hadn’t managed to voice. “We don’t need shifter babies, because our population is not in decline. Citizenship in our Pride isn’t limited to natural-born shifters. We’re bursting at the seams.”
I thought about that for a second, and the tension building inside me began to ease. This is what Jace and Abby were trying to tell me. “So, Titus doesn’t need to claim me for his Pride?”
Naveen shook his head. “Nope. Out here, you are worth no more than any of the rest of us. Except perhaps as an initial curiosity.”
I should have been relieved. So why did that thought suddenly feel like a slap in the face?
EIGHT
Titus
“Okay, now breathe deeply and try to relax all your muscles,” I said as Corey Morris collapsed to the concrete floor on his knees. His flesh looked pale and oddly lumpy from the transformation of muscles going on beneath his skin. “I know that sounds impossible, but the tenser you are, the more this will hurt and the longer it will take.”
Morris rolled his eyes at me, and if he’d been capable of speech with a mouth caught somewhere between a cat’s muzzle and the human arrangement of teeth, I’m sure he would have been sharing quite a repertoire of expletives. Which would have been considered an insult to any other Alpha.
In theory, I had no interest in censoring my enforcers’ language, but I’d already come to understand the logic behind the “no cursing at your Alpha” rule, which was standard in the officially recognized Prides. An Alpha who lost the respect of his enforcers would soon lose the respect of the rest of his Pride members.
Then h
e’d lose the Pride itself.
Morris groaned through clenched teeth as his jaw began to ripple, taking on an even more feline shape. His ears seemed to twist as they were re-formed, migrating slowly from the sides of his head toward the top. But the visible part of that transformation barely scratched the surface of the pain he would feel below the skin, where the true change was ripping its way through his muscular and skeletal structures.
“When I was new at this, I found it easier to lie down.” But the frustration in Morris’s eyes said he couldn’t figure out how to make his muscles obey that command. He wasn’t in control of his own body, possibly for the first time in his life, and I knew as well as anyone how terrifying that feeling was.
Especially the first time.
Soon, he’d learn to control his shift. To bring it on at will. But for now…
“Try to let the changes roll over you. Give yourself up to the process. As cheesy as that sounds, it’s the best advice I can give.”
Finally, as fur began to sprout from follicles all over his body, Corey Morris either figured out how to relax his muscles or lost control of them entirely. He fell over on his side with a solid thud. A choking sound rattled in his throat, as his larynx and esophagus began to shift.
“Just breathe…” I felt like I should put a hand on his shoulder, or make some other comforting gesture, but I knew better than to touch a stray during his first shift. Or right afterward, before he’s gained his bearings. Before he realizes he can still access his human thoughts—and boundaries—while in cat form.
That’s what had gone wrong with Robyn, according to Jace. Abby had done her best to help her roommate through the transition, but she was brand new to the process—they both were—and she didn’t expect Robyn to live. Though there’d been vague rumors of female strays surviving in Central and South America, none ever had in the US, so in the beginning, Abby’d believed that all she could do was comfort her friend as the fever slowly drained the life from her body.
By the time she’d realized her roommate would survive, Robyn had already shifted, in the very cabin her kidnappers had dragged her to. Where she’d witnessed several deaths. Where she was surrounded by the scent not just of the cat who’d infected her, but by the scents of the men who’d assaulted her and tried to kill Abby.
Robyn was born into the shifter world in a violent event as rife with blood and pain as any real birth would have been. It was a miracle she’d come out of it with her mind intact.
Mostly.
The shock and trauma Robyn had undergone—the inability to process or control instincts making demands she couldn’t understand or master—was what strays in the free zone had been enduring for generations. What I was trying to prevent with Corey Morris, and with all the other toms in my territory.
“It’s almost over now,” I said softly, as the river of fur flowed to cover his belly and the lower halves of all four of his legs.
When the transformation was complete, Morris lay panting on the floor on his side, staring at the basement as if he couldn’t see it. I knew from experience that he wasn’t processing anything yet, other than the end to a massive and unanticipated amount of pain. Pain in places he hadn’t even realized he could hurt, like the insides of his elbows and the tops of his feet. The ends of his fingers and toes, and that fleshy place between his thumbs and forefingers.
I stood, and the movement caught his eye. “I’m going to get you some food and water. You might not feel like eating yet, but you’ll be famished soon.” Because shifting burned an enormous number of calories. And because he’d been too sick to eat or hold down any food for the past twelve hours, at least.
Morris grunted from deep in his throat, a sound that could have meant anything from “Thanks” to “Fuck you very much.”
On the other side of the basement, I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a pitcher of cold water and a hunk of raw rabbit, left over from Knox’s hunt the night before. I poured water into a bowl, put the meat on a paper plate, and set them both on the floor a few feet from Morris, so that any initial misfiring of his new arrangement of muscles and nerves couldn’t knock them both over.
I’d just poured myself a fresh cup of coffee when my phone rang, and Faythe Sanders’s name and number appeared on the screen.
“Faythe?” I fought not to yawn into the phone. “It’s been a long night here. What’s up?”
“I spoke to Jace and Abby,” she said, over a background of road noise. “They said Robyn isn’t coming with them.”
“To the wedding?” Another yawn. “Did you really think she would?”
“I think it would have been better for everyone involved if she had.” Something brushed the phone on her end, then her voice was muffled. “Greg, no! Put the straw back in the cup!”
“Are you driving?” I asked.
“No, Marc is. We’re on the way to Kentucky for the wedding.” A child’s laughter rang out over the line, and Faythe heaved an exasperated exhalation. “Greg! Please put the straw in the cup!”
“You sound like you’ve got your hands full. Are you supposed to travel this far into a pregnancy?”
“Don’t even try that ‘go home and rest’ crap with me, Titus. Girls run the world. I believe Beyoncé said it best.”
I laughed. “Then I guess I should let you get back to business.”
“Not yet. Hang on.” Something brushed the phone again. “Greg, put your headphones on. I’m going to play the movie. Just put them… Yes, over both ears.” Then she returned. “Titus, please tell me you’re not having second thoughts about sending Robyn to Atlanta.”
The truth was that second thoughts were the only thoughts I’d had. Robyn didn’t want to go back. “I would have thought that you, of all people, would understand where she’s coming from, Faythe. She doesn’t want the council to run her life. Doesn’t that sound familiar?”
“Yes, and if she hadn’t made a deal with them—if she hadn’t given her word—I’d be on the other side of this argument with her. And after she’s fulfilled her half of the deal, I will be on her side, if she still wants to leave. But until then, I can’t support any attempt to weaken the authority of the council I’m a member of, when it’s acting in good faith and in the best interest of the community it serves.”
“And if it weren’t acting in the best interest of that community?”
“Then I would go to bat for the community. But that’s not what we’re talking about here, Titus. You have to bring her back so she can finish her training. What she decides to do after that is up to her.”
“Is it really? Because she overheard your council arguing over whose son gets first dibs on her. And she said you were in on it.”
“Damn it. That’s not…” Faythe’s words trailed off with a huff of frustration. “Yes, they were discussing the possibilities. They each want to be a grandfather, and most of them are old-school. But I wasn’t advocating marrying her off. I was pointing out that if she doesn’t like any of their sons, the whole discussion is pointless. No one will make Robyn do anything she doesn’t want to do. You have my personal guarantee on that.”
“Mine too,” Marc said, his voice fainter, because he was farther from the phone. “Robyn can see—or not see—anyone she wants. But…”
His hesitation set off alarms in my head. “But what?”
“But she needs to wait to make any …romantic decision,” Faythe finished for him. “Until after she’s finished her training and is officially on her own.”
“And is the council willing to commit to a timeframe for that?” Not that I had the authority to negotiate on Robyn’s behalf…
“It’s kind of a self-paced program, Titus. The deeper her commitment, the faster it will go. And the council thinks she should concentrate on her own mental and emotional health until she’s learned to control herself in both forms.”
Those alarms coalesced into a full-fledged siren. “What are you saying? She’s not allowed to date? That’s not your
decision to make.” Why did I suddenly sound so defensive? “Don’t you think that making positive connections might help her gain control over the wilder side of her instincts?”
For a moment, I heard nothing but road noise over the phone, and I had no doubt they were mouthing things silently to each other as Marc drove.
“She killed people, Titus,” Faythe finally said. “She couldn’t help but kill people. This is in her best interest, but it’s also in yours.”
“Mine? You think Robyn and I—”
“I meant ‘you’ in the plural sense,” she clarified. “This is in the public’s best interest, so to speak.”
But that wasn’t entirely true. That much was clear in the newly tense tone of her voice. “Why don’t you say whatever you’re dancing around, Faythe?”
She exhaled slowly. “The council has asked me to make sure you understand how vulnerable Robyn is at this point in her acclimation. She’s still having flashbacks and nightmares, and they’re afraid she might misunderstand any overture of friendship on your part. That she might…form an attachment. And that you might let her.”
“You think I’m taking advantage of her?” I demanded.
“No. I don’t,” Faythe insisted. “I know you better than that. But I also know that things happen without planning, especially when the people involved are vulnerable or in pain.” The sincerity in her voice sounded visceral and very personal. As if she were reading a page from her own history. “Mistakes are made, and they can’t be taken back.”
And suddenly I understood. She’s talking about Jace. About their affair, years ago, before she’d married Marc.
Yet she was also talking about Robyn and me. Did that make me the potential mistake Robyn would one day regret?
“Okay, look,” Marc said. “This isn’t personal. We have to make sure you understand your position here, since Jace and Abby left her alone in your territory. Her safety is entirely in your hands. You’re an authority figure. You can’t sleep with her. No matter what.”
“You’re questioning my ethics and taking charge of a decision that belongs to Robyn.” My voice had become a growl. My temper was a storm surge battering the walls of a weakened dam.