“The circumstances won’t matter,” Titus insisted. “An Alpha has to be above reproach. Especially the first stray Alpha.”
“Okay. Well, we still have options.” Drew shrugged. “The council doesn’t have to know. Even if they decide to do an inspection or official tour of the territory, they don’t ever have to meet Corey Morris. We can send him home with Spencer, to recuperate in private.”
Titus took a long drink from his mug. “Even if I wanted to start my official relationship with the council off with a lie, that won’t work. This is a long-term problem. Anyone who ever smells Morris’s scent will link him to me, and eventually, that information will make it to the council. And that would be worse than owning up to it in the first place.”
“You’re right.” Drew’s frown deepened. “We need something more permanent.”
“Whoa, wait a minute.” I stared from one to the other as chills blossomed the full length of my arm. “You can’t just kill him!” I whispered, well aware that if Corey knew enough to use his feline hearing, he’d hear me anyway.
Finally, they both turned to look at me, wearing identical scowls. “We don’t kill people, Robyn,” Titus said. “He’s talking about a more permanent solution to the Alpha problem. Not the Corey Morris problem.”
Oh. Wait. “What does that even mean?”
Titus exhaled heavily. “I have to step down.” He met my gaze with an iron determination. “That’s what’s best for the Pride.”
“What’s best for the Pride is you as its leader.” A few hours ago, I couldn’t understand why Titus would want to turn the free zone into another Pride-controlled territory, but now the thought of him losing something he’d worked so hard for—something intended to help strays abandoned by the existing system—was breaking my heart. And pissing me off. “This is your Pride!”
Titus shook his head. “It’ll never be recognized as a Pride at all with me as the Alpha.”
“He’s right,” Drew said. “We need to face the reality of the situation, which is that the odds are already stacked against us. We have to work harder and hold ourselves to a higher standard than natural-born cats just to get a seat at the table. We can’t ask for recognition with this hanging over our heads. They already think most of us are savages.”
“You’re wrong!” I insisted. “Faythe and Marc know better. Abby’s dad knows better.”
“They’re a minority of the council,” Titus pointed out. “They can’t outvote the others.”
“Look, I know this is none of my business. And I know we only met a couple of days ago. But I also know that whatever happened, you couldn’t have intended to infect Corey Morris.” I was more certain of that than of anything else I’d learned since sneaking out of the Di Carlos’ territory. “So tell them what happened and let the facts stand on their own. Tell us what happened.”
“We’re beyond that. What matters now is getting in front of this before it can hurt the Pride.” Titus stood and dumped the rest of his mug into the sink. “Drew, call a meeting.”
I stared at them both, frustration pounding in my head like a migraine. Why are Alphas so stubborn?
Drew stood. “Should I call in the patrols?”
“No, just the toms currently in residence. I’ll draft a letter to everyone else. We’ll meet in the study in twenty minutes.”
Drew gave him a sharp nod, then disappeared up the steps. Titus sank into a chair at the table again and crossed his arms over his chest while he stared at Morris, who lay on his bed, facing the wall. The Alpha was clearly lost in his own thoughts until I pushed my chair closer to the table and it scraped against the concrete floor.
“Robyn.” He seemed surprised to see me still there. “I could use time alone.”
“Tough. What’s going on, Titus?”
“The world is crumbling beneath my feet. Is that not obvious?” His scowl felt like clouds rolling in front of the sun, an effect that even Bert Di Carlo’s disapproval hadn’t had on me. With a brief beat of panic, I realized what that meant—my shifter half had come to recognize Titus’s strength and authority. To feel it in my bones, like some incontrovertible truth.
This is how it happens. How shifters come to follow men like Titus and women like Faythe—people willing to put the good of those they lead over their own well-being. And the natural-born probably never even felt it. Or rather, they were born feeling it, thus likely never noticed.
Bert Di Carlo was not my Alpha—that much was suddenly perfectly clear. But Titus Alexander could be.
Assuming he would ever be anyone’s Alpha.
“I saw your face.” I leaned across the table and took his hand, refusing to let go when he tried to pull away. “You didn’t infect Corey Morris. Not on purpose, anyway. You had no idea you were going to find your own scent when you tested his.”
His eyes narrowed. “You don’t know me well enough to know that.”
“Bullshit.” I tried to pretend that didn’t hurt. “Surprise looks much the same on any face. And if you had infected him, you wouldn’t have kept him here, waiting for your own guilt to emerge. So what’s going on?”
Titus exhaled, then firmly removed his hand from my grip. “Robyn, go upstairs and wait with the others in the study. Now.”
He hadn’t made a request. He’d given me an order.
I stood to follow that order, even though my human half wanted to protest, but then the guesthouse door opened overhead. Footsteps thumped down the stairs, and Brandt appeared on the landing, then jogged the rest of the way down. “What’s going on, Titus? Drew’s calling a meeting, but he won’t say…” Brandt’s words faded into nothing as his gaze fell on Corey Morris. “Is this about the infector? Are we going to bring him in?”
Titus’s jaw clenched, but Brandt hardly noticed as he crossed the concrete floor toward the open cell at the end. He took a dramatic whiff at the threshold, and his entire body tensed.
“What the fuck, man?” Brandt spun faster than any human could have without losing his balance. “All I’ve heard from you since I got here is how we’re never, ever supposed to do to someone else what was done to us. The guys lost their jobs. They got kicked out of their homes when they got infected. They can’t get married or ever have kids because we’re not allowed to tell anyone else what we are. How could you preach one thing, then do the opposite?”
“This is a little more complicated than it looks,” Titus growled, staring at the hands he held clasped tightly on the table, and my pulse leaped with hope at the first acknowledgment I’d heard from him that all was not as it seemed.
“Bullshit!” Brandt growled.
I stood so fast my chair scraped the floor behind me. “Do not curse at your Alpha!”
Titus’s head swiveled toward me, his brows almost comically high.
Brandt looked at me through eyes haunted by betrayal and shiny with unshed tears. I understood how he felt, having obviously lost an idol. But that didn’t excuse his behavior.
The young tom tore his pained gaze away from me and aimed it at Titus. “Sack up, man. Take responsibility, like you’re always saying. Did you infect that poor guy?”
Titus stood slowly, as if the motion actually hurt. “Yes. I infected him,” he said, and the words seem to drain the steel from his spine. The strength from his soul. They seemed to break him, like nothing ever thrown at him, including his own infection, ever had. “I’m sorry I let you down.”
Brandt blinked tears from his eyes and stood straighter. He’d obviously expected Titus to deny it. To somehow explain away the evidence we could both smell clearly. When that didn’t happen, he turned and ran back up the stairs. A second later, he slammed the guest house door.
Hands clenched into fists at his sides, Titus unleashed a roar so visceral and deep that his vocal cords must have shifted, though no visible part of him had.
In his cell, Corey Morris whined, and I wondered for the first time how much he’d understood of what he’d heard.
According to
his own narrative, Corey hadn’t attacked the cat who’d infected him, and I had no reason based on his scent or body language to believe he’d been lying about that. And since he hadn’t gotten a good look at his attacker, there probably wasn’t much he could reveal about Titus’s involvement, one way or another.
“I’m sorry,” Titus said through clenched teeth, and it took me a second to realize he was apologizing for losing his temper.
“If you’re going to be sorry about something, be sorry about lying to Brandt.”
His gaze narrowed on me. “I didn’t lie.”
“Yes, you did. And now you’re doing it again. I know what a man looks like when he lies to my face.”
Titus exhaled and sank into his chair again. “The facts and details aren’t as important as the greater truth; which is that the only thing I can do for Brandt and the others now is step down. Shifters live and die by their senses, Robyn, and what our senses are telling us is that I infected Corey Morris. Whether you like it or not, I’m a liability to the Pride.”
I sat in the chair next to him and ducked to catch his gaze. “But there has to be some—”
“Robyn.” He took my hand and looked right into my eyes. “I appreciate your trust, and on some level, I even appreciate your indomitable spirit, as infuriating as I find it in this moment. But for the next half hour, I’m still the Alpha here, and you are not allowed to argue with the Alpha.”
That was the first thing he’d said in the past few minutes that made sense.
“Fine. So, who will replace you? How does that work, anyway? You appoint someone?”
“Yes. I think. Though technically anyone can challenge the Alpha to a fight, at any time, and if the challenger wins, he’s the new Alpha.”
“Or she.”
That drew a smile from him. “Yes. Or she.”
“So it doesn’t really matter who you appoint?”
“If the men still have any respect for my opinion and experience after they hear about Morris, then they’ll believe that whoever I appoint is the man most worthy of the job. If not…” he shrugged.
“They know you better than I do. If I can tell that this is more complicated than a simple attack, they’ll believe that too.” Yet Brandt hadn’t, because… “If you let them believe that.”
Titus gave me a quiet smile, but he looked unconvinced.
“So, who will you appoint? Jace?”
“Jace is the most qualified, but…”
“But he’s not here?” I guessed, when Titus’s voice trailed off.
“That, and he’s natural-born. They like him, and they’re fine with him here in an advisory position. But they won’t want to be led by someone they think holds himself above them.”
Did they really think of Jace like that? What about Abby?
“My other concern with Jace is that he’s already insisted that putting him in charge won’t help our case with the council. If they wanted to recognize Jace as an Alpha, they wouldn’t have exiled him in the first place.”
“So then, Drew?” I guessed.
Titus nodded slowly.
“You look doubtful.”
“I’m not sure he’s ready, but he’s my only real option. Fortunately, he has the best interest of the Pride at heart, and he’s been with me from the beginning. I’m sure he’ll accept advice from both Jace and me behind the scenes.” Titus blinked, then shook his head, as if he were trying to wake up from a long nap. Or emerge from shock. “I’m sorry. That’s nothing you should have to worry about.”
Which was clearly just a nice way to say it was none of my business, and if he’d been thinking straight, he would never have revealed an Alpha’s private doubts to an outsider.
Titus stood and squared his shoulders, and I could practically see him donning determination as if it were an article of clothing. “You don’t need to come to the meeting. None of this has anything to do with you.”
“Seriously?” I stood and stepped into his path, so he’d have to stop and reconsider. “So once you step down, your deal with the council will be void? I can take off whenever I want?”
“That’s not what I meant.” Titus ran one hand through his hair. “Drew will uphold our agreement. That’s in the Pride’s best interest. You’ll get the rest of your two weeks.”
“And after that? What if I don’t want to leave here? Does Drew have the experience and backbone to stand up to the council?” Would he do that for someone he’d just met? Someone who wasn’t ready to pledge loyalty to him as an Alpha?
“I don’t know. I’m sure he’ll do the best he can.” He tried to step around me, heading for the stairs, but I grabbed his arm to stop him.
“Titus. What’s going to happen to them without you? Where will your enforcers live? Can Drew afford to pay them? I may not know much about the inner workings of a Pride, but I know they can’t operate without enforcers. Or funds.”
“He’ll figure something out. Alphas have been running territories for generations without a fortune to fall back on.” Titus shrugged. “I’ll fund them for a while and then maybe he can get a day job and charge dues, like the other Alphas. But that’ll be up to him. I can’t really think about that right now. I have to…” He gestured for the staircase, then stepped around me and took the steps two at a time.
I followed him out of the guesthouse, around the pool, and into the kitchen, where he stopped. Listening.
“You can’t be serious.” I recognized Knox’s voice from down the hall, and even most of the wordless grunts of agreement following it sounded familiar. “This is a joke.”
“Go see for yourself,” Brandt said. “I wouldn’t have believed it either, if I hadn’t smelled him.”
Titus took a deep breath, then marched forward with his shoulders square.
“You don’t have to do this,” I whispered as I followed on his heels. “Tell them the truth. Whatever that is, it can’t be worse than losing your position. Than losing their respect.”
“I’ve made my decision,” he growled softly.
I shrugged and stepped past him. “Fine. Then I’ll tell them you’re hiding something.”
“Robyn.” Titus grabbed my arm, his eyes flashing with the first beats of anger I’d seen from him. “This is my last order to you as an Alpha. Keep your mouth shut. Do you understand?”
His order resonated through me with the authority behind his words. The shifter half of me demanded that I obey. But if I could choose to fight my attraction to him—just another instinct to be conquered—I could fight the order too.
Or…
“I tell you what.” I stood on my toes so I could reach his ear, and his scent triggered a rush of my pulse. “I’ll keep my mouth shut during the meeting if you give me your word that you’ll tell me the truth afterward.”
Titus’s eyes narrowed. His brows dipped low. His grip on my arm tightened. “Just you?” he demanded softly, and I couldn’t quite smother the chill his whisper sent through me. “And you’ll keep it to yourself? You swear?”
“I swear on the very concepts of feminism and independence.”
His left brow arched. “Those are odd things to swear by.”
I shrugged. “Those are the parts of me most threatened by my new life as a shifter. They’re what I cling to, so that I know I’m still me, even when the fur takes over. Even when I follow orders. Take it or leave it.”
Titus’s puzzled expression melted into…surprise. “Alphas aren’t typically given ultimatums. I’ll take it. But don’t make this a habit.” He let go of my arm, then leaned down to whisper again into my ear. “And do not break your word, Robyn.”
The fierce edge in his voice called out to something primal deep inside me. I nodded, then I followed him down the hall and into a two-story study that I might have called a library instead. Three of the four walls were lined with shelves packed with hardbacks—mostly old leather-bound editions. In one corner, a tall ladder rested on a rail that would carry some lucky reader all the way around t
he room and up to the shelves at the top of the high ceiling.
In the center of the room, Brandt and the resident enforcers were seated on a cluster of leather furniture arranged around an old Persian rug in shades of red, brown, and dark blue.
A few feet away, Drew Borden sat on the edge of a massive, ornate wooden desk, one foot planted on the floor. He cleared his throat when we stepped into the room, and everyone got quiet as they turned to stare.
Titus stopped inside the doorway. “I’m not going to drag this out,” he said. “I’m stepping down as Alpha, effective immediately. Recent developments have made it clear that my leadership will do more harm than good for the Pride. I ask that you accept Drew Borden as your new Alpha.”
Drew looked humbled by the nomination, but not truly surprised. “Titus, I’m not sure—”
“You’ll be fine,” Titus insisted. “And both Jace and I are on call to advise, as often as you need us. I will call Faythe Sanders and report the change. Expect to hear from her later today.” He closed his eyes and inhaled slowly. Then he focused on Drew again. “You’ll need to make other housing and finance arrangements, but for now, you’re all welcome here. I will be taking a short trip so that my presence won’t interfere with your transition into a leadership role.”
With that, he turned and headed for the staircase at the front of the house.
I lingered in the study doorway, watching as shock rippled across the small crowd. For a couple of seconds, no one spoke. Then Brandt let out a disgusted huff.
“I told you. He did it. He got caught, so now he’s quitting. He’s a fucking hypocrite!”
“Brandt.” Lochlan twisted his long blond hair into a bun as he spoke. “Shut up and let the grownups think.”
“He’s understandably frustrated,” Drew said. Then he turned to Brandt with a stern expression. “But that’s no excuse for the name-calling. Whatever’s happened doesn’t change the fact that Titus has been a great leader and he’s put nothing ahead of the good of the Pride. The very fact that he’s stepping down illustrates that.”
Brandt nodded, staring at the hands clasped in his lap.
“Let’s keep this under wraps until Titus and I have a chance to notify the rest of the Pride. I’ll be putting together a new patrol schedule and will be selecting a second in command within the next day or so…”