Reeling, I backed away from the study, trying to wrap my head around events still unfolding. How could Drew already have a game-plan minutes after losing his Alpha, when I was still stunned by the change of leadership?
When Titus was still obviously in shock.
Titus.
I jogged up the stairs and down the hall, then planted one foot in Titus’s bedroom doorjamb just in time to stop it from closing. Too late, I remembered I wasn’t wearing shoes. “Ow! Wait.” I pulled my foot free and rubbed it while I hopped on the healthy one, grateful for the cat’s balance that kept me upright. “You gave me your word.”
Titus pulled the door open and looked at me. I stopped hopping and set my throbbing right foot on the floor, suddenly aware of how stupid I must look. “Come in. But we’ll have to talk while I pack.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m taking a leave of absence. Like I said.”
“Yes, but where are you going?” I stepped into his room and was surprised to find it nearly spotless in the wake of Corey Morris’s invasion. No more torn clothing on the floor. No more wet footprints. The exception was his bed, which still looked very much slept in, with the dark gray comforter askew and the crimson sheet hanging from one side. “Where does a billionaire go to get away from his problems? Europe? The Caribbean?”
“Jackson.” Titus opened a door on the far wall and disappeared into a closet the size of my former dorm room, lined with racks of hanging slacks and suit jackets.
“Jackson, Mississippi? As in, an hour from here?”
The grunt from the depths of his closet sounded vaguely like an affirmation. A second later, he emerged with a carry-on sized designer suitcase.
“Why the hell would you go to…” My question faded into nothing. The answer was suddenly obvious. “Jackson is where Corey Morris was infected. You’re not trying to get away from this. You’re digging deeper into it.”
Titus wouldn’t investigate something he already understood. But if he didn’t understand how Corey Morris was infected, why would he accept the blame for it? Why would he give up his territory and leadership position?
He set his suitcase on the bed and flipped it open without even a glance in my direction. While he returned to his closet, I closed the hard shell case and sat on it. He returned with an armload of clothes and stopped short when he saw me.
“Spill it, Titus. I’m not going to move until you do.”
TWELVE
Titus
Robyn sat on my suitcase in those snug jeans, her legs crossed at the knee and dangling down the side of my unmade bed. The sight of her there, so close to where I wanted her, sent a spike through my pulse.
But she’d never been mine, and I no longer had the luxury of pretending otherwise.
I laid my clothes across the footboard, trying not to notice that she twisted to watch me, then I headed into my closet. “Do you honestly think I only own one suitcase?”
When I came out with a spare, she was sitting on my clothing, her legs now dangling against my footboard.
“I know you have more clothes,” Robyn said, looking up at me with her arms crossed beneath her breasts. “And more suitcases. And probably duplicates of everything you own. I can’t stop you from running out of here without keeping your promise. But I don’t think you’ll do that. A good Alpha keeps his word.”
“I’m not an Alpha anymore,” I pointed out as I eyed the wrinkles her shapely thigh was pressing into my favorite shirt. Wishing I was wearing it at that moment.
“You’re not their Alpha. But you’re still an Alpha. According to Abby, the position of ‘Alpha-as-leader’ isn’t the same as being an Alpha. Her brother Isaac is in charge of his Pride, but he’s not truly an Alpha yet. And Jace is an Alpha with no Pride to lead. That’s why you two keep butting heads. You’re like him now. A displaced Alpha. But a good one. You’ll keep your word.” Her mischievous smile stirred a heat deep inside me. “And in case I’m wrong about that, I’m fully prepared to obstruct you every step of the way until you start talking.”
I could see that she wasn’t bluffing. And I had given my word.
“Okay, but this is for your ears only, Robyn. You can’t tell Drew. You can’t even tell Abby. I need you to swear, and I need to know you mean it.”
“I swear.” Her smile faded into a look of concern. “What’s going on, Titus?”
I pulled her to her feet and hung my clothes over my desk chair, then sat in the chair. Robyn sank on the edge of the bed again, facing me, worry dipping her brows lower over her big blue eyes. I exhaled slowly. Then I met her gaze.
“You were right. I lied. The scent woven through Morris’s isn’t mine.” I could see the questions already forming on her tongue, but I pressed on before she could ask them, because once Robyn started talking, it was hard for anyone else to get a word in. “It’s my brother’s. The scents of same-sex full-blood siblings are very similar. Have you ever smelled Abby’s brothers?”
Robyn shook her head. “I’ve met Jace’s brothers, but at the time I was too preoccupied with the charges against me to notice what they smelled like.” She shrugged and dropped her gaze to the floor. “And that was before my mandatory training, so I wasn’t really tuned in to how much you can learn about a person from his scent. Other than the obvious advantage for identifying the bastards who did this to me.”
“Well, if any of them had had brothers, you might have made some big mistakes,” I told her.
She snorted. “The current consensus is that I did make some big mistakes.” She blinked, and I could practically see her dragging her focus back to the present. “Tell me about your brother.”
“Justus is eleven years my junior. He was a freshman in high school when our parents died.” He’d been devastated, and being there for him had let me defer my own mourning until he’d left for college, which had turned out to be both a blessing and a curse. “Now he’s a sophomore at Millsaps. In Jackson.”
Her frown deepened as the location sank in. “Where Corey Morris was infected. Do the guys know?”
“That Justus exists? Of course. There are pictures of him all over the house. His bedroom is the one across from mine and next to yours, but he never comes home anymore, and Drew’s the only one who’s met him.” A very deliberate decision on my part.
“So they’ll assume Morris is carrying a trace of your scent for the same reason I did,” Robyn said, clearly thinking it through. “Because they’ve never smelled your brother. But if Drew’s met him, why doesn’t he recognize Justus’s scent?”
“He’ll figure it out eventually. But so far, it hasn’t occurred to him that my brother could have infected Corey Morris because Justus is human. At least, he was when I saw him over the holidays. I’ve been very careful to keep him out of all Alpha-related business. He didn’t even know shifters exist. Though he clearly knows now.”
The thought of what my brother had been through—the inevitable trauma of his infection—made me want to put my fist through the wall. I’d jumped through every hoop imaginable to keep him safe and in ignorance of the violence that had become my life since my own infection. In ignorance of the struggle to protect the strays in my territory, often from each other and from themselves.
But obviously my efforts had been spent in vain.
“I should have told him.” I leaned forward with my head in my hands, devastated to realize that my attempts to keep Justus safe had actually put him in more danger. “If he’d known we existed, he would have come to me when he realized he was infected. He would have known how to handle his own transition.” I sat up and met her gaze with an anguished one of my own. “Robyn, if I had let him meet the guys and see what we’re doing, he wouldn’t be out there infecting other innocent people.”
Corey Morris’s infection was my fault, even though I’d never laid a single claw on him. In that sense, what I’d told my men was true.
“Second guessing yourself now won’t help,” Robyn insisted. “Hind
sight is worthless unless you can learn from it, and what could you possibly learn from this? You can’t just announce our existence to the world so that the next person who gets infected understands what’s happening. That’s against the council’s rules.”
Which was one of the reasons I hadn’t disclosed our existence to Justus—telling him would have been violating one of the Shifter world’s most important prohibitions and likely would have kept me from being acknowledged as Alpha.
Had I sacrificed my brother’s safety for my own ambition?
“Titus, I don’t even understand this.” Robyn’s frown became a wide-eyed look of confusion. “How could you possibly keep this from your brother, logistically speaking? Doesn’t he come home on school breaks? How do you explain the parade of totally ripped men walking around half-naked in your home? Some halfway house for reformed male strippers?”
A laugh snuck up on me, and when I saw her small smile, I realized she’d startled me out of self-pity.
“Justus used to come home during his breaks, but when I decided to turn my home into Pride headquarters, I started sending him on trips during the holidays, instead. I can’t go with him, unless we vacation in one of the free zones, so we’ve rented this cabin up in the Montana free zone for the past two Christmases. And there are no shifters native to island nations, so in the summer we spend a couple of weeks in the Bahamas or the Caribbean, before I send him to Europe for the rest of his break.” I shrugged. “I don’t know how long that routine would have held up, but it’s worked so far.”
“But did you think that for the rest of his life he’d never make a surprise visit? Did you truly think you could keep this from him forever?”
“Of course not. I knew I’d have to tell him something once the Pride was recognized.” But in addition to it being against the rules, jumping the gun felt like jinxing myself—a superstitious end to the possibility that the Pride ever would be recognized.
“Okay. So if Drew will eventually figure out the truth about your brother, why bother hiding it? Or stepping down? As Alpha, wouldn’t you be in a better position to help Justus?”
“I don’t think so.” I’d thought about little else in the past hour. “And trying to help him might endanger my position anyway. Creating a stray is a capital offense. A mandatory death sentence.”
“So is killing a human, yet I survived. And Abby said that Faythe infected someone years ago, and she’s in charge of a whole Pride now. They found her guilty, but gave her a light sentence because the infection was an accident. It could go the same way for your brother.”
I shook my head. She still didn’t understand. “You’re both women. The council values your lives over male lives. Especially over stray male lives. Most of the members will take any excuse to execute a stray, and I can’t let that happen to my brother. I have to find out what really happened before anyone else figures out that he’s involved. Thus the suitcase.” I stood and flipped open one of the hard shell cases, then began folding the clothes draped over the back of my chair.
“Okay.” Robyn stood and headed for the door. “Let me get my stuff. Which is pretty much the extra toothbrush you gave me yesterday.”
“Whoa, wait,” I said, but she kept walking, so I had to jog past her to block the bedroom door. “You have to stay here.”
“Why? Do you think the council will keep its word, now that you’re not the Alpha? Because I think they’ll use this as an excuse to make me go to Atlanta immediately. Especially now that Abby and Jace aren’t here. They’re not going to leave one of their precious tabbies in the hands of a bunch of strays they’ve never even met and have no reason to trust.”
“Robyn, I gave them my word.” Breaking that now would only make things worse for both of us. And for Justus.
“But you never told them I’d stay in this house for two weeks. What you told them was that you’d protect me, and you can’t do that if I’m here and you’re in Jackson. What if something happens to me while you’re gone? They’ll hold you responsible. You have to take me with you, Titus.”
Son of a bitch. Robyn had me. And it was possible I didn’t try very hard to convince her otherwise.
“Fine. Go get your…toothbrush. I have to make some calls.”
Robyn looked satisfied, if not happy, as she raced into the hall and closed my bedroom door behind her.
I called Jace first, while I packed. He answered on the third ring. “Hey, Titus, what’s up?” Highway noise and the use of a hands-free speaker made him difficult to understand, but cat’s hearing gave me an advantage. “Robyn driving you nuts already?”
The grunt immediately following his question told me Abby had elbowed him. Or punched him in the arm.
“No. Well, yes, but that’s not why I’m calling.” I rolled a wrinkle-resistant button-up shirt and wedged it into the suitcase between a pair of spare shoes. “Shouldn’t you guys be there by now?”
“We stopped for a long lunch,” Abby called out. “We’re about half an hour away.”
“Has Drew been in touch?” I asked.
“No.” A steady ticking sound came over the line as he used his blinker. “Why would he?”
“Because I just stepped down as Alpha and put him in charge.”
“Whoa, what?” Abby demanded, as brakes squealed over the line. “Jace, pull over.”
“Working on it,” Jace said. “Titus, what’s going on?”
“I don’t have much time, so I’ll let Drew go into the details later. But the quick version is this: I’ve been implicated in the infection of the stray Spencer brought in last night. I stepped down to keep that from affecting the Pride’s chances of acceptance.”
“You can’t really stop that,” Jace said.
“I know, but they’re better off without me at the moment.”
“What happened?” Abby demanded. “What do you mean by ‘implicated’?”
“I’m not going to go into that right now. What I can tell you is that it’s not what it looks like, but it’s every bit as bad as it sounds. I’m leaving for a few days to figure this whole thing out, but I’ll have my phone with me. I told Drew that you and I would both be available in an advisory capacity.”
“Of course,” Jace said.
Abby sighed. “Jace, maybe we should go back. You’re more qualified than Drew…”
“Yet less likely to be acknowledged by the council. I’m no good to the Pride except in an advisory role,” he insisted, echoing what he’d already told me a dozen times.
“But we can’t leave Robyn there now. Everything will be chaotic, and Drew will be distracted from looking out for her.”
I added another rolled up pair of jeans to my suitcase, then threw in several pairs of boxer briefs. “Robyn’s coming with me.”
“What? Where are you going?” Abby demanded. “You can’t parade Robyn around the free zone. It isn’t safe.”
“There won’t be any parading. And since I gave my word that I’d protect her, I kind of have to bring her.”
Jace chuckled. “That was her idea, wasn’t it?”
“It doesn’t matter whose idea it was. I’m hanging up now so I can call Faythe.” I said as I flipped my suitcase closed. “But don’t worry about Robyn. She’ll be fine. I swear on my life.”
“What about you?” Abby asked. “Will you be fine?”
“You’ll know as soon as I do.” With that, I hung up the phone and sank onto the edge of the bed. The most difficult call was yet to come.
I dialed Faythe’s cell phone while I closed the clasps on my suitcase, and I was almost relieved when her voicemail kicked in. I left the basics—I was stepping down for the good of the Pride, and Drew Borden would be taking over—in my message, as I threw toiletries into a small leather case in my bathroom. When I emerged from my room, fully packed, I almost ran smack into Robyn, who stood in the middle of the hall. Holding a toothbrush.
“Abby took all her toiletries with her, and since she’s the size of a fourth-grader, all he
r clothes look like dirty Halloween costumes on me.” She shrugged and gestured with the toothbrush. “So it looks like I’m packing as light as I thought I’d be.”
“I have soap and toothpaste and we can stop for clothes and things once we get there,” I told her. Robyn nodded, but didn’t look entirely happy with that thought. “Let’s go.”
“Don’t you want to say goodbye to the guys?” she whispered when I marched down the stairs and headed straight for the front door, carrying my suitcase in one hand.
“No.” The truth was that I had no idea what to say to them, and I wasn’t prepared for the inevitable questions. Any answers I gave could expose my lie, and until I knew exactly what had happened to my brother, I wasn’t going to risk revealing his part in the infection of Corey Morris.
“Well, I do.” Robyn’s shoes squeaked on the marble floor as she spun and headed toward the kitchen, where I could hear most of my men speaking in soft voices. “Hey, I just wanted to say goodbye before we go,” she said, and I closed my eyes and prayed for patience.
“Where are you going?” Knox said. “Aren’t you supposed to stay here?”
“Yes.” Concern rode Drew’s deep baritone. “She is.”
I exhaled slowly, then set my bag down and headed for the kitchen. “I told the council I’d protect her, and I can’t do that if she’s not with me,” I said from the doorway.
“Are you sure about that, Titus?” Drew asked, and his concern raised the hairs on the nape of my neck. It was only natural that he would challenge me, considering his battlefield promotion to Alpha.
And it was only natural that his challenge would irritate me.
“I’m sure.” Even though Robyn had to talk me into it.
“I hate to question your judgment, man. Especially in your own house. But you gave your word as Alpha of this Pride,” Drew said, and the collective focus of the enforcers volleyed back to him, as the level of tension in the room rose. “Shouldn’t that promise be transferred along with the position?”