Thoughts ran through my head so fast I couldn’t truly focus on any of them. So much to be done. So little I knew how to do. So very much pain I didn’t have time to deal with.
The funeral. The fight. Planning for both. Maybe I could funnel my anger over the necessity of burying my father into the plot to assassinate Malone and ruthlessly gut my father’s murderer. You know, two birds, one big, bloody stone? That’s an efficient use of anger motivation, right?
And Kaci. Somehow I’d have to find a way to talk to her about the fact that she’d just lost someone else. The man who had taken her in and protected her with everything he had—including his youngest son’s life—after she’d lost her own family. Kaci couldn’t take much more loss, and I couldn’t in good conscience tell her that my father’s death would be the last.
Chances were good that we would lose someone else. Maybe several someones.
No. I went stiff in Marc’s grip, and his arms tightened around me, wordlessly comforting me even though he didn’t understand what had upset me.
Planning the fight was one thing, but anticipating the tragic outcome was another entirely. I couldn’t think about who those potential casualties might be. Except for me. One of them might be me, and then what would happen to the Pride when I was gone?
“It doesn’t feel like thirty-three years,” my mother said, and I looked up from my own thoughts to see her still kneeling, still facing my father, but obviously speaking to us. “I would never have thought three decades could possibly feel so fleeting, but it feels like I slid my hand into his last week and promised to love him forever. And I’ve never regretted a single moment of it. Not even when he left the bathroom light on or when he fell asleep at his desk at two in the morning.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to stop my silent tears, or how best to dry hers.
“We used to run together, you know. Just the two of us, out in the woods, euphoric over the wind, and the smells, and each other. We never needed anything else, but we were blessed with so very much more.” She twisted to look at me then, and the pain etched into her face brought me to my knees, the ache in my heart an endless, nameless oblivion.
Marc let me go and I crossed the floor toward her.
“We were blessed with you, and with your brothers. As you grew up, I felt so helpless, like I could do little more than watch as you became your own people, all five of you. It was like witnessing a miracle, and it happened so quickly. One day we were fascinated by how tiny Michael’s newborn feet were in those little booties, and the next, you took off for college without a backward glance. I don’t know where the time went, but I spent it all with him, and it slipped away so fast.”I sat next to her on the floor, the straw scratching my back through my shirt, and pressed as close to my mother as I could get. Touch was the only comfort I knew how to give; words had abandoned me entirely.
“I don’t know how to live now, Faythe,” she whispered. “They say you never know what you have until it’s gone, but I knew. I knew every moment, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now, with him gone.”
“You still have us,” I said, well aware that we weren’t enough. Having grown children wasn’t the same as having the love of your life. The other half of your own soul. But I had nothing else to offer her.
Except his last words.
“He gave me a message for you,” I said, and she turned to face me, her blue eyes red with tears and wide with hope. “He said to tell you that you’re his whole life, and have been since the moment he met you. He said that you’re in his heart, and in his soul, and even death will never really separate you.”
And I believed it. If any love could transcend both time and life, it would be my parents’ love.
My mother sobbed again, but this time she was smiling, and I was glad I’d saved his message for that moment. When she truly needed it.
She sat there for several minutes, thinking. Probably remembering. Then she blinked and gave her head a little shake, and I knew she was back in the present. “We have to bury him. I have to call people…”
How could I possibly tell her that we couldn’t do that? That we’d have to bury him like a criminal in the night, to keep the political fallout from making everything impossibly worse?
“I haven’t even told Rick yet.”
“He knows,” I whispered.
She looked startled for a moment, then she nodded. “Of course he knows. He was there. I should have been there.”
No, she shouldn’t have.
“Mom…we have to talk about the rest of this. About what else happened.”
She looked up, and I was relieved to see clarity in her eyes, even if her hand still stroked his arm, unmoving on the bale of hay. “He named you, I know.” She looked suddenly worried. “That was always his plan, but it happened so soon….”
“Yes. He left me in charge of the Pride, but, Mom, the council won’t recognize me, and if we don’t have an ‘acceptable’ Alpha by Saturday, Malone’s going to try to place one of his own choosing.”
My mother’s eyes flashed with fury, and her entire form went stiff. “He’ll have to kill me to do it.”
“Us, too,” Marc said, and Vic nodded.
But actually, he only had to kill me.
“Faythe?” Owen said, and I looked up to see him standing in the doorway with Parker. Owen held his worn cowboy hat over his chest, and as I stood, his gaze slid past me to the bales of hay where our father lay. He stepped forward, and I helped my mother to her feet, then went to meet my brother.
Owen’s arms slid around me along with the scents of clean sweat and earth. There wasn’t much farmwork to do on an animal-free ranch in February, but the telling scents clung to his hat and his boots, triggering a warm, familiar comfort I wouldn’t find anywhere else, now that Ethan was gone.
But comfort could only do so much.
“I should have been there,” he said into my hair, his chin stubble scratching my forehead.
“There’s nothing you could have done.” But I couldn’t tell myself the same thing. I’d seen it coming. I’d seen Dean aiming his gun, and I hadn’t moved fast enough. I couldn’t. “We can’t fight bullets.” But we could rip off the hands holding the guns.
“Mom’s taking it hard,”
“I know. We all are.” My father’s death was shock and devastation like none of us had ever felt. It changed everything. We were hacking a new path through virgin territory without him, and the backlash of branches had already left me bruised. “We’ll get through it—with a healthy dose of ass kicking disguised as therapy.”
“Speaking of which…” Owen let me go and stepped back, gesturing for Parker to come forward.
Parker held out his arms for a hug, and I tried to ignore the fact that he smelled like whiskey. Like a lot of whiskey. “I’m so sorry, Faythe,” he said, when he let me go, running one hand through graying hair that suddenly seemed to be more salt than pepper.
Over his shoulder, I saw Owen wrap one arm around our mother while they shared a private, silent viewing.
Parker cleared his throat and glanced at his feet before looking up again. “You saw my dad? How was he?”
I sighed and resisted the urge to avoid his eyes. Delivering bad news was definitely my least favorite part of the job so far. “Well, let’s just say he is not my biggest fan. In fact, he may be the charter member of the ‘Faythe must die a slow and messy death’ club.”
Parker cringed. “That bad?”
“He called me a disgrace and a whore.”
“Why would he call you a whore?” Owen asked, twisting to face us without letting go of our mother.
“What, the disgrace part doesn’t surprise you?” I forced a grin to let him know I was kidding—and to avoid answering his question. Behind him, Marc stiffened and crossed his arms over his chest.
Parker frowned, too distracted by his personal problems to even process Owen’s question. “I just… I’m so sorry for how my dad treated you. How he’s probably going to treat us all.”
I shook my head and stared up at him, trying to convey import with my gaze alone. “It’s not your responsibility to apologize for your father. None of this is your fault.”
“Knowing that doesn’t lessen the guilt.”
“I know.” Jace felt the same way about his stepfather’s leading role in the effort to take over our Pride, and I had similar feelings about both my brother’s and father’s deaths. Guilt was the least rational emotion I’d ever experienced—and the most difficult to overcome.
“Hey, Brian said we missed the formal swearing, so—” Parker shrugged, and at his words, Owen and my mother turned toward us “—we’re ready to make up for lost time.”
Owen forced a sad smile, one hand curling the rim of his dusty brown hat. “I think the only good thing to come out of this whole thing is the fact that my sister is now the first female Alpha in werecat history. Disgraced or not.”“She was already working hard on infamy, so I’m not sure this really makes that much difference,” Marc quipped.
My mother frowned. “It makes all the difference in the world.” Her warm, thin hand slipped into mine. “I’m proud of you, Faythe. Your father would be, too.”