Alpha (Shifters #6)(45)

I blinked back more tears. How long would it be before we could talk about him without crying?
“I can’t… I don’t think I can be what he was.” I swallowed thickly, and her hand squeezed mine. “At least, not yet. But Marc and Uncle Rick promised to serve as advisers, and I was hoping you would, too, when things settle down a little.”
She actually managed a half smile at that. “I’m even prouder of you now.”
“So, no one can come to the funeral?” Owen said, and I nodded, leaning over the back of my father’s armchair. I couldn’t bring myself to actually sit in it, but I had to assume some physical position of authority. It was expected. Sometimes people recognize leaders based on subconscious clues, and standing near my father’s traditional seat of authority was the simplest, most seamless way I knew to reinforce the idea of me as his successor.
But since Owen and Parker had sworn their loyalty and no one present had questioned my authority yet, I couldn’t help wondering if I was really trying to convince myself.
“No one who isn’t already here,” I qualified. “But once this is all over, we’ll have a true memorial. He will be properly remembered.”
“But not inviting people seems so…cold,” Brian said, from the couch where he sat with Parker and Marc.
“Quite the opposite, really.” My mother spoke softly, but had no trouble capturing everyone’s attention from her perch on the love seat next to Manx. “It will be intimate. A small, closed burial will give us a chance to mourn him in private before we have to put our grief on display for everyone else he ever knew.”
And just like that, it was settled. Thank goodness. I was in awe of my mother.
“Then we fight?” Eagerness bled through Vic’s voice like spilled wine through silk.
“Yes, and we don’t leave the Appalachian territory until I personally verify that Calvin Malone is no longer breathing. Colin Dean is the secondary objective, and while I’d love the chance to give him a slow, agonizing death for what he did to our Alpha, we can’t afford to be that picky. I’ll take him dead if taking him alive doesn’t look possible.” And if I knew Dean, he’d make us kill him rather than be taken prisoner.
“Is there a specific plan, beyond kill, maim, and capture?” Parker asked, looking grimmer than I’d ever seen him. He was taking the news about his father very badly, and I could smell the whiskey on his breath even from across the room. I’d have to talk to him about that. 
“Yes, actually. Obviously, Patricia and Melody Malone are completely off-limits, though you have permission to protect yourselves from them as necessary.” And I was living proof that an angry tabby could be just as hard to handle as a tomcat. “As for everyone else, kill only if you have to. We’re trying to whack off the enemy’s head, not hack him into a million pieces, and a little mercy can go a long way.”
“It can also get you killed,” Parker said.
“Yeah. Let’s try not to let that happen.” I blinked and forced my eyes to refocus as I glanced around the room at all the faces watching me. “In addition to all that, we’ll have backup from the East Coast, the Midwest, and the southeast Prides.” Uncle Rick, Aaron Taylor, and Bert Di Carlo’s men, of course. “As well as air support from a Flight of thunderbirds. At least, that’s the plan.” Though we had yet to actually secure their help, because they could only be contacted in person.
When the mumbles of surprise subsided, I continued, unable to completely bury my grim smile. “I’m hoping all of that turns out to be major overkill, but this is our last good shot at taking Malone out, and we are not going to mess it up.”
That time, the general sentiment was approval, and a palpable surge of bloodlust-tinged anticipation.
When I’d answered the rest of the questions and outlined the basics of the private burial, I dismissed the meeting with a suggestion that everyone get some sleep. There’d be little time to rest after the funeral the next day.
“Well done,” Marc said, as the last of the toms filed into the hallway.
I was exhausted, mentally and physically, and I really wanted to sit. I glanced down at my dad’s chair, and Jace chuckled. “You can sit there, you know. I don’t think he’d mind.”
I shook my head. “I’m not ready. It feels weird.” And there was nowhere else in the room to sit without looking like I was taking sides; Marc sat on the couch, and Jace sat on the love seat.
“So, are you going to stand up for every meeting?” Marc grinned like he was joking, but he wasn’t. And what he really wanted to ask was if I intended to stand, rather than choose between the two of them.
“Maybe. At least until I figure out…what works best.”
“Are you hungry?” Jace asked, and Marc scowled.
“No. I’m fine. Listen, guys…” I released a long exhale and finally sank onto the arm of my father’s chair, one foot on the ground for balance. “You don’t need to wait on me. I don’t want you to. I can cook my own food and get my own coffee.”
Marc actually laughed. “Faythe, you don’t cook worth a damn.”
“Okay, you’ve got me there.” However, unless we were talking frozen pizza or hamburgers, neither did either of them. “But my point is that I can’t be my dad, and you don’t need to treat me like him. I’m still trying to figure all this out—figure out who I need to be, to be Alpha—and the last thing I need is for you two to start acting weird around me.”
Jace chuckled. “At the risk of pissing Marc off, I don’t think either of us has any intention of treating you like your dad.”
Marc scowled again, but he couldn’t argue. “I just want to take care of you, Faythe.”
“I know. And I really do appreciate it. I just… I have a lot to sort out right now. I’ll get it figured out. I swear. But right now, I have to talk to Kaci.”
I left them in the office, but I stopped to listen just outside the door when I heard Marc speak. “You’re not making this any easier on her,” he snapped, and I could practically feel Jace bristle, even with a wall separating us. “I’m not making it easier on her? You’re the one brooding and pouting and…”I cleared my throat where they could hear, then headed toward the kitchen to rescue Kaci from Holly.
Twenty-one
“You’re a cousin, right, Karli?” Holly said, and I pressed my back to the wall to eavesdrop for the second time in as many minutes. I’d asked Kaci to keep Michael’s human wife occupied during the Shifter-only meeting in the office.
“Um… Yeah.” Kaci hadn’t actually had to use the identity my father had created for her with anyone but Holly so far, and I mentally crossed my fingers that she would remember it. “Why?”
“Are the other branches of this family so…weird?”
“What do you mean?” Kaci asked, and I cringed. We all knew exactly what Holly meant.
“Private funerals. Practically weekly family emergencies, usually in the middle of the night. Closed-door family meetings that include the employees, but not the daughter-in-law. Farmhands who live on the property, even though there’s no livestock at all, and in the winter there isn’t even any hay.”
“I don’t know about any of that,” Kaci hedged. “My family didn’t have a farm.”
I almost laughed out loud.
“So, where is your family?” Holly asked, with all the sensitivity of a drunken frat boy. “Why do you live with your cousins instead of your parents?”
Aaaand, there’s my cue…
I rounded the corner into the kitchen to save Kaci from having to reply, trying to look like I hadn’t been listening in. Kaci sat at the breakfast bar, her long, thick brown waves pulled into a tight braid. Holly stood opposite her, measuring cocoa powder to dump into a saucepan of milk. She wore only eye makeup and had pulled her hair into a simple ponytail at the base of her skull. In jeans and a snug tee, she looked nothing like the pictures I’d seen of her on the runway, but she was still beautiful, even without all the professional hair and cosmetic artists molding her into the guise of perfection. She looked…clean and honest, if more than a little confused.
“Hey, Faythe, we’re making hot chocolate.” Her smile was sincere, even as her concerned gaze studied me for clues about how I was taking my father’s untimely death. “You want some?”
Hot chocolate, the old-fashioned way, and unassisted beauty. No wonder Michael loved her, in spite of the obvious Shifting handicap.
“Um, sure.” I slid onto the bar stool beside Kaci and gave her a subtle nod to tell her that everything was okay—as okay as it could be, considering—and that I’d fill her in soon.
“Do you have any mint extract? It’s really good with chocolate….” 
“Check my mom’s baking cabinet.” I gestured to the cabinet doors behind her, and the only human Sanders turned to look.
I probably would have liked Holly, too, if I wasn’t always so busy trying to keep secrets from her. We couldn’t tell her what we really were because disclosure of our existence to a human was a capital offense. Punishable by execution. Not that the Territorial Council was in any shape to enforce such a sentence at the moment, but as much of a pain as she could be at times, none of us wanted to expose either Holly or Michael to any unnecessary danger.