Alpha (Shifters #6)(60)

“And every cat instinct I have is telling me to kill Jace, but I can’t. My human half knows that if I try to rush you into a decision, or do anything to dissuade you from picking him, it’ll backfire on me.”
I blinked, confused. “Why would it backfire?”
He frowned, as if he knew me better than I knew myself. “If I make Jace into the underdog, you’ll fight for him out of instinct. You always fight for the oppressed. That’s just who you are, and that’s one of the reasons I love you. Even if that isn’t working out in my favor this time.”
My next breath felt almost too thick to drag in. “He’s not the underdog, Marc.” I exhaled heavily and fought the urge to drop my gaze. “There is no underdog.”
“That’s the whole problem. You and I have a real history, Faythe. By rights, I should be the front-runner, and he should be the underdog.”
“I know.” But I couldn’t make myself not love Jace any more than he could make himself not love me. And that’s when the reality of the situation truly sank in. I was going to have to walk away from one man who truly loved me in favor of another. And choosing one didn’t mean I’d quit caring about the other.
But did they both understand that? Hell, did either of them?
Yes. Jace understood. He knew that loving Marc didn’t make me love him any less. But Marc couldn’t compromise. It just wasn’t in his skill set.
“And the worst part of this?” He hesitated, rolling his eyes at his own statement. “Well, it’s not the worst part, but it’s bad enough. The thing is, as much as it kills me to see you with him, when I’m not there, he’s the best qualified to protect you. So even if I thought either of you would listen, I couldn’t ask you to stay away from each other right now. I’m not going to stand in the way of your safety, even if it means losing you to him.”
Tears filled my eyes, and I blinked them away.
“Just…” When I didn’t look up, he stopped and tilted my chin until my gaze met his. His eyes were swimming with pain. “Faythe, just tell me you two are being careful. Don’t give him what you won’t give me.” 
At first, I didn’t understand. Then I did, and I knew what it cost him to ask me that.
“Marc, I’m not… We’re not…” I took a deep breath and started over. “It was just that once. And yeah. We were careful,” I whispered, the ache in my heart threatening to swallow me whole. He let go of my chin, and I stared down at my hands. “More careful than you and I are.” Because sometimes Marc and I just…got distracted and forgot. I reached for his hand, but he pulled away from me, and my chest hurt so bad I could hardly breathe.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Jace asked, and I looked up to see him walking toward us with a set of keys in one hand and a folder full of paperwork in the other.
“Nothing.”
Everything.
I swiped one sleeve across my eyes and stood, throwing my bag over one shoulder. “Let’s go.”
Jace frowned, but knew better than to press the issue.
He’d rented a domestic compact car that got great gas mileage, but came with few extras. Marc drove, because his control issues were in overdrive and he couldn’t take a backseat to Jace.
I didn’t want to drive. My control issues were reserved for people who tried to tell me when and whom to marry.
“Too bad they don’t have phones. I can’t help thinking this would go much more smoothly if we could’ve called ahead to warn them that we’re coming,” Jace said from the backseat.
I twisted in the passenger seat to face him. “And say what? ‘Hey, we’re coming. Please don’t eat us’?”
“Well, that certainly beats, ‘Dinner’s on, come and get it!’”
I smiled, but Jace’s joke had its basis in truth. Thunderbirds were birds of prey, and they preferred raw meat. And when indulging wouldn’t put them in imminent danger of being discovered, they had no qualms about consuming human flesh. In fact, while cannibalism is one of the greatest taboos for werecats, thunderbirds ritualistically consumed the flesh of their enemies and of their own dead.
Also in the con column for dropping in unexpectedly at a thunderbird nest was the fact that they didn’t like visitors. Or surprises. Or werecats. All things considered, we’d been on few riskier missions. And very few that were more important.
After an hour-long drive from the Roswell airport, we pulled off the highway onto a narrow, uneven gravel road, surrounded on both sides by steep hills and rock facings. Nothing made me feel more insignificant than being surrounded by mountains. Except maybe dangling one hundred fifty feet in the air, with nothing between me and death-by-gravity but a pair of sharp, hostile thunderbird talons.
Either way, I was totally out of my element in New Mexico, and more grateful than ever that Marc and Jace had both come, even if riding with the two of them was like riding in a funeral procession. On the way to my own grave.
About four miles down the road, we came to the first obstacle: an old abandoned vehicle positioned sideways in the middle of the road. If we hadn’t been driving a compact, we’d have had to either push the old steel-framed car out of the way on four flat, rotting tires—doable, but unpleasant even for three werecats—or leave the rental car and walk the rest of the way. A mile and a half later, the road was blocked again, this time by two even older stalled cars and a large boulder. The thunderbirds were serious about discouraging salesmen. And trick-or-treaters. And Thin Mint–bearing Girl Scouts.
We had to walk from that point on, armed only with cell phones and protein bars. By the time we came to the pile of huge rocks, likely intentionally tumbled into the middle of the road, the nest was within sight. It sat at the end of the valley, built on an outcropping jutting from the juncture of two hills. The huge lodge-type structure was at least six stories high, by my best guess, and more than two hundred feet in the air. With nary a staircase in sight.The broad front porch looked out over the sheer drop like a safety-featureless balcony and doubled as a landing pad for the several dozen giant birds housed within.
Marc stopped to stare up at the structure, mouth slack in what could only be awe. “I’ve seen it before, but it’s no less impressive the second time around.”
“Impressive, scary as hell. Opinions vary,” I muttered.
He shook his head. “You can’t argue that that’s not an incredible piece of craftsmanship. I bet they built the whole thing themselves.”
I shoved my hands in my pockets and trudged ahead so the guys had no choice but to follow. “I know they did. But you wouldn’t be so impressed by it if you’d ever been flown up there, dangling like a worm to a nest full of giant chicks.”
“I guess.” But he couldn’t tear his gaze from the nest, and I realized this was the first time he’d seen it in daylight. Middle-of-the-day sunlight, in fact.
“So, how are we supposed to get their attention?” Is there a doorbell hidden in tree bark around here somewhere?” Jace glanced at the tree-covered hills encroaching steadily on the narrow road, which was starting to make me feel claustrophobic. “I don’t think I can hit the window with a pebble from here….”
Something squealed faintly overhead, and I glanced up as the front door swung open. “I don’t think getting their attention is gonna be an issue….” But suddenly I wasn’t sure I wanted their attention.
I knew exactly what kind of damage an angry cat could inflict—hell, I’d nearly been killed by several of them. I’d even seen a pissed-off bruin throw a full-grown tom into a tree hard enough to break the cat’s spine. But I’d never in my life seen anything scarier than a flight of enraged thunderbirds, and suddenly, coming to demand that they repay their debt seemed like a colossally bad idea. What if they didn’t remember their promise to me, or they’d changed their minds? What if coming unannounced—not that we’d had any choice—was considered bad form, punishable by being ceremonially pecked to death, then eaten?
But we were out of options. If we couldn’t recruit them to unleash that awesome dive-’n’-slash fury against our enemies, we could wave goodbye to the south-central Pride forever. And to our freedom, not long after that, because I had no doubt that once Malone’s grip on his new puppet regime was secure, he’d come after us, and all three of us would rather die fighting than be taken prisoner. Then what would happen to Kaci, Manx, and my mother?
Overhead, two forms appeared at the edge of the front porch, staring down at us. From at least three hundred feet away and two hundred feet up, all I could make out was the typical short, extremely stocky build of two male thunderbirds. I couldn’t even tell for sure whether or not they wore clothes. 
They could see us much more clearly—a bird can spot a mouse running through a field from the air, and for the thunderbirds, it didn’t seem to matter whether they were in human or avian form. Not that I’d seen many of them in exclusively one form or another; they tended to prefer endless odd combinations, similar to my own face during a partial Shift. Only their best-of-both-worlds routine was infinitely more useful than mine.