“Not that I can blame him.” Vic sighed. “What about your mom?”
“She’s upset, but I think dealing with Kaci is helping her deal with Ethan.”
Distant footsteps crunched over the line—probably other toms combing the forest. “So…we’re going to retaliate?”
“Yeah. Jace is taking me and Dan to Mississippi to continue the search for Marc, and you and Parker can ride back with him, if you want. My dad hasn’t mentioned any specifics yet, but I’m sure he’ll need you both for whatever he’s planning.”
“Okay. Wow.”
“Can you tell Parker? But don’t spread the word, other than that. We don’t need the rest of the world catching wind of our vulnerability.”
“No problem.”
“And, Vic?” I already knew the answer, but I had to ask. “Any luck yet?”
He exhaled slowly, and the sound was frustration given voice. “Not so far. But we’ll find him.”
“I know. We will.” Yet when I hung up, tears blurred my vision. I folded my arms on my desk and let my forehead rest on them, wishing I could close my mind as easily as I’d closed my eyes. But there was no way to turn off the doubt settling into my stomach like stones weighing me down, or the fear burning through my heart like acid.
“You okay?”
I jerked upright to find Jace standing in my doorway, his good hand still on the knob. Damned sneaky tomcats…
“Not even a little bit. You?”
“About the same.” Jace’s ubiquitous smile was gone, and I could not get used to the sight of him without dimples.
I turned in my chair to watch him as he crossed the room to sit on the end of my bed, carefully distancing himself from me physically. Not that it mattered. Just seeing him sent a jolt of adrenaline straight into my heart, and I couldn’t decide whether that was due to guilt, genuine heartache from the very real connection we’d established, or some involuntary, eager muscle-memory from my traitorous body.
“Will it get any easier?” I asked, my hands clenching around the back of my chair.
“You mean Marc, or Ethan?”
“Either. Both.”
“I don’t think so. Not until we find him, anyway.” Meaning Marc, of course.
“Dr. Carver thinks he’s dead.”
Jace’s frown tightened instantly, miserably, and I can’t explain my relief upon seeing that. He truly wanted Marc found alive, even after what had happened between us. How could things possibly be so complicated? Was there any way to untangle the threads without breaking any of the ties?
Jace’s good hand clenched around the post at the foot of my bed, his injured arm lying carefully still on his lap. From his posture, I decided he’d sacrificed comfort for clarity and had refused more painkillers. “Did he say that?”“He didn’t have to. And he’d know better than anyone, right? About Marc’s chances?”
“No.” Jace started to get up to comfort me, then thought better of it and sank back down on the edge of the mattress. “You’d know better than anyone. You know his strength and spirit, and his determination to get back to you. Carver doesn’t know any of that.”
“Thank you.” I smiled in gratitude, but my heart throbbed harder when my gaze met his. And though I tried, I could not stop my pulse from racing. I couldn’t fend off the memory of his hands on me, his lips on mine.
Sleeping with Jace hadn’t changed my feelings for Marc. Nothing could have done that. I still loved Marc desperately and couldn’t imagine life without him. Jace was…something else. Something I could feel but couldn’t articulate. Something I wanted, and hadn’t been able to resist in my grief-weakened state.
He was something that would have to wait. I couldn’t handle that kind of drama with everything else going on. So I forced my eyes away from his, to keep him from recognizing his part in the heartache currently defining my existence.
“I can’t believe Cal did this.” Jace wiped the back of his unbandaged arm across damp, reddened eyes, bringing us back to the topic at hand. “I know he’s ambitious, but what the hell was he trying to accomplish, other than pissing us off?”
“He wants a war.” I snatched a tissue from the box on my desk and wiped my face. “And when Daddy refused to hand Kaci over, Calvin thought he’d picked a fight the council would approve of. The real bitch is that he may be right. He called for a closed vote and snagged enough Alphas to get permission to breach the boundary.”
“Well, if war is what he’s after, he got what he wanted.” Jace’s gaze intensified, as if he were searching my face for something specific. “Greg’s sending us in tomorrow—”
“No!” I moaned, and he looked oddly relieved by my reaction. “If Malone was looking for a war he’ll already have his plan in place and his players in motion.”
Jace nodded bleakly. “We’ll definitely be without the element of surprise. And we don’t have our full forces available.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep, slow breath before meeting his gaze again. “It’ll be a slaughter.”
“Well, it certainly won’t be pretty.” He fidgeted with the edge of the wrapping around his right arm. “But we still outnumber them, even without the toms looking for Marc.”
“Oh, yeah? There’s no way—” I stopped when footsteps from the kitchen reminded me that privacy was nonexistent in a werecat household. Standing, I closed the door softly, then continued in a whisper as I crossed the room. “There’s no way Malone would have picked this fight without at least a couple of allies at his back. Mitchell and Gardner, I’m guessing. And they’ll have sent men in support. If Dad sends us into Kentucky, Malone’s toms and allies will be there waiting for us.”
He nodded again as I sank cross-legged onto the bed opposite him. “And the ranch—and Kaci—will be completely undefended.”
Fuck.
I ran a hand through my hair, studying one possible solution after another as they ran through my head. But only one offered hope, without sacrificing our stand in the name of justice. “Before he sends us in, Dad needs to find out who’s willing to stand with us in this. You can’t fight a war without allies.”
“I know. Don’t get me wrong—” Jace’s eyes widened in earnestness “—I’d rip Calvin’s throat out myself, if he were here right now. But sending more toms to their deaths wouldn’t be avenging Ethan. It would be failing him. We can’t afford to go in there armed with nothing more than righteous anger.”
I stared at Jace in surprise. Where had that come from? I was devastated and confused by my brother’s death, but his best friend was stepping up. Finding courage and purpose in his determination to avenge Ethan—the right way.
The quiet intensity in Jace’s gaze swelled as his eyes held mine, and suddenly it occurred to me that we were sitting a foot apart, alone in my room. On my bed. I dropped my eyes and picked at a ball of fuzz on the comforter between us, dragging my thoughts back on topic. “Daddy would never act this rashly if he were thinking clearly.”
“You have to talk him out of it, Faythe.” He ducked to catch my eye. “Get him to think it through first.”
“Talk him out of it?” I leaned back against the headboard and let my head fall so that I stared at the ceiling. “When was the last time anyone talked my father out of anything? He rarely listens to me on the best of days, and this certainly isn’t one of those.”
“So make him listen to you. He’s still planning to turn the Pride over to you someday, right?” Jace edged forward and took my hand, and though his face was all business—from the sad crinkles around his eyes to the firm line of his mouth—my fingers tingled like I’d just stuck one of them in an outlet.
“Yes. As far as I know.” Damn, damn, damn. My heart ached, and my pulse pounded, and I was sure he could hear at least one of those. Fear and dread and confusion, and a tiny spark of excitement all raged within me, threatening to blow me off my foundation. And something told me that once that happened, I’d never regain my balance.
“Then he’ll have to respect your opinion, if you stand firm,” Jace said, oblivious to my inner chaos as his warm fingers tightened around mine. “If he’s planning to go in there with nothing but brute strength, he’s not thinking clearly, and he’s putting everyone in danger. You have to say something. But privately.”
Because to question my Alpha’s decision any other way would be disrespectful. Even if he didn’t listen to us, my father would lose face in front of his other enforcers, and that would be disastrous to morale. Especially in the middle of the current crises.
So I would tell my Alpha—and father—that he was making a huge mistake. No big deal, right? After all, I’d argued with him thousands of times in my twenty-three years. Of course, he’d rarely taken me seriously in the past.
But this time, he couldn’t afford not to.
Twenty-One
I snuck into the office quietly, hoping to avoid my father’s notice. I shouldn’t have bothered. The Alpha was pacing back and forth between the far wall and the love seat, the living room phone pressed to his ear. He was completely absorbed in his call, but to my relief, he looked somewhat calmer than when he’d spoken to Paul Blackwell.Dr. Carver sat hunched over behind my father’s desk, digging through the bottom filing cabinet drawer and occasionally swearing beneath his breath, evidently confident that in his current state of agitation, the Alpha would never notice.