“Believe it or not, we can handle it without you.” But his gentle smile softened the blow to my ego. “You get some sleep and let us worry about the stray.”
“I’m not worried…” I started to protest, but he was already looking at Marc, his expression now hard and angry. Whatever that was about, I didn’t want to miss it, either.
“Step outside with me for a moment,” our Alpha ordered. Then, before Marc could answer, my father turned to me again, and his eyes had gone soft, which irritated me because it meant he was treating me like a daughter instead of like an enforcer. Smiling, he planted a soft kiss on my forehead, which I couldn’t remember him doing since the morning of my tenth birthday. “Good night, kitten. We’ll be here when you wake up.”
“I’m not a kitten!” I snapped, but no one was listening. My father ushered Marc into the living room and shut the door behind them, as if that would block out their conversation. But I could still hear them arguing about me, and surprise registered even through the thick sleeping-pill fog rapidly enveloping my brain. I couldn’t recall Marc ever arguing with his Alpha before. But then I understood: My father wasn’t acting like an Alpha. He was acting like a father, and Marc was calling him on it.
“…could you leave her unsupervised? She could have been killed!”
“Yes, she could have.” Marc’s voice was calm, with an undercurrent of quiet confidence, which sent a silent thrill through me. He sounded like an Alpha. “Any one of us could be killed on any given day of the year, Greg. We’re enforcers. Risk comes with the job.”
“And that’s why you work in pairs. To watch each other’s backs.”
“In a perfect world, yes,” Marc admitted. “But our world is far from perfect, and sometimes things come up. Opportunities present themselves, and that’s what happened here. Faythe saw an opportunity, and she took it. The whole thing was her idea. She said she’d make better bait than either one of us, and she was right. He would never have shown himself with me and Jace hanging around.”
“No rogue is worth her life.”
“I agree. But if you really expect her to take over for you, you have to let her learn how. And you have to let her know you trust her. Especially now, when no one else seems to. This was her idea, and it was a good one. She’s stubborn as hell, and if we hadn’t played along, she would have taken off on her own, anyway. We both know that. I did what I thought was best at the time, and so did she. But no one feels worse about her getting hurt than I do.”
“I know.”
I swallowed thickly, discomforted by my father’s acknowledgment of Marc’s feelings for me, in spite of the pain and frustration my presence put him through on a daily basis. Privacy was nonexistent in our world, and most of us saw no reason to pretend not to know something everyone else knew anyway. The only person I pretended with was Jace, and that was only because he seemed to prefer it that way.
“This is about more than that, though, Greg.”
“Hmm?” my father said, and I smiled to realize he was avoiding something. Could there actually be something the great Greg Sanders wasn’t comfortable admitting to himself?
“The tribunal is probably going to convict her on both charges. We all know that. What they need now is a reason to let her live. An excuse that will let her walk away without making them look like weak fools. They need to know she’s useful to them—to all of us—as something other than a dam. Saving Brett and bringing in the stray will show them that. Yes, she was hurt in the process, but she’s going to be fine. The ends justified the means, Greg, and she believes that just as much as I do. If you don’t believe me, go ask her yourself.”
Silence spoke for my father. Marc was right, and he damn well knew it. But he couldn’t truly ease a father’s fears. “Fine. As soon as the tribunal hands down a verdict, she’s back on the clock, and back at work for real. But until then, she takes it easy. Especially now that she’s hurt. Keep an eye on her.”
“Of course.”
The Alpha’s distinctive smooth-but-heavy footsteps moved away from the door, and I called out to him in spite of the pain in my stomach, just to let him know I’d been listening. “’Night, Daddy!”
His steps paused, and he chuckled softly. “Good night, kitten.”
“I’m not a kitten!” I shouted as Marc pulled the door open. “I’m fully grown!”
“You two are going to butt heads on that one for the rest of your life,” he said, smiling. “You’ll always be his little girl.”
“And he’ll always be an overprotective, know-it-all pain in my ass,” I snapped.
Marc nodded, still smiling as he sat on the side of my bed. “Like father like daughter.”
I couldn’t quite pull off a frown. He could call me whatever he wanted, because that meant he was talking to me. “So why are you being so nice to me all of a sudden. Because I’m hurt?”
“Maybe.”
“You mean, all I had to do was spill a little blood?”
“Or maybe a little kindness.”
Ouch. That was hardly fair; I was rarely mean to him. But I didn’t say it out loud, because that was one of the things we could never agree on. He thought it was cruel of me to refuse to marry him, and I thought it was cruel of him to make me choose between marrying him and losing him completely.
Marc’s world was defined by bold streaks of black and white, and mine was consumed by shades of gray. He saw good and bad, but all too often I saw only the lesser of two evils. Oddly enough, however, we seemed to have reversed our usual positions on this whole me-standing-trial thing.
“I’m sorry,” he said, stroking my hair again.
“Don’t be. I deserved it.”
Before he could disagree—and he would have disagreed—the bedroom door opened again.
“Okay, Marc, let’s get a look at that arm.” Dr. Carver sat on the chair between the beds and waved him over, gesturing for him to sit on the empty bed. Marc did as directed, and Dr. Carver carefully extended the injured arm toward the lamp to inspect it.
“Well, the scratches are clean, and they aren’t very deep. Looks like you got lucky, too.”The only reason Marc still had his arm, not to mention full use of it, was because he was a damn good enforcer. His reflexes were the fastest I’d ever seen, and he was always on alert. Marc made his own luck in life.
All I ever seemed to make was mistakes.
As my eyelids grew heavy, I watched Dr. Carver sew Marc up, making one small, hypnotically even stitch after another. He actually wound up with more than I did, because his scratches were longer than mine, if not as deep.
“I want you to Shift in the morning,” Dr. Carver said to Marc as my eyes started to close. “It’ll shorten your healing time considerably, and it sounds like they’re going to need you in top shape around here.”
I opened my eyes one last time to see Marc nod, and to realize he was still watching me over the doctor’s shoulder. The last thing I saw before succumbing to drug-induced slumber was his mouth quirking up at me in an achingly familiar half smile.
Nine
When I woke, Marc was gone. My room was dark, and the red alarm-clock numbers on the nightstand said it was 3:13, but I was too disoriented from the sleeping pills to know whether that meant a.m. or p.m. I twisted to my right, intending to glance at the window, but I didn’t make it that far, because pain sliced through my stomach at the first movement.
“Oh, shit,” I moaned, and laughter floated to me out of the dark.
“Did you think that would feel good?”
Jace.
I fell back onto the pillow, relieved that I wasn’t alone and that Marc had been replaced by Jace, rather than by…well, anyone else. “I didn’t think at all, actually. I forgot how much moving hurt.”
“It’ll get better soon.” And he should know. In the last six months alone, in addition to the usual scrapes and bruises accrued in the line of duty, Jace’d had the living shit beat out of him by Marc and been shot by Manx. He’d spent so much time in my mother’s sickroom that she’d offered to let him redecorate it.
“I certainly hope so. Could you turn on the light?”
“Sure.” Chair springs creaked and footsteps shuffled across the floor. A muffled click echoed through the dark room, and light flared to life from the lamp near my bed to illuminate Jace, one hand still on the switch.
“Thanks.” Squinting, I slid one hand beneath my head, trying to prop it up without moving my stomach.
“No problem. You want some water?”
“I would, actually. My mouth’s pretty dry.” And my tongue tasted bitter too.
“That’s from the sleeping pills.” Jace handed me a plastic cup of water from the nightstand, drawing my attention back to the clock.
“That’s a.m.?” I asked, having finally decided there wasn’t enough natural light in the room for it to be afternoon. And surely I hadn’t slept that long…
“Yeah. You’ve been out for nearly five hours. Doc says you can have whatever you want to eat.”
I smiled as he sank into the chair by my bed, holding the cup near my face, straw bent toward my mouth. “Pizza. I want pizza.”