But apparently I was not supposed to point that out. Who knew?
My father chose that moment to stand, and I couldn’t help but think he’d timed his statement carefully, so I would have my say before he pronounced me guilty for the same reason Malone had come to my defense—to show that he could be fair too.
“Faythe, your motives and even your results are immaterial here. What matters is that you disobeyed a direct order.” He paused to look at each of his fellow Alphas. “Now, I’m sure everyone here understands the value of the work you’ve done with Kaci Dillon. But surely you acknowledge that your action must have a consequence?”
Aw, crap. He was going to make me say it.
“Yes, of course.” I sighed, and my shoulders sagged in defeat. In for a penny, in for a pound, Faythe. “I knew that when I went in, but I did it anyway because I believed then—and now—that the result would be worth whatever penalty you throw at me. Not going in would have been taking the coward’s way out. Staying in the hall because I was scared—of you guys or of her, it makes no difference—would have been shirking what I consider my moral duty. Knowing the right thing to do is easy. Doing it when you know there will be consequences is not. You taught me that.”
My father nodded, and I thought I detected a little flush in his cheeks, though that might have been wishful thinking on my part. Either way, my uncle looked a little less furious than he had moments earlier.
I met each council member’s eyes for just a moment, silently acknowledging their authority even as I asked them to acknowledge my good intentions. “I did what I had to do. Now you have to do the same.”
With that, I took my seat, my heart pounding in my throat, my palms sweaty enough to leave damp streaks on the polished surface of the dining-room table.
“Personally,” Paul Blackwell said, and I narrowed my gaze on him, surprised to hear the old fart speak up, “I see no reason to sentence her now, considering that her future is…uncertain.”
That didn’t sound good.
“I agree.” This from Malone, who’d looked less than pleased by one of my better attempts to talk my way out of trouble. Tough room. “I move that we hand down her sentences all at once, when the hearing is over.”
“No.” My father leaned back in his chair. “I have a right to my say in this procedure, but am not a part of the tribunal.”
“Fine.” Malone rested his elbows on the table. He watched me, though his remark was obviously directed at my father. “We’ll decide this one separately, but announce them all three together.”
A small-but-vocal part of me wanted to point out that I hadn’t actually been found guilty of murder yet, so there was no sentence to be handed out on that one. But since my mouth had actually talked me out of trouble this time—at least for the time being—I saw no reason to press my luck.
Unfortunately, the tribunal’s ire wasn’t directed solely at me. When my part was done, I sat in a chair against the wall, at the end of the line of toms waiting to face the music.
Dr. Carver came under fire for asking me to disobey a direct order. In his defense, he told the Alphas that as a physician, his first duty was to the young tabby’s well-being, and that he did what was in her best interest—provided her with immediate nourishment and counseling from the only person she would let near.The council members seemed unmoved, and Malone insisted that if Dr. Carver had explained the urgency to them, they would have immediately provided the tabby with whatever she needed. But we all knew she wouldn’t have cooperated with them and they would not have let me go in alone to earn her trust.
When they’d all had their say, the doc was strongly reprimanded and warned—by my father—that any future transgressions would result in him being exiled from the Pride.
Lucas got off with an angry warning and a month’s suspended pay, since he was the lesser-ranking tom present. But as my father’s second-in-command, Marc technically had the authority and the responsibility to stop us all from doing something so irresponsible and potentially dangerous. Yet he hadn’t.
My stomach twisted in on itself as Marc walked solemnly into the center of the room. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back and his feet spread—at ease, though he was probably anything but. He elected not to sit. He was going to take it like a man.
Because of me.
I couldn’t remember Marc ever even being reprimanded by the council before. He’d been reproached by my father for his quick temper on occasion, but that was nothing compared to this. That was a slap on the wrist from a loving father figure. Malone didn’t love Marc, and would just as soon rip off his hand as slap his wrist.
Malone opened his mouth to begin, but my father cut him off. “Marc…” He trailed into a pained silence, and I fervently hoped I was the only one who could read the disappointment in his eyes. “What were you thinking?”
“Honestly?” Marc asked, and my father nodded, giving him permission to say something the others probably wouldn’t want to hear. “I was thinking that it didn’t matter what I did. If Faythe wanted to work with the tabby, she was going to do it no matter what any of us said or did.”
Daddy didn’t smile. Instead, he nodded wearily, as if to say he shared Marc’s pain.
“So you let her disobey a direct order?” Malone demanded, leaning so far forward, the table must have been digging into his waist. “You just stood there and watched your Pride’s only tabby—the professed love of your life—walk alone and unarmed into the room with a strange, violent werecat? Why?”
I could only see Marc’s face in profile, but that was enough to showcase jaws bulging in anger, and a single brow drawn into a fierce frown. “Because someone had to do it, and Faythe is best equipped for the job. She has previous experience counseling a traumatized young tabby.” My cousin Abby, of course. “And a couple of days ago she took out a full-grown stray in the grip of scratch fever, and this was just a child, weakened by hunger and exhaustion. Also, Faythe wasn’t completely unarmed. She had a tranquilizer.”
But he wasn’t saying it all. He wasn’t saying that he’d tried to stop me, and that I’d refused to listen. He wouldn’t lay the blame on me—even when I deserved it.
I leaned forward, my hands clenched around the arms of my chair. Why isn’t he defending himself?
“What if the cat had attacked?” Malone gripped the edge of the table with tension-white fingers. “Faythe’s barely recovered from several gashes in her stomach. What if she’d been injured again?”
“Like you care!” I mumbled. My father’s head whipped around and his eyes settled on me with the weight of my own conscience. But I’d had enough. I stood, glaring at them all at once. “What? It’s the truth! Aren’t you guys after the truth? Because we all know Councilman Malone would order Marc to break my neck here and now if he thought he’d get away with it. Yet there he sits, browbeating him for something I did! Where’s the justice in th—”
Lucas tugged hard on my arm, and when I fell into my chair, I bit my tongue, effectively cutting off my tirade. Blood flowed into my mouth and I swallowed it, wiping at my lips with the back of my sleeve even as I glared at my cousin. He ignored me, eyes glued to the Alphas seated at the front of the room.
“One more word and I’ll have you escorted out of the lodge,” Malone said, and somehow he made “escorted” sound much more menacing than it should have. Anger blazed up my spine. The bastard was threatening me!
I opened my mouth to say…something. I didn’t have the details all worked out yet, but that turned out not to matter because Marc beat me to the punch, no doubt trying to save me from myself, as usual.
“I’m not protesting this.” He glanced at his feet as if fighting for patience, and when he looked up again his eyes held a complacent strength the likes of which I’d never felt in my entire life. I would have given almost anything for a fraction of the self-control Marc wasted on the council. “I let her go in,” he said. “I’m not arguing otherwise, so let’s get this over with.”
“Fine.” Malone nodded, like that’s exactly what he’d wanted to hear, when I knew for a fact it was not. He wanted to berate Marc some more, now that he’d finally found a legitimate forum for his irrational prejudice. But Marc had taken that opportunity away, and I would have applauded, if Lucas hadn’t chosen that moment to clasp my hand, ostensibly to comfort me.
Malone’s eyes gleamed with barely repressed joy, which I wanted to pound in one side of his head and out the other. “We’re charging you with insubordination, and with neglect and endangerment of the tabby under your protection, which confounds me, frankly, considering you once wanted to marry this particular tabby.”
That slimy son of a bitch!
Marc’s hands fell into fists at his sides, and my uncle rushed to fill the silence. “Calvin, keep the editorializing to a minimum.”
Malone ignored him, but wisely moved on. “I’m recommending a sentence consisting of a public apology, dismissal and exile.”
Marc jerked as if he’d been slapped, and someone gasped out loud. I think it was me.