Shit. I was back in my own room at the cabin.
“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” Jace said softly from my right.
“Call me that again, and I’ll tell the whole Pride you sleep in Scooby-Doo underwear.”
“I don’t sleep in Scooby-Doo underwear. Hell, I don’t sleep in any underwear.”
Waaay too much information, Jace. And for once, no mental image popped into my head. I wasn’t in the mood for recreational speculation at the moment. Not by a long shot.
“It’ll be my word against yours.” Still scowling, I sat up and put one hand to my forehead, when the room spun around me. The tranquilizer hadn’t quite worn off yet. That, plus the daylight leaking through the cracks in the blinds told me I hadn’t been unconscious very long. Though my rumbling stomach argued otherwise.
“How long was I out?” I asked as Jace sat on the end of my bed.
He angled his wristwatch into the muted glow of my bedside lamp. “Just over three hours.”
It could have been worse; I hadn’t even missed lunch. “How bad is it?”
His pained expression said he knew exactly what I was asking. “Well, I doubt you helped your own case.”
“Fuck my case.” I threw the covers back, and my bad mood instantly worsened when I realized I wore no pants. “Nothing I do or say is going to make a damn bit of difference in that regard. They already have their minds made up.”
“They do now…”
“They have from the start, but that whole damn ambush made no sense at all.” I squinted into the shadows and spotted my jeans draped over the arm of a chair in the corner. “Where the hell do they get off charging Marc for endangering me, when they’re going to order me executed as soon as they can fill out the proper paperwork?”
“You sound like your uncle.”
I shot Jace a quizzical look over my shoulder, on my way to the chair. “What did he say?”
“I heard him tell your dad that Calvin’s been in his room on the phone all morning, and he was on for nearly two hours yesterday, with music playing the whole time. He’s up to something. Rick doesn’t know what, but he’s trying to find out.”
Sighing, I sank into the chair and shoved first one foot then the other into the jeans I’d been wearing for most of the last eighteen hours. They were my most comfortable pair, and sometimes a good pair of jeans goes even further than good chocolate toward making me feel better. The only thing more effective would be a strong drink, which was out of the question at the moment. I needed to keep my wits about me, especially after convincing every Alpha within three hundred miles that I was certifiably insane.
Tranquilized for my own good. The guys would never let me live that one down.
“How’s Kaci?”
Jace swiveled on his rump to watch me slink across the room toward my suitcase in search of a clean shirt. I needed a shower, but didn’t want to waste time on such trivialities just then. “She’s been asking for you. She won’t talk to anyone else. Malone went in to see her, and she wouldn’t even look at him. You should have seen him when he came out. He was so mad he wouldn’t say what happened, but Lucas overheard it from the hall.”
I pulled off the T-shirt I’d slept in and tossed it onto the pile of dirty clothes in one corner. “Well?” I faced Jace when it became clear that he was waiting for my response. “What did he say?”
“She told him to get the hell out of her room before she started screaming.”
“Screaming?” I rummaged through the pile of clothes in my suitcase, looking for something that wasn’t too wrinkled. But my entire wardrobe looked as if it had been wadded into one big ball, probably by someone searching for clothes for Kaci.
“Yeah. And apparently he didn’t move fast enough to please her, because she did start screaming, and we could hear her loud and clear from the living room.”
Unimpressed, I shrugged as I pulled a black lace bra from the top pocket of the suitcase. “That’s not hard to believe.”
“The living room of this cabin, not the lodge.”
Oh. Attagirl.
With my back to Jace, I unhooked my bra and tossed it onto the pile of clothes in the corner, then scooped myself into the clean one. “So she’s okay?”“Yeah. That was about an hour ago, and they haven’t sent anyone in since. They’re waiting for you to wake up and go talk to her.”
“Are they planning to ask nicely?” My words were muffled as I pulled a black ribbed T-shirt over my head. I’d chosen it to remind everyone that I was still an enforcer, even if I was suspended. At least for the moment.
Jace huffed behind me as I shoved the sleeves of my shirt halfway to my elbows. “I doubt they’ll ask at all,” he said, smiling gently. “After your last big speech, they know you’ll do it because it’s the ‘right’ thing to do.”
I should have known being nice would come back to bite me on the ass.
Rooting through the bag again, I tugged my hairbrush from a tangle of sleeves and ran it through my hair. My ponytail was gone, and the rubber band was nowhere to be found.
I kept my back to Jace as I asked the next question, both because I didn’t want him to see my face and because I didn’t really want to know the answer. “What about Marc? What did Daddy do?”
Jace sighed, and my shoulders sagged, my brush pausing in midstroke. I knew the truth before he even said it. “They didn’t give him any choice, Faythe. It was all over by the time Michael and I got back, so I didn’t hear what happened, but we both know your father would never have agreed to Marc’s sentence if he had any way out of it.”
No! How the hell could he do it?
“That’s bullshit, and you know it!” My fist slammed into the side of my soft-shell suitcase, which flew across the dresser and smashed into the dark wood-paneled wall. The knuckles of my right hand throbbed with my pulse; I’d skinned them on the rough carpet weave of the bag. “There are always choices. Plenty of choices. What there’s never enough of is courage—willingness to push past the easy option and see what else is available.”
Jace scowled, an edge of anger showing through the sympathy defining his expression. “You think it was easy for your dad to lose Marc?”
“No.” I closed my eyes and let myself sag against the dresser. “Of course not.” Hell, there were times I thought he liked Marc better than me. “I just can’t believe he did it. He’s always talking about how important it is to do what’s right. To keep those in power from running over those in need. But I guess that’s a tendency he learned from the rest of the council—too much talk and not enough action. Too much politics, and not enough truth. If he and Uncle Rick would stand up to the others one good time—really lay it out loud and clear—this whole thing would be over in an hour.”
“Maybe, but ‘over’ doesn’t necessarily mean a happy ending.” A sad smile tugged at the corner of Jace’s mouth as he watched me. “You think you have all the answers?”
“In life? No.” I plucked a folded pair of socks from the suitcase on the floor. “But in this case…yes. If my dad wants to keep this Pride intact, it’s time for him and his allies to shut their mouths and start talking with their fists.”
“What if everyone else has the same idea?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged, pulling one sock free of its mate as I sank onto the nearest bed. “They lose, we win, and everyone goes home? Good triumphs over evil? That’s how it works in movies.”
Jace shook his head in sympathy and sat next to me. “This isn’t Hollywood. If you want to change the system, you’re going to have to do it from the inside. Even if Marc isn’t there to help.”
My eyes watered, and I wiped them on the clean sock, hoping Jace hadn’t noticed. But of course, he had.
“I’m so sorry, Faythe.”
“It’s not your fault.” Though I knew how he felt, as if he were somehow responsible, just because his bastard of a stepfather was spearheading the attempt to knock my world off its axis. But this had nothing to do with Jace. It was all Malone, and his petty grudges and power intoxication.
Fine. Maybe I couldn’t stop them from kicking Marc out, but they couldn’t stop me from going with him. We’d go together. After all, they couldn’t execute me if they couldn’t find me. Right?
Finally dressed, I stomped toward the door on my way to find Marc, but Jace appeared in my path from out of nowhere. I hadn’t even seen him get up. “Move,” I ordered.
He shook his head, arms crossed firmly over his chest. “I know what you’re thinking and I understand, but you can’t go.”
“I can’t do this with you right now, Jace. You know how I—”
A pained look crossed his face, chased away almost instantly by ironclad resolution. “This has nothing to do with us. I want to see you happy, even if it isn’t with me. But you can’t go with him.”
I tried to shove him out of my way, but Jace refused to budge. I shoved harder, and he took my upper arms in both hands. “Think about Kaci. You’re the only one she’ll talk to. She needs you. Don’t do this to her.”
As badly as I hated to leave her, Kaci would be fine. My mother would know how best to help her. So would Manx. I tried to jerk my arms from his grip, but he wouldn’t let go.