Pride (Shifters #3)(61)

Okaaaay, this is awkward. I couldn’t remember ever before being told by a child that I smelled like sex, which was basically what she’d just said.
“I’m sorry, Kaci.”
She slid down the wall to sit with her knees up and her head in her hands.
I squatted next to her and stroked her hair, because I wasn’t sure what else to do. I’d never been very good at comforting people. “I’m sorry this happened to you—more sorry than you can possibly imagine. But I can’t fix it. No one can. The best we can do is to show you how to be one of us. How to deal with what you’re hearing and seeing now.”
“What if I don’t want to deal with it?”
“You’re gonna have to eventually.” I sighed. I had no idea how to help a stray through her transition. But I might just know how to help a teenager relax… “But in the meantime…how about a video game? And maybe some junk food?”
Her head rose slowly, her brows arched halfway up her forehead in surprise. “Are you serious?”
“Why not? The guys have two different PlayStations set up downstairs. You ever play?”
She grinned. An honest-to-goodness, carefree-teenager grin. With teeth and all. “Yeah. Only every day of my life…until recently.”
I smiled back; I couldn’t help it. “I’m sure all their games are violent and bloody…”
Her smile faltered for a minute, then it was back in full force, her expression fortified with a healthy dose of resolve, like she was determination to have fun, even if it killed her. “The bloodier the better.”
I had to admire the kid’s grit.
“Good.” I eyed the loose skirt and fitted blouse, then glanced at the pile of more casual clothes on the nearest bed. “Pick out something appropriate for video-game carnage and junk food. We have a selection of chips and dip downstairs that puts a supermarket to shame.”
Five minutes later I pulled the bedroom door open and held it for a jeans-and-T-shirt-clad tabby who smiled in spite of the tense way her arms hung at her sides. She was nervous about meeting everyone, and I couldn’t really blame her. I liked only about half of the people I’d be introducing her to, mostly because the other half wanted me dead. Or whored out to one of their sons.“Where are you going?” the new guard asked, glancing from her to me, then down the hall toward the staircase, as if hoping someone would come to his rescue before he had to use the biggest muscle found above his neck.
“Downstairs. Kaci’s ready to make some new friends. Would you like to be the first, or are you going to be a pain in our collective ass?”
“I have to clear it with an Alpha,” the guard said, glancing uncertainly from me to Kaci, then back to me.
I shrugged. “So, go. Clear.”
The guard jogged off in search of an Alpha, but I saw no reason to wait, so I led the tabby down the hall after him.
Kaci hung behind me on the stairs, so that I stepped into the living room first, and when she peeked out from behind me, all conversation stopped. The lodge became so quiet I could hear the individual heartbeats of everyone in the room—only a few toms recently back from the search, thankfully.
Marc sat in the armchair closest to the sickroom, from which he could see the entire room at once, including the front door. Jace sat on the end of the couch nearest him.
Dr. Carver was gone, a fact I verified with a quick glance out the front window at the empty spot his rental car had occupied. Blackwell and Malone were in the dining room at the rear of the lodge, their presence betrayed by the indistinct buzz of quiet conversation.
Presumably everyone else was still out searching for the missing female hiker. Except for my father, who stepped into the living room from the kitchen at that moment, the guard on his heels, frozen in mid-question.
He raised one brow at me in question, and when I only smiled in response, he nodded, then ducked back into the kitchen, as if the tabby coming out of her shell for the first time was no big deal. A rush of gratitude brought heat to my cheeks, and I would have thanked him if Kaci hadn’t been practically clinging to my arm.
“Kaci, you remember Marc and Jace, right?” I tugged her gently into sight.
“Hi.” She stepped warily around me, into the fringe of the room.
“Hey, kiddo!” Leaning forward on the couch, Jace favored her with his typical grin, all straight white teeth and cherubic lips. “’Bout time you joined the party.”
I snorted, mildly amused by his description of my murder trial as a party. “I told Kaci we might be able to scrounge up something to eat and a game of…whatever pointlessly bloody exercise in time-wasting you guys have in there.”
“Grand Theft Auto IV! You wanna play?” He was off the couch and across the room in an instant, pulling open the door to the empty first-floor bedroom.
Kaci glanced at me hesitantly, as if asking for permission. Or maybe looking for the all clear. I nodded, more pleased than I wanted to admit by her willingness to trust Jace—and by his apparently effortless ability to put her at ease. 
She followed him into the bedroom and a moment later the game unit whirred to life softly, beeping a moment after that.
“You hungry?” I asked Marc, backing toward the kitchen so I wouldn’t have to take my eyes from him any sooner than necessary.
“Always. I think I saw a can of Ro*Tel in the cabinet, and there’s a block of Velveeta in the fridge.”
“That’ll work.” I rounded the corner into the kitchen to find my father waiting for me. “Hey, did Jace talk to you about…” Malone preparing to pull a Julius Caesar?
“Yes, but we’ll talk about that later, after the current mess is settled.”
“But that’ll be too la—”
Dad frowned at me in warning, and put one finger over my lips. Then he nodded toward the living room, where Marc’s steady steps approached us. His message was clear, even unspoken. I would have to say goodbye to Marc eventually, and this was just as good a time as any.
But he was wrong. There was no good time to say goodbye to Marc, so I wasn’t even going to try. I wasn’t going to think about it until I had to, and that moment hadn’t come yet.
Marc came in through one doorway as my father went out the other, and he headed straight for the fridge while I searched out the can of Ro*Tel he’d mentioned. We stood together at the counter, cutting the processed-cheese mush into much smaller blocks than necessary, just to have an excuse to be near each other.
My arm brushed his, and after a few minutes, he hooked his foot around my ankle, standing half behind me, my left foot sandwiched by both of his. His chest pressed into my back, and his breath brushed my bare neck, exposed by my high ponytail.
We worked in silence, content for the moment simply to be together. But cheese dip was a no-brainer, and try though we might, we couldn’t drag the process out more than twenty minutes, even with the crappy, dented double boiler he found in the pots-and-pans cabinet.
He carried two bowls of dip into the bedroom, and I grabbed two unopened bags of corn chips on my way out of the kitchen. Marc and I lounged together on one of the twin beds, munching contentedly while Jace and Kaci sat on the floor, beating the crap out of digital drivers and grabbing drippy bites between rounds.
Over the next hour, other toms came and went as the search-party shifts changed. Kaci barely greeted each one with an absent nod and a wave, one hand still deftly working her video-game controller. Though she never gave any of the new arrivals much of an acknowledgment, neither was she upset by their presence.
By the time the sun sank below the horizon, Kaci and Jace had gone through several levels in their game and seemed to be the best of friends. Or even brother and sister.
Marc and I lay quietly, rarely speaking, but constantly touching. Our hands were intertwined and my leg thrown over his when the dining-room door squealed open and the voices from the back of the house rose in volume.
I tensed instantly, knowing damn well what they wanted. The sun was down and Amanda Tindale had not been found. Time was up. Kaci would have to start talking, whether she wanted to or not.
Twenty-Seven

Marc’s hand clenched around mine, silently asking me what was wrong, even as he sat up next to me on the bed. I nodded in the direction of the as-yet-unseen parade of Alphas, then toward Kaci, though I had no idea whether or not he could understand my makeshift sign language.
A long shadow fell through the open doorway, and to my surprise, the person casting it was not Calvin Malone, but my father—who had obviously beaten him to the proverbial punch. Daddy’s eyes flicked from me to Kaci, then back to me, and his brows rose in question. His meaning was clear: playtime was over.I nodded, and he retreated into the living room, herding the other Alphas along with him.
“Kaci?” I crawled forward to perch on the end of the bed, more relieved than I would have admitted when the warm curve of Marc’s body settled in behind mine, his arm winding around my waist.
“Yeah?” Kaci hit a button with an eerily nimble thumb and the game on-screen froze as she twisted to look up at me. If she’d noticed my father’s arrival and quick retreat, she showed no sign. “What’s wrong?”
I inhaled deeply, unsure how best to prevent her from clamming up or freaking out when I explained what we needed from her. “I’ve put this off as long as I can, and now the council needs some information from you. We need some information from you,” I corrected myself, hoping that she’d be more willing to help me and the guys than a bunch of old men, most of whom she’d never met.