Rogue (Shifters #2)(36)

I knew who had infected Andrew. I even knew how it had happened. He’d only had contact with one werecat.
Me.
Chapter Eighteen
“What’s wrong?” Michael leaned forward, as if to catch me if I fell off the couch. I barely heard him. I was too busy hearing Andrew.
You didn’t tell them about me. Andrew’s words played in my head, his voice reproduced in my mind with frightening accuracy. You owe me, Faythe.
What I’d said to my father was accurate—for the most part. I’d never intentionally or knowingly Shifted in front of Andrew. But I hadn’t meant for my eyes to Shift an hour earlier, either. And they weren’t the only part of my face to ever experience an unexpected partial Shift.My teeth had done it, too.
I’d bitten Andrew’s ear the very day I left school, not two hours before Marc had shown up in the quad. I’d broken the skin. Just barely, but enough to draw a single drop of blood. Apparently that was enough.
I’d infected him. I hadn’t meant to. I hadn’t even known I’d done it. Or that it was possible. Yet I’d accidentally made him one of us, then left him, abandoning him to pain, fear, and incapacitating disorientation during his transition. It was a miracle he’d survived.
Huh. Look at that, I thought, teetering on the razor-sharp edge of hysteria. I committed a capital crime after all. No wonder Andrew wanted to kill me. I couldn’t really blame him.
“Faythe, say something,” Michael urged, and it took me a minute to realize I’d gone completely silent. “If you don’t start explaining, Dad’s going to draw his own conclusions.”
“Too late.” My father eyed me with frightening intensity, and it took every ounce of willpower I had to keep from squirming where I sat.
“I think I know who infected Andrew,” I whispered. It was the best I could do.
The Alpha sat straighter in his chair, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. If he didn’t know exactly what I was going to say, he must have been pretty close. And he was no longer eager to hear it. “What happened?” he said at last. “And consider your words very carefully.”
Suddenly the silence in the soundproofed office seemed dangerous, and somehow wrong. I felt compelled to fill it with a blurted confession, followed by babbling apologies and tearful explanations. But I didn’t. I wouldn’t have shamed myself with such a display before I became an enforcer, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to do it now.
But I had to say something.
I hesitated one last time. I’d let my father down more times than I could count, but this was the Big One. This was humiliation, disappointment, and disillusionment all wrapped up together, tied with a big red bow of disgrace. The gift that keeps on giving.
“It was an accident,” I said, continuing calmly but quickly, before he had a chance to interrupt. “I didn’t understand what happened until just now.”
Michael nodded, urging me on. He seemed to be the only one who really wanted me to continue.
My heart thumped painfully, and my hands connected in my lap, my fingers twisting and pulling one another mercilessly. “I bit him. Accidentally.” I couldn’t help repeating that last part.
“You bit him? Accidentally?” My father’s green eyes hardened. I knew that look. The Alpha had arrived, and he was angry. “Explain yourself. Now.”
I nodded, grateful for the opportunity in spite of the rage in his eyes. “I was in human form. It should have been safe. I swear I didn’t know what was happening.” My hands moved wildly, punctuating each sentence, and I couldn’t seem to stop them. “At the time I had no clue this was even possible, but now I think my teeth Shifted. They couldn’t have changed much, because I didn’t notice it, and neither did he. But that’s the only way it could have happened.” 
My desperate, babbling excuses faded into silence, and still my father stared at me. As did Michael. His eyes burned into me, seeing right past my defensive explanation to the truth. The whole truth, which our father obviously didn’t understand.
“You bit him in human form?” For one long, torturous moment, confusion replaced the anger in the Alpha’s expression. “Why? Why would you bite him?”
Well, hell. He was going to make me say it. This is not a conversation I want to have with my father. Ever. But it was much too late to back out, so I took a deep breath and plunged forward into the dark abyss. Melodramatic? Hell yeah.
“We were…you know. Together.”
“I see,” he said, after a long, tense silence. But I had my doubts. He didn’t look like he saw.
My father stood, retrieving his glass from the end table, and crossed the room to his desk. As I sank deeper into the couch, he opened his bottom desk drawer and pulled out a half-empty bottle of Scotch. The good stuff.
Seated now, he poured two inches of amber liquid into his glass, hesitated, then poured a third inch. As I watched my father drink, it occurred to me that the testimony I was about to launch resembled a kamikaze’s final flight. It would be a sickeningly fast and exhilarating plunge, executed with the greater good in mind. And it was virtually guaranteed to end in death. Mine.
Martyrdom always seems so daring and courageous from an outsider’s perspective, but from the cockpit of the kamikaze’s plane, with the earth racing up to meet you, the view sucks.
My father screwed the lid on his bottle and set it in the drawer. He slid the drawer shut and took another drink. Then he started across the floor toward me, walking slowly, as if he were stiff, or achy. With a deep, weary sigh, he settled back into his chair. His eyes rose to meet mine, and they were completely empty. Blank.
Damn, he’s good.
For almost a complete minute, my father stared at me, sipping from his glass. Silence closed in on me, and I wanted to look away from his eyes, but I couldn’t. If I broke eye contact, he might think I was hiding something, and I desperately needed him to believe I was telling the truth. Now, more than ever. So we both sat still and silent, ignoring Michael.
Finally, he spoke. “I’m going to give you a chance to rethink what you just told us. That’s more than I would give any other cat in the world. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
I nodded. He was giving me a chance to save myself. To take back what I’d just said. To decide I’d made a mistake—that I hadn’t infected Andrew. He was looking for a justifiable excuse to spare my life, at least until after the official inquisition the Council would demand if he refused to have me executed. He’d have a good reason for that—if I was willing to lie.
But I wasn’t. I couldn’t. Lying about what I’d done would mean becoming the selfish, heartless monster Andrew must already think I was. The monster who’d turned him into what he’d become, then left him to die.
“Do you want to…rephrase your statement?” my father asked. “For the record?”
Slowly, regretfully, I shook my head. It was the single hardest thing I’d ever had to do. Harder than fighting for my life. Harder than leaving Marc years before. Harder than coming home.But it was right. I knew that with every frenzied beat of my heart. In every shadowed corner of my soul.
I was doing the honorable thing. Just as my Alpha had taught me.
“Faythe…” My father’s voice shook, in fury and in…terror. He was afraid. For the first time in my life, I saw fear in my father’s face, lining his forehead, glazing his eyes.
“I can’t do it, Daddy. I’m telling the truth. I did nip him, but the infection was an accident. It’s not supposed to happen that way. It shouldn’t be possible.”
My father hurled his glass across the room. The movement was too fast for my eyes to track. I didn’t understand what had happened until glass shattered against the wall and the biting scent of Scotch permeated the air. I jumped, whirling to see the wet smear across the oak paneling.
He shot out of his seat. His armchair fell over backward, slamming against the hardwood floor. “I give you the opportunity to save yourself, and you give me this partial-Shift nonsense? Again?” His face was flushed, his eyes blazing.
“It’s the truth.” I fought the need to pull my feet up onto the couch and curl into a protective ball. “You taught me to tell the truth, to take pride in doing the right thing, even when it’s hard. And now you want me to lie, because it’s easier?”
“I want you to save yourself, whatever that takes!” He dropped to his knees on the floor in front of me, taking my wrists in his hands. He stared into my eyes from inches away, pleading with me to listen. To understand. “We’re talking about your life, Faythe. Our future. Not who lost the croquet ball, or who broke the antique vase. You’re not eight anymore, so don’t throw your damned honor in my face. What good is honor when you’re dead?”
I swallowed thickly. “What good is the truth, if you only use it when it doesn’t matter?”
His eyes burned into mine. “Damn it, Faythe!” Dropping my arms, he leapt to his feet, storming past an astonished Michael, who could do nothing but watch. “We all know you went through something horrible in that basement, and you’re entitled to believe whatever helps you cope with killing Eric. But now you’re taking it too far. This isn’t a game. It isn’t therapy. It isn’t truth-or-dare. It’s your life.”