Stray (Shifters #1)(27)

“Any word on who’s coming?” Marc asked, reaching down to grab his jeans from the floor where they’d landed.
“Yeah.” Parker leaned against the door frame. “Michael said all ten Alphas are coming. Apparently they all want a say on how we handle this. Four are bringing their wives, and Nick Davidson’s bringing his daughter.”
All ten? I thought, wondering if I’d heard him wrong. Wow. That was every Alpha from every territory in the country. We hardly ever had perfect attendance, even at scheduled meetings.
Marc stood up, one hand holding his pants by the waistband, the other on the towel around his waist. “Where are they staying?” He gave the towel a tug, and it dropped to the floor.
I jumped up fast enough to get a head rush, and scurried over to my dresser, slipping my watch over my wrist to avoid staring at him.
Parker cleared his throat, disguising a chuckle at my reaction. “Michael made reservations for everyone in town, but Mr. Davidson asked if Nikki could stay here.”
“Mom will love that.” I turned to face the room again, my blushing under control. My mother loved all kids, especially dainty little girls like Nikki Davidson. As a child, I was a constant source of frustration for her, with my skinned knees and torn skirts. When I was nine, I blew up a Laura Ashley doll with one of Ethan’s firecrackers. That was the last time she ever tried to make a lady out of me. At least openly. She’d resorted to passive-aggressive tactics ever since.
Marc zipped up his pants, and my eyes were pulled toward the sound. The waistband of his jeans left the top curve of his hipbones exposed, and those masculine points seemed to hold me captive for a moment. When I could, I jerked my eyes away, and they landed on his shirt, crumpled at the end of my bed, abandoned. He’d been tossing shirts there for years, since long before his clothes had any business being on my bedroom floor. My theory was that he liked having me return them. He took advantage of any occasion that required me to seek out his attention. But it was hard to get mad this time. The missing shirt definitely improved the view.Marc was one of those naturally well-built men, for whom weight training merely added definition to an already impressive physique. I could count each ripple of his abs, and had done so on more than one occasion in years past, trailing my fingers lightly down his stomach until… Well, never mind that.
But the memory came just to spite my floundering willpower. I’d almost forgotten there had ever been a time when we could touch each other without one of us tensing, but there had been, once.
I read somewhere that most girls either fall in love with or grow to hate the man who takes their virginity. For me, it was both. I hated Marc’s cocky assurance that I would eventually want him back, but I couldn’t imagine him not being there every time I came home. He had been my first everything. My first boyfriend, my first kiss, my first real confidant. And that was most of the reason I hated him, on those occasions when I did. He knew me too well. But I knew him, too.
“See anything you like?”
I blinked, my cheeks flaming. I’d been staring, and for a while, apparently. Parker was gone, and I hadn’t noticed him leave. There was no one left to shield me from the heat in Marc’s eyes.
I sighed, knowing his question was far from rhetorical. “Seeing something I like isn’t the problem, Marc. It never was.”
“What is the problem?” he asked, his voice thick with yearning. I had my hand on the doorknob, and I fought the urge to turn and look at him. I lost. And there was that expression on his face again, that fear I’d had trouble placing the day before. It still looked all wrong, like Christmas lights in June.
“I’ve changed, and you haven’t.” I left the room before he could ask me to elaborate, because I wasn’t sure I could. Not until he put on a shirt, anyway. I couldn’t even think until then.
Twelve

The twenty feet of plush beige carpet between my room and my father’s office might as well have been a bed of hot coals. Each step hurt a little more than the last, and the distance seemed to swell with each painful thump of my heart. Growing up, I’d feared nothing worse than being called into the office. Going on my own was one thing, but being summoned was quite another. Like Marc, Daddy never yelled, but unlike Marc, he would not be moved by my tears. Not that I planned to shed any.
My father was more than just my sire. He was my Alpha, and because I was a girl, that wouldn’t change until I got married, which I’d spent the last few years avoiding. As a child, I’d owed my father obedience and respect, but as an adult and a member of the Pride, I owed him even more: lifelong loyalty. Everything I did, even away from the ranch and the rest of the Pride, had to be done with the safety of our secret existence in mind. The mistake I’d almost made in the woods might have gotten anyone else, even my brothers, expelled from the Pride. But Daddy wouldn’t expel me. Ever. Tabbies are too valuable to be discarded for any reason. At least until they’ve borne a daughter. 
No, Daddy couldn’t afford to oust me, but he could take away my freedom. He’d certainly done it before.
I stared at the door, postponing the inevitable for another few seconds of torturous anticipation. Ethan used to say that waiting to be punished is always worse than the punishment itself. But Ethan had never been grounded. At least, not like I had been.
The house was a collage of sound around me; I could hear people going about their business in nearly every room. My mother puttered around the kitchen, wiping down counters and rewarming food, in blissful ignorance of my emotional turmoil. Ethan was in the shower; I could hear him humming the theme to Gilligan’s Island as he lathered and rinsed. And repeated.
But in front of me was an auditory vacuum, a white spot on the canvas of chaos that was my home. Daddy’s concrete-walled sanctuary was scary in a way no dark alley could ever be. Anything could be happening in there—anything at all—and no one would know it. But then, that was the whole point.
I knocked on the door and opened it without waiting for a reply. I probably wouldn’t have heard one anyway. Daddy sat hunched over his desk, talking on the phone, but when he saw me, he said goodbye and hung up. It wasn’t a good sign.
“Close the door, please, Faythe.”
I pushed the door shut, and took a seat on the couch. I knew the drill. I even folded my hands on my lap like a good little girl. But it had been years since my father bought that act.
Daddy pushed back his chair and stood, leaning on the desk with both hands while he looked at me with an expression I couldn’t quite place. Exasperation? Dread, maybe? But it definitely wasn’t the fury I’d expected.
“Tell me about Andrew.”
“What?” I gaped at him, so surprised by his request that at first I actually couldn’t process what he’d said.
“Your boyfriend at school.”
“Yes, Daddy, I know who he is,” I snapped, and he raised his eyebrows at my tone. I took a breath and tried again. “I thought this was about Marc’s leg. Or maybe…not inviting anyone to graduation.” I’d started to say “the man in the woods,” or “my bet with Jace.” But then I remembered he didn’t know about either of those little errors in judgment, and I wasn’t about to tell him. Soon I’d have more secrets on file than the CIA.
Daddy frowned, dark, heavy brows overshadowing eyes the same shade of green as Ethan’s. “You know, you could avoid this kind of confusion if you weren’t always in some kind of trouble.”
Shit, why didn’t I think of that? I tugged my shirt down, wishing suddenly that I’d paid more attention to the clothes I’d grabbed. “Why do you want to know about Andrew?”
He crossed the room in several leisurely strides to sit in his armchair, leaning back with the ankle of one leg resting on his opposite knee. The relaxed pose and the long pause were both intended to make me nervous. They worked. “How long have you been dating him?”
“Why do I have the feeling you already know the answer?” I asked, curling my toes in the thick rug. Suddenly I was very conscious of my bare feet, which was strange, considering how much less I’d worn in the very same room only hours earlier.
“I have a responsibility to the entire Pride to ensure your safety, Faythe.”
Great, the responsibility speech. I stared at him, knowing he would respect continued eye contact. “You promised me freedom.”“I kept my promise.” He cracked his knuckles one at a time, so slowly that after the first few, I leaned forward in anticipation of the next. It was psychological torture.
“You also promised me privacy.” My eyes were drawn to the first finger of his right hand, as he pressed on it with his thumb.
Crack. “No,” he said, his face impassive as another pop punctuated his reply. “I promised not to interfere with your life, and I haven’t.” Crack.
“Never argue semantics with an English major, Daddy.”
Finished with the largest ones, he started on the middle knuckles of the same hand, ending each sentence with one, like an auditory exclamation point. “I’m not arguing anything.” Crack. “I’m stating facts.” Crack.
I rolled my eyes. Arguing with my father was pointless, but like one of those windup toy soldiers, I kept walking face-first into the same obstacle, over and over again. I couldn’t seem to help it. Sighing, I resigned myself to the inquisition because resistance was more trouble than submission, and I was already tired of arguing. “What do you want to know about Andrew?”