Читать книгу Stray - Rachel Vincent - Страница 12

Six

By the time Marc and Jace stood, their Shifts complete, I was ready to greet them on four legs. I weighed a healthy one-hundred-and-thirty-five pounds, which is slim, with ample allowance for curves on a woman my height. As a human, that’s not very impressive. But a one-hundred-and-thirty-five pound cat always gets a second glance—and usually a panicked scream.

But if I was impressive as a cat, Marc was downright scary. Including his tail, he was just over six and a half feet of sleek black fur, sharp claws and jaws powerful enough to split the back of a deer’s skull with a single bite. He was a two-hundred-and-forty-pound mass of graceful, rippling muscles, just waiting to pounce. And few things pounced on by Marc ever got back up.

My father theorized that in cat form we have occasionally been mistaken for so-called “black panthers,” a term used to refer to melanistic jaguars or leopards. In short, black panthers don’t exist, but we do. All of us, regardless of our coloring as humans, have, as cats, the same short, solid black, glossy fur, completely devoid of stripes or rosettes. Length and weight vary with each individual, of course, but in general we are somewhere between the size of a jaguar and that of a small-to-medium lion.

Finished with his own Shift, Marc circled me slowly, stopping several times to sniff my fur in specific places, and once to give my nose a quick lick. Finally satisfied that all was well with me, he rubbed his cheek against mine and nipped tenderly at my neck. I let him. Social guidelines were different in cat form, when it no longer mattered who’d left whom, and why. As cats, we were part of a whole, like littermates.

Jace stood back, letting Marc have his way, because just as some rules changed, others stayed the same. Marc walked the length of my body, letting his tail drag across my back. Then he sat on the ground in front of me and roared.

My heart leapt to hear it. I hadn’t heard a roar other than my own in years. Ours is not the distinctive roar of a lion, though it’s nearly as deep and clearly feline. It sounds like a series of low-pitched bleats, rising and falling in volume, each blending into the next.

Deeper in the woods, the playful romping stopped as the others froze in place to listen. Marc had called, and he was their leader in my father’s absence. As the last of Marc’s roar faded from my ears, it was replaced with the sounds signaling their approach: snapping twigs, crunching leaves and deep breathing. Cats could be absolutely silent when they chose, but rarely bothered when there was no need. The guys weren’t stalking; they were responding to a summons.

In moments, Parker burst through the brush, followed by Owen and Ethan, three dark blurs soaring through the air in front of me to land with delicate, easy grace. Except for one. Ethan landed not on the ground, but on Jace, who rolled over onto his back at the last second. He caught Ethan’s throat between enlarged canines and the vulnerable flesh of his attacker’s stomach with exposed rear claws. They were only playing, so Jace neither bit nor slashed, but had it been for real, it would have been bloody. And it would have been over in a heartbeat. But then, if it had been for real, Jace would never have heard him coming.

Jace tossed Ethan to the ground, where he landed on his feet, hissing with his fur standing on end. They both joined the others in greeting me. In cat form, even more than as humans, our greetings were very physical. I found myself at the center of a writhing, purring mass of black fur and whiskers, tails curling over, under, and around me. The mingling of personal scents was both comforting and invigorating, as were the memories tumbling over one another in a bid for my attention.

When my patience dwindled, I nipped at whatever came near my mouth. I got a whiff of hay and dry soil as I bit down gently on Owen’s tail. Jace’s ear came with the faint scent of the Granny Smith he’d finished for Ethan. But no one paid any attention to my warnings until I growled, and even then they were slow learners. Marc came to my rescue, which I thought was the least he could do, since it was his fault they’d converged on me in the first place. And since even the smallest of them—Ethan—outweighed me by forty pounds.

Marc hissed, and I turned to look at him across someone’s back. He stood several feet away with his neck straining forward and his jaw open to expose a mouthful of sharp teeth, ears flat against the top of his skull. He wasn’t really mad; he was just posturing to get their attention. It worked.

All eyes were on Marc, and since I was never one to pass up an opportunity, I launched myself over Parker and through a thin clump of brush. The chase was on.

I heard them behind me, pursuing me for the thrill of speed, and not because they had any hope of catching me. Surely they knew they had no chance. Maybe in a car on a long stretch of highway, but not in the woods where I’d grown up. And never on four paws.

My pulse racing, I darted between trees and vaulted off fallen limbs, sending small creatures fleeing ahead of me. Everywhere were the sights and sounds of the woods. The undergrowth grew thick and green, and pine trees soared to over one hundred feet high, with the red birches not far behind. My ears were on alert, catching and instantly cataloging the various nocturnal forest creatures as I passed them. Mice squeaked, owls hooted, and possums waddled off in search of safety. I ignored them all.

For fun, as my heart beat a syncopated rhythm against my rib cage, I climbed a broad oak tree, gripping the trunk with my claws over and over again, leg muscles tensing and relaxing as they propelled me upward until I gained a low, thick branch. With a glance at the ground below, I leapt onto a limb extending from a neighboring trunk. From there, I worked my way along, leaping from branch to branch, tree to tree, until I finally thumped to the ground, already running.

My eyes were perfectly suited to roaming the forest at night. They made good use of generous pools of moonlight pouring through gaps in the canopy of leaves and heavily laden pine branches above. Light reflected from the eyes of potential prey, and I could easily distinguish the dark coats of nocturnal animals from the shadows nestled in every niche and crevice, and hiding beneath curtains of fern and blankets of poison ivy. Dry leaves crackled beneath my paws and thorns tugged at my fur as I sprinted, my lungs relishing the luxury of such fresh, fragrant air.

Our forest was home to any number of woodland creatures, the largest of which were deer. But we were the biggest predators around for miles. Dogs—and especially cats—knew to avoid our territory thanks to Marc’s obsessively organized system of scent marking. We had the run of the forest, and we liked it that way.

On my right, something slithered beneath a pile of leaves, but I didn’t pause to identify it as I ran. The only things I chased that night were my personal demons. Or rather, they were chasing me. For the first time in years, I felt the hot breath of my past on the back of my neck. It was the carnivorous spirit of everything tradition demanded I become, and the only way to escape was to run, to beat the ground with my paws, in a furious race for the right to control my life. And I would not lose. Not again.

Finally, when my lungs burned, my legs ached, and every muscle in my body insisted that I must stop or collapse, I had to admit that at least for now, the demons were only in my head. My pursuers were my fellow Pride members, and they only chased because I ran. It was a cat’s instinct to try to catch anything that moved, like a kitten pouncing on a piece of string trailed across the floor. And I’d trailed my string all over the forest, practically daring them to come get me.

I slowed to a stop, listening between ragged pants as I calmed my racing heart. The guys had fallen far behind, and the evidence of their pursuit faded into the symphony of shuffles, rustles, cracks, hoots and squeaks that defined the forest at night. Satisfied that I’d proven my point, that I could outrun them all, I sank to the ground to rest at the base of a pine tree. I glanced around, taking in even the most minute shift of leaves in the warm night breeze. The night was mine for as long as I wanted it, and I finally had the privacy I’d sought for so long at school. It irked me that I’d found what I wanted in my own backyard, when I’d searched for it fruitlessly for years, hundreds of miles from home.

Content, I licked the dirt from my paws, giving my ears a good swipe while I was at it. Grooming was always relaxing. It gave me a chance to think, which I could never do without something to occupy my hands. Or paws, as the case may be. As I set to work on my whiskers, a gurgling sound caught my attention, and my ears perked up—literally. I’d paid little attention to direction as I ran, more intent on escaping the tomcats and my personal demons, which became harder to tell apart with each passing moment. But the sound of running water was unmistakable. I was near the stream.

Unlike house cats, we swim very well and love to fish. And unless something had changed in the last two years, the stream was full of fish practically tripping over one another for the honor of filling my stomach. I stood and listened carefully, my ears rotating in unison as I searched for the direction of the sound.

There. Southeast, and not very far away. I could already smell the mineral-rich water.

Still tired from my run, I turned in the direction of the stream and took my time, batting at every firefly I saw on the way. At the water’s edge, I peered down at the rippling surface. My own face looked back at me in the moonlight. It wasn’t my human face, of course, with dimples and slightly ruddy cheeks, but the reflection wavering in the stream was no less familiar. My fur was solid black, with no distinguishing marks and no variation in color except for whiskers, which stood out as startlingly white against the dark background.

My eyes were the same color in either form: pale green, almost yellow in the moonlight. At school my friends said they were distinctive, but in cat form they looked normal, even average. Of course, the shape was completely different than my human eyes; as a cat, my pupils were slits, rather than circles. At least in the daylight. At night, they dilated almost all the way, leaving only thin rings of color around broad black disks.

I leaned forward and lapped at the water, quenching the scorching thirst I’d worked up during my sprint. And fluid wasn’t the only thing the race had cost me. Cats have a higher metabolic rate than humans do, and we seem to have a higher rate than even most large cats, possibly due to the calories used up during the process of Shifting. Simply put, Shifting makes us hungry. Immediately.

Motion from the stream caught my eye. Something darted just beneath the surface of the water, too big to be a frog, and too fast to be a turtle. I hunkered low to the ground, preparing to charge into the water after my dinner. When everything felt right—a feeling I couldn’t verbalize because it had no human equivalent—I jumped. But I never hit the water.

Something smacked into me in midair, ending my forward momentum and driving me to the right. I hit the ground on my side. A crushing weight pinned me down. I saw nothing but black fur, but even with my eyes closed I would have known who it was. On two legs or four, I knew his scent better than I knew my own and had every inch of his body memorized, in both forms. I knew every line, every scar, and even every striation in his irises. As a teenager, I’d gazed into those eyes for hours at a time, wondering if they were as bright by moonlight as they were in the sun. It turned out that they were.

But those days were behind me, by my own choice.

Get off me, Marc! I thought, but what came out was a growl. It was a damn fine growl, in my opinion. Low and threatening, and very serious. But he ignored it with a blatant disregard for my will that would have been uniquely his, if not for the fact that he’d learned it from my father.

Marc lowered his face to mine slowly. He rubbed his cheek against my whiskers and my head, making his way slowly to my only exposed shoulder.

Great job, Faythe, I thought, as furious at myself as I was at Marc. You’ve been pinned twice in less than an hour.

Marc bit me softly each time I tried to throw him off or get to my feet, and I never stopped growling. He was marking me with the scent glands on either side of his face.

I hate being marked.

He would go no farther; we both knew that. And he was being very gentle, even seductive for a cat, but that couldn’t have been further from the point. The point was that he had no right to mark me. None at all.

Marking was an overt declaration of possession. Of territorial rights. Werecat instinct led us to mark our personal possessions, our kills, and the boundaries of our property. By rubbing his personal scent on me, Marc was claiming me for himself like he might claim the front seat or the biggest slice of pizza. The implication was that I belonged to him. Which was far from the truth.

His behavior would have been perfectly acceptable, even expected, if I were his mate—a wife, or even a long-term girlfriend. In that case, it would be appropriate for me to reciprocate. But I was not his mate, therefore I was not his to mark. Not anymore. Not ever, if we were being completely honest.

Trapped in a cage formed by his legs and pressed to the ground by his weight, I could do nothing but wait for him to finish. That, and feed the rage mounting in every bone in my body. In every shadowed corner of my soul. I passed the seconds with thoughts of retaliation, of the pain and humiliation I would unleash on him at the first available opportunity.

Yep, that’s me. Sugar and spice, and everything nice.

Finally he made a mistake. He moved lower to reach my rib cage, but wasn’t willing to back off of me for fear of my escape. Instead, he turned, placing his left hind leg within reach of my muzzle.

I lunged. My teeth sank into his leg, an inch above his paw. I withheld nothing, giving in to my instinct to bite through to the bone. Marc deserved only my best effort. After all, that’s what I was getting from him, in a bizarre, gently insistent kind of way.

Marc yowled and tried to jump away, hissing in pain and anger.

I refused to let go. It took every ounce of self-control I had to keep from snapping his bone. My canines met around his leg. My back teeth sank through fur and into muscle. I growled, my claws gripping the ground for stability. Blood flowed into my mouth, threatening to choke me if I didn’t swallow. Still, I held on.

Marc turned on me, with that peculiar feline flexibility, and roared almost directly into my ear. But I didn’t let go until he nipped my shoulder just hard enough to draw blood. I’d had a potentially crippling grip on his leg, and he’d held back from hurting me. Some might call that sweet. I called it poor judgment. I only played for keeps, and if Marc wanted to play with me, he’d have to do the same. I was finished making exceptions for him. I’d moved on, whether he realized it or not. And hopefully he would now.

Four more shapes burst through the thick undergrowth, all large and black, the edges of their fur melting into the shadows. Daddy’s other loyal tomcats had come to rescue his right-hand man from a tabby half his size. If I could have, I would have laughed. As it was, I could only huff, but that was good enough to make my point. Marc hobbled off, settling on the ground several feet away to clean his wound, pausing to glare at me periodically and to growl.

As I washed Marc’s blood from my face, Ethan approached me warily, his head hanging low. He sniffed the air as he came, as if he wasn’t quite sure it was actually me. If my scent didn’t convince him, one look at my eyes would. Cats can communicate anger through their expressions just as people can, and I was really good at looking pissed off. I’d had lots of practice.

My appetite was gone, along with any peace I’d gained from my run in the forest. I shot one last contemptuous glance at Marc, then turned my back on them all and jumped over a tangled clump of brush and vines, landing silently on a bed of pine needles on the other side. I was too tired to run, and the walk back to the house took much too long to suit me. The sights and sounds I’d rejoiced in half an hour earlier now grated on my last nerve. Each owl’s hoot seemed to scold me; each rodent’s squeak mocked my plight.

At the edge of the trees, I sank my teeth into my neat pile of clothes, managing to get everything but my panties. I hesitated, uncomfortable with leaving my underwear exposed on the lawn, but abandoned it in the end because I didn’t have any hands and was too pissed off to try Shifting immediately.

Luckily, I didn’t need hands to open the back door, because it was equipped with an oblong handle, easily depressed by cat paws. As long as someone was home, we never locked the doors, because a cat has no place to carry keys. Also, we figured that anyone stupid enough to trespass deserved to be eaten and probably wouldn’t be missed.

I’m kidding, of course. Mostly.

Pawing open the screen-door latch, I trudged into the back hall. The tiles felt cold and smooth against my paws, and the air-conditioning ruffled my sensitive facial whiskers. The only sound other than the whistle of air through the vents was the hum of the refrigerator. It sounded oddly mechanical to my cat ears.

I padded into my room through the open doorway and dropped my clothes on the carpet. Still fuming, I jumped onto the bed and curled up with my tail wrapped around my body. I was hungry and thirsty, and too mad to Shift. Great.

And it only got better when Jace leaned around the door frame, waving my panties from one finger like a white flag. I growled at him, but he only laughed. He knew I wouldn’t hurt him in human form, because that wouldn’t be playing fair. But then, neither was waving my underwear around for the whole world to see.

“You want them back?” he asked. I bobbed my head, and he laughed again at my approximation of a very human gesture. “Come and get them.”

He stepped into the doorway, wearing nothing but a pair of black bikini briefs, and I was suddenly glad to still be a cat. Anyone else might have looked ridiculous in so little material, but Jace was temptation personified. If I’d been human, he couldn’t have mistaken the look in my eyes for anything less than lust. But as a cat, while I had a healthy appreciation for what lay, rather obviously, beneath that tiny triangle of cloth, I was distanced from it by the boundary of species. Jace was much less a possibility than he would have been had I not been sporting fur and claws.

“Come on, if you want them,” he repeated, and I cocked my head, trying to look curious since I couldn’t just ask why he wouldn’t bring them to me. It worked. “Marc said he’d use me as a scratching post if I ever went into your room unchaperoned again.”

Aah. Yes, that sounded like Marc, though he would never have said it in front of me.

Jace grinned, eyes glinting suggestively. “He didn’t say anything about you coming into my room.”

I snorted air through my nose at him and thumped to the floor, landing more delicately on four feet than I ever could have on two. He held out my panties, and I padded over to him, taking the waistband between my teeth. I blinked up at him.

“You’re welcome,” he said. “You really did some damage to his leg, you know.”

I bobbed my head again. I did know. I’d meant to.

“Your father’s going to be pissed. Marc was supposed to make a run up to Oklahoma tomorrow to check out a report we got yesterday about a stray.”

I blinked again and yawned, dropping the underwear on the floor. So Owen would go instead. Or Parker. I didn’t really care about my father’s plans to patrol the territory, unless they meant taking prying eyes away from me. Of course, by injuring Marc, I’d inadvertently guaranteed that he’d be around to watch me for a while. Great job, Faythe. That was me, always careful to plan ahead.

“Shift back,” Jace said, smiling down at me. “I’ll get you something to eat.” He closed the door without waiting for my response. Not that I could have said no. But it would have been pretty satisfying to nudge the door closed in his face.

The Shift back to human was harder than it should have been, and took longer than normal because I couldn’t help thinking about Marc and dwelling on my own anger. I could still taste his blood, which made me simultaneously hungry and furious, a decidedly bizarre combination.

Jace’s last comment ran through my head as I Shifted. He’d said a stray had been reported in Oklahoma, well within the boundaries of our territory. That made at least two such reports, that I knew of, in the last two days. What was going on?

Strays are humans who became werecats after being scratched or bitten by one of us in cat form. Not every bite or scratch produces a werecat, but in spite of centuries spent observing the process, no one seems to know for sure why. Or why not. But there are plenty of theories.

Some werecats believe the size or severity of the wound is directly proportionate to the chances of “infection,” if that’s even the right term. Others, mostly the older generation, believe that transmission is more likely to occur under certain phases of the moon. I’d even met one sweet old dam years earlier who believed that fate determined who would join our ranks and who would not—that those meant to Shift would, and those who were not meant to would not.

According to her theory, human women were not meant to be werecats. Ever. In my entire life, I’d never heard of a female stray. Naturally, nearly everyone had a theory explaining the transformation’s apparent gender bias, and the reasons were just as ridiculous as the prevailing theories about conduction in general. The most popular of these was the conjecture by an elderly former Alpha that women—as the weaker sex—weren’t strong enough to survive the initial Shift.

I thought that particular old man was full of shit. My personal theory was that something in a woman’s physiology, maybe in her immune system, kept the werecat “virus” from getting a grip on her body. But until I could prove it, which wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon, no one gave a damn what I thought. As usual.

Either way, the only thing we know with any certainty about contamination is that humans can only be infected by one of us in cat form, just like with werewolves in the movies. Hollywood got the transmission part right but missed the species altogether. By a long shot.

As a child, I once saw two thunderbirds, flying in tandem across a brilliant blue sky too large to hint at their actual size and strength. And we’d all heard my father recount his infamous run-in with a bruin—a werebear, if you will. But to my knowledge, werewolves are pure fiction. Stray cats, however, are undeniably real, and they posed a constant problem for the rest of us.

Since they were not born into any Pride, most strays could claim no territory of their own and had no system of support. Along with wildcats, who either left their birth Prides or were kicked out, strays lived their lives in seclusion from the rest of us, wandering within the free territories, struggling to either accept or end a life they never asked for or even imagined.

From all accounts, strays lived a miserable existence, so it was no wonder they sometimes crossed the border into our land looking for companionship, and sometimes for answers. When that happened, our enforcers were glad to fill in the many blanks—as the strays were escorted back to the border. Unfortunately, most strays who crossed our boundaries were looking for something else entirely: revenge, or even a slice out of the territorial pie. As a result, the territorial council had long since passed laws forbidding strays from crossing Pride borderlines. Marc was the exception. But then, Marc was exceptional, so that was really no surprise to anyone who knew him.

And now I’m back to thinking about Marc… Damn it.

By the time I stepped back into my pants, I could smell beef cooking. Hamburgers. It had to be, because Jace’s culinary skills were limited to burgers and spaghetti, and I didn’t smell tomato sauce. Oh well, a girl can never have too many burgers, right?

I padded down the hall on bare feet, my steps silent as I passed several closed doors on the way to the kitchen. Jace’s off-key whistling met my ears, accompanied by the sizzle of meat on the stove. I paused in the doorway, glad to see that he’d donned a pair of jeans, if nothing else.

A smile slid into place as I watched him. Jace was comically out of place in front of any household appliance, particularly my mother’s six-burner, stainless-steel behemoth of a stove. He subscribed to the Jackson Pollock theory of cooking, which had somehow led to the creation of an abstract masterpiece out of the formerly spotless, white-tiled kitchen.

As I watched, he turned from the stove toward the peninsula, dripping grease in an arc across the floor from a plastic spatula gripped loosely in one hand. He dropped the spatula on the countertop—without the benefit of a spoon holder—and began slicing tomatoes with a six-inch smooth-bladed butcher knife. I covered my mouth to stifle a giggle as tiny seeds and red juice spurted across the countertop tiles, mingling with a tangle of discarded onion skins and outer lettuce leaves.

“Shit,” he mumbled under his breath, still oblivious to my presence. Grinning, I slipped silently into a chair at the breakfast table. I inhaled deeply, tempted by the aroma of beef and onions. Beneath those were the usual kitchen smells: disinfectant, most notably, mingled with the faintly lingering scents of lemon and rosemary, my mother’s favorite ingredients.

Jace turned back to the stove, still whistling as he piled seasoned beef patties on a plate lined with paper towels. Then he spun gracefully on one foot, the plate balanced on the fingertips of one hand, and stopped in midstep, his eyes wide with surprise to find me watching him. Laughter bubbled from my throat; I couldn’t stop it. The look on his face was almost enough to cure my bad mood.

“I’m glad you’re pleased with yourself,” he said, his voice full of self-deprecating amusement. He set the plate on the table in front of me and went back to the counter to finish butchering the tomatoes. “Why were you spying on me, anyway?”

“Goldfish syndrome,” I said, pinching a chunk from the nearest beef patty.

Jace paused in midslice to glance at me quizzically.

“You guys have been watching my every move for years, and I couldn’t resist the novelty of being the observer for once, rather than the observed.”

“Oh.” He resumed hacking apart vegetables with the butcher knife. “I wouldn’t say we watched your every move…”

“Oh, please.” I rolled my eyes at him. “I’m surprised my father didn’t commission a big glass bowl for me to move into.”

He laughed, scooping a double handful of smooshed tomato slices onto a clean plate.

“Speaking of which, where are my mighty sire and dam hiding out tonight?” I asked, my voice thick with sarcasm. “Have I already scared them into submission?”

“Hardly. It’s late for old folks. They went to bed an hour ago, with orders for us to keep an eye on you.”

“Oh.” Of course they had. And wouldn’t my father love to hear himself described as old.

In the silence that followed, Jace’s ham-fisted sawing captured my attention, and my eyes narrowed in suspicion. He was slicing way too many tomatoes. I glanced from the plate of condiments on the counter to the huge stack of burgers in front of me, my smile fading quickly. “You can’t fatten me up in a single meal, Jace.”

“I’m not trying to.” Finished with the tomatoes, he began fishing pickle slices from an economy-size jar. The combined scents of dill, garlic, and vinegar made my mouth water. Jace turned, a pickle slice halfway to his mouth. “You’re going to have to share and play nice.” He popped the slice into his mouth and crunched into it.

I gripped the tabletop in irritation as his meaning sank in. “The guys aren’t invited.” I wouldn’t have minded eating with Parker and my brothers, but they’d bring Marc, and I didn’t care if I didn’t see him again for another five years.

Jace shot me a stern look, catching me off guard. It was my father’s expression. “They’re giving you time to cool off, but they’re hungry too, and you ruined the hunt. So, we’re all going to sit down like civilized adults and enjoy a meal together. Fresh deer would have been nice—” he glared at me pointedly “—but burgers will have to do.”

I scowled, but he turned around to keep from seeing it. I hadn’t ruined the hunt. Marc had, but it would do no good to explain that to Jace, so I kept my mouth shut. When the battle lines were drawn, the guys would stick together, and I’d be left with only my thick skin to protect me from testosterone-laced barbs and daggers. Unfortunately, the nearest tabby other than my mother was several hundred miles away.

No, wait. Sara was missing, which was the reason for my unscheduled trip home.

Tense laughter and the shuffling of bare feet on tile preceded the guys as they filed into the kitchen, in varying degrees of undress. As usual, Owen was the only one who did justice to the phrase “fully clothed.”

Marc limped in last, his hair damp and smelling of shampoo. I glanced at his left ankle but couldn’t see the wound because his foot was wrapped in a clean white gauze bandage, extending beneath the cuff of his jeans. He crossed his arms over his bare chest and leaned against the wall, staring past me with flushed cheeks. He was either embarrassed or mad, and probably both.

So what? Screw him. He’d brought it on himself.

The other three stood clustered around him, avoiding my eyes. “Grab a plate, guys,” Jace said, ignoring the obvious tension. He set a stack of my mother’s everyday plates on the table, but I made no move to take one. The guys came forward one by one, beginning with Ethan, who had half of his first burger eaten before he settled into the chair next to me.

While the others filled their plates, all except Marc, who still scowled from the doorway, Parker knelt next to my chair, smiling up at me. “How long has it been, Faythe?” he asked. We’d already greeted each other as cats, but it was hard to catch up on lost time with a purr and a lick on the cheek. “What, two years?” His eyes twinkled at me, daring me to disagree.

“More like two months.” I swatted his shoulder fondly. “I saw you at the concert, you know. You don’t exactly fit in with the college crowd.”

He smiled and shrugged, running one hand through prematurely graying hair. “I had my orders. You know that.”

I did know. Everyone always had orders, and for some reason the guys felt honor-bound to follow theirs. I felt no such obligation. But then, I wasn’t getting a paycheck, either.

Parker stood and leaned down to give me a chaste kiss on the cheek before going to fill his plate. Marc followed him, limping past me without so much as a glance in my direction.

Looking around the room, I took in the familiar faces one at a time. It was just like old times, pigging out on junk food after my parents went to bed and arguing about who had to clean up. Even the tension between me and Marc felt familiar; we’d been one of those couples for whom one kind of passion was as good as another. We’d fought as often as we’d made love, and one often led to the other.

“So, Jace,” Owen said from his seat at the bar. “Did Burger King blow up in here, or what?”

“I didn’t see you sweatin’ over a hot stove,” Jace said around a mouthful of food.

“He was sweating?” Ethan glanced at me for confirmation.

I shrugged. “I didn’t see any sweat, but I did see some dancing.”

Parker raised an eyebrow, bemused. “There was dancing?”

“No. There was no dancing.” Jace scowled at me.

I grinned. “Not only was he dancing, he was twirling.”

Parker snickered, and Ethan laughed outright, nearly choking on the last bite of his first burger.

“Okay, I may have taken a graceful step or two,” Jace admitted, a barbecue-flavored chip halfway to his mouth. “But it’s not like I was doing Vic’s rain dance.” He crunched into the chip, and for a long moment his chewing splintered a tense silence.

It was a harmless reference to a very funny night several summers before, when Vic had danced naked in the backyard, appealing to the heavens for some much-needed rainfall. But mentioning Vic had brought to mind his sister, which reminded me forcefully of just what I was doing there, surrounded by my brothers and lifelong friends.

I was home because my parents saw a strike against one North American Pride as a strike against us all. They were closing ranks, circling the wagons to protect the women and children, and as insulted as I was to be included among those in need of protection, I seemed to be the only one who considered their precautions unnecessary.

Could I be wrong? I’d assumed my parents had seized upon Sara’s vanishing act as an excuse to bring their stray sheep back into the fold, where they thought I belonged. But what if they were right? What if someone had taken her?

That one thought changed everything.

All at once, the gravity of Sara’s disappearance hit me like a fist in the gut. Air whooshed from my lungs, and I gasped, trying to draw more in. Doubled over, I panted, near panic. I’d been convinced that she had run away, but what if I was wrong? What if Sean had taken her? If he was crazy enough to snatch her from her own territory, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t hurt her.

A hand settled on my shoulder, heavy and warm. I looked up, fighting back tears. Marc stood in front of me, with a plate in his other hand and concern in his eyes where there had been only anger moments earlier.

Embarrassed by my near collapse and still furious with Marc, I slapped his hand from my shoulder. The sound echoed throughout the room for much longer than I thought it should have. His eyes widened in shock as his arm dropped to hang at his side.

“Don’t touch me,” I whispered through clenched teeth, glaring at him. He had no right to try to comfort me after the stunt he’d pulled in the woods.

Marc’s cheeks flushed with humiliation as his expression hardened into anger.

The others stared openly, their food apparently forgotten.

My chair made a harsh scraping sound as I shoved it back from the table. All eyes were on me as I stood. I turned away from them, letting my hair fall to shield my face. The only thing worse than having the guys witness my little breakdown would be having to accept their comfort. I didn’t want comfort. I wanted solitude. I had to get away from them all, but especially from Marc. “Excuse me, guys,” I mumbled. “I’ve lost my appetite.”

I’d taken two steps toward the doorway when a warm, strong hand closed around my wrist. I glanced back at Marc, trying to jerk free. His fingers tightened around my arm, grinding the bones together. I whimpered, hating the sound of weakness even as I made it.

Owen stood, and I thought he’d intervene on my behalf, but one look from Marc stopped him in midstep.

Marc’s plate crashed to the table. His pickle spear landed on its side on my mother’s floral tablecloth. A tomato slice dangled from the raised edge of his plate. He stomped out of the kitchen with one hand clamped around my arm, and even with his limp I had to jog to keep up. He pulled me down the hall, past a half dozen closed doors, then tossed me into my bedroom with one hand.

I stumbled and kept putting one foot in front of the other to keep from losing my balance. My momentum took me all the way to the bed, where I banged my thighs against the footboard, and fell forward on my face.

I came up hissing.