Pride (15 page)

“One less what?” Marc demanded, his voice as cold and hard as steel.

Oh, shit.

“This is none of your business.” Malone wisely refused to complete his aborted thought, but I couldn’t let him get away with that. If he was going to hate Marc, he was damn well going to be honest with himself—and with the rest of us—about why.

“One less what?” I shouted, pushing myself into a sitting position with my back against the headboard. The pain in my stomach was sharp at first, but had already faded into a dull throb before my father threw the bedroom door open.

He didn’t say a word. He simply warned me with his eyes to stay out of it.

Over the shoulder of my father’s navy terry-cloth robe, I saw Malone, already fully dressed. And beyond him stood Marc, wearing only the shorts he typically slept in, his hair wet from the shower he’d just taken.

“One less what?” I repeated, narrowing my focus on Malone, wondering if he could possibly know what a complete ass he was. Surely not. Surely no one could possibly maintain such a repulsive personality without a blanket of ignorance insulating him from reality.

“One less…
criminal
running loose.” Malone’s face flushed in either fury or humiliation, but I didn’t know him well enough to decide which it was. “I was going to say
criminal.
”

“We all know what you were going to say,” I spat, tossing the covers back to expose my lower half—still clothed in the red pajama pants, thank goodness. “It doesn’t take a genius to fill in the blanks. Though apparently it takes a pedigree to get in your good graces.”

“Faythe…” my father warned, but his expression, rather than matching his carefully stern tone, was completely blank.
Did that mean he didn’t really want me to shut up? Or just that I hadn’t yet reached “critical” on his internal political-disaster dial?

Malone turned back to my father, ignoring both me and Marc. “I assume you’ll let us know if Radley contacts you.”

“Certainly. And I assume
you’ll
let
us
know when you’ve agreed upon a verdict on the murder charge?”

“Of course.” Malone’s glance landed on me briefly before he stomped across the living room and out the front door.

“Get some sleep,” my father said to Marc, then he turned to me. “And
you
don’t overdo it today. Danny will be back this evening to see if you’re ready to Shift.”

With that, my father retired to his own rented bedroom, where he probably spent more time staring at the ceiling than actually sleeping.

The rest of the day dragged by slowly while Jace, Marc, and my father tried to catch up on sleep. Jace and Marc had been sharing one of the two upstairs rooms, but since I was awake, I let Marc borrow the spare bed in mine, for a little privacy. That left only Michael to keep me company/watch to make sure I didn’t escape, which was obviously a
huge
risk, considering I’d nearly been disemboweled twelve short hours earlier.

My brother spent the entire day on the couch next to me, his laptop balanced on both knees, clacking away at the keyboard as if there weren’t a real world all around him, ready and willing to keep him busy.

Fortunately, he didn’t want to talk, so I had plenty of time to catch up on my reading. As luck would have it, during one of Michael’s two short bathroom breaks, the cabin’s landline rang for the first time all day, and there was no one else around to answer it. I dropped my novel on my lap and carefully stretched toward the end table, hoping to reach the phone before it woke anyone up.

“Hello?” I gritted my teeth as the pain in my stomach faded.

Naturally, it was my mother, since there was no one around for me to pass the phone to. “Faythe, dear, how are you feeling?”

“Like a pincushion. How ’bout you?”

To my surprise, she actually laughed. “Well, you
sound
good. And I’m fine. We’re all doing very well, in fact. Manx finally decided on colors for the baby’s first picture outfit. We’re going with stripes in cornflower, periwinkle, sapphire and midnight.”

“Lovely.” I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. “And…monochromatic.”

“I know.” My mother chuckled again. “She’s still insisting on all blue.”

Dr. Carver had confirmed the unborn infant’s gender a couple of months earlier with an after-hours ultrasound at his office. Far from being disappointed with another boy, Manx was thrilled. She was determined that regardless of her own fate, this baby would live, and that the world would welcome him in spite of his gender. Unlike his brothers. And to prove her point, she and my mother were knitting the poor thing an entire closetful of hats, sweaters, mittens and blankets in every shade of blue imaginable.

My mom talked my ear off for the next five minutes, telling me she’d finally met Angela, Ethan’s girlfriend, and how often Manx’s baby was kicking now. Owen had sold the last of the season’s hay, and Vic and Parker were doing regular patrols. The only one she didn’t mention was Ryan, perhaps because nothing had changed with him, in his basement prison cell. But more likely, she was still trying to pretend her favorite-son-turned-traitor had never returned. And I could hardly blame her for that.

When Michael emerged from the bathroom, I tossed him the phone, mouthed the word
Mom,
and went back to my book.

“Hello?” he said into the mouthpiece, already heading into the kitchen to scrounge up some lunch.

I didn’t even pretend to read as I eavesdropped. My mother hadn’t asked me about the hearing, though I knew damn well that was why she’d called, probably hoping I’d be the one to bring it up. But that wasn’t my style. If she wanted to know something from me, she’d have to ask.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t
her
style. My mother was more the hint-dropping type, at least with me.

My mother and I had never been the best of friends. She was grace, and tact, and poise, while I was bruised, and blunt, and loud. But despite our differences, I’d recently discovered that
she
was the source of my steel backbone, and quite possibly the root of my own stubbornness—discoveries that both surprised and pleased me.

Still, she was more comfortable discussing serious things with Michael, and, sure enough, as he dug through the freezer, Michael fended question after question, leaving me to puzzle out her side of the conversation on my own, because the rumbling of the ancient refrigerator blocked most of it out.

“Guilty.” He held up a box of frozen lasagna and a pepperoni pizza, asking me silently to choose. I pointed to the pizza, and he shoved the lasagna back into the freezer. “Not yet. Uncle Rick’s buying us more time.” Another pause as he closed the microwave door on the pizza and pressed some buttons. “Yeah, she did. It was really…interesting. Didn’t look much like the last time.”

She was asking about the partial Shift—not my favorite topic at the moment. Fortunately, when the microwave dinged, Michael begged off the line, promising to have our father call her back later.

While we were eating, Jace padded downstairs, clad only in a pair of blue plaid pajama bottoms cinched around his narrow waist. He mumbled a groggy hello on his way into the kitchen, where he nuked five frozen burritos and started a fresh pot of coffee, his eyes still half-closed. Minutes later,
the scent of coffee brought Marc out of his coma, looking irritatingly fresh and alert.

I’d slept ten out of the last twenty-four hours and still felt like crap thanks to painkillers and the constant throbbing in my stomach. Marc had only had four, and looked like he could climb Mount Everest without breaking a sweat. The claw marks on his arm were little more than puffy red scars now that he’d Shifted into and out of cat form twice.

When he and Jace had Shifted, they headed off into the woods for a four-hour session to relieve one of the teams out looking for the human hikers. Marc and Jace returned around five-thirty, exhausted and disheartened at having made no progress.

The human hikers had been missing for three days. Brett Malone had been mauled twenty-six hours earlier, and we’d found no sign of the strays we suspected were responsible for both. And to top all that off, I felt completely useless, because my stomach still hurt like hell.

As I watched Marc pop open a can of Coke after his shift in the woods, my gaze fell on his newly healed wounds and I knew what I had to do.

It was time for me to Shift—the sooner I healed, the sooner I could get my butt off the couch and into gear. My eyes slid briefly to the closed bedroom door next to mine, behind which my father had finally fallen asleep.

I should probably ask him first.
But I didn’t, because he’d tell me to wait until the twenty-four-hour mark. Instead, I dug my cell phone from my pocket. While the guys watched, Michael frowning in disapproval, though he couldn’t have known what I was doing, I speed-dialed Dr. Carver’s cell, which we all kept programmed for medical emergencies. He’d talked the guys through more than a few tourniquets over the years. And a couple of broken bones, as well.

“Hello?” Dr. Carver answered on the second ring. “Faythe? What’s up?”

“I’m going to try Shifting.”

Silence settled over the line for a moment, and in the background Brett asked if it was supposed to hurt when he inhaled. “Give me ten minutes to get done here.” The doc’s voice held no doubt or judgment of any kind. I heard only acceptance of my decision and a willingness to help, which was a really nice change.

My father was awake by the time Carver arrived—I strongly suspect Michael woke him—which meant there were four extra sets of eyes staring at my stomach when Dr. Carver examined my lacerations beneath the fluorescent fixture in the kitchen, the brightest source of light in the cabin.

“Excellent needlework, if I do say so myself.” The doc leaned forward in one of the dining chairs to peer closer at my stitches. “Well…” He sat up, making contact with my eyes this time, instead of my abs. “It’s not going to feel good, that’s for certain. Are you sure you’re ready to try? It won’t hurt to wait one more day…”

“I can
not
sit on that couch doing nothing for the next twenty-four hours. All I want to know is whether or not Shifting will actually accelerate the healing. Is there any chance it could tear the skin more?” The very thought of which was enough to make me sick to my stomach.

Dr. Carver blinked, then glanced at my father before answering me. “It would have done more damage than good if you’d Shifted last night. But a few hours can make a big difference. You’ve already started to heal, and with any luck, the stitches will hold.” He shrugged. “If you’re feeling up to it, I say give it a try. Assuming that’s okay with the powers that be, of course.” And with that, his gaze slid back to the Alpha.

My father frowned as he studied the earnest hope surely plain on my face. I knew what he was thinking: Malone would never go for it. The tribunal didn’t want me to Shift because they knew that if I decided to run, they probably couldn’t catch
me. I was the smallest—therefore the lightest—cat in our cabin complex, and I’d spent my entire life outrunning my four brothers just to emerge from childhood intact. That, plus my recent enforcer training labeled me a huge flight risk in their eyes, and no matter how often or sincerely I promised them I wouldn’t go, they didn’t believe me. The real bitch of it was that considering my history, I couldn’t really blame them.

But now that I was injured, things had changed. I couldn’t outrun an
armadillo
with four holes in my stomach, not to mention the ones in my chest. Surely even Malone would understand that.

Finally my father exhaled slowly, and the mischief sparkling in his eyes lent youth to his features. “Danny, are you saying Faythe
needs
to Shift to facilitate healing her lacerations?”

Wide-eyed, Dr. Carver nodded eagerly, clearly catching on. “The sooner she Shifts, the quicker she’ll heal, thus the faster she’ll be ready to continue with the hearing.”

“We don’t really have a choice, then.” A hint of a grin peeked through my father’s typically stern expression. “Faythe, you’re going to have to Shift for your own good, and you may as well get it over with now, so the tribunal doesn’t accuse us of trying to delay your hearing.”

Jace scratched his nose to hide a smile, but I didn’t bother. I’d only been allowed to Shift once every two weeks—currently considered the bare minimum for a werecat to maintain good physical and mental health—and even then I’d been heavily supervised. I was nearing the end of my two-week cycle of abstention, and the thought that I might have to leave the mountains without experiencing them on four paws was making me almost as crazy as the accusation that brought me there in the first place.

“I’d like to observe your Shift,” Dr. Carver said. “In case anything goes wrong.”

“Fine.” As badly as I hated having my Shift ogled, I was
not
going to give up my chance to frolic in the woods over something so trivial.

My father nodded, and it was official. “After you Shift, you have half an hour to exercise. Make sure everything still works.”

“I’m injured, not eighty,” I complained, but he ignored my interruption.

“The strays are still out there, Faythe, and the fact that they’ve abandoned their hideout means they probably know we’re looking for them. Stay close to our cabin and away from the main lodge. And stay within sight of your escorts at all time. Escorts?” My father’s eyes roamed the room, and no one was surprised to see Marc and Jace each raise one hand silently. “Fine.” His gaze returned to me. “After your half hour, come back here and let Danny watch over your Shift back. And Faythe?”

“Yes, Daddy?” I stared up at him with my innocent face fixed firmly in place. He wasn’t falling for it. He never had.

“Don’t do anything stupid or dangerous. Understand? You are
not
fully healed, and you won’t be after a single Shift. Doing too much too fast will only hurt you worse. No tree climbing, no long-distance leaping, and no hunting. Just a little light exercise. Got it?”

“Yes, Daddy.”