Rogue (5 page)

I’d already forgotten about Andrew’s phone call by the time I fell asleep, and the last thing I heard before surrendering to exhaustion was Marc’s groan of frustration when he opened the bathroom door to find me already curled up. Without him.

“F
aythe, watch out!”

I whirled instinctively toward the sound of Ryan’s voice the instant I heard it. I should have known better. In the far corner of the basement, my second-born brother stood gripping the steel bars of the cage, staring over my shoulder with his eyes wide in warning.

Shadows shifted on the wall in front of me. Clothing whispered behind me. A foreign heartbeat echoed in my ear. Hot breath stirred hairs on the back of my neck. I spun to face my foe. I was too late.

My eyes found his as his foot hit my ankle. He swept my feet out from under me. My ass hit the thick blue mat with a muted thud. My teeth clicked together, one side of my cheek between them. Sucking on the wound, I glared up at my opponent.

Ethan grinned down at me, peering through green eyes a shade brighter than my own, and my frown melted. I’d never been able to stay mad at the youngest of my brothers; he was
too damn cheerful. But such was not the case with the black sheep of the family.

“Damn it, Ryan,” I snapped, twisting to glare at him over one shoulder. “Your stupid warnings do me more harm than good. Quit trying to distract me and keep your worthless mouth shut next time.”

“Fine.” Ryan’s hands fell from the bars, and he slid them into his pockets, where they usually stayed hidden. “Keep practicing in total silence. So long as the bad guy’s mute, you’ll be prepared.” He seemed inclined to say more, no doubt with a healthy dose of sarcasm, but a single look from our father silenced him. Thin lips pressed firmly together, Ryan shuffled across bare concrete to the cot in one corner of the cage.

My father turned from his prodigal son to face his life’s true challenge—me. “I’ll admit I’ve considered muzzling Ryan, but this time his interruption raises a good point.” He strolled across the floor toward me, smoothing down the front of a pressed white dress shirt as he walked. In spite of the heat and the grimy, unairconditioned basement, my father looked un-ruffled and flawlessly well pressed, as usual.

“And that point would be…?” I left my question hanging as I accepted the hand Ethan offered. He hauled me up with no visible effort, then smacked me on the back. I glared at him, irritated to realize that though I was soaked with perspiration, he had yet to break a sweat. It didn’t seem fair that he was both older
and
stronger. Okay, he wasn’t really that much stronger than I was, but he definitely had more endurance, in spite of our father’s best efforts to stretch mine to its limits.

My father stopped with the tips of his polished dress shoes touching the edge of the mat. “Yes, Ryan is arguably worth less to the Pride than the money it costs to feed him—”

At that, my incarcerated brother growled deep in his throat, but another glance from the Alpha shut him up. Ryan might have been vocal in his dissatisfaction over his meager accommodations, but he wasn’t about to make his situation any worse. He was wise in matters of self-preservation, if in nothing else.

“—however, his interruption
is
typical of the kinds of distractions you’ll face in a real fight.” My father adjusted his silver wire-rimmed glasses and stared hard at me through the lenses. A lecture was coming. I could feel it. “You can hardly expect a confused, out-of-control werecat to oblige you with silence just so you can concentrate on putting him out of his misery, can you?”

I frowned, unhappy to hear that we’d dropped any pretense of these lessons being about self-defense. I was hired muscle for now, whether I liked it or not. Sighing, I repositioned the wide shoulder straps of a black sports bra I no longer completely filled out. “No, but—”

He held up one thick, worn hand to silence me. “You have to practice as if every fight is real, as if the danger is not only to you, but to those under your protection. You owe it to the rest of the Pride to give everything you have. All the time. You can’t win a real fight if you’re easily distracted.”

Grinding my teeth together, I fought the urge to remind my father that I’d
been
out in the real world, that for the past three months, I’d been chasing down interlopers, hand-delivering warnings, and patrolling the territory boundaries. I’d been supervised, of course, but not two days earlier, I’d apprehended Dan Painter on my own. I wanted to say that and more, but I didn’t, because I knew how he’d answer. He’d ask why, if I was capable of more, was I not
showing it now. I didn’t have an answer for him. So I kept my mouth shut.

That was one lesson I’d learned well over the summer. And since it was apparently the
only
thing I’d learned, I nodded curtly, sending my ponytail into a harsh bob behind me.

“Try it again.” With that, my father backed into a dark corner of the basement, his clothes fading into the shadows as the darkness seemed to consume him, but for the shine in his bright green eyes.

I took a deep, calming breath, ready for round four. Or was it round five? I couldn’t remember, but it didn’t matter, because Ethan was already coming at me again.

This time I was prepared.

I squatted, feet and knees spread, so that my center of balance was closer to the ground and my stance more stable. Ethan loped toward me, impossibly nimble. He lunged the last few feet. I bounded to my left and out of his path. He skidded past me. I whirled around to keep him in sight.

Ethan spun in midstep, showing off a lithe feline grace and flexibility. He landed on his knees facing me. His hand shot toward my leg. I darted out of reach and kicked out with my right foot. My sneaker connected with his jaw. His head snapped back.

He growled as I backpedaled, and both his depth and volume put Ryan’s puny attempt to shame.

Ethan rubbed his jaw. I smiled sweetly. Fresh sweat glistened on his back in the light of the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. He dropped to all fours, fingers splayed on the mat. His back arched. My smile vanished. He was going to pounce.

I barely saw him move. Beads of perspiration hit the mat. Ethan’s sweatpants were a black blur as he flew toward me. I
dropped to the pad, rolling onto my back. I tucked my elbows in at my sides and pressed my knees into my chest. Feet flexed, I pointed the soles of my shoes at the ceiling. Ethan landed exactly where he’d aimed: on me. His weight crushed my legs into my torso. Air burst from my lungs. Fingers scrambled for a handful of my hair. Grunting, I shoved my legs away from my body.

Ethan flew backward across the basement, still several feet off the floor when he passed the edge of the mat. He twisted in midair, like a house cat falling from a fence post. His scuffed sneakers hit the ground. His hands followed almost instantly. Ethan hissed in pain as his momentum drove him forward, skinning his palms on the rough concrete. He jumped gracefully to his feet, his back to me, shoulders hunched. When he turned to face me he was smiling.

“Damn, Faythe!” he cried, rubbing two angry red shoe-prints on his bare chest. “Where’d you learn that?”

Standing, I opened my mouth to answer, but my first syllable ended in a string of vowels as something crashed into my left shoulder, driving me to the mat. I landed on my right side, pinned by something hard and heavy. Air whooshed from my lungs for the second time in as many minutes. With the first of my recovered breaths, I took in the scent of my new attacker, even as I recognized his laugh.

My temper flared. I hadn’t even heard him come downstairs. Why couldn’t our basement steps creak like everyone else’s?
Stupid high-quality construction.
That’s what comes of being born to an architect.

“Get—” I paused, shoving at the form draped over me as I twisted onto my back “—off. Get the hell off me.”

Marc smiled down at me, propping himself up on his
palms as his knees moved to straddle my hips. “Give me one good reason.”

Frowning, I stopped struggling to glare up at him. “What I’ll give you is five seconds to get up before I end what little possibility you have of ever siring children—with me or anyone else.”

Instead of heeding my threat, he laughed again and leaned down to steal a kiss. I hissed and lunged off the floor with an ugly grunt of effort, my palms shoving on the front of his dark T-shirt. I didn’t make it to my feet—in fact, I barely moved Marc at all—but anger must have been obvious in my eyes, because my father cleared his throat, and we both stopped to look up at him. “Marc, get up.”

My mouth opened in surprise and my hands fell to rest on my stomach. The Alpha was backing me up? Instead of Marc? Were the roads of hell slick with ice? Had pigs taken to the skies? I smiled at my father, pleased by his support, even though I didn’t need it. I could throw Marc off on my own. I’d certainly done it before.

But then my father had to go and ruin what might have been an unprecedented father-daughter bonding moment. He met Marc’s eyes, a smile claiming the lightly wrinkled corners of his mouth. “I want grandchildren.”

Of course.
I rolled my eyes in frustration. Just because I’d lost sight of the big picture didn’t mean
he
had. Or that he ever would.

Marc took one look at the exasperation on my face and slid onto the mat on my right side, between me and my father. The gesture, though clearly unconscious, was more than appropriate. Marc was always coming between us, though it was hard to tell which of us he was trying to protect.

“Grandchildren, huh?” I said, sitting up in a single jerky motion. My father’s joke wasn’t funny, because it wasn’t really a joke. It was yet another reminder that no matter how good an enforcer I became, I couldn’t escape my primary duty, and no amount of sugarcoating could make that pill go down easily.

I gained my feet, and Marc took a step back. Ethan’s smile vanished, his hands dropping to hang loose at his sides. On my left, Ryan’s shoes shuffled away from me on the floor of his cell, and I could almost feel the tension in the room spike. They thought I was going to start yelling; I could see it in their faces.

I met my father’s eyes and forced a laugh. “You don’t even know what to do with Ryan. What on earth would you do with a bunch of grandchildren running underfoot?”

Our Alpha smiled, and Marc exhaled in relief. He was a big fan of my new effort to be agreeable, because as my father’s right-hand man and my potential other half, he was usually caught in the middle of our fights and forced into the role of moderator. And Marc was a rotten moderator, which was just as well. Alphas typically got their own way, and thus had little need for lessons in compromise.

“What would I do with grandchildren?” My father adjusted his glasses again, probably to hide the relief in his eyes. Or maybe that was amusement. “I’d do exactly what I did when you and your brothers were little—let you crawl all over your mother until you were toilet-trained.” He paused for a beat, his eyes sparkling. “And for Ethan, that was quite some time. Nearly five years, if memory serves.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Ethan snatched a towel from the old bench-press machine and used it to wipe sweat from his face and chest.

Ryan snorted, and Ethan glared at him. In spite of very
close family ties, and the fact that all but one of my siblings still lived with me in our childhood home, none of us had much sympathy for Ryan’s extended stint in the cage. Not even me, though until Ryan took up residence in the basement, I’d held the Pride record for consecutive days spent behind bars. I hadn’t seen daylight for two straight weeks once.

Ryan was nearing the end of his ninety-first day, with no end in sight, and he deserved every single second of his punishment. Actually, he deserved worse, but our father consistently refused my request to have him neutered. It must have been a guy thing.

“Watch it, jailbird, before I forget to empty your coffee can,” Ethan snarled.

Ryan opened his mouth to reply, then closed it with a click of teeth against teeth. His gaze traveled to the corner of the cage, where his makeshift toilet sat, empty—for the moment.

“That’s what I thought.” Ethan dropped the towel on the bench press and stepped back onto the mat. Ryan glowered at him but kept his mouth shut. He’d been pathetically well behaved over the past thirteen weeks, apparently hoping to get time off for good behavior. But our father was no state prison warden. He wouldn’t let Ryan out until he knew what to do with him. Unfortunately, short of skinning him alive, we had yet to come up with a single more appropriate punishment for the part Ryan played in the hell Miguel put us all through. Except for the kitchen shears I kept sterilized and ready to go.

“Okay, let’s try it again.” My father backed slowly away from the mat. “Marc, would you care to join them?”

“Love to.” Turning his back to the Alpha, Marc favored me with a teasing smile, emboldened by the heat in his eyes. “It would be my pleasure to take her to the mat. Again.”

I pushed past Marc to glower at my father. “Two against one? That’s hardly fair.”

Ethan snickered, but I ignored him, already wishing I’d kept my mouth shut.

“Only children speak of life in terms of fairness, Faythe.” My father’s face was expressionless, his mouth a firm, straight line. But his eyes reflected the ghosts of more painful memories than I could possibly guess at. “Life is neither fair nor unfair. It is what it is, and our responsibility is to deal with whatever comes our way. Including opponents who don’t fight honorably. You have to be completely aware of your surroundings. Be prepared to deal with the unexpected, such as Marc jumping you from behind.” He came a step closer to the mat, driving his point home by his very presence.

A lump formed in my throat as I realized he was right. If I’d been paying more attention to my surroundings three months earlier, I would never have been kidnapped.

I nodded, feeling like the kindergartner I’d once been, accepting a well-deserved scolding for coloring on the leather upholstery in his office. “So, you’re saying two against one
is
fair?”

“No, I’m saying that
fair
doesn’t matter. You do whatever you have to do to survive. We all do. Now, give us your best.” With that, his gaze flicked pointedly over my shoulder.