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“…couldn’t carry Lucas very far, or very high…” Di Carlo said from across the hall.

“Yeah, but Luke weighs nearly three hundred pounds,” my uncle replied. “That’s a good fifty pounds over the largest man here, and closer to seventy more than most of us.”

Yeah, and if they hadn’t been distracted by the gun, the birds would have double-teamed him, like they did with Charlie
…

“…did he get the gun, anyway?” Kaci asked, and I was getting dizzy from trying to keep up with two conversations at once. “I thought Shifters don’t use guns.”

“It’s the one Manx shot Jace with.” But I didn’t truly realize what I’d said until my mother scowled at me from across the counter, frozen in the act of wiping down the countertop.

Kaci’s hazel eyes widened in horror. “Manx
shot
Jace?”

I cursed myself silently for not giving her my full attention. That was probably one of those things a thirteen-year-old didn’t need to hear. At least, not without the full story. “It was an accident. She was aiming at…the bad guy behind me, but Jace thought she was aiming at me. So he jumped in front of me and got shot.”

Though it hardly seemed possible, her eyes went even wider and glazed over with what could only have been total adoration. “Jace took a bullet for you?”

“Um, yeah.” Actually, he’d taken a bullet for Luiz, but I wasn’t going to downplay his heroics—he’d been
willing
to take the bullet for me. And he still was. Jace would have done anything for me, and everyone in the house knew it.

But so would Marc.

I’d been staring at her brownie when I got lost in my own thoughts, and Kaci mistook my emotional turmoil for hunger. “Here.” She pushed the saucer and half her snack toward me. “It’s the last one. Take it.”

I forced a grin. “Thanks.” But as I chewed, Marc’s voice floated my way from the office.

“…she’s not going to go for that.”

“It’s not up to her,” my father replied, and I dropped the remainder of the brownie on the little plate.

“Just a minute…” I mumbled, then slid off my stool and raced across the dark hall and into the candlelit office.
They’re talking about Manx or Kaci
, I thought as I stepped past Jace and into the room. But that wasn’t true. I could tell from the way they all stared at me, their eyes identically shadowed in the gloom.

“What’s not up to me?” I demanded, in as respectful a tone as I could manage.

My father sighed and stood from his armchair. “We can fight them, but it isn’t going to be pretty. So I want you to take Kaci, Manx, and Des somewhere safe until this is over.”

No!
But shouting at my Alpha—especially in front of his peers—would only make things worse. So I sucked in a deep breath and regrouped as everyone watched me, waiting for the fireworks. “I’d really rather stay and fight. Can’t someone else take them?”

“Teo’s volunteered to go with you,” Di Carlo said. “But we’re going to need everyone else here to fight.”

I glanced at Mateo, but he was ostensibly absorbed in cleaning beneath his fingernails. I’d never known Mateo Di Carlo to back down from a fight; Vic and his brother were very much alike in that respect. But he might never have another chance to spend so much time almost-alone with Manx. He was willing to miss the action for a chance to convince her that she’d be better off with him than with Owen.

Most toms never got a chance to learn to be subtle in their affections.

“Dad…” I began, but stopped when his eyes pleaded with me silently.

“Faythe, in all honesty, you can’t fight with a broken arm, and we want to send someone the tabbies trust with them. That’s you. We’re not trying to get rid of you, or even protect you. We’re depending on you to protect
them
.”

That was the truth; I could see that much. But it was only half the truth. He
was
trying to protect me.

“They won’t be in any danger,” I insisted. “The birds are supposed to get us out of the way, anyway, so they’ll probably let us drive right off the ranch, completely unmolested.”

My father nodded slowly. “That’s what we’re hoping. But just in case, we feel that you and Teo are best prepared to defend them.”

Okay, he had a point there. Mateo was in love with Manx—at least, he thought he was—and I’d give my own life to keep Kaci safe. “I’m not going to talk you out of this, am I?”

“I wish you wouldn’t try,” my father said evenly. So I nodded once. Decisively.

“Fine. I’ll go.” I swear every eyebrow in the room shot up and a couple of jaws dropped. They didn’t have to look so surprised. I wasn’t
such
a shrew, was I? “Where are we going?”

“If it wasn’t such a long drive—and through the free zone—we’d send you to Bert’s place.” Umberto Di Carlo ran his territory from a suburb north of Atlanta. But since Manx wasn’t a legal citizen, and had no ID, we couldn’t fly. “For now, head north to Henderson and get a room. We’ll be in touch with more concrete plans soon.” Fortunately, we all kept fully charged backup batteries for our cell phones, just in case. A lesson we’d learned the hard way.

“Okay,” I said, and my father sighed in relief. I turned toward the hall to see Kaci standing in the doorway, clutching her votive. “Get packed, Whiskers. We’re going on a road trip.”

M
anx was getting out of the shower when I got to my room, so I filled her in while she stood in the middle of my floor, her hair dripping on her robe as ever-leaping shadows moved over her face. She listened with her dark brows drawn low, her mouth a grim, straight line. The spark of irritation in her eyes said she’d rather stay and fight, but the twitch in her arm—as if she wished she were holding her baby—said she knew she could no longer protect her son on her own.

I couldn’t stand to see her so…powerless. Dependent. And I knew well how close I’d come to sharing her fate. Or worse.

Manx cleared her throat, and I made myself face her silent suffering. “Twenty minutes. I will pack.” Then she was gone.

I shoved the essentials into my bag, then grabbed my candle and headed for our former guest room to check on Kaci. On the way, I stopped in the doorway to the guest bathroom, where Lucas sat on a bar stool brought in from the kitchen. My mother was wrapping the ankle he had propped on the closed toilet seat by the light of several candles, while Brian Taylor applied a clear, goopy ointment to my cousin’s shoulders.

Which looked like they’d almost been ripped from his body.

Three deep punctures pierced his skin below each collarbone where the talons had gripped him, and a fourth had apparently been driven
through
both his shoulder blades, completing the bird’s grip in the back.

“Shit, Lucas!” I set my bag down in the hall and stepped into the bathroom for a closer look. My mother frowned over my profanity, but didn’t look up from her work.

“Yeah.” Lucas glanced at his reflection, then down at me. Even seated on the stool, he was a good six inches taller than I was. “Looks nasty, huh?” He flinched as Brian worked on his left shoulder.

“They carried Kaci a lot higher and farther than they did you. How come she doesn’t look like this?” Brian asked, dabbing more ointment on the torn skin with a cotton ball.

“Because Kaci weighs about a third what Lucas weighs.” My mother finished the wrap and secured it with a metal butterfly-shaped clip. “So she had a lot less weight pulling against their talons.”

“That, and they had her by the arms, instead of the shoulders,” I added. “And they were trying not to hurt her, whereas their plans for Lucas likely included a forty-foot drop.”

My mom stood and carefully lowered his foot to the floor. “You’ll have to Shift a couple of times before you…head outside.” Her face went white at the thought of the fight to come, but her expression remained resolved. Strong. “But clear that with the doc, first. Those shoulders may not want to support your weight for a while.”

I shot my cousin a sympathetic look, then continued down the hall.

But I only made it ten feet before Mateo’s voice caught my attention and I stopped outside Manx’s bedroom. I shouldn’t have listened. The closed door said they wanted privacy, and the anxious whispers only underlined that fact. But across the hall, Owen was sleeping off his latest dose of pain pills, and while Manx and Teo weren’t my business, they
were
my brother’s business. So I told myself I was listening for him.

“…not safe here anymore, and our door is always open to you. You have choices, Mercedes. You don’t have to stay here just because this is where you landed, or because you feel obligated to them.”

A dresser drawer slid shut. “I like it here,” Manx said, in her firm, lilted speech.

“I know. I just want you to know that we’d be happy to have you.
I’d
be happy to have you. I can take care of you, Manx. You
and
Des.”

Her footsteps paused, and I pictured her staring at the ground, clothes in hand as she weighed what was best for her son against what was best for her heart. “Yes,” she said finally. “I believe that you can.”

That was all I could take.

Yes, Manx had choices, but sometimes choosing for yourself is just as hard as accepting someone else’s choice for you.

Twenty-four minutes later, we stood by the back door, the women at center stage. Kaci wore a stuffed backpack and cradled a sleeping Des, who was blissfully unaware of the danger we were about to carry him into. I had my old college book bag, and just behind us, Mateo Di Carlo carried Manx’s duffel over one shoulder, and his own smaller bag over the other.

My heart ached as I hugged my mother. We weren’t sure whether or not she fell under Malone’s orders to spare the women, since she was beyond childbearing age and long-since married. My father had tried to talk her into going with us, just in case, but she’d stubbornly refused.

“Are you sure you won’t come?” I whispered as I clung to her. “You know how impulsive and bullheaded I am. I could use someone to keep me in line.”

My mother laughed and pulled back so she could see my face. “You’ll grow out of the impulsiveness, and you get the bullheadedness from me. No matter what your father says.” She shot an affectionate glance at him over my shoulder. “But I need to stay here.”

The way she eyed me intently, meaningfully—and the way she spoke her next sentence—sent a violent assault of chills up my spine. “Now, go say goodbye to your father.”

I nodded, still staring into her eyes. Trying not to understand the message she was sending. But it was all too clear.

The man with the gun would be the first and most obvious target. My mother was staying because there was a good chance that this might be my father’s last fight.

I blinked back tears, then turned to hug my father, acutely aware that this was unlike any other preassignment goodbye we’d ever shared. “Be careful,” I whispered, breathing in his scent—the leather, coffee, and aftershave I’d always associated with absolute safety and authority, even if I sometimes chafed under the yoke of them both.

“I was going to say the same thing to you.”

“If you guys make enough noise, we’ll be fine.” I sounded confident, though I was far from sure.

“Oh, we’ll make noise,” Jace promised, and I turned to hug him, too, holding him just a second longer than I should have. Then I went on to hug Michael, Vic, Parker, and Brian. I’d already said goodbye to Owen in his room, where frustration had gleamed like tears in his eyes. He hated missing the fight almost as much as I did. But he’d already struck his blow and given us our prisoner. And without Kai, we wouldn’t know enough to even
think
about fighting his Flight members.

So I’d kissed the cowboy goodbye and called him my hero. Then ordered him to stay in bed and recuperate.

“Faythe…” Marc began when I faced him, the last of my farewells. But he didn’t have to say any more. We’d said goodbye entirely too often in the past few months, and leaving him again was the last thing I wanted to do.

“Watch yourself.” I went up on my toes to kiss him and let the contact linger a bit longer than I normally would have in front of an audience. “And watch my dad.”

“You know I will.”

And I did know. Marc’s role in the upcoming melee was to protect his Alpha: the man with the gun. And in truth, that would probably be easier without me there for them both to worry about. No matter how far I progressed in my training, no matter how well I fought in either form, there was always someone trying to defend me. Thus putting himself and others in unnecessary danger.

“I’ll see you soon.” I squeezed him harder.

He smiled. “I’d bet my life on it.”

My father cleared his throat. “Everybody ready?”

“Where’s Manx?” I scanned the small crowd and saw her stepping out of Owen’s room. She flushed when she saw us watching, then her stride quickened and grew more confident.

“We are ready?” She took Des when Kaci held him out to her, obviously aware of all the eyes focused on her. Including Mateo’s.

“We are.” As ready as we were going to get, anyway.

My father stepped forward, holding the pistol, and gestured toward his left. The guys—all except Mateo—headed for the front door. My dad turned to me one last time. “Carey Dodd’s already in place waiting for you. You have his number, right?”

“Yeah.” I’d programmed it into my phone, just in case.

“Good. Even if they catch on, I don’t think the birds will follow you into the woods, but keep your ears open, just in case.”

“We will,” Kaci said, clutching her small flashlight, and my dad spared a moment to smile at her.

“Call me as soon as you make it to the car,” he said, and I nodded, one hand on the back doorknob. “Wait for your mother’s signal,” he warned, then jogged down the dark hall to join the rest of the men.

“Okay, let’s go.” My dad opened the front door.

My pulse raced, and I wondered if birds could hear well enough to know that.

My Alpha stepped onto the porch, the gun held ready. Marc and Vic fanned out to either side of him, Jace and Parker beyond them. Each enforcer carried a rudimentary weapon, and because we were all enamored of Lucas’s impale-them-in-midflight approach, all the weapons had at least one sharp end.

The plan was simple: the guys would make a bit of a fuss, demanding the birds restore our power. There wasn’t a chance in hell that would happen, but hopefully they’d cause enough of a distraction to let us slip out the back door and into the woods without the birds noticing.

It was a hell of a risk—but we were out of options.

“Beck!” my father shouted from the front porch, and through the windows, I caught the glare of someone’s flashlight beam, streaking toward the sky like a spotlight. “We need to talk!”

For a moment, there was only silence, but for the racing pulses of those of us waiting, and I was sure our little ruse would fail. Manx, Des, and Kaci would be stuck here with the rest of us, in danger once the real fighting began.

But then that too-familiar thunder of wings roared from the front of the property, and I exhaled softly in relief. They were coming.

The noise of their approach would cover the sounds of us leaving, but we couldn’t afford to break for the woods until they’d all landed, because their eyesight—while not as good in the dark as ours—was much better than their hearing, and they might easily catch a glimpse of movement in the backyard from the air.

So we waited, and I watched in the dark with my cat eyes as my mother peered anxiously through the front window. When the wind-beating racket finally faded and the last of the bird-bodies thumped to the ground, my father began his spiel. And my mother waved frantically behind her back with one hand.

That was our signal.

Kaci’s pulse spiked. I put a supportive hand on her shoulder and gestured for her to kill her light. She turned off the flashlight, then shoved it into the water-bottle pouch on one side of her backpack as I slowly, carefully pulled open the back door.

No creaks; so far, so good.

The screen door was next, and I froze when it squealed, only halfway open. My mom went stiff, then bent to stare out the window again, to see if anyone had noticed. I’m sure the cats all heard, but if the birds had, she saw no sign. She waved us out again, and I opened the door the rest of the way, relieved when it stayed silent.

Mateo went first, with Manx and the baby on his heels. They snuck down the concrete steps on their toes, then took off across the dead grass toward the woods. Kaci was only a second behind Manx, and I went right behind her after handing the open screen door over to my mother to close after we’d made it to the trees, so that the closing squeal wouldn’t give us away before we reached relative safety.

My pulse roared in my ears as I ran, careful to stay just steps behind Kaci.

Teo hit the tree line first, then stopped to wave Manx ahead of him. Des was fussing by then, but was too surprised by the bumpy ride to wail in earnest, thank goodness. And the moment she stepped into the woods, Manx was ready with his pacifier, to keep him quiet.

When Kaci made it to the trees, I stopped and turned to make sure no one had spotted us. I could still hear my father yelling, and caught the occasional screech of a bird’s response, but there was no one in sight. We’d made it, at least this far.

I waved to my mother, and she nodded, then closed the screen door. I stepped into the woods as it squealed shut, and allowed myself one quick sigh of relief. Then I turned and jogged to catch up with the others.

“Who’s Carey Dodd?” Kaci whispered as I fell into step beside her. Des sucked peacefully in front of us, where Manx and Teo hiked side by side.

“One of the Pride members,” I answered, careful to keep my voice soft. We weren’t out of the woods yet. Literally. “He’s the closest nonenforcer tom we have.” My dad had arranged for him to pick us up two miles from the ranch, on a road that cut through the woods behind our property, hopefully far enough away that the birds wouldn’t see the car or hear the engine. Dodd would take us to Henderson and stay as added protection for Manx and Kaci. We weren’t taking any chances.

Because we were in human form—and only I could Shift my eyes—our hike took nearly an hour, and the first half was the roughest by far. Kaci and Manx tripped often, and Teo and I scrambled to catch them until finally Manx handed off the sleeping baby to the tom, who was much more used to tramping through the woods in the dark.

When we were far enough from the house, I decided it was safe enough to risk a little light, and the walk was a bit easier with two flashlight beams lighting the way.

When the trees began to thin, I called Dodd’s cell phone and had him start his engine. We used the rumble to guide us the last eighth of a mile or so, and were relieved to step out of the forest less than twenty feet from the waiting vehicle.

Dodd jumped from the driver’s seat of his SUV and rushed to open the back door for Manx and Kaci. Kaci crawled in first, then took the baby while Manx got settled in the middle of the bench seat. Until we could stop for a car seat, she’d have to hold the baby on her lap.

Teo scooted in next to Manx and pulled the door shut, and I sat up front with Dodd. “Thanks for the ride,” I said, pulling the seat belt tight across my lap.