“I’d call him crazy, if he weren’t so well organized.” My uncle Rick Wade leaned back in the ratty armchair, his furrowed forehead reflecting the disappointment on every other face in the room. Including my own, no doubt. “Malone knew he was going to win, and he came prepared. Some of his proposals are obviously dictatorial, but they’ve been phrased very carefully, so they’re hard to reasonably object to.”

“Yeah, he’s good at maintaining the illusion of integrity. It’s like an evil superpower.” I flipped up the chipped, stainless-steel lever on the kitchen faucet, and water poured into the huge pot. It would take forever to boil on the outdated electric stove, but spaghetti was the easiest meal we knew how to cook in large quantities, and we had extra mouths to feed—my uncle and Aaron Taylor, plus Vic and Brian, who had flown in that morning to replace me, Jace, and Marc, under the assumption we’d be leaving soon for New Mexico.

At the stove, Marc stirred two skillets of ground beef. He was stiff and still irritated because I’d spent the night on the couch, rather than sleep between him and Jace, or try to convince one of them to take the couch.

Jace looked up from the slices of French bread he was buttering and gave me a small smile. At the moment, anything that pissed Marc off made him happy—Jace was still mad about me wearing eau de Marc the night before.

“And you don’t think recruiting testimony from the thunderbirds would do any good?” my uncle asked, looking less than convinced.

“I think we’ve moved beyond political solutions, Rick,” my father said from the chair opposite his brother-in-law. “We always knew it would come to this.”

“And it’s about damn time,” Umberto Di Carlo rumbled from somewhere beyond my line of sight. “I was tired of playing nice, anyway. Everyone knows Cal ordered the maneuver that got Ethan killed and we know he’s responsible for the thunderbird attack that killed Charley Eames and Jake Taylor—”

Aaron Taylor blinked at the mention of his dead son, and I looked away from his pain, because it resurrected my own.

“—and almost cost us Kaci,” Di Carlo continued. And that was without even mentioning the strays he’d had tagged and/or murdered in the free zone, which had almost gotten Marc killed. “It’s time he pays for all of that. I say let’s quit dragging our feet and make it a real consequence. One he can’t live with.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” My father’s comment was so soft I almost missed it, and when I glanced up, I saw him staring at the coffee table, his hands templed beneath his chin. He was eager for justice, but no Alpha in his right mind would ask for war without considering the consequences. The possible losses.

“I want to see him pay for Jake’s death. But before we jump into anything, I need to know that we’re all on the same page,” Aaron Taylor said, as I turned off the water and hauled the half-filled pot out of the sink. “We’re talking about war. About attacking another Alpha and his allies…”

“We’re talking about killing Calvin Malone.” I left the pot on the counter and crossed the kitchen to the doorway, where I could see the whole room. The Alphas had grouped around the coffee table, and Di Carlo’s enforcers lined the far wall. “We’re talking about removing him from power by removing him from life. That’s what he deserves, and that’s the only permanent solution to the growing problem he represents.”

Taylor leaned forward in his chair, eyeing first me, then his fellow Alphas. “Yes, but full-scale war? If Jake’s death has taught me anything, it’s that we can’t afford to lose that many toms.”

“Neither can we afford to leave Malone in charge,” my father pointed out in his quiet, reasonable tone. “The loss of both lives and liberty would be devastating.”

“Yes, but why not target only Malone?” my uncle asked from the couch.

I picked up an open box of spaghetti from the counter. “We could do it that way, and personally I’d love to be there when Malone takes his last breath. But that’s only postponing the inevitable. What do you think the Appalachian Pride and its allies will do if we assassinate their leader? What would we do, if they killed one of you?”

Uncle Rick sighed. “Full-scale war. But we can’t turn back from that, once it starts.”

“Of course not.” My father dropped his hands and sat straighter, drawing all attention his way while I set the pot on the stove and turned the burner on high. “That’s the point. The direction the council is headed is unacceptable, and it’s going to take something drastic to set it straight again.”

“I agree.” Uncle Rick’s shoulders slumped beneath the burden of responsibility they must all have been feeling. “All I’m saying is that, after this, it’ll never be the same. The council may never be truly united again.”

“It hasn’t been for quite some time,” Di Carlo pointed out. “And our failure to act won’t change that. If we start a war to get rid of Malone, we may destroy the council in the process. But if we let things continue, he’ll restructure the council to suit his own needs, effectively destroying it himself.”

“He’s already started that,” Taylor interjected, and his heavy gaze landed on me with particular weight.

“Whoa, what does that mean?” I glanced at the pot of water, then decided that food could wait. The council had met until late the night before and reconvened early in the morning, without enforcers once again. Evidently the rest of us had missed more than just the design of Malone’s new stationery.

My father took his glasses off to polish the lenses, and only once he had them back in place did he meet my gaze. “Calvin had an entire list of policy changes ready to go before the vote, and since then, he’s been introducing one after another. So far, about a third of them have passed, and each time, Paul Blackwell has been the swing vote.”

Dread clenched my stomach like an iron vise.

Unfortunately, even with the new unspoken hostility between them, Blackwell and Malone still shared a few ideological tenets, such as the belief that strays had no place within a Pride, and that a tabby’s primary responsibility is to provide her territory with its next generation. So if Blackwell could be counted upon to vote his conscience—and history had already proved that he would—he would have to support Malone in most policy changes intended to hurt me and/or Marc.

Shit. “What’s passed so far?”

“New Alphas must be approved by a simple majority of the council before they will be officially recognized,” my uncle said, his frown deepening until I thought his face would collapse in on itself.

That one could be aimed at either me or Marc, and would no doubt apply to Jace, too, if his father had any idea how much of a threat Jace had become. “Wow, they’re planning way ahead. What else passed?”

My uncle sighed. “All Prides must pay a monthly stipend to a discretionary fund that will be used to finance council business.”

“What kind of business?” Marc asked, as he drained the first skillet of beef.

“Establishing a new, permanent council headquarters, hiring new enforcers as needed…”

Anger burned in the back of my throat, where a growl itched to form. “For which Pride? Malone’s, I assume? We’re supposed to pay for him to hire new thugs? No way in he—”

“Not for him,” my father interjected, before I could complete the planned profanity. “Enforcers for the council at large, to handle any issue that involves more than one Pride. They’ll be like state troopers, to our city police.”

“That one’s a direct shot at your dad,” Uncle Rick added. “For handling the Manx issue on his own instead of turning it over to the council.”

It took real effort to make my pulse stop racing, and to keep my teeth from Shifting out of fury. “Is that it?” If those were the laws that passed with Blackwell’s vote, I could only imagine what kind of horrible proposals he’d actually found objection to.

“Those are the most threatening so far.” Di Carlo ran one hand through hair still thick and dark in his late fifties. “But we’re supposed to debate one more this afternoon….” He glanced at his fellow Alphas, none of whom seemed inclined to complete Di Carlo’s aborted sentence.

Every hair on my body stood straight up. “What? What’s the new proposal?”

Finally my father sighed and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, looking more pessimistic and frustrated than I’d seen him in a very long time. At least when Ethan died, he’d gotten angry. I’d much rather see him angry than discouraged. “Faythe… His new proposal says that no woman can serve as an enforcer until she’s given birth to a daughter.”

Noooo…

My uncle took one look at the horror surely clear on my face and rushed to explain. “Originally the policy said that no women should be allowed to serve, period, but Blackwell balked at that, so Malone tacked on the daughter codicil. And it looks like Blackwell’s going to support that one, too.”

Of course he was. He’d always believed that I was better suited to a diaper bag than a pair of handcuffs.

“The problem is that there’s no good way to protest that one,” Di Carlo said. “If we want to survive as a species, we do need…” His voice trailed off, but we all knew how that sentence should have ended.

I’d grown up knowing one great, pervasive truth, and had discovered another since I started working for my father. The first was that in order to survive, the south-central Pride needed me to give them children. Because of a genetic inconvenience, there were usually four to six boys born before each daughter, and like most tabbies, I was the only girl in my family. The vacancy of my womb meant the end of my family tree and extinction for my Pride. There was no way around that.

The second—equally important—was that I wanted to serve as an enforcer, and some day as an Alpha. I had yet to come up with a compromise between my own personal rock and hard place, and until I did, the council—especially now that Malone was leading it—would use that against me.

It’s not that I was opposed to the idea of having children. I never had been. However, if, when, and with whom were my decisions to make, and no one had the right to take those choices from me. But Malone had obviously found a new way to try.

I blinked, but the room refused to come back into focus. My blood raced so quickly the whole cabin seemed to spin. I glanced at my father, desperately wishing he would tell me I’d heard wrong. That Malone wasn’t trying to get me fired and sentence me to serial childbirth, all in one fell swoop.

But he couldn’t.

I dumped the dry noodles into the pot, struggling to control my temper, then turned to face the rest of the room again.

“So we’re agreed? Malone must die.”

The cabin got quiet after lunch. The Alphas had gone to the main lodge to try to keep the most sexist policy proposal ever written from becoming official Pride law, and I could do nothing but wait for the outcome. And ponder my future. And wash the dishes.

Teo and Vic had volunteered to make one of their mother’s recipes for dinner. Teo went to town for supplies and Vic had insisted on going with him, ostensibly to make sure his older brother didn’t mess anything up.

But the truth was that he didn’t want to be near me and Jace. He was taking our relationship almost as hard as Marc was, and had barely said a civil word to either of us since we’d gone public. I think he was even a little mad at Marc for not pressuring me harder for a decision. Or killing Jace.

Jace had offered to help with the dishes, but I sent him into the living room for a tense, overtly hostile game of cards with Marc and my cousin Lucas, who tried to keep the peace. I needed time alone to think, and I wasn’t up to watching Marc watch me and Jace, waiting for our hands to touch accidentally on purpose in the soapy water.

I’d just set the last plate in the dish drainer when the rumble of an engine drew my gaze to the front window. I expected to see Vic and Teo Di Carlo returning in the rental van, but instead, I saw a gray sedan passing slowly on the narrow gravel road that ran across the cabin complex.

The car was unfamiliar, but there was no mistaking Colin Dean’s shock of white-blond hair in the driver’s seat. There was second man in the front passenger seat and a third in the back, both facing away from me. But as they drove directly in front of our cabin, Dean gestured toward it, and the other toms turned to look. And my heart literally skipped a beat.

I knew them both. The big guy up front was Gary Rogers, whom I still half thought of as Deep Throat. I’d broken his arm to get him to talk, in the woods behind Malone’s property when we’d snuck in to get Lance Pierce. And the tom directly behind him was Jess…something or other. Jess had pinned, then groped, me, and Marc had bitten off the offending thumb and left him to bleed next to the grave they’d dug for Jace.

What the hell were they doing in Montana? Even if Malone thought he needed extra security, those two would surely have been his last choice, after failing to stop me and Marc from rescuing Jace and taking Lance. Which only left one possible reason for their presence: they were witnesses.

“Guys!” I twisted the faucet too hard and it creaked beneath my grip until I loosened it.

Marc put his cards down, and they all three looked up as I crossed the kitchen into the living room. “Dean just drove onto the complex with Gary Rogers and Jess what’s-his-name. I think Malone’s going to charge us. Soon.”

“That figures.” Jace frowned but didn’t look particularly worried.

“Well, it’s not like we didn’t see it coming.” Marc scooped up the rest of the cards and tapped them into a neat stack in preparation to shuffle. “We’ll tell your dad when he gets back, but if we go through with the attack, some stupid trespassing and assault charge is going to be a pretty moot point, right? It’s not like Malone’s going to be around to oversee a trial.”

But I couldn’t shake the unease eating away at my insides. Halfway through their next hand, I got up to pace.

“Faythe…” Jace laid his cards down and joined me at the window, and I could feel Marc’s gaze on us. “So what if he charges us? It’s not going to make any difference in the end. Come on, you’re gonna drive yourself nuts staring out the window.”

“Us, too,” Lucas quipped, already dealing me in. “Come help me teach these two a lesson.” Because I couldn’t play spades partners with either Marc or Jace.

“I’m sorry.” I sank onto the couch and picked up my cards, organizing them by suit on autopilot. “I just don’t understand why he’d fly Jess and Gary all the way up here just to make formal charges. They don’t need witnesses for that.”

“Maybe the council made him do it, after they refused to consider our charges against him without witnesses. I can totally see Blackwell making him prove he’s willing to play by his own rules.”

“Yeah, I guess. But this still feels like overkill. Even when I was up for murder and infection, they only sent a letter, and they don’t have us on anything near that serious.” Because neither trespassing nor assault were capital crimes.

Lucas shrugged. “Unless he’s planning to charge you as accessories to Lance’s murder.”

“No way.” But despite my protest, that was a distinct possibility. “First of all, Lance wasn’t murdered—he was executed.” And no one but me, Marc, Jace, and Kaci knew that the thunderbirds hadn’t been the ones to actually kill him. “Second, neither Jess nor Gary even saw us take Lance, much less saw him die.” We’d left them bound in the woods when we moved on to complete our assignment.

“Well, unless you want to go down there and ask Malone what he’s up to, there’s nothing we can do but wait.” Marc scowled at the comforting hand Jace put on my shoulder. “And play cards. Your bid.”

I tried to pay attention, and after winning two hands of spades in a row, I finally began to relax—until the first set of footsteps pounded up the front porch steps. Followed quickly by several more.

We’d heard no car engine, which ruled out Vic and Teo, and my father and his allies didn’t move so quickly or stomp so hard—unless something was wrong.

We stood in unison. Cards fluttered to the floor. The breakfast table chair behind Marc fell over to clatter on the hardwood. The front door flew open, and I nearly choked on surprise, then raw terror.

Alex Malone stood in the doorway, aiming a gun at my chest. Colin Dean stood at his back, along with several more enforcers I barely recognized. None of them had been on the compound during the vote the night before. Malone had brought in reinforcements.

“Whoa…” Marc started to step in front of me, then froze when Alex clicked off the gun’s safety.

“Don’t move.” Alex stepped into the living room, and his men fanned out behind him, all holding pistols.

“Since when do we carry guns?” Jace asked, his voice calm and low. Other than the occasional tranquilizer gun for rogues who couldn’t be reasoned with, most Shifters eschewed firearms because of a deep-seated fear of being shot by hunters, as well as the generally accepted belief that when gifted with claws, canines, and supernatural senses, guns were an unfair advantage. Thus carrying them was dishonorable.

Clearly Malone and his men were unbothered by that pesky sense of honor.

“Since the council approved them for the use of the new inter-Pride task force ten minutes ago.” Dean pointed his pistol at me when Alex adjusted his aim toward Jace.

“You brought them with you…” I whispered, stunned by their brutal preparedness and our deplorable lack of foresight. A chasm of fear opened deep inside me, big enough to swallow me whole.

Dean shrugged and shot me a cocky grin. “We came prepared.”

I couldn’t help wondering what else they’d come prepared for….

“You’re being taken into custody on charges of trespassing, kidnapping, murder, and treason. Walk slowly toward the wall and put your hands behind your back,” Dean said to the room in general.

“Or what?” Jace demanded. “You’ll shoot us, in front of all these witnesses?”

Dean sneered. “If you put up a fight, we’re authorized to shoot to wound. So keep that in mind before you start swinging.”

“This is because of the knife, right?” I stared pointedly at the thick scar bisecting his left cheek. “You can’t be trusted to hold on to your own blade, so they gave you a gun. What makes you think you’re any better with that?”

“We’ll find out if you don’t put that tight little ass against the wall.”

Marc growled. “You touch her and I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Dean demanded. “Bleed all over the floor? Because that’s exactly what’s going to happen if you so much as twitch. Now all of you, up against the wall. Three feet apart.”

“What the hell did I do?” Lucas crossed thick arms over his broad chest, towering over everyone in the room, including Dean.

“We’re not here for you.” Alex prodded Jace with the barrel of his gun until his half brother stepped reluctantly toward the long back wall. “But you’re not going to get in the way, either. Up against the paneling, or I’ll put a hole in your foot.”

Lucas growled, but complied. None of us could fight with a gunshot wound, and we couldn’t afford the time to heal one. Better to escape custody later, than to get shot resisting it.

Marc went next, turning his face toward me as some nameless enforcer shoved him chest-first into the wall. He had to tuck his gun into the back of his pants to cuff Marc, but two of the three spare goons at his back had Marc in their sights, just in case.

“You’re next, princess.” Dean stepped close enough to see down my shirt, but I refused to budge. I would not be handcuffed and dragged out of our own cabin like some kind of criminal. “That’s it. Fight. Make me get rough. I’m just looking for an excuse.”

“Faythe, just do it,” Jace warned, and I could hear the pain in his voice, from what it cost him to say that.

“Is that what you said to get in her pants?” Dean asked, but he was watching me, not Jace, and he stepped closer to whisper the next part, his gun bruising my sternum, his breath sour in my face. “Is that all it takes? One good, hard order?”

“Fuck off,” I whispered through clenched teeth. My hands curled into fists so tight my fingernails cut into my palms. I concentrated on that minute pain to keep my focus. To keep from getting so mad my face Shifted. If that happened, I had no doubt Dean would shoot me. He wouldn’t even hesitate.

“Up against the wall. Now.”

“Faythe, it’ll be okay,” Marc said through gritted teeth.

“Oh, no, it won’t. Not for any of you.” Dean laughed, still staring down at me. “But I might make out all right. Now move.”

When I didn’t, he grabbed my arm hard enough to bruise and physically turned me, but I didn’t walk until he shoved the barrel of his gun into my back. I stopped at the wall, and when I glanced at Marc—my teeth clenched in impotent fury—Dean shoved me from behind, smashing the side of my face into the paneling hard enough to stun me.

I blinked, and the room stopped spinning, but not before he’d pulled my arms behind my back. “Shouldn’t you Mirandize us or something?”

“You mean tell you your rights?” Dean chuckled again. “You no longer have any rights. And you better keep that in mind before you go running your mouth.” Cold metal closed around my left wrist, then my right, and he clicked the cuffs too tight on purpose. “Find their phones.”

“On the end table,” Jace said, before Alex could pat him down.

“Front pocket,” Marc said, obviously hoping to avoid that same process. The nameless goon made a face as he reached around Marc to slide the slim phone out with two fingers.

“What about yours, princess?” Dean whispered into my ear. “Where are you hiding the goods?” He slid his free hand slowly down my side, but I could tell from Marc’s look of absolute hatred that Dean was watching for his reaction, as well as mine.

“Te voy a madrear!”

“It’s in the front bedroom,” I said, trying to pull away from Dean’s hand, but his gun poked into my ribs from behind, holding me still.

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” Dean’s hand slid over my left hip and around the front of my jeans, barely brushing my empty pocket before dipping way too low for standard searching procedures.

This time, Jace’s growl echoed Marc’s, and plastic clicked softly as someone turned off his gun’s safety.

“It’s true, so either shoot me or get the fuck off me!” I shouted, holding back angry tears by sheer will.

“You should calm down,” Dean warned, his breath brushing my ear. “You’re getting your lovers all riled up, and that just can’t end well.”

“Dean.” Alex Malone stepped into my field of vision. “Does she have the phone or not?”

“Not on her,” Dean snapped.

Hmm… Dissention among the ranks?

“Then keep your hands to yourself.”

Dean took a step back, but didn’t dislodge his gun from my spine. “Let’s go.”

Alex nodded, and at his signal, the thug behind Marc turned him by one arm and shoved him forward, then marched him toward the front door. Jace was next, and Dean signaled the remaining “task force” members to follow him. The last one released Lucas, then jogged after the others.

On my way out the door, Dean’s gun digging into my rib cage, I twisted to see Lucas staring after us in total shock. In spite of his size and considerable enforcer experience, he was just as defenseless as the rest of us. The guns were a game changer. “Get my dad,” I said, as Dean shoved me down the first step.

Lucas nodded.

“Yeah, like that’s going to help.” Dean tightened his grip on my arm and leaned to whisper in my ear, as I stared after Marc and Jace in the rapidly fading daylight. “Daddy can’t take a shit anymore without asking Cal for permission, and he sure as hell can’t get you out of this mess. I’m your personal warden. And if you take one step out of line, you’ll never look in another mirror without crying.”