The barn doors were closed, and knowing my father’s body lay beyond them made his death feel somehow even more real—more devastating—than when I’d witnessed his last breath.

“Mom, you don’t have to do this.” I slid one arm around her shoulders while we stared at the doors, neither of us moving to open them.

“Yes, I do.” She swallowed thickly, and that spark of memory—my father as her live wire—was gone, replaced with pain and dread so thick and heavy I could practically taste them on the air. “If I don’t see him, I’m never going to really believe it, because he’s alive in here.” She laid one trembling, gloveless hand over her chest. “He’s so alive inside me that I can still hear him.”

“What is he saying?” I asked, as her face blurred beneath my tears. I’d failed her more than anyone.

“He’s calling me a coward.” Her voice broke on the last word, and she sniffled in the cold, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes suddenly more defined than I’d ever seen them.

“No, Mom, he would never call you a coward.” Not even if it were true. He would never intentionally hurt her, and he’d never forgive himself for doing it unintentionally. “You’re hearing yourself.” She was the source of my frank tongue, if not the coarse language that often fell from it.

“I know.” She sniffed again and stood straighter. “But it sounds like him. He’s daring me to go in there and deal with this, so I can come out stronger and ready to do what has to be done. The funeral and the packing.” She faced me then, eyes wide with real horror. “Faythe, I don’t think I can pack up his things.”

“Then don’t. Who says you have to?” I tried to smile, but the best I could manage was a not-frown. “There are no rules, Mom. There’s no grief timeline.” Other than the five-day Alpha deadline I still hadn’t told her about.

“You’re right.” She took a long, deep breath, then turned back to the barn. “I’m ready.”

We went in through the normal-size side door, and my mother froze two feet into the barn. Marc stood beside a platform made of leftover hay bales, upon which a dark blanket covered my father’s still form. I wasn’t sure where they’d found the blanket, but I was grateful. It felt much less cold and sterile than sheet plastic.

When my mother finally approached, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs, he folded the top of the blanket back to my father’s neck. I tried not to look, but I couldn’t stop myself.

I’d seen a lot of death, of both friends and enemies, but seeing it on my father was an entirely different experience. His face had grayed since I’d last seen it, and he no longer looked alive enough for me to pretend he was only sleeping.

My mother shrugged out from under my arm and approached him slowly. Marc backed away to give her some privacy, and we joined Vic near the first long-empty horse stall, where he stared down at his own worn black hiking boots. His face was red, his eyes swollen.

Marc looked much the same. I wrapped my arms around him for a moment, then twisted in his hold to press my back against his chest.

My mom dropped onto her knees on the dirty barn floor. She put one hand on my father’s cold chest and pressed the other against her own mouth, like she could stop the whole thing from being real if she could only hold back the words.

But she couldn’t.

I didn’t hear what she whispered, and I didn’t want to. Some things are private. Some things needed to be said, even when the person who needed to hear them couldn’t hear anything. Ever again.

Thoughts ran through my head so fast I couldn’t truly focus on any of them. So much to be done. So little I knew how to do. So very much pain I didn’t have time to deal with.

The funeral. The fight. Planning for both. Maybe I could funnel my anger over the necessity of burying my father into the plot to assassinate Malone and ruthlessly gut my father’s murderer. You know, two birds, one big, bloody stone? That’s an efficient use of anger motivation, right?

And Kaci. Somehow I’d have to find a way to talk to her about the fact that she’d just lost someone else. The man who had taken her in and protected her with everything he had—including his youngest son’s life—after she’d lost her own family. Kaci couldn’t take much more loss, and I couldn’t in good conscience tell her that my father’s death would be the last.

Chances were good that we would lose someone else. Maybe several someones.

No. I went stiff in Marc’s grip, and his arms tightened around me, wordlessly comforting me even though he didn’t understand what had upset me.

Planning the fight was one thing, but anticipating the tragic outcome was another entirely. I couldn’t think about who those potential casualties might be. Except for me. One of them might be me, and then what would happen to the Pride when I was gone?

“It doesn’t feel like thirty-three years,” my mother said, and I looked up from my own thoughts to see her still kneeling, still facing my father, but obviously speaking to us. “I would never have thought three decades could possibly feel so fleeting, but it feels like I slid my hand into his last week and promised to love him forever. And I’ve never regretted a single moment of it. Not even when he left the bathroom light on or when he fell asleep at his desk at two in the morning.”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to stop my silent tears, or how best to dry hers.

“We used to run together, you know. Just the two of us, out in the woods, euphoric over the wind, and the smells, and each other. We never needed anything else, but we were blessed with so very much more.” She twisted to look at me then, and the pain etched into her face brought me to my knees, the ache in my heart an endless, nameless oblivion.

Marc let me go and I crossed the floor toward her.

“We were blessed with you, and with your brothers. As you grew up, I felt so helpless, like I could do little more than watch as you became your own people, all five of you. It was like witnessing a miracle, and it happened so quickly. One day we were fascinated by how tiny Michael’s newborn feet were in those little booties, and the next, you took off for college without a backward glance. I don’t know where the time went, but I spent it all with him, and it slipped away so fast.”

I sat next to her on the floor, the straw scratching my back through my shirt, and pressed as close to my mother as I could get. Touch was the only comfort I knew how to give; words had abandoned me entirely.

“I don’t know how to live now, Faythe,” she whispered. “They say you never know what you have until it’s gone, but I knew. I knew every moment, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now, with him gone.”

“You still have us,” I said, well aware that we weren’t enough. Having grown children wasn’t the same as having the love of your life. The other half of your own soul. But I had nothing else to offer her.

Except his last words.

“He gave me a message for you,” I said, and she turned to face me, her blue eyes red with tears and wide with hope. “He said to tell you that you’re his whole life, and have been since the moment he met you. He said that you’re in his heart, and in his soul, and even death will never really separate you.”

And I believed it. If any love could transcend both time and life, it would be my parents’ love.

My mother sobbed again, but this time she was smiling, and I was glad I’d saved his message for that moment. When she truly needed it.

She sat there for several minutes, thinking. Probably remembering. Then she blinked and gave her head a little shake, and I knew she was back in the present. “We have to bury him. I have to call people…”

How could I possibly tell her that we couldn’t do that? That we’d have to bury him like a criminal in the night, to keep the political fallout from making everything impossibly worse?

“I haven’t even told Rick yet.”

“He knows,” I whispered.

She looked startled for a moment, then she nodded. “Of course he knows. He was there. I should have been there.”

No, she shouldn’t have.

“Mom…we have to talk about the rest of this. About what else happened.”

She looked up, and I was relieved to see clarity in her eyes, even if her hand still stroked his arm, unmoving on the bale of hay. “He named you, I know.” She looked suddenly worried. “That was always his plan, but it happened so soon….”

“Yes. He left me in charge of the Pride, but, Mom, the council won’t recognize me, and if we don’t have an ‘acceptable’ Alpha by Saturday, Malone’s going to try to place one of his own choosing.”

My mother’s eyes flashed with fury, and her entire form went stiff. “He’ll have to kill me to do it.”

“Us, too,” Marc said, and Vic nodded.

But actually, he only had to kill me.

“Faythe?” Owen said, and I looked up to see him standing in the doorway with Parker. Owen held his worn cowboy hat over his chest, and as I stood, his gaze slid past me to the bales of hay where our father lay. He stepped forward, and I helped my mother to her feet, then went to meet my brother.

Owen’s arms slid around me along with the scents of clean sweat and earth. There wasn’t much farmwork to do on an animal-free ranch in February, but the telling scents clung to his hat and his boots, triggering a warm, familiar comfort I wouldn’t find anywhere else, now that Ethan was gone.

But comfort could only do so much.

“I should have been there,” he said into my hair, his chin stubble scratching my forehead.

“There’s nothing you could have done.” But I couldn’t tell myself the same thing. I’d seen it coming. I’d seen Dean aiming his gun, and I hadn’t moved fast enough. I couldn’t. “We can’t fight bullets.” But we could rip off the hands holding the guns.

“Mom’s taking it hard,”

“I know. We all are.” My father’s death was shock and devastation like none of us had ever felt. It changed everything. We were hacking a new path through virgin territory without him, and the backlash of branches had already left me bruised. “We’ll get through it—with a healthy dose of ass kicking disguised as therapy.”

“Speaking of which…” Owen let me go and stepped back, gesturing for Parker to come forward.

Parker held out his arms for a hug, and I tried to ignore the fact that he smelled like whiskey. Like a lot of whiskey. “I’m so sorry, Faythe,” he said, when he let me go, running one hand through graying hair that suddenly seemed to be more salt than pepper.

Over his shoulder, I saw Owen wrap one arm around our mother while they shared a private, silent viewing.

Parker cleared his throat and glanced at his feet before looking up again. “You saw my dad? How was he?”

I sighed and resisted the urge to avoid his eyes. Delivering bad news was definitely my least favorite part of the job so far. “Well, let’s just say he is not my biggest fan. In fact, he may be the charter member of the ‘Faythe must die a slow and messy death’ club.”

Parker cringed. “That bad?”

“He called me a disgrace and a whore.”

“Why would he call you a whore?” Owen asked, twisting to face us without letting go of our mother.

“What, the disgrace part doesn’t surprise you?” I forced a grin to let him know I was kidding—and to avoid answering his question. Behind him, Marc stiffened and crossed his arms over his chest.

Parker frowned, too distracted by his personal problems to even process Owen’s question. “I just… I’m so sorry for how my dad treated you. How he’s probably going to treat us all.”

I shook my head and stared up at him, trying to convey import with my gaze alone. “It’s not your responsibility to apologize for your father. None of this is your fault.”

“Knowing that doesn’t lessen the guilt.”

“I know.” Jace felt the same way about his stepfather’s leading role in the effort to take over our Pride, and I had similar feelings about both my brother’s and father’s deaths. Guilt was the least rational emotion I’d ever experienced—and the most difficult to overcome.

“Hey, Brian said we missed the formal swearing, so—” Parker shrugged, and at his words, Owen and my mother turned toward us “—we’re ready to make up for lost time.”

Owen forced a sad smile, one hand curling the rim of his dusty brown hat. “I think the only good thing to come out of this whole thing is the fact that my sister is now the first female Alpha in werecat history. Disgraced or not.”

“She was already working hard on infamy, so I’m not sure this really makes that much difference,” Marc quipped.

My mother frowned. “It makes all the difference in the world.” Her warm, thin hand slipped into mine. “I’m proud of you, Faythe. Your father would be, too.”

I blinked back more tears. How long would it be before we could talk about him without crying?

“I can’t… I don’t think I can be what he was.” I swallowed thickly, and her hand squeezed mine. “At least, not yet. But Marc and Uncle Rick promised to serve as advisers, and I was hoping you would, too, when things settle down a little.”

She actually managed a half smile at that. “I’m even prouder of you now.”

“So, no one can come to the funeral?” Owen said, and I nodded, leaning over the back of my father’s armchair. I couldn’t bring myself to actually sit in it, but I had to assume some physical position of authority. It was expected. Sometimes people recognize leaders based on subconscious clues, and standing near my father’s traditional seat of authority was the simplest, most seamless way I knew to reinforce the idea of me as his successor.

But since Owen and Parker had sworn their loyalty and no one present had questioned my authority yet, I couldn’t help wondering if I was really trying to convince myself.

“No one who isn’t already here,” I qualified. “But once this is all over, we’ll have a true memorial. He will be properly remembered.”

“But not inviting people seems so…cold,” Brian said, from the couch where he sat with Parker and Marc.

“Quite the opposite, really.” My mother spoke softly, but had no trouble capturing everyone’s attention from her perch on the love seat next to Manx. “It will be intimate. A small, closed burial will give us a chance to mourn him in private before we have to put our grief on display for everyone else he ever knew.”

And just like that, it was settled. Thank goodness. I was in awe of my mother.

“Then we fight?” Eagerness bled through Vic’s voice like spilled wine through silk.

“Yes, and we don’t leave the Appalachian territory until I personally verify that Calvin Malone is no longer breathing. Colin Dean is the secondary objective, and while I’d love the chance to give him a slow, agonizing death for what he did to our Alpha, we can’t afford to be that picky. I’ll take him dead if taking him alive doesn’t look possible.” And if I knew Dean, he’d make us kill him rather than be taken prisoner.

“Is there a specific plan, beyond kill, maim, and capture?” Parker asked, looking grimmer than I’d ever seen him. He was taking the news about his father very badly, and I could smell the whiskey on his breath even from across the room. I’d have to talk to him about that.

“Yes, actually. Obviously, Patricia and Melody Malone are completely off-limits, though you have permission to protect yourselves from them as necessary.” And I was living proof that an angry tabby could be just as hard to handle as a tomcat. “As for everyone else, kill only if you have to. We’re trying to whack off the enemy’s head, not hack him into a million pieces, and a little mercy can go a long way.”

“It can also get you killed,” Parker said.

“Yeah. Let’s try not to let that happen.” I blinked and forced my eyes to refocus as I glanced around the room at all the faces watching me. “In addition to all that, we’ll have backup from the East Coast, the Midwest, and the southeast Prides.” Uncle Rick, Aaron Taylor, and Bert Di Carlo’s men, of course. “As well as air support from a Flight of thunderbirds. At least, that’s the plan.” Though we had yet to actually secure their help, because they could only be contacted in person.

When the mumbles of surprise subsided, I continued, unable to completely bury my grim smile. “I’m hoping all of that turns out to be major overkill, but this is our last good shot at taking Malone out, and we are not going to mess it up.”

That time, the general sentiment was approval, and a palpable surge of bloodlust-tinged anticipation.

When I’d answered the rest of the questions and outlined the basics of the private burial, I dismissed the meeting with a suggestion that everyone get some sleep. There’d be little time to rest after the funeral the next day.

“Well done,” Marc said, as the last of the toms filed into the hallway.

I was exhausted, mentally and physically, and I really wanted to sit. I glanced down at my dad’s chair, and Jace chuckled. “You can sit there, you know. I don’t think he’d mind.”

I shook my head. “I’m not ready. It feels weird.” And there was nowhere else in the room to sit without looking like I was taking sides; Marc sat on the couch, and Jace sat on the love seat.

“So, are you going to stand up for every meeting?” Marc grinned like he was joking, but he wasn’t. And what he really wanted to ask was if I intended to stand, rather than choose between the two of them.

“Maybe. At least until I figure out…what works best.”

“Are you hungry?” Jace asked, and Marc scowled.

“No. I’m fine. Listen, guys…” I released a long exhale and finally sank onto the arm of my father’s chair, one foot on the ground for balance. “You don’t need to wait on me. I don’t want you to. I can cook my own food and get my own coffee.”

Marc actually laughed. “Faythe, you don’t cook worth a damn.”

“Okay, you’ve got me there.” However, unless we were talking frozen pizza or hamburgers, neither did either of them. “But my point is that I can’t be my dad, and you don’t need to treat me like him. I’m still trying to figure all this out—figure out who I need to be, to be Alpha—and the last thing I need is for you two to start acting weird around me.”

Jace chuckled. “At the risk of pissing Marc off, I don’t think either of us has any intention of treating you like your dad.”

Marc scowled again, but he couldn’t argue. “I just want to take care of you, Faythe.”

“I know. And I really do appreciate it. I just… I have a lot to sort out right now. I’ll get it figured out. I swear. But right now, I have to talk to Kaci.”

I left them in the office, but I stopped to listen just outside the door when I heard Marc speak. “You’re not making this any easier on her,” he snapped, and I could practically feel Jace bristle, even with a wall separating us. “I’m not making it easier on her? You’re the one brooding and pouting and…”

I cleared my throat where they could hear, then headed toward the kitchen to rescue Kaci from Holly.