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Parker stared at the floor, straight strands of salt-and-pepper hair hanging over his face. “You want me to decide whether or not to turn my brother over to the thunderbirds?”

“No.” My father shook his head firmly. “That’s my call. But I am interested in your opinion.”

Parker sat up then, his face lined in pain and bitter conflict. “Okay, if we turn him over, they’ll kill him. Right?” he asked, and the rest of us nodded. Even my mother, who sat with her ankles crossed primly beneath her chair, her expression just as guarded as my dad’s. “But if we don’t, they’ll keep killing
us
.”

“Yes. But it’s a bit more complicated than that,” my father said.

“Because of my dad?”

Again our Alpha nodded. “I’m assuming that if we turn your brother in, our chances of gaining your father’s support drop dramatically.”

“You might say that.” Parker raked one hand through his hair, and in that moment he looked much older than his thirty-two years.

“Maybe there are choices we’re not seeing…” I ventured, and both of them turned to me expectantly. “Maybe we could offer Lance sanctuary, too, in exchange for his testimony to the birds.” My father started to object, but I rushed on before he could. “Via video, or something. I don’t know. I don’t have the details worked out yet, but there has to be some way to fix this without handing him over to be slaughtered.”

But before anyone could argue—or agree—an electronic version of an old-fashioned telephone ring cut into the air, and I glanced down to see that I still had Jace’s cell phone in my lap. I picked it up and glanced at the display, hoping to see Brett’s name.

Patricia Malone. I reached across the rug to hand Jace his phone. “It’s your mother.”

Jace raised one brow at our Alpha, asking permission to take the call. My father nodded, and a sick feeling unfurled deep inside my stomach. Jace flipped open the phone. “Hello?”

“Jace?” His mother’s voice was only vaguely familiar, and I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Patricia Malone. “I just thought you’d want to know that Brett’s dead.”

“W
hat?” Jace went pale. His forehead crinkled and his blue-eyed gaze met mine as my heart threatened to collapse beneath the mounting pressure of guilt. “That’s not possible. I just talked to him.” He stood, and probably would have left the room if his brother’s fate weren’t of crucial consequence to our entire Pride.

“Don’t tell me what’s possible—I saw the body,” his mother snapped, true anguish fueling her anger. But then her tone softened. “You spoke to Brett today?”

Jace sank back onto the love seat, almost seeming to deflate in front of us. “Well, Faythe did. But I was here.” He glanced at me, and I could only stare back at him as I clutched Marc’s hand with my good one. It was my fault. I’d pressured Brett into helping us, and now he was dead.

And we had no evidence.

“What did he say?” His mother’s voice dropped even lower. Like she didn’t want to be overheard.

“Nothing. They were just talking.” Jace bent with his forehead cradled in one palm. “What…? How did it happen?”

Mrs. Malone sighed, and her anger seemed to bleed away with that one soft exhalation. “It was an accident. He and Alex were sparring in the woods. Just training. Brett lost his balance and fell out of a tree.”

“He fell out of a
tree?
” Jace glanced first at me, then at our Alpha, to see if either of us was buying the coincidence. My father’s steadily darkening scowl said he was not, and my own expression hopefully mirrored his. We’d told the few humans in his life that Ethan had died when he’d fallen out of a tree, but it was no more plausible a story for Brett than it had been for my brother.

The tree bullshit was a message to us, from Malone. He’d found out what Brett was doing and had killed his own son as much to hurt us as to keep his own dealings from going public. And it sounded like Alex, Malone’s second-born son, had done the honors.

The knots in Jace’s family tree made mine look straight and strong in comparison.

“You can’t be serious.” Jace leaned back on the love seat and stared at the ceiling.

“Hon…”

“Mom, you don’t really think Brett fell out of a tree. Today, of all days?” She started to interrupt again, but Jace spoke over her. “You can pretend you don’t hear things, but you know what’s going on. I
know
you do, so you can’t seriously believe Brett was out goofing off in the woods—today—and fell out of a tree. What did they tell you? That he broke his neck?” His eyes watered, and his voice halted as he choked up. “How closely did you look?”

“Honey…”

Jace shot to his feet and stomped toward the bar but made no move to pour a drink. “Did you
see
his
neck
, Mom?” he demanded.

Patricia Malone sobbed over the phone, one great, heaving, hiccuping cry of despair that left me hollow inside, my guilt and regret a mere echo of her pain. Then she sniffled twice, and after a brief silence seemed to have herself under control. “I need you to come home,” she said, in little more than a whisper.

“Mom…”

“Melody’s in bad shape, Jace. She’s not taking it well, and we need to be there for her.”

Jace turned to face the rest of us, and my heart broke for him. He couldn’t go back; if they’d kill Brett, they’d sure as hell kill Jace. We all knew that. Surely his mother knew it, too, whether or not she was willing to admit it, even to herself.

“You belong here with us,” she insisted.

The last bit of self-control crumbled from Jace’s expression, revealing raw pain and anger for an instant before he whirled to face the wall. “That hasn’t been true since you married Calvin.”

I stared at my cast in my lap, fiddling aimlessly with a puff of padding sticking out from the end. He should have been alone; we were all intruding on what should have been a very private agony. I glanced at my father and tossed my head toward the door, raising one brow in question. He nodded, then stood and motioned for us all to follow him into the hall. Whatever Jace said next would be personal, and of no value to our Pride. Marc took my good arm as we headed for the door, but if Jace noticed us leaving, he showed no sign.

“Don’t do this, Jace,” his mother begged as I rounded the couch. But her voice carried a sharp edge of warning.

“I’m not doing it.” I’d never heard Jace sound so strong. So angry, and unmovable. “Calvin’s doing it. He set the thunderbirds after us, and he killed his own son because Brett was defecting with evidence. If you can’t see the truth when it’s staring you in the face, we have nothing else to talk about.”

I was halfway to the door with Marc at my side when a plastic
crunch
echoed through the room. I turned to see Jace holding the pulverized remains of his cell in one hand, small bits of plastic and electronics spilling between his fingers to clatter on the hardwood.

“Will you accept Marc Ramos as an escort?” my father asked from the hall, making no effort to lower his voice. Marc’s hand tightened around mine beneath the table. At the peninsula, my mother froze in the act of ladling chili into bowls, and her gaze strayed to the doorway. Along with mine.

“Greg…” Blackwell hedged, but my father’s footsteps never paused, and Blackwell had to either keep up or be left behind. Both men stopped in front of the dining room—no doubt strategic positioning on my dad’s part.

“Marc is my best enforcer, Paul.” My Alpha turned with his back toward the kitchen, putting me and Marc in Blackwell’s direct line of sight, over his shoulder. “I can’t in good conscience send you off with anything less than my best.”

I glanced at Marc and found him watching in silence, his every muscle tense, his breath apparently frozen in his lungs.

Blackwell looked our way and sighed, then his focus shifted to my dad. “Of course. I’m sorry for the trouble, but I do thank you for the escort.”

I might have been the only one who saw the almost imperceptible ease of tension in my father’s shoulders. But then again, my mother probably saw it, too.

Marc stood when our Alpha motioned for him and Vic. They would drive Blackwell and his two toms to the airport in their rental car, then ride back with my oldest brother, Michael, who would be landing in a couple of hours, back from a business trip.

Michael had been out of town for the past three days, and he knew nothing about the thunderbirds or the damage they’d done, because he was out of touch while his plane was in the air. So my father had left him a voice mail telling him where to meet Vic and Marc, and that they’d explain on the way home.

Several minutes later, I watched through the front window as the four younger toms hastily escorted the elderly Alpha down the steps and into the rental car, where he squeezed into the roomy backseat between his own men. Vic drove down the quarter-mile driveway and out of sight, and though the thunderbirds launched dramatic—and frankly, scary—dives toward the car, they made no physical contact. Probably because the car would have emerged the clear victor over feather and bone in any kamikaze mission.

Moments after the rumble of the car’s engine faded, the birds came swooping back into sight, then over the house, where they no doubt perched on the roofline, waiting for some foolish cat to come out alone.

But—as badly as we hated being prisoners in our own home—that wasn’t going to happen.

Dinner was miserable, even with my mother’s chili and homemade corn bread muffins. Jace sat across the table from me, staring into his bowl, aimlessly stirring its contents. I wanted to say something to him. To apologize for getting Brett involved, or lend him a tear-proof shoulder. After all, I’d just lost my own brother. But memories of the last time we’d grieved together stood out in my mind like a big, flashing “danger” sign, so I settled for meaningful looks of sympathy every time our gazes met, wishing I knew what to say.

I forced down two bowls of chili to encourage Kaci to eat, though neither of us had any appetite. In spite of a house full of guests, there were several empty chairs, and my gaze was drawn to them over and over as I ate. Marc and Vic wouldn’t be back for several hours. Manx was still tending Owen in his room, and Jake and Charlie were gone for good.

After supper, Kaci went to help with the baby and some of the guys invited me to share a bottle of whiskey and a game of spades. But I was restless and out of patience, so I excused myself and headed to the basement. I couldn’t take any more communal mourning. And the current of rage running beneath our common grief? Riding that was like sitting on a drum of gasoline, holding a lit sparkler. Eventually one of those tiny flames would fall in the right place, and my whole world would explode.

Part of me felt like that had already happened.

“You’re distressed,” Kai said as my left fist slammed into the big punching bag.

“No, I’m pissed off.” I threw another punch, concentrating more on power than on form, and my shoulder ached in protest. I bounced on the balls of my feet, as I’d been taught, both fists held ready, though my broken right arm would not see active duty.

“Does that help?”

“Yes.” But that was a lie. Usually, hitting something put me in an instant good mood, but punching one-handed only made me feel awkward and infuriatingly powerless.

Hopefully our unwelcome guest was suffering similar frustrations. The thunderbird stood with his own broken arm cradled to his bare and still-bloody chest. His good hand—fully human for the moment—clutched a steel bar at the front of the cage, through which he watched me vent my grief, anger, and frustration on the equipment in our homemade gym.

Upstairs, I could hardly breathe without wanting to kill someone, just from inhaling all the tension. But like the office, the basement was practically soundproof, by virtue of being underground. The small, high windows and the door at the top of the stairs were the only weaknesses in the sonic armor, and you’d have to be very close to them to overhear anything clearly. So my solitude would have been nearly complete, if not for the human-form bird studying me as if I were the circus oddity.

“What happened to your arm?” Kai asked as I threw another punch. I’d skipped the gloves, but what were skinned knuckles compared to torn flesh, bruised hearts, and everything else my fellow cats were suffering upstairs?

I swiped my good arm across my sweaty forehead without looking at him. “I broke it.” And that reminder sucked up what little joy remained in my useless punching, so I shifted my weight onto my left foot and let my right leg fly. I hit the heavy bag hard enough to make it swing sluggishly, and the blow radiated into my knee and beyond. A tiny spark of triumph shot through me. Kicking was better. There was nothing wrong with my legs.

“How did you break it?” Kai asked, obviously unbothered by my pointedly short answers.

I steadied the bag with my good hand and faced him, hoping I looked fierce in spite of the scribbled-on cast. “I broke it dispatching of the bastards who tried to kill several of my Pride mates.”

I expected Kai to flinch, or laugh, or show obvious skepticism. Instead, he only nodded solemnly. Almost respectfully. “So you understand our need for vengeance.”

“No.” I whirled again and grunted as my left leg hit the bag. “We deal in justice.”

“Justice and vengeance are the same.”

“Now you’re just lying to yourself to validate blood thirst.” I kicked again, and the bag swung harder. “Justice is for the victim.” Kick. “Vengeance is for the survivor.” Kick. I stopped to steady the bag again and glanced at the bird now watching me in fascination. “You’re not doing this for Finn.” I threw a left jab and had to stop myself from following it with a right out of habit. “You’re doing it for yourselves, and that’s anything but honorable.” Contempt dripped from my voice, and blood smeared the bag when my knuckles split open with the next punch.

“We punish the guilty as a warning to future aggressors,” Kai insisted, and I turned to see him scowling, small dark eyes flashing in the dim light from the dusty fixture overhead.

“There was no aggression!” I threw my hands into the air. “Your boy tried to take a werecat’s kill. That’s fucking
suicide
. Don’t you harpies have any instinct? Or common sense?”

Kai drew himself straighter, taller, though the movement must have stung in every untreated gash spanning his chiseled stomach. “We are birds of prey, but carrion will suffice in a pinch. The kill was abandoned in our hunting grounds. Finn had every right to a share.”

“It wasn’t
abandoned
. The hunter—” I was careful not to give out Lance’s name “—just went to tell the group he’d brought down dinner. And for the record, a werecat is only obligated to share his meal with higher-ranking toms and his own wife and children, should he have them. Our custom says nothing about donating to any vulture who swoops out of the sky.”

“He wasn’t in werecat territory.”

Okay, technically Kai had a point, but that was only by chance. In many cases, territories of different species often overlap, mostly because what few other species have outlasted werewolves exist in such small numbers as to be inconsequential to us.

Or so we’d thought.

“You know what? None of that matters.” Frowning, I kicked a boxing glove across the floor and crossed my arms over my chest, annoyed that they didn’t fit there, thanks to the cast. “The cat who killed Finn wasn’t one of ours. If he had been, your bird would have died in our territory. But you just said he didn’t.”

Kai’s scowl deepened, and his good hand tightened around the bar until his knuckles went white, the muscles of his thick hands straining against his skin. “If your people are innocent, where is your proof?”

Incensed now, I stomped across the gritty concrete into the weak light from the fixture overhead, careful to stay well back from the bars. “Our proof was murdered this afternoon. By your
honorable
informant.”

The bird only stared at me, probably trying to judge the truth by my eyes. But I couldn’t read his expression. Couldn’t tell whether he believed me, or even cared one way or the other. “You need new proof.”