Stray

Marc favored me with a patronizing smile, yet another of my many pet peeves. “You know, for a smart girl, you sure can act dumb.”

I frowned, unsure how to take the combination compliment/insult. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“You already know most of what you need to know. All you need now is some experience.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I snapped, clenching the footboard behind me. I rubbed my fingertips over the polished grain of the wood, using the sensation to ground myself in reality, in the world where I spoke with poise and confidence, and Marc spouted his usual nonsense with the fervor of a true fanatic. My mind rebelled against the idea that Daddy had been cultivating me as his replacement for years and I’d never even noticed. That wasn’t possible. Was it?

“Shut up and think about it for a minute.” He pulled out my desk chair and sat, staring at me with an irritatingly smug confidence. “Have you ever taken dance lessons?”

“Is there a point to this question?” I put my hands on my hips, tapping my foot with exaggerated impatience.

“Just answer me. Have you ever had a dance lesson? Or a shopping spree? What about a manicure?”

My decidedly unmanicured hand clenched around a handful of denim, one finger snagging in my belt loop. “If this is a joke, it isn’t funny. You know me better than that.” Unfortunately.

“So does your father. He never encouraged your interest in anything frivolous, but he made sure you had a say in every decision about the Pride from the time you were twelve years old, even if he didn’t actually use your input.”

Marc let his gaze slide to the floor, clearly searching his memory for another example to support his harebrained theory. “He taught you how to fight.” His eyes snapped back to mine, as fast as a flash of lightning. “Why would he do that? None of the other Alphas teach their daughters to fight. You’ve never worn a tutu, but how many afternoons have you spent in sweatpants, sparring with the guys?”

I studied my fingernails, bitten to short, jagged edges. “Too many to count.” The sparring sessions had started when I was ten and wanted to take karate with a girlfriend from school. Daddy wouldn’t let me. He was afraid I’d really hurt someone. My first face-off against Ethan had proven him right, to my simultaneous horror and delight.

“Who taught you to control your breathing when you sprint and how to pounce from the trees?”

My father. There was no need to say it aloud because, like any good prosecutor, Marc never asked a question unless he already knew the answer.

“What about council diplomacy?”

I groaned and glanced at the clock on my stereo. Apparently time really could stand still. “What about it?” I asked, turning back to him reluctantly. My father had dragged me to at least one Pride council meeting a year until I left for school. After listening to two Alphas negotiate interterritory traveling rights for their college-bound sons, staving off boredom in Advanced Grammar class hadn’t even been a challenge.

“You know the details of every treaty negotiated by the council since you had your first Shift.”

“So what?” I tossed my hands into the air in exasperation. “What’s the point?” But understanding came even as I asked, and his next words only confirmed it for that last, stubborn part of my brain.

Marc stood straighter, barely pausing this time when his full weight hit his injured ankle. “Those are the things you’d have to know to lead a Pride. Your father doesn’t just want you to marry the next Alpha, Faythe. He wants you to be the next Alpha. To succeed him.” He searched my eyes, trying to gauge my reaction.

It struck me all at once, as if hearing it spelled out in small words made it real.

I’ll be damned. Daddy wasn’t teaching me to be independent. After all, how would that benefit the Pride? He was teaching me to be responsible.

Still staring at Marc, I sat down on the bed—not because I wanted to, but because my legs refused to support me any longer. Numb with shock, I let my gaze drift down from his face to the Berber carpet. I studied the familiar design, tracing the overlapping diamonds one at a time, as if the answers to every question floating around in my head must lie hidden somewhere within the pattern. But if they did, I couldn’t find them.

“All this time, I thought you understood,” Marc whispered. I glanced up to find him staring at me with wide eyes, the surprise in his expression bordering on disbelief. “I thought you knew what he wanted and were refusing on general principle. I can’t believe you never realized.”

“Yeah. Me neither.” I barely recognized my own voice. I sounded dazed, or maybe drugged. But then a deeper understanding hit me like a slap in the face. Everything he’d said was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth. Not by a long shot.

My eyes returned to him slowly. “You have all the same qualifications, Marc.” The stunned quality in my voice had been replaced by an unsettling calm, and as I watched, his face flushed. “You know everything I know, and you already have the experience.”

Yet without me, he would never be Alpha. And we both knew it.

Marc studied the collection of CDs lined up next to my stereo. “My training as an enforcer was very thorough, and my areas of study often overlapped yours.” He was hedging, covering up the truth with a thick layer of bullshit.

“How long?”

He met my eyes, his own carefully blank. “How long what?”

“How long has Daddy been grooming you? How old was I when he chose you for me? Eight? Ten?”

He had the decency to blush. “He didn’t choose me, Faythe. You did.”

I considered reminding him about a woman’s prerogative to change her mind, but didn’t think it would help. “I’m not an idiot, Marc. Daddy picked my boyfriend to be his top enforcer, and I’m supposed to believe that’s just a coincidence?” I heard my voice rise in pitch but couldn’t seem to stop it. “He wasn’t training you to defend the boundaries. He was preparing you to take over for him as Alpha.”

“No.” His denial was earnest and simple. “I’ve been trained to help and support you. To be your top enforcer, like I am for Greg.”

But I couldn’t believe it. Of course, that’s what Marc would say. He’d say anything to get us back together, and so would my father, but he had an ulterior motive.

I’d always known my father wanted me to marry Marc, but I’d assumed he was trying to make me happy, misguided though his efforts were. It had never occurred to me that because I was his daughter, Daddy was stuck with me. But he’d chosen Marc. My father wanted Marc as his heir, and the only way to accomplish that was through me.

Marc saw my thoughts on my face and shook his head at me slowly, as if I should have known better. “It wasn’t like that. You can’t train someone to be an Alpha. You know that.”

Of course I knew. You couldn’t teach a cat to utilize strengths and instincts he didn’t possess. But inherent talents could be molded if they were caught early enough, and that was exactly what Daddy had done with Marc.

An Alpha had to be fast, strong, and very good under pressure. He had to be able to make critical decisions quickly, with little information to go on. And most important, he had to have that indefinable something—akin to charisma, but infinitely stronger—which drew loyal tomcats to him and kept them true under even the worst circumstances.

Marc had all of that and more. He was decisive and evenhanded, but ruthless when he had to be. He’d been born to lead, and Daddy had guaranteed that his talents would never go unnoticed, especially by me. He’d made sure that the man closest to me—the only eligible man in the house during my formative years—was one he approved of and had, in fact, handpicked.

Staring into those gold-flecked eyes, I realized that my father had steered me toward Marc not to make either of us happy, but for the good of the Pride. Because everything Daddy did was for the good of the Pride, even if it wasn’t good for any one individual. Including me.

“You know he set us up,” I whispered, anger lending a bitter taste to my words. “You know neither of us ever really had a choice.”

Marc frowned, never taking his eyes from mine. “I had a choice, Faythe, and I made it years ago. I told you I’d never change my mind, and I haven’t. You’re the one who left.”

He had that right. I’d left, and spoiled all of my father’s careful planning. After all, even the best Alpha male was no good without a mate.

Unable to hold his gaze anymore, I let my eyes wander. They fell on a framed photograph on my dresser: Marc and me at my senior prom. My mother must have put it there, because I certainly hadn’t. That was the night he’d asked me to marry him. It was also the night I’d run away for the first time, terrified not by anything that went bump in the night but of growing up to be just like my mother.

Centuries ago, according to legend, our ancestors lived like true cats, with the biggest, strongest toms fighting for the right to mate the available tabbies. Unfortunately, there were very few tabbies. As I understood it, the problem lay not with the women but with the men. As with humans, the gender of our offspring is determined by the sex chromosome donated by the father. But in tomcats, the gametes carrying the Y chromosome are more motile than those containing the X chromosome. Simply put, the sperm cells that would produce male fetuses swim much faster than those that would produce females. This results in an average of five toms born for every one tabby.

To say that the competition for mating rights was fierce and bloody would be like saying the universe is pretty big. There are no words to describe an understatement of such magnitude.

Fortunately, in order to maintain the secret of our existence, most Prides were long ago forced to abandon instinct for the civilization of human society. In our modern Prides, each tabby chose her own husband. And almost invariably—whether through instinct, or deep-rooted social conditioning—she chose someone capable of leading her Pride.

However, even with civilized customs in place and a support system of enforcers, the Alpha had to be a strong leader in order to keep the respect and loyalty of his Pride. A weak Alpha wasn’t Alpha for long, even in the modern world. By contrast, like my father, Marc would have been a great Alpha.

Marc-in-the-picture looked so young, so happy. He was a triple threat: strong, charismatic and beautiful. Helen’s face may have launched a thousand ships, but Marc’s had sunk at least as many hearts, one of them mine.

When I’d asked him to choose, he’d picked the Pride over me. He wouldn’t get a chance to do it twice.

As he’d pointed out, I’d left, and just because he’d dragged me home didn’t mean I would stay there.