Alpha

“Don’t worry, they’re all eager to meet you,” Jace said, and I followed him down the steps, hanging back when she hugged him, clinging to him like a life raft in a storm.

“Andrea still asks about you,” she said, when he finally pulled away.

Jace stiffened, like he wanted to glance back at me, and pulled one hand through his hair. “How is she?”

“Fine. Surprised.” She grinned and ran one hand over her flat stomach, and some vague tension in me eased. She was happy to be pregnant. She didn’t resent Ethan’s baby, and that made me like her, in spite of her familiar manner with Jace. “She’s excited to be an aunt.”

So was I.

I’d never expected to be related by blood to a child who wasn’t mine. Few toms ever had children, and though Ethan was a great fighter, he wasn’t a leader. He would never have been an Alpha, nor would he have settled in a childless human marriage like Michael. So if not for Angela and her baby, we would have nothing left of him but memories.

My eyes watered at the thought of a baby with Ethan’s green eyes, and a shock of his black hair.

“Is that her?” Angela asked, and I glanced up, surprised.

“Yeah.” Jace waved me forward, and I took the last two steps slowly. “Faythe, this is Angela Raymond. Angie, this is Faythe, Ethan’s sister.”

“It’s so great to meet you.” She threw her arms around my neck, and I stumbled back in surprise. But Angela was unfazed, so I patted her back awkwardly. “The guys talked about you all the time,” she said, when she finally let go, and her blue-eyed gaze met mine frankly, after a brief, puzzled glance at my scarred left cheek. Obviously they hadn’t mentioned that. “I feel like I already know you.”

Oh, I doubt that…

But she was so wide-eyed—so earnest, in spite of her nerves—that it was impossible not to smile back at her. Not to like her.

Ethan had considered himself a player. He’d had no trouble lovin’ ‘n’ leavin’ girl after girl. Until Angela. And now, seeing her, hearing her, I understood why she’d outlasted the others, and I wondered if, given time, she might have actually won a place in his heart, instead of just his bed.

“Everyone’s excited to meet you,” Jace said, gesturing toward the front door.

“Everyone?” Her forehead furrowed and she looked at the house as if it might swallow her whole.

“Don’t worry.” Jace put one hand at her back to guide her forward. “Meeting them is the easy part.” He glanced back at me and winked. “Remembering the names might be a bit of a challenge.”

I closed Angela’s car door, then followed them inside.

The house was silent, but for the whispered breaths and excited heartbeats coming from the living room, which Angela probably couldn’t hear. Everyone was listening. Waiting. Eager for the first up-close glimpse.

This was unprecedented. We’d only recently learned that humans and werecats could sire children, and while strays were proof that that had happened—to be “infected,” a human must already carry a recessive gene donated by a werecat somewhere in the family tree—there were very few cases of toms actually claiming their illegitimate children. And all of those cases were very recent because, before, such pregnancies had been considered impossible.

Ethan’s baby would be born human, and the difference between his blood and his mother’s would be small enough to avoid detection in the basic newborn tests, as had been happening for decades with potential strays. So my nephew—the baby would almost certainly be a boy—would have no true place in our violent, complicated world until and unless he was one day scratched or bitten by a werecat. And infection was still a capital crime, even between blood relatives, a concept we as a species had only recently been forced to confront.

As Angela stepped through the front door into our house—our Pride’s headquarters ever since my father became Alpha—I tried to imagine what we must look like to her. What we must feel like. Most humans lacked the appropriate mental compartment in which to file us. They would sense something different about us, but be unable to say what. We might scare her. We might fascinate her. We might never see her again.

That was my mother’s worst fear.

Jace led her to the first room on the right, and Angela stopped cold in the doorway. Her smile froze, then faded into uncertainty as her focus skipped from face to face, none of which I could see from the hall.

We were a motley bunch at best—even compared to most other Prides—and we were a lot for a human to take in at once. Especially a newly pregnant college student, whose boyfriend had just died.

This was as hard for her as it was for us.

Sympathy for Angela flooded me, and I gave Jace a little shove. He raised one brow at me but moved over, and I edged past Angela into the living room to make the introductions. To represent my family and try to bridge the gap between worlds.

All the men had stood when we’d entered the room, and every last one of them stared straight at her. I sighed in frustration and rolled my eyes at several of them. Way to look normal, guys. I forced a laugh and turned back to her. “Did Ethan tell you we have a big extended family?”

She nodded hesitantly.

“I know it’s kind of overwhelming, but everyone really wanted to meet you.” Though in retrospect, introducing her to the entire household at once seemed like an extraordinarily bad plan.

She nodded again, mute.

I led her to the right and we worked our way around the room. She shook hands, and I made brief introductions and explanations. My fellow enforcers were first.

“Angela, this is Brian, Vic, and Marc. They work for my father.”

“On the ranch? Like Jace?” Her eyes lit up; she was pleased to have found some logic to cling to in the sea of confusion we’d tossed her into.

“Um, yeah.” They each shook her hand and welcomed her, but Marc eyed Jace as he followed us around the room.

Next came Kaci. “This is my cousin Karli.” The identity under which she would attend school, once everything had calmed down. Assuming that ever happened.

“Hi, Karli,” Angela said, obviously more at ease with a young girl than with a room full of strange men.

“Hey. So, you’re gonna have Ethan’s baby?” Kaci said, after a frank, curious glance at Angela’s flat belly. “Well, I guess it’s your baby, too. But I hope it looks like him, at least a little bit.”

Angela smiled. “Me, too.” And just like that, she’d won Kaci over.

While we crossed the rug toward Owen, he bent to help Manx up, with Des in her arms. Her hands were carefully arranged beneath the folds of the baby’s blankets, so that her fingers—the nails ruined from her recent declawing—wouldn’t show. “And this is my brother Owen.”

Owen shot her a friendly, lopsided grin, and stuck out one calloused hand for hers, his other arm around Manx. “Pleased to meet you. I’m just sorry Ethan isn’t here to make the introductions.”

“So am I.” Angela shook his hand warmly, then her gaze was drawn to Des’s face as he yawned and stretched one chubby arm from beneath his blanket. “And who’s this? Ethan didn’t mention a nephew.”

Owen flushed, but stroked the baby’s face with one long finger. “Mercedes is a friend of the family, and this is her son, Desiderio.”

“How beautiful!” Angela said, when Manx tilted her bundle forward so her child could be admired.

“Please forgive me for not shaking,” she said, and Angela smiled at her exotic accent.

“Don’t worry about it. You’ve got your hands full.”

Manx smiled in relief and glanced at Owen, who beamed back at her. She’d been nervous about hiding her hands, no matter how many times he’d assured her that it wouldn’t be an issue.

“Dad?” I said, and my father stepped forward in his usual suit, minus the jacket. “This is my father, Greg Sanders.” It felt weird not to add his title after the basic introduction, but Angela wouldn’t even know what an Alpha was, and telling her—exposing our existence to a human—would only get me brought up on more charges.

She held out her hand and my father shook it formally, studying her face like he’d be tested on it later. “It’s so good to finally meet you. I see now why Ethan tried to keep you all to himself.”

Angela blushed, and I stared at my father in surprise. Who’d have known he could be charming, when he wasn’t barking out orders?

“And this is my mother,” I said, as my mom clasped her hands in front of her own perfectly pressed slacks. “Karen Sanders.”