Pride

On my left, the kitchen door creaked open, and I turned to see Marc step inside. His gaze found me instantly, the gold specks glittering in his brown eyes. He looked away first, as had become his habit since we’d broken up ten weeks earlier. Ten weeks and four days, to be exact. And approximately ten hours.

But who was counting?

A familiar ache settled into my chest, and I tried to drown it with coffee.

“Are you sure they’re Shifters, and not natural cats? Cougars, maybe?” Uncle Rick asked from the living room. I tried to concentrate on what was being said, but I couldn’t seem to drag my gaze from Marc.

“What’s going on?” he whispered to Jace, avoiding my eyes as he sniffed in the direction of the living room. “And what’s that smell?”

“Of course I’m sure,” Keller rumbled from the other room, and Marc froze at the sound of the strange voice.

“Is that what I think it is?” Marc murmured, crossing the kitchen to stand behind us, where he could see into the living room. “A bruin?”

Jace nodded, a grin practically splitting his face in half. Bruins were rarer than thunderbirds. Rarer even than tabby cats, at least in the U.S. My father said they’d be gone for good someday. Maybe during my lifetime. I’d never expected to see one in person.

“They’re bigger than cougars, and jet-black, every one,” Keller continued. “Smarter ’n cougars, too. But they lack the common sense to be frightened when they ought.”

Definitely tomcats, then, I thought. And probably teenagers.

“I expect you boys to round ‘em up, and soon,” the bruin said, glancing from one Alpha to another. “I’ve already buried one—figured you’d wanna know why he didn’t come back—and I don’t mind diggin’ more holes, if need be. Seems only fair to warn you first, though.”

My father frowned, and I knew exactly what he was thinking. What they all must have been thinking. We weren’t missing any cats. Though he didn’t seem to know it, Keller was talking about strays. Reckless, likely suicidal strays. He had to be.

“We’ll take care of the problem.” My father tapped his index fingers together beneath his chin. Then, as if he’d read my mind, “Can you describe the scent of these werecats? They were male, I assume?”

Keller nodded. “No doubt about that. Not with ‘em pissin’ on every tree and rock for ten square miles.”

My father cleared his throat to disguise a smile, but Jace wasn’t so fortunate. He choked on a gulp of coffee, spewing it across the table and down the front of his shirt. I bit my lip to keep from laughing, and Marc grabbed a pile of paper napkins from the counter behind him, dropping them over the mess on the table.

“Could you tell anything else from their scents?” Uncle Rick asked, while my father glared at us from the living room. I shrugged at him in apology, while Jace tossed the soggy napkins across the room into the trash can. “Were they Pride or stray?”

Keller stroked his beard again. “Can’t say as I know the difference.”

My father nodded, as if he’d expected that very reply. “A stray is a werecat who was born human, then infected by being scratched or bitten by one of us in cat form.”

I squirmed in my seat, uncomfortably aware that nearly every eye in the living room had just focused on me. Always in the past when the topic of strays came up, Marc became the unwilling center of attention. But that was no longer the case. I was now infamous for having created a stray. In fact, I was the only Pride cat in living history to admit to such a thing. No one else was that crazy. Or stupid.

But things were different for bruins, as Elias Keller had just reminded us. His species wanted nothing to do with the human population. Or with each other, for the most part. Unlike werecats, bruins lived alone, typically in rough cabins in isolated mountainous regions virtually untouched by civilization. They were the “mountain men” of legend, reclusive giants in huge flannel shirts, fur hats and colossal boots, stomping through the forest with an ax over one shoulder and a dead deer over the other. They were likely the source of the Paul Bunyan stories. Hell, in one form or another, they were probably also Bigfoot, almost never seen, because there were very few of them to be seen.

Bruins weren’t rare only because they bred slowly, though that was certainly part of it. The rest of the problem was that like thunderbirds, they could only be born, not made. Being mauled by a bruin would not turn a human into a “werebear.” It would kill him or her. Period. Which was why the concept of a stray was completely lost on Keller.

“And there’s a difference between the smell of a stray and a…Pride cat?”

Malone nodded. “We’re all Pride cats. This cat you…buried? Did it smell like us?”

Keller sniffed the air dramatically, and his entire beard twitched with the motion. It might have been funny, if he didn’t look so very serious. “Yes. You’re all cats. They were all cats. You all smell like cats to me.”

“He needs to smell a stray,” Paul Blackwell said, and dread settled into my stomach. I knew what was coming. I just didn’t know who’d be dumb enough to do it.

But I should have known.

“Where’s Marc Ramos?” Malone demanded, glancing around at his fellow Alphas, as if he expected Marc to suddenly appear in their midst. “He’s a stray. Someone bring Marc in here.”

I dared a peek at Marc and found him standing behind Jace, fists clenched around the back of the chair, face scarlet. He growled, very low and deep, and I ached to put a sympathetic hand over his.

“Marc?” Malone called again from the living room. He twisted in his chair, glancing down the hall first, then toward the kitchen, where he found us all frozen in place—Marc in anger, me in dread, and Jace in what could only be humiliation. I hadn’t noticed his reaction earlier, because Marc was clearly about to blow his top. But when I looked at Jace, I saw that his jaws were clenched, muscles bulging in his cheeks, and that he stared at Malone in nothing short of rage. Pure, murderous rage.

“Ramos, front-n-center!” Malone shouted, apparently oblivious to the fact that he was insulting my father’s top enforcer—the tomcat who got paid to bust heads in defense of our territory.

Marc growled louder, and the chair back creaked beneath his hands. He watched my father instead of Malone, waiting for either a nod or a shake of his Alpha’s head to tell him what to do. But instead, my father shrugged. He was leaving the decision up to Marc, and I loved him for it. For not demanding that Marc present himself to be sniffed like a bitch in heat.

However, before Marc could make up his mind, Keller spoke again, slicing through the tension with a single, insightful statement. “I can smell you from here, son. No need to put yourself out on my account.”

Marc nodded. He didn’t smile—he was much too angry for that—but I could see respect for Keller in his eyes.

“So.” Malone dismissed Marc as casually as he’d called for him. “Did these werecats smell like us, or like him?”

I never actually heard Keller’s answer because the wood splintering under Marc’s hands drowned it out. An instant later, Marc held the detached back of Jace’s chair—a solid strip of oak attached to four thin spindles—in one hand. Jace jumped from his seat just as Marc hurled the wood through the window over the kitchen sink. Glass shattered, spraying the ground outside. Heads swiveled our way, eyes wide, mouths gaping. Then, before anyone seemed to realize what had happened, Marc was gone, and the screen door slammed shut.

Malone practically shook with fury, now standing in the middle of the living-room floor. “Jace, bring him back. Now!”

Jace’s hands curled into fists at his sides, and anger smoldered in his eyes. He ignored Malone and watched his own Alpha for a signal.

“Let him go.” My father didn’t shout. He didn’t need to.

Jace’s hands uncurled, and he sank back into his broken chair, ears flaming as he stared at the table.

Calvin Malone turned to face my father, and again I saw him in profile. “Do you let that kind of disrespect go unpunished among your men?”

“You mind your Pride, and I’ll mind mine.” His carefully blank face was the only hint at how very angry my father was. At Malone, not Marc or Jace.

Malone’s mouth twitched. He was furious, but making an obvious attempt to rein his temper in, at least until the bruin was gone. “We’ll discuss this later.”

My father nodded curtly. “We certainly will.”

“Well, I’ll get out of your fur.” Keller rose from the couch, and its springs screeched in relief. He stepped toward the door, and had to duck beneath the fan overhead.

“Mr. Keller, wait,” Uncle Rick called, and the bruin paused several feet from the door. “Where did you last see these strays?” So they were strays…“And how many are there? We’ll send some men out on patrol, and they’ll need to know where to start.”

Keller’s face relaxed. “There’s a good-size pond not six miles north of here. I scented at least two of them there this morning, and several more before that. That good enough to get you started?”

“Yes, thank you. We appreciate the warning.” My father escorted Keller to the door, step by creaking step. The bruin had to bend to fit through, and when my father turned to the rest of us, his face was all business. “Can you spare two men apiece?” he asked, glancing around the room from Alpha to Alpha.

“Of course,” Blackwell said, “More, if you need them.”

My father nodded, acknowledging the commitment.

“You’re not serious about this, Greg?” Malone demanded, looking around the room for support from his fellow Alphas. My father, the head of the Territorial Council, walked past him without responding, and it was all I could do not to laugh out loud. He’d been using that tactic on me for years, but I’d never expected to see him ignore a fellow Alpha’s question, as if it wasn’t worthy of reply. Though, for the record, I agreed with him completely.