I blinked, but the room refused to come back into focus. My blood raced so quickly the whole cabin seemed to spin. I glanced at my father, desperately wishing he would tell me I’d heard wrong. That Malone wasn’t trying to get me fired and sentence me to serial childbirth, all in one fell swoop.

But he couldn’t.

I dumped the dry noodles into the pot, struggling to control my temper, then turned to face the rest of the room again.

“So we’re agreed? Malone must die.”

The cabin got quiet after lunch. The Alphas had gone to the main lodge to try to keep the most sexist policy proposal ever written from becoming official Pride law, and I could do nothing but wait for the outcome. And ponder my future. And wash the dishes.

Teo and Vic had volunteered to make one of their mother’s recipes for dinner. Teo went to town for supplies and Vic had insisted on going with him, ostensibly to make sure his older brother didn’t mess anything up.

But the truth was that he didn’t want to be near me and Jace. He was taking our relationship almost as hard as Marc was, and had barely said a civil word to either of us since we’d gone public. I think he was even a little mad at Marc for not pressuring me harder for a decision. Or killing Jace.

Jace had offered to help with the dishes, but I sent him into the living room for a tense, overtly hostile game of cards with Marc and my cousin Lucas, who tried to keep the peace. I needed time alone to think, and I wasn’t up to watching Marc watch me and Jace, waiting for our hands to touch accidentally on purpose in the soapy water.

I’d just set the last plate in the dish drainer when the rumble of an engine drew my gaze to the front window. I expected to see Vic and Teo Di Carlo returning in the rental van, but instead, I saw a gray sedan passing slowly on the narrow gravel road that ran across the cabin complex.

The car was unfamiliar, but there was no mistaking Colin Dean’s shock of white-blond hair in the driver’s seat. There was second man in the front passenger seat and a third in the back, both facing away from me. But as they drove directly in front of our cabin, Dean gestured toward it, and the other toms turned to look. And my heart literally skipped a beat.

I knew them both. The big guy up front was Gary Rogers, whom I still half thought of as Deep Throat. I’d broken his arm to get him to talk, in the woods behind Malone’s property when we’d snuck in to get Lance Pierce. And the tom directly behind him was Jess…something or other. Jess had pinned, then groped, me, and Marc had bitten off the offending thumb and left him to bleed next to the grave they’d dug for Jace.

What the hell were they doing in Montana? Even if Malone thought he needed extra security, those two would surely have been his last choice, after failing to stop me and Marc from rescuing Jace and taking Lance. Which only left one possible reason for their presence: they were witnesses.

“Guys!” I twisted the faucet too hard and it creaked beneath my grip until I loosened it.

Marc put his cards down, and they all three looked up as I crossed the kitchen into the living room. “Dean just drove onto the complex with Gary Rogers and Jess what’s-his-name. I think Malone’s going to charge us. Soon.”

“That figures.” Jace frowned but didn’t look particularly worried.

“Well, it’s not like we didn’t see it coming.” Marc scooped up the rest of the cards and tapped them into a neat stack in preparation to shuffle. “We’ll tell your dad when he gets back, but if we go through with the attack, some stupid trespassing and assault charge is going to be a pretty moot point, right? It’s not like Malone’s going to be around to oversee a trial.”

But I couldn’t shake the unease eating away at my insides. Halfway through their next hand, I got up to pace.

“Faythe…” Jace laid his cards down and joined me at the window, and I could feel Marc’s gaze on us. “So what if he charges us? It’s not going to make any difference in the end. Come on, you’re gonna drive yourself nuts staring out the window.”

“Us, too,” Lucas quipped, already dealing me in. “Come help me teach these two a lesson.” Because I couldn’t play spades partners with either Marc or Jace.

“I’m sorry.” I sank onto the couch and picked up my cards, organizing them by suit on autopilot. “I just don’t understand why he’d fly Jess and Gary all the way up here just to make formal charges. They don’t need witnesses for that.”

“Maybe the council made him do it, after they refused to consider our charges against him without witnesses. I can totally see Blackwell making him prove he’s willing to play by his own rules.”

“Yeah, I guess. But this still feels like overkill. Even when I was up for murder and infection, they only sent a letter, and they don’t have us on anything near that serious.” Because neither trespassing nor assault were capital crimes.

Lucas shrugged. “Unless he’s planning to charge you as accessories to Lance’s murder.”

“No way.” But despite my protest, that was a distinct possibility. “First of all, Lance wasn’t murdered—he was executed.” And no one but me, Marc, Jace, and Kaci knew that the thunderbirds hadn’t been the ones to actually kill him. “Second, neither Jess nor Gary even saw us take Lance, much less saw him die.” We’d left them bound in the woods when we moved on to complete our assignment.

“Well, unless you want to go down there and ask Malone what he’s up to, there’s nothing we can do but wait.” Marc scowled at the comforting hand Jace put on my shoulder. “And play cards. Your bid.”