Alex swallowed thickly, and an instant later his expression hardened and his eyes narrowed. “You are a bitch.”

“Like that’s a newsflash.”

He glared at me like a spoiled child. “I should put those cuffs right back on.”

“You’re welcome to try.” But he’d have to use both hands for that, and if I got a chance to go for his gun, I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him in the leg. Which was part of the difference between me and him—I wasn’t afraid to finish what I started. “But if you’re not going to, then get the hell off my bed.”

“You’ll be singing a different song once they take your claws. What are you going to do then? Talk people to death?”

“Maybe I’ll arm myself,” I snapped trying to hide the horror slowly building inside me. I could not lose my claws. I flexed my fingers, glad that they were growing useful again. I would not live my life at his mercy, or anyone else’s. “Guns seem to be all the rage lately for the desperate and gutless.”

Alex tried to grab my arm again, but I jerked away as the door opened behind me. I whirled to find my father standing in the doorway carrying two steaming mugs. His face was flushed from the cold. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” I inhaled deeply and noted that he smelled like pine and wood smoke, and suddenly I craved the outdoors, though I’d been there only an hour before. “Alex was just being an asshole, but I think the moment’s passed. Right, Alex?”

He stood and marched past me to the door, hesitating as my father stepped aside to let him pass. “You get fifteen minutes alone with her, and there’ll be a guard posted outside the window.”

“Wow. This place is a regular San Quentin,” I snapped, reveling in my own sarcasm.

Alex looked up at my father from inches away. “Your daughter has a real attitude problem.”

My father laughed, a hearty guffaw, if I ever heard one, and Alex was noticeably startled. “You should have seen her as a teenager.”

I couldn’t resist a grin as he closed the door in Alex’s face.

“How are they?” I scooted back on the mattress until my spine hit the headboard, and my father handed me the blue mug. I sipped from it, expecting coffee, but found rich, sweet hot chocolate instead. Comfort food. The scent of coffee from the other mug had disguised it. “Thanks.” I raised my mug and he nodded, then I turned my thoughts back to the issue at hand.

“They’re cold, but surviving.” He settled onto the edge of the extra twin bed, cradling his own mug. “Marc has a split lip and Jace has a lump on the back of his head. Seems they both balked at the idea of being caged, until they found out it was either them or you. Malone’s completely unwilling to house the three of you together, or you with either of them. Not that I blame him.”

“I’m surprised he’d let them stay together. Maybe he thinks they’ll kill each other.”

My father sipped from his mug, and I almost missed the tiny tremor in his hand. He was very, very upset. “They’re in separate pens. Cat transport cages, like a zoo might use. Steel frame with steel-mesh sides. They can’t stick more than a finger out through the sides, and they can’t break out.”

Suddenly I felt like I’d lose my lunch all over the bed. “Can they stand up?”

He set his mug on the bedside table. “Not in human form.” My father’s frown spoke almost as clearly as the hands he clasped in his lap. He was more worried than angry, and that was not good. He needed to get mad. We’d all have to be thoroughly pissed to get through this.

“We have to…”

“I know.” He lowered his voice to a barely audible whisper and crossed the rug to sit on the edge of my bed. We were alone, but I had no doubt several sets of ears were listening from the too-quiet main room. “The pens are chained closed, but only secured with a standard padlock. Once we get rid of the guard, we can get them out, given a household hammer and a few uninterrupted minutes.”

My brain raced. “Any chance one of Di Carlo’s men can get to them?” I was already tired of whispering.

“Possibly. But we have to do it sometime tonight, because they’re going to try you in the morning. And we have to free all three of you at about the same time, because once they discover any of you missing, we’re either going to have to run or fight. And, kitten, I’ve never run from anything in my life, and I don’t plan to start now.”

A tingle of anticipation raced through me at his words. I was ready. I’d been ready. And there was something oddly heartwarming about planning a war over cocoa with my father. But…

“Not that I disagree, but what about the rest of our men?” My next words hardly carried any sound. “And our new recruits.” The thunderbirds, of course.

My dad shrugged, his brow drawn into a tense frown. “There’s no time. Even if we called now, they’d never make it in the next few hours. And we have no way to get in touch with the birds quickly.”

Damn. I stood and started to pace. I felt like I was about to crawl out of my skin, though I’d only been locked up for an hour, and the thought of the impending fight didn’t help. “Dad, we need air support, now more than ever. Malone called in reinforcements.”

“I know.” He stood and crossed the room to lean against the dresser beside me. “Officially, they’re all either witnesses against you—” Jess and Gary, clearly “—or enforcers to replace the men he reassigned as the inter-Pride task force. But what that really means is that Malone now has more than twice the number of toms at his back that any of the rest of us have, and when you factor in his allies and their men, we’re decidedly outnumbered.”