And I believed it. If any love could transcend both time and life, it would be my parents’ love.

My mother sobbed again, but this time she was smiling, and I was glad I’d saved his message for that moment. When she truly needed it.

She sat there for several minutes, thinking. Probably remembering. Then she blinked and gave her head a little shake, and I knew she was back in the present. “We have to bury him. I have to call people…”

How could I possibly tell her that we couldn’t do that? That we’d have to bury him like a criminal in the night, to keep the political fallout from making everything impossibly worse?

“I haven’t even told Rick yet.”

“He knows,” I whispered.

She looked startled for a moment, then she nodded. “Of course he knows. He was there. I should have been there.”

No, she shouldn’t have.

“Mom…we have to talk about the rest of this. About what else happened.”

She looked up, and I was relieved to see clarity in her eyes, even if her hand still stroked his arm, unmoving on the bale of hay. “He named you, I know.” She looked suddenly worried. “That was always his plan, but it happened so soon….”

“Yes. He left me in charge of the Pride, but, Mom, the council won’t recognize me, and if we don’t have an ‘acceptable’ Alpha by Saturday, Malone’s going to try to place one of his own choosing.”

My mother’s eyes flashed with fury, and her entire form went stiff. “He’ll have to kill me to do it.”

“Us, too,” Marc said, and Vic nodded.

But actually, he only had to kill me.

“Faythe?” Owen said, and I looked up to see him standing in the doorway with Parker. Owen held his worn cowboy hat over his chest, and as I stood, his gaze slid past me to the bales of hay where our father lay. He stepped forward, and I helped my mother to her feet, then went to meet my brother.

Owen’s arms slid around me along with the scents of clean sweat and earth. There wasn’t much farmwork to do on an animal-free ranch in February, but the telling scents clung to his hat and his boots, triggering a warm, familiar comfort I wouldn’t find anywhere else, now that Ethan was gone.

But comfort could only do so much.

“I should have been there,” he said into my hair, his chin stubble scratching my forehead.

“There’s nothing you could have done.” But I couldn’t tell myself the same thing. I’d seen it coming. I’d seen Dean aiming his gun, and I hadn’t moved fast enough. I couldn’t. “We can’t fight bullets.” But we could rip off the hands holding the guns.

“Mom’s taking it hard,”

“I know. We all are.” My father’s death was shock and devastation like none of us had ever felt. It changed everything. We were hacking a new path through virgin territory without him, and the backlash of branches had already left me bruised. “We’ll get through it—with a healthy dose of ass kicking disguised as therapy.”

“Speaking of which…” Owen let me go and stepped back, gesturing for Parker to come forward.

Parker held out his arms for a hug, and I tried to ignore the fact that he smelled like whiskey. Like a lot of whiskey. “I’m so sorry, Faythe,” he said, when he let me go, running one hand through graying hair that suddenly seemed to be more salt than pepper.

Over his shoulder, I saw Owen wrap one arm around our mother while they shared a private, silent viewing.

Parker cleared his throat and glanced at his feet before looking up again. “You saw my dad? How was he?”

I sighed and resisted the urge to avoid his eyes. Delivering bad news was definitely my least favorite part of the job so far. “Well, let’s just say he is not my biggest fan. In fact, he may be the charter member of the ‘Faythe must die a slow and messy death’ club.”

Parker cringed. “That bad?”

“He called me a disgrace and a whore.”

“Why would he call you a whore?” Owen asked, twisting to face us without letting go of our mother.

“What, the disgrace part doesn’t surprise you?” I forced a grin to let him know I was kidding—and to avoid answering his question. Behind him, Marc stiffened and crossed his arms over his chest.

Parker frowned, too distracted by his personal problems to even process Owen’s question. “I just… I’m so sorry for how my dad treated you. How he’s probably going to treat us all.”

I shook my head and stared up at him, trying to convey import with my gaze alone. “It’s not your responsibility to apologize for your father. None of this is your fault.”

“Knowing that doesn’t lessen the guilt.”

“I know.” Jace felt the same way about his stepfather’s leading role in the effort to take over our Pride, and I had similar feelings about both my brother’s and father’s deaths. Guilt was the least rational emotion I’d ever experienced—and the most difficult to overcome.

“Hey, Brian said we missed the formal swearing, so—” Parker shrugged, and at his words, Owen and my mother turned toward us “—we’re ready to make up for lost time.”

Owen forced a sad smile, one hand curling the rim of his dusty brown hat. “I think the only good thing to come out of this whole thing is the fact that my sister is now the first female Alpha in werecat history. Disgraced or not.”