“Okay, you’ve got me there.” However, unless we were talking frozen pizza or hamburgers, neither did either of them. “But my point is that I can’t be my dad, and you don’t need to treat me like him. I’m still trying to figure all this out—figure out who I need to be, to be Alpha—and the last thing I need is for you two to start acting weird around me.”

Jace chuckled. “At the risk of pissing Marc off, I don’t think either of us has any intention of treating you like your dad.”

Marc scowled again, but he couldn’t argue. “I just want to take care of you, Faythe.”

“I know. And I really do appreciate it. I just… I have a lot to sort out right now. I’ll get it figured out. I swear. But right now, I have to talk to Kaci.”

I left them in the office, but I stopped to listen just outside the door when I heard Marc speak. “You’re not making this any easier on her,” he snapped, and I could practically feel Jace bristle, even with a wall separating us. “I’m not making it easier on her? You’re the one brooding and pouting and…”

I cleared my throat where they could hear, then headed toward the kitchen to rescue Kaci from Holly.

Twenty-one

“You’re a cousin, right, Karli?” Holly said, and I pressed my back to the wall to eavesdrop for the second time in as many minutes. I’d asked Kaci to keep Michael’s human wife occupied during the Shifter-only meeting in the office.

“Um… Yeah.” Kaci hadn’t actually had to use the identity my father had created for her with anyone but Holly so far, and I mentally crossed my fingers that she would remember it. “Why?”

“Are the other branches of this family so…weird?”

“What do you mean?” Kaci asked, and I cringed. We all knew exactly what Holly meant.

“Private funerals. Practically weekly family emergencies, usually in the middle of the night. Closed-door family meetings that include the employees, but not the daughter-in-law. Farmhands who live on the property, even though there’s no livestock at all, and in the winter there isn’t even any hay.”

“I don’t know about any of that,” Kaci hedged. “My family didn’t have a farm.”

I almost laughed out loud.

“So, where is your family?” Holly asked, with all the sensitivity of a drunken frat boy. “Why do you live with your cousins instead of your parents?”

Aaaand, there’s my cue…

I rounded the corner into the kitchen to save Kaci from having to reply, trying to look like I hadn’t been listening in. Kaci sat at the breakfast bar, her long, thick brown waves pulled into a tight braid. Holly stood opposite her, measuring cocoa powder to dump into a saucepan of milk. She wore only eye makeup and had pulled her hair into a simple ponytail at the base of her skull. In jeans and a snug tee, she looked nothing like the pictures I’d seen of her on the runway, but she was still beautiful, even without all the professional hair and cosmetic artists molding her into the guise of perfection. She looked…clean and honest, if more than a little confused.

“Hey, Faythe, we’re making hot chocolate.” Her smile was sincere, even as her concerned gaze studied me for clues about how I was taking my father’s untimely death. “You want some?”

Hot chocolate, the old-fashioned way, and unassisted beauty. No wonder Michael loved her, in spite of the obvious Shifting handicap.

“Um, sure.” I slid onto the bar stool beside Kaci and gave her a subtle nod to tell her that everything was okay—as okay as it could be, considering—and that I’d fill her in soon.

“Do you have any mint extract? It’s really good with chocolate….”

“Check my mom’s baking cabinet.” I gestured to the cabinet doors behind her, and the only human Sanders turned to look.

I probably would have liked Holly, too, if I wasn’t always so busy trying to keep secrets from her. We couldn’t tell her what we really were because disclosure of our existence to a human was a capital offense. Punishable by execution. Not that the Territorial Council was in any shape to enforce such a sentence at the moment, but as much of a pain as she could be at times, none of us wanted to expose either Holly or Michael to any unnecessary danger.

“Is everything okay?” Holly glanced toward the hall to indicate the meeting I’d just concluded without actually mentioning it in front of Kaci. Her intent was sweet—protect the child from all mention of tragedy—but a bit ironic, considering that Kaci knew much more about my father’s death—not to mention his life—than she did.

“As okay as can be expected, considering.” I ran my hand down the length of Kaci’s braid, and she gave me a sad smile, accepting physical comfort on instinct, the strongest werecat impulse I’d seen in her yet.

“Good.” Holly poured two drops of mint extract from the lid of the bottle into the saucepan, then opened a five-pound bag of granulated sugar and picked up a measuring cup. “I was just asking the munchkin here about her family.”

Kaci went stiff, but Holly didn’t notice. I rubbed Kaci’s back, then started to step in for the official redirect, but Kaci beat me to it, her face caught somewhere between a scowl and a gloat. “She said we’re weird.”

Holly flushed instantly, and her eyes went wide. “I didn’t… That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” I tossed my head toward the hall and Holly frowned, then nodded and followed me with a promise to “Karli” that we’d be right back.