Lochlan rolled his eyes, and a tumble of dark blond waves fell over his shoulder. No man bun today. “Does that never get old, man?”

“I don’t understand,” I said as I dug a spoonful of toasted pecans from the next bowl. “Are you not a doctor?”

“I used to be an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Duke.”

“Ah.” My brows rose. “A PhD. That’s my plan too. History.”

Loch nodded. “Unfortunately, Duke isn’t in the free zone, so…” He shrugged, then cut a bite out of a waffle half-buried beneath caramelized banana slices.

Duke University was in Abby’s father’s territory. No strays allowed.

“Loch and Knox both lost their jobs and their homes when they got infected,” Drew said. “But all that should stop once we’re officially recognized by your council.”

It’s not my council…

“But not you?” I said with another glance at Spencer.

He shrugged. “I’m local.”

“What about him?” I nodded at the youngest tom as I followed Drew farther down the peninsula.

“That’s Brandt Fischer. He was infected a few months ago, but we didn’t find him until after his first shift. We brought him here for acclimation, and he just doesn’t seem to want to leave.”

“You know I can hear you, right?” Brandt spoke up from the breakfast table, where he sat at Abby’s left.

Drew rolled his eyes. “That’s a somewhat selective ability, in your case.” Then he leaned closer to whisper into my ear. “He wants to be an enforcer, and no one has the heart to tell him he’s too young and inexperienced. He mostly tags along after Knox and Naveen, doing whatever grunt work they throw his way.”

“Naveen?” I asked, glancing around the kitchen.

“Over here.” A man with thick, glossy black hair and piercing brown eyes stood from his stool at the end of the peninsula, holding an empty paper plate smeared with whipped cream and syrup. “Naveen Madan.” He extended his hand to me across the granite. “You’re Abby’s friend?”

“Yeah.” I transferred my plate into my left hand, so I could shake his. “We were college roommates until…”

“Until you were infected?”

“Well, until the council found out I’d been infected. But that was my own fault.” Turns out that killing four people—even bad guys—will quickly bring you to the attention of the authorities, both shifter and human.

And suddenly I was uncomfortably aware that if any of the men around me had done what I’d done, even if they were as traumatized as I’d been, they would have been executed for their crimes. Quickly, and quite possibly brutally.

But I saw no sign that they knew what I’d done. If Abby hadn’t told them, I probably shouldn’t either.

“Ready?” Drew asked with a glance at my plate.

“Almost.” I took a scoop of luxuriously thick homemade whipped cream from the mixer at the end of the peninsula, then drizzled chocolate syrup over my mountain of food and followed him to the round table, where there were two seats left. “Is breakfast always like this?” I asked as I slid into the chair across from Abby.

She shrugged. “Sometimes there are omelets with arugula and pesto, or basil, chili, and parmesan.”

“Oooh, or smoked trout and fennel,” Brandt added.

I turned, wide-eyed, for another look at Knox, the tattooed chef.

Most of Di Carlo’s enforcers had sworn oaths of service and loyalty shortly after graduating high school. Serving as an enforcer and protecting a Pride had been their lifelong ambition—an inevitability from the time they were small.

But Titus’s men were a little older than the average enforcer and they’d obviously developed lives, careers, and talents of their own before they were infected. Before they came to work for their Alpha.

Lives and careers many had been forced to give up when they were exiled to the free zone.

Jace set his fork on his empty paper plate. “Robyn, I hate to eat and run, especially since you just got here.”

“But…” I could practically hear the word hanging from his tongue.

“But we need to get on the road.”

Abby swallowed the last bite of her waffle and stood, plate in hand. “I’m sorry. But we’ll be home in a week.”

“I know.”

She dropped her plate into a trash compactor, then pulled me up for a hug. “You’ll be fine here. There isn’t a man on Titus’s team who wouldn’t die to protect you,” she whispered into my ear. “They take their enforcer duties very seriously, because they all feel like they have something to prove.”

“To the council?”

“And to Titus. And now to you. They’re good guys.”

“I’m sure they are.” But they were also big guys, with the strength of several very large human men apiece. Big guys who had two solid reasons to dislike me, whether they knew it or not.

But I’d put myself in this mess.

“Give them a chance,” Abby whispered as she let me go. I tried not to panic as the men around me shouted out jovial goodbyes.

Chewing my first bite of a truly spectacular waffle, I listened to Abby’s and Jace’s footsteps fade as they headed down the long main hallway toward the front of the house. Only once the sound of Jace’s engine had faded from my ears did I notice that the Alpha was missing.

“Where’s Titus?”

“In the infirmary,” Lochlan said from his seat at the bar while he pulled his long blond hair back and secured it with a rubber band.

“Still? Doesn’t he ever…delegate?”

“I’ll go down to give him a break soon, but he tries to stay with new strays as long as possible,” Spencer said. “It lets the stray form an immediate connection and establishes Titus as an authority figure from the beginning.”

“Does that help?” I asked.

Drew shrugged from the chair to my left. “Natural-born cats rarely question the societal structure and authority figures they’re raised with. Titus is trying to replicate that by being present in the infancy of a stray’s transition. I guess time will tell if it works. He’s only been doing this for about a year.”

Drew stood to get a second helping, but I could only stare at my plate as his words played through my head again. I’d totally lost my appetite.