Robyn’s leg began to jiggle beneath the table. “I don’t know. It wasn’t a conscious decision. I never really decided to kill anyone.” She frowned. “Dr. Carver said my cat half was in charge of my brain when those things happened, which means they weren’t my fault. I was dissociated from my conscience and my human decision-making process. Didn’t you guys talk to him?”

“We did.” Blackwell trained his habitually skeptical focus on her. “Why did you go looking for those men in the first place, Ms. Sheffield? I assume that part was done while you had full use of your human faculties?”

Robyn nodded hesitantly. “Well, the first of those men found me. Abby had taken me to the woods so we could run in cat form, and I picked up a scent I hadn’t even realized I’d smelled at that cabin the day I got scratched. It belonged to a man those hunters worked with who hadn’t been there that day. He was following us, and when I smelled him, I just sort of…lost control. My teeth needed to break through flesh. I needed to taste his blood. I couldn’t think about anything else.”

She was describing bloodlust; we all knew the symptoms well.

“When it was over, I shifted back into human form and went through his stuff, trying to figure out who he was. Why I knew his smell. I found a disposable cell phone that only had a few contacts in it. One of the names was Steve’s—he’s one of the men who took me from the campsite—so I knew the rest of those names were other hunters. Other men out there killing and skinning shifters.

“I texted the addresses to myself, but I didn’t tell Abby.”

“Why not?” Gerald Pierce asked, from the left side of the table.

“Because she kept telling me how important it was for me to keep the whole thing a secret and to never go anywhere without her. I thought she’d think it was too much of a risk, but I had to make sure they weren’t doing to someone else what they did to me.” Robyn took another sip of her water. “I went to the first address to make sure they weren’t holding any more prisoners. I was just gonna wait until the house was empty, then break in and take a look around, but…I don’t know what happened. I don’t remember shifting, but I must have, because I woke up later, naked and covered in blood.”

“You killed those men in a dissociative state, brought on by severe trauma?” Faythe said, reiterating the facts for our fellow Alphas to remind them of Robyn’s deal.

“Yeah, I guess. And now I have to have an Alpha, who gets tell me what to do whenever he wants. I have to tell him where I’m going, and I can’t leave his territory without getting permission from him and from the Alpha of whatever territory I want to go to. And if I want to go to one of the free zones, it’s this whole big organizational challenge because I can’t go by myself, in case I get kidnapped and sold into marriage somewhere in South America. That really wasn’t much of a risk for me before I started sprouting fur and claws, you know,” Robyn said.

I had to stifle a smile, in spite of the circumstances. In granting her immunity, they’d unmuzzled the new tabby, and several of the older council members were obviously having regrets.

“This system you guys have set up is really anti-American, but it turns out that’s not the right opinion for me to have. I’m supposed to be a shifter first, and an American second, but when I do that—when I give in to my cat instincts and urges—you guys threaten to execute me if I don’t go along with this bullshit deal you offered me.”

Michael stood, unsure what to do, since Robyn had veered off course. “Um, may I have a word with Ms. Sheffield in private, please?” he said, and she turned to glance at him in surprise.

“No,” Ed Taylor barked. “Let’s let her speak. Ms. Sheffield, what would your reaction have been if Ms. Wade had told you all of this when you were first infected?”

Robyn gave him a bitter huff. “I’d have fucking defected to Canada.”

There was a collective gasp from most of the council, who probably hadn’t been cursed at by a tabby since Faythe’s pre-Alpha days.

“You would have run?” Faythe said, but she already knew the answer. We all knew the answer. She was just trying to drive home the gist of Abby’s defense.

Robyn nodded. “You would have had to hunt me down and drag me back by force. You might have had to kill me. I wasn’t ready to hear all this then, and if Abby had told me, you guys might be hunting my pale ass all over the great white north right this very minute.”

Several of the older Alphas scowled, but Robyn had done her job. As the new stray stood to be dismissed, Faythe caught my gaze, and I knew exactly what had dulled the shine in her eyes and stiffened her posture. The hard part was yet to come.

Abby smiled at me behind Michael’s head, and I knew at a glance that she thought we were winning. None of her political science classes had taught her what angry Alphas were like when they felt scared, threatened, and betrayed. She didn’t know about behind-the-scenes phone calls or under-the-table deals, or how brutal the survival instinct could be when it applied to an entire species, rather than to an individual.

Abby had no idea what she was walking into, and I’d had no chance to warn her.

All I could do was return her smile and cling to my backup plan. Abby had made herself a target, and I would do whatever it took to draw the council’s aim from her.

TWENTY

Abby

Robyn gave me a sympathetic look as she left Faythe’s dining room, but I could tell she was relieved. Her part was over. She’d done what she could to help me, swimming upstream in a political current she’d never even known existed until days before, and I was proud of her. Jace was right. She was strong. She’d be fine.

When I stood to take my seat, every gaze in the room followed me. The ambient tension was thick enough to choke me with every breath I took. My father had chosen Ed Taylor to lead the inquisition to show that my broken engagement to Brian had left no rift between the two Alphas, but based on the gruff look Taylor gave me when I sat, he didn’t seem to have gotten the memo.

For four years, he’d believed that his son would take over my father’s Pride. That I would give him grandchildren. That Brian would follow in his footsteps and maybe ask for fatherly advice. I’d taken all that away from him. I understood his anger. But it had no relevance to my hearing.