“How is she?” I followed her for a better look.

“Dr. Carver says she’s okay, considering. Her pulse is weak, but no more so than it was last night. I think Jace is right, she just fainted.”

Relieved, I exhaled slowly. I wasn’t ready to really think about Ethan yet. Nowhere near ready. Focusing on Kaci was easier.

“She needs to Shift, Faythe,” my mother said softly, arranging the tabby’s hair over one shoulder.

“I know.” That’s why I had come home. But now life—and death—had gotten in the way.

I was in the kitchen starting another pot of coffee when my dad started shouting. “What I want? I want to know who the hell authorized an invasion of the south-central territory!”

We’d all heard my father yell before, of course. Usually at me. But I rarely heard him swear, and never with so much raw anger.

I rushed across the hall in my socks and hovered in the office doorway in shock, my mouth actually hanging open. My father stood behind his desk with the office phone pressed to his right ear. His face was scarlet with rage, his left fist pressed into the leather desk blotter. His eyes were dry, and his expression had shifted from insufferable pain to unquenchable anger.

“Surely you’re exaggerating, Greg,” a coarse, elderly voice said from the other end of the line, so soft I could barely make the words out. “I hardly think a diplomatic envoy could be considered an invasion.”

“Envoy my ass!” my father shouted, and I almost choked on my own tongue. “Diplomatic envoys don’t sneak onto private property in feline form. In fact, it’s pretty damn hard to be diplomatic without the use of speech. It most certainly was an invasion, Paul, and I want to know how the hell this happened. Were you in on this? Did Malone call for a vote, or did he simply drop his men off at the border and send you a memo after the fact?”

Oh, shit. He was talking to Paul Blackwell. As the oldest member of the council, Blackwell had been chosen to lead it until either my father was reinstated or someone else was appointed to take his place.

So far, Malone was the front-runner. But for the moment, Councilman Blackwell was in charge, and it was never wise to piss off the head of the Territorial Council. Even the temporary head.

But then again, it was never wise to piss off Greg Sanders, either.

A door opened down the hall, and Owen and Dan appeared, both looking every bit as surprised and wary as I felt. They came toward me silently, and though Dan hung back, Owen and I hunched together to peer through the doorway at my father, as I’d never seen or heard him before.

“Of course there was a vote,” Blackwell insisted evenly. “Did you think the council would fall apart without you here to run things?”

Our Alpha ignored that jab from the elderly councilman—whom my father himself had once called the most impartial man on the council—and when he responded, his voice had gone soft with hidden danger. “Why would anyone vote in favor of breaching a territorial boundary?” He paused for a moment, frowning in thought, then continued before Blackwell could answer. “Rick would never vote for such an injustice. Neither would Bert Di Carlo.”

He was right. Neither Uncle Rick nor Vic’s father would ever have voted to let Malone breach our boundaries and attack us. Beyond that, neither of them would have kept such a plot secret from my father.

“No…” Blackwell said, and even over the line I heard the reluctance in his voice. “Neither of them was called to session. It was a closed vote.”

Oh hell.

A closed vote meant Malone and his men were openly positioning themselves in opposition not only to my father, but to all of the south-central Pride’s potential allies. It was as close as we’d get to a declaration of war until the first blow actually fell.

Or until my father declared himself out for Malone’s blood.

Eighteen

“A closed vote?” My father’s voice was as cold and hard as steel. His rage charged the air like an electrical current, and I half expected to see his fingers spark where they held the phone.

“What’s a closed vote?” Owen whispered, and I glanced at him in surprise. Then I realized he had no reason to be familiar with such an unusual political maneuver. I only understood because our father had been training me to take over for him my whole life—though I’d had no idea that’s what he was doing until recently.

Since Dan was obviously also clueless, I addressed my whispered answer to them both, backing away from the door a bit to keep from being overheard by my father, who hadn’t noticed us yet. Normally I wouldn’t have revealed the inner workings of the Territorial Council to a stray, but Dan had already witnessed a lot of private happenings, and keeping a secret in a house full of werecats is next to impossible.

And, in my opinion, he’d already earned our trust, by fighting alongside us, and from all he’d done to help us find Marc.

“The council needs a simple majority vote in favor of a motion before it can be approved.” Which even Dan probably already knew. “A closed vote is a way to get approval for something important without alerting certain members of the council. What you’d do is call for a vote only from those Alphas you’re sure will vote in your favor. But it only works if there are enough of those to overrule the nays, assuming everyone not called would vote in the negative.”

Dan looked confused, and if Owen had understood the concept before I started talking, he didn’t now.