My father was not happy. Andrew’s death would be one more strike against me, in the collective eye of the council. I’d still have to stand trial, and now there was no witness to testify that the infection was indeed an accident. Apparently killing the human I’d infected didn’t get me off the hook for infecting him in the first place. Weird, huh?

His reaction to the tabby wasn’t much better. “She shot Jace?” No one spoke. None of us knew what to say as my father paced in front of his desk, rubbing his chin furiously. “She was hunting Luiz in human form? With a gun? What kind of tabby is this?”

“The pregnant kind.” Vic’s mouth twitched, trying to deny a full-blown smile.

I watched my father’s reaction carefully, and was not disappointed.

He wasn’t surprised in the least. “You knew!” I accused, jumping off the couch in spite of the pain in my ribs. “You knew the first time you smelled her scent. Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I told you to treat her as if she were made of glass.” When his answer clearly didn’t mollify me, he went on. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want any of you to let her condition blind you to the threat she represents. So she’s pregnant. She still murdered three tomcats, and now she’s shot Jace. Speaking of which, where’s the damn gun?”

In that moment, I realized how much I truly respected my father. He wasn’t wil ing to let her off the proverbial hook just because she was pregnant.

“I locked it in your bottom drawer,” Marc said.

My father nodded his approval and told us all to get something to eat.

Just after 8:00 p.m. Dr. Carver final y arrived to take charge of the patients. All four of us. He declared my ribs unbroken and said I was fit to work, in spite of multiple cuts and bruises. He pronounced my mother’s stitches “beautiful,” and said that Vic would be fine, and that his recovery would be accelerated considerably if he would Shift as soon as he felt up to it.

With the minor wounds out of the way, Dr. Carver moved on to the living room, where he did what he could for Jace. He sterilized the wound, removed the bullet, and bandaged the hole in his shoulder.

Jace’s orders were much the same as Vic’s: Shift as soon as possible.

Manx worried Dr. Carver the most, because she hadn’t regained consciousness. He removed her handcuffs and gave her a ful exam, after which he told my mother that the tabby was approximately four months pregnant, and that the baby’s heartbeat was still strong. As was the mother’s.

The tabby’s wrist was fractured from its meeting with Marc’s two-by-four, so the doc put her in a cast. Beyond that, he said, all we could do was make her comfortable and wait for her to wake up. Both of which my mother took an active interest in.

And she wasn’t the only one. The guys were completely fascinated by Manx. They all knew she was officially a bad guy, but if anything, that made her even more intriguing.

Parker and Vic stopped in her doorway at random intervals, just to stare at her. Jace would probably have done the same if he could walk.

But what they didn’t seem to realize—what I was more than eager to tell them—was that based on her slaughter of three toms in almost as many days, it would seem that the jungle tabby didn’t have much use for men.

Though one had obviously found use for her.

My father and Marc questioned Dan Painter at length about Manx—in the barn, since Ryan occupied the cage— but didn’t come up with much of anything new. He’d had no idea she was pregnant and didn’t know her real name. He had no clue where she was from. He only knew that she’d been going from town to town in response to a series of very short cell phone calls from a man with a heavy accent. She did not kil at every stop, never touched a human, and only disposed of those toms who

“messed” with her. Manx, it seems, did not like to be touched, a lesson Painter apparently learned early, and well. Which was a point in his favor, for me.

After several hours and no new information, my father let Painter go, with the promise that if he could keep his nose clean in the free territory for a year, he could then officially apply for admission into the Pride—an offer I’d never heard him extend before. With that promise, Painter took off for Mississippi with his tail tucked between his legs and his phone number and address in my father’s files.

By Tuesday night, twenty-four hours after our arrival at the ranch, Dr.

Carver had made a second round of visits to Jace and Manx, and had gone back to his hotel, for which the Pride was paying. My father had made a detailed report to the Territorial Council, and had called Michael and Ethan to give them an update. Ethan didn’t take the news of Jace’s injury well at al , and was eager to come home, but my dad ordered him to stay for Jamey Gardner’s memorial, to properly represent our family.

By dinnertime, Jace had stabilized enough to be moved to the guesthouse, into his own bed. Parker set up an extra DVD player in the room Vic and Jace shared, and rented him nearly two dozen action movies to help aid his recovery.

After dinner, I sat in the far corner of the guest room, curled up in an overstuffed armchair with the latest Stephen King hardcover. But I couldn’t concentrate on the story. Not with Luiz still free and Andrew’s blood on my conscience. And the tabby’s motives still unknown.

I’d taken to “reading” in what the guys were already calling “Manx’s room,” in part because I wanted to be there when she woke up. My curiosity built with every passing hour, until I was nearly desperate to find out who she was, and how she knew Luiz well enough to know he deserved to die. Because, frankly, she was right.