Marc crossed the floor with a pile of clothes in his arms, and his movement caught my eye as I stood in the doorway, staring into his room. He dropped the clothes into a suitcase open on the unmade bed, balanced half on a pillow and half on a crooked mound of covers.

“What—” My voice croaked, so I swallowed and tried again. “What are you doing?”

“Packing. I thought it was kind of obvious.” He walked back to the dresser without even glancing at me. “I’m taking some time off.”

“Time off?” I heard myself and regretted the fact that I sounded like a brainless parrot, but I was helpless to stop it. In the nearly eleven years Marc had worked for my father, he’d never taken a single day off. Not one. Which meant he probably had quite a few coming…

I inhaled deeply, preparing to say my piece. To change his mind. “I’m sorry you heard it like that.” I tried to catch Marc’s eye, but he wouldn’t look at me, nor would he stop packing. I cleared my throat and started over, tracking his movement back and forth across the room. “But you didn’t hear enough to understand what happened.”

“I heard plenty.”

“It was an accid—” I grabbed his wrist as he walked past me, another pile of shirts under his opposite arm. He froze in place. His head turned slowly, and finally our eyes met. His were blank. Empty. He jerked his arm from my grasp and continued toward the bed. “Marc, could you please look at me? This is hard enough without you…packing.”

“Well then, let me make it easier for you.” He dumped the shirts on top of the pile in the suitcase and looked up at me. “I. Heard. Enough.

You infected Andrew. Your carelessness—and whatever freaky, furry game you were playing —condemned a man who was guilty of nothing more than fucking my girlfriend to a life of solitude and violence. Even worse, you’re responsible for everything he’s done. Those missing women are on your conscience. That’s all I need to know.” He flipped the top of the leather bag over and tried to close it, but the zipper resisted.

Furry game? Was he serious?

“That isn’t all you need to know. Will you—” I grabbed the handle of his suitcase in exasperation and pul ed it away from him. Already strained to its limits, the zipper slid back and the suitcase popped open, spewing socks and underwear all over the bed and the floor, like an explosion from a cotton volcano. Marc growled and bent to pick up a shirt. I snatched it from his hand and held it behind my back. “Will you forget about the clothes for a minute and listen to me? Please?”

“Fine.” He kicked aside a balled-up pair of socks and folded his arms across his chest. “You want to explain? I’m listening. Explain how you somehow forgot to mention to me over the past three months that you infected your college boyfriend. Explain why you didn’t think that was significant enough to bother telling me before he started taking his anger at you out on other women unlucky enough to have black hair and green eyes. Not that I blame him for being pissed off. I know pretty damn well how that feels!”

Marc picked up his now-broken bag and hurled it across the room. I flinched as it hit the far wall, next to the window, and fell to the floor in a heap of worn leather and rumpled clothing. “You stood me up at our fucking wedding, and I begged you to come back. I just rol ed over and took it, even though every cat in the country was laughing at me behind my back. But apparently my complete humiliation wasn’t enough to satisfy you. So why don’t you explain how you expect me to react when the entire werecat community finds out you created a replacement for me out of some preppy, khaki-wearing col ege boy who’s more familiar with waiting in line for his iced latte than with the finer points of self-preservation. Explain to me just what the hell you were thinking, Faythe,” he shouted, and I winced with every sarcasm-laced barb. “I think I’m ready to hear that now.”

I took a deep breath, doing my best to remain calm and to resist yelling. He had some valid points, after all. “I wasn’t trying to replace you. And I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know what I’d done. I didn’t figure it out until tonight. I did bite Andrew, but it was an accident. Well, the infection was an accident,” I said, my words rushing together as I backpedaled. “I bit him on purpose. Kind of.” I flinched as the last words left my mouth, uncomfortably aware that I wasn’t helping the situation.

Marc blinked at me and his expression hardened even more, which I hadn’t thought possible. “Do I even want to know why you bit him?”

Heat rushed to my cheeks. “Probably not.”

Outside, a sudden gust of wind pelted the window with rain, drawing Marc’s attention away from me. When he met my eyes again, his were flaming in fresh anger. “Wel , I gotta give college boy credit for that, at least,” he spat, his tone dripping with enough acid to eat through the hardwood floor. “The way Vic described him, I didn’t think he would have the balls to go for any fur-and-claws action, especially considering how much damage you can do with your human teeth and nails. And with your damned dagger of a tongue.”

Speaking of sharp tongues…I sighed. This was not going well. “I never Shifted, Marc.”

“What?” Confusion flitted across his face briefly before the angry scowl settled back into place. “Then how the hell did you infect him? Spit in his drink when he wasn’t looking? Inject him with your blood in his sleep?”