“You’re going to hurt yourself, Faythe. Just hold still.” He rubbed my shoulder, and Marc bristled. “She’d be easier to reason with if you hadn’t gotten her drunk,” he snapped.

“She’s never easy to reason with.” Jace grinned at me. Then he met Marc’s glare and his brows dipped so that their scowls matched. “I hate seeing her in pain.”

“You think I like it?”

“I don’t know what you like.”

“Shut up!” I laughed and rolled my head to glance from one to the other. “I know what you both like.”

“Fuck!” Jace threw his arms into the air, then eyed me desperately until Marc gripped my chin and turned my face toward him.

“What does that mean?”

I laughed again, but then suddenly I was crying, and I don’t know how that happened.

“Let go of her,” Jace growled. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

“Yes, I do.” I jerked my chin from Marc’s hand and stared up at him, wishing I could wipe the stupid tears trailing down the sides of my face. “You both like me, though I can’t figure out why right now.”

Marc relaxed, and Jace exhaled slowly in relief. What had he thought I was going to say? I was drunk, not stupid! “Okay, now that that’s out in the open, please be quiet and let Marc finish sewing you up.”

Another sharp point of pain pierced my arm with the next stitch, and I bit my lip.

“That was never exactly top secret,” Marc said as the thread tugged at my flesh. “Everyone knows about Jace’s little crush.”

Jace went stiff on my right.

“Not everybody…” I was horrified to hear myself say. Had Jace given me tequila or fucking truth serum? He squeezed my elbow, desperate to shut me up, and I smiled at him in sympathy. “I know. It’s the tequila.” Marc glanced first at me, then at Jace in confusion. Like I wasn’t making sense! “Don’t you remember what happened last time I had too much tequila?”

Damn it! Okay, maybe I was drunk and stupid…

Marc laughed, and Jace froze, until Marc turned back to the needle. “Now, that was a hell of a night!”

Jace scowled at me, and suddenly I remembered that tequila had given them both a chance to get back into my…life. And with that realization, I silently vowed to keep my mouth shut until the alcohol had left my system.

Fortunately, without my own voice to keep me awake, I fell asleep in spite of the repeated, prickling pain in my left arm. Sometime later, I woke up on the hotel bed, still wrapped in the towel. My left arm was encased in sterile gauze, which gave off an unfamiliar chemical scent. My right arm was bare and stretched out across the mattress. I was grouchy, in pain, and distressingly sober.

And alone. Or so I thought until I heard the soft rumble of male voices from just outside the window, where two familiar silhouettes stood side by side. “Damn it, Jace, this is suicide. There’s no way we’ll make it out of the territory with Lance.”

“If we don’t try, we’re dead. And so’s Kaci. And Calvin will wind up with Faythe.”

“He will, anyway, if this goes wrong,” Marc growled.

Jace’s shadow shrugged beyond the thin curtains. “She’s willing to take that chance for Kaci. For all of us.”

“Of course she is. She has no concept of her own mortality.”

I rolled over and levered myself up on my right elbow, careful not to let my hand or wrist brush the bed. The towel slipped halfway down my chest.

“Yes, she does.” Jace sounded mad, but he was holding it in. “She’s courageous, not careless. She just values everyone else’s life more than her own. That’s an Alpha trait.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Marc paused, and I could practically hear him counting to ten in his head. “Maldito sea! When this is over, we have to have a serious talk.…”

“Hey!” I called, knowing they’d hear, and Marc would shut the hell up. Was I going to spend the rest of my life standing between them? The door opened and Jace brushed past Marc to be first through the door. I shot him an angry look. Marc wouldn’t put up with much of that, whether or not Jace understood what he was going through.

“How long was I asleep?” The alarm clock read 9:34—in the morning, presumably—but I had no idea what time I’d passed out.

“Less than an hour,” Marc said, and I breathed deeply in relief.

“Good. Jace filled you in on the plan?”

He frowned and sank onto the opposite side of my bed. “You mean that slow-motion suicide attempt? Yeah. I got the basics. We sneak onto Malone’s property, break into the guesthouse, and somehow drag Lance out without alerting anyone else. Then we run for our lives.”

I frowned. “You got a better idea?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Then let’s have a look at my arm. I need to start Shifting.”

“She’s gonna need food.” Marc scooted closer as I held my wrapped arm out to him. “And we should probably eat, too.” He glanced up at Jace, who obviously knew what was expected of him. But Jace couldn’t bring himself to volunteer.

I closed my eyes, counted to five, then met Jace’s angry gaze. “Jace, will you please make a food run?”

He nodded stiffly. “What do you want?”

“Burgers are fine. Three for me, and some fries. And whatever you guys want.”