My heart was pounding in my throat when I opened the door.

The place was empty.

I searched everywhere, even in cupboards too small for a rat to hide in. But I looked anyway. I locked the door behind me and pulled the shade over the window. Then I sat on the floor and covered my face, holding back hysterical laughter on the one hand and helpless tears on the other. Caution had degenerated into paranoia, and I was exhausted.

Huddled on the floor, I spent ten minutes debating whether to take a nap or a shower. Nap, shower, nap, shower. The skin over my entire body itched, so I decided I needed a shower more than anything. I smelled like the bad part of town.

By the time I got to the bathroom, I'd changed my mind and decided what I really needed to do first was brush my teeth. I brushed my teeth five times. Flossed twice. Didn't look too closely at the bits I spat out.

I woke up. The sun glared around the edges of my window shade with late-afternoon light. I stretched, arching my back, reaching with my arms and legs, and smiled because while I was stiff, nothing hurt. No injuries cracked along my back.

For the moment, I didn't want to move any more than that, because then I'd have to figure out what to do next.

Meg had overstepped her bounds.

T.J. didn't answer his phone. He hadn't for the last few days. He was far away, running from the cops, and I couldn't call him for help.

Taking the bus to Meg's place was much less cool than riding T.J.'s bike.

It also took longer, which meant I had a lot of time to reconsider.

I didn't have any proof. I could tell Carl about what had happened last night, but I couldn't trust him to do anything about it. After all, he hadn't done anything about Meg's conspiring with Arturo to kill me, when he had concrete evidence. Then again, he had essentially asked me to fight her. To kill her, really. Take her place. But I didn't want to be Carl's alpha female.

Pack dynamics were predicated on a two-way relationship. I owed the alphas, Carl and Meg, total loyalty and devotion, and they owed me protection. I hadn't felt protected in a long time. Carl seemed to value supporting Meg more than protecting me. All that trust was gone. The center did not hold.

While I'd felt pretty cocky about facing Meg, I didn't think I could face both of them. Not by myself.

I had to tell them what had happened last night. Doing so would probably start a fight. Their patience with me had probably worn thin enough that it wouldn't be just a dominance, slap-her-around-a-little fight. Maybe Meg would be by herself.

I really, really missed T.J.

I got to the house. The front door was locked. Nobody home.

Meg had a real job. She kept up a pretty good semblance of a normal life, working as a stock clerk in a warehouse. It paid for the house, the car, the extras. Carl didn't work. It looked like she wasn't home yet and Carl was away.

The back door was locked, too. I sat against the wall on the patio and looked out to the hills, to the scattered trees that grew more frequent until they became the woods of the national forest property. The sun was shining straight at me. A warm, lazy afternoon, a scent of pines on a faint breeze. I closed my eyes, wanting to nap. If I didn't think too hard, I could enjoy the moment.

I caught a scent, a trace on the breeze, a familiar taste of wolf, of pack. Shading my eyes, I looked. Someone was out there. Not close. I scanned the hills, but couldn't see anything, not a flicker of movement. Then the scent was gone. Probably an echo, a shadow. This place was covered with the smell of pack.

Carl came around the side of the house. He stopped when he saw me, closing his fists and hunching his shoulders, posturing. I glanced at him, then turned my face back to the sun, basking.

"Hi, Carl."

"What were you looking at?" He said this suspiciously, like he thought I was hiding something.

"I don't know. I thought I saw something. T.J., maybe."

Carl relaxed a little and continued toward me. He leaned against the wall, towering over me. "I haven't seen him in days. I know he likes to go roaming. I thought you might know where he went this time."

"He's hiding. The police are looking for him, for killing Zan."

After a pause he said, "Zan is dead?"

I looked at him. I assumed T.J. told him everything. "You didn't know?"

"Meg told me he left. Ran off. I thought maybe he and T.J. ran off together." He made a suggestive humph, adding meaning to 'together.' Geez, even if Zan had swung that way, T.J. had better taste.

"Meg's a liar."

"Why would T.J. kill him?"

"Zan attacked me. T.J. was protecting me."

"Why would Zan attack you?" he said.

"Are you serious? Are you really so clueless about what's happening in your own pack?"

His shoulders tightened, hackles rising. Then he blew out a breath in a sigh and let himself slouch. "What am I going to do with you?"

I hugged my knees and glared out at the hills, painted gold by the sun. Shadows of the trees lengthened, crawling toward me.

"I'm going to have a talk with Meg. I don't know what you're going to do. You'll either stay out of the way, or you'll back Meg. I don't know which."

"Can you take down Meg?"

"I can try."

"Then you'll take her place."

"No. I don't want her place." I wanted my own place; how could I make him see that?

"I can't be head of this pack by myself." He sounded almost panicked.

"Maybe you could learn."

He said, his voice tight, "Why won't you even consider it?"

"Because I don't need the pack. I have my own life." Rogue wolf. I could do it. "So, are you going to back her up or stay out of my way?"

He hooked his hands in the pockets of his jeans and looked away. It occurred to me that Carl wasn't that old. Maybe thirty-four, thirty-five. I didn't know how much of that time he'd spent as a werewolf. He lacked the confidence of maturity. How much effort did it take him to put on the tough act, to maintain that dominant stance he needed to stay in control? I'd never noticed before, but the confidence didn't come naturally to him. Not like it did to, say, Cormac.

"You want to come inside to wait for her?"

"I think I'll stay here."

He went back around the corner of the house.

Not too much longer after that, he came out the back door. Meg was with him. They stood side by side, looking down at me. I should have been butt-sore from sitting on the concrete that long. But it really was a nice afternoon. The air was starting to get a hint of twilight chill. I was comfortable.