A pause hung for a moment—dead air. My thoughts had scattered, and I quickly marshaled them to try to follow my diatribe with something clever.

But Arturo spoke first. "Rick. You do not have the resolve to play this part. You want a salvo, I will show you a salvo."

He hung up.

That was when I noticed Matt waving over the board, pointing at his watch. I hadn't been watching the time, and I'd almost missed the end of the show.

I talked fast. "Right. I have about twenty seconds to explain what just happened. I'm not sure I can, except to say that yes, Ricardo here's a friend of mine and he's got some rivals out there. Any of you looking to vampirism to solve your problems, keep that in mind. You'll only trade one set for another. Stay safe out there and I'll return next week. This is Kitty Norville, voice of the night."

The on-air sign dimmed, and I could see Matt's sigh of relief from here.

"You're right, of course," Rick said quietly. "We've spent centuries ruling our worlds at the expense of others. It's a hard habit to break."

I tried to make my smile friendly. "Nice of you to say so. But we'll have to discuss the political philosophy of the whole thing later. Remember, that was only phase one."

Matt came in from the booth. "Kitty, what's going on?"

Rick and I were already on our way out the door. "I'll let you know when it's all over."

"I don't like the sound of that."

"Good. You shouldn't. Matt—do me a favor and if anything weird starts happening around here, you see any people who don't look right, anyone who shouldn't be here, or if anyone turns up missing unexpectedly, call 911. Don't wait, don't hesitate. Just call."

"Kitty, what the hell—"

"I'm sorry. I can't explain. I'll see you later." I hoped. My heartbeat felt like a jackhammer in my chest. Carl and Meg wouldn't have to lift a claw to kill me. Stress would do it just fine.

We left the studio with about four hours until dawn and waited in front of the building. Not much time for what I wanted to do. Ben was already waiting in the parking lot. Shaun pulled up in his car right on schedule, just after the show, like I told him to. My pack was growing, I thought with trepidation.

We'd ruffled Arturo's feathers, now it was time to ruffle Carl's. I had to keep moving, plowing ahead as fast as I could, before I had second thoughts. It wasn't too late to back out of the whole thing, was it? As Ben and Shaun approached, I said, "Hi, guys."

They eyed each other warily, and their gestures were uncanny. Their wolves were speaking in their sideways glances, the way they avoided staring at each other directly, the way they made sure not to approach each other, but to approach me in parallel, not coming near each other. They were sizing each other up without offering a challenge. Did they even realize they were doing it?

I made myself relax, to keep the tension in the air from spiking any more than it already had. I needed these two to cooperate. To trust each other. I needed them to be a pack, even though they'd never met each other.

"Ben, this is Shaun. Shaun, Ben." They didn't offer to shake hands. Just nodded in acknowledgment, keeping their gazes down, maintaining an easy distance between them. Their noses were working, though, their nostrils flaring.

"He's yours?" Shaun said, and I heard an unspoken question in his tone: He's your mate, your alpha, and I must defer to him as well?

"That's right," I said. He nodded, then moved a step back, giving Ben precedence. Making way.

God, this was weird.

"All right," I said. "Let's get a move on."

"Kitty, good hunting," Rick said, moving off to his BMW. He was going to the hospital to keep watch over my mom, at least until dawn. "And be careful."

"You, too."

The three of us piled into my car.

"Where we headed?" Shaun finally asked as I turned onto Highway 6 toward Golden. I hadn't told him the details. I just said I needed a warm body for an expedition. He'd been trusting enough not to ask any more questions.

"We're going to the Park and Ride on 93. We'll drop the car off and head into the hills. Then we start marking territory."

"You're kidding," Shaun said.

"Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'pissing contest,' " Ben said, grinning.

Shaun whistled low. "Carl's going to hate this."

"That's the idea. It's not a full moon, so he won't be out. None of the pack’ll be out. He won't know what we've done until he steps out of the house tomorrow morning and takes a big breath of air." I didn't want to be anywhere near him at that moment. If we did it right, he'd smell it on the air: foreignness, invasion, another pack moving in. He'd smell us.

"I've never done anything like this before. It sounds like fun," Ben said. I couldn't tell if he was joking. And I felt terrible, because even though he'd met Carl and Meg, he really had no idea what I was getting him into. He might have helped Cormac hunt vampires and werewolves on occasion, but he'd never had to fight for dominance as one of them. His battles were usually in courtrooms, where people followed rules.

Flying by the seat of my pants didn't begin to cover this.

"You're crazy," Shaun muttered. "We are so dead. We're so gonna die."

Ben looked at him over the car seat. "Then why are you even here?"

"We're not going to die," I said. "We'll keep moving. We won't stop long enough for them to be able to find us."

Shaun wouldn't let up. "That's fine for you to say as a human. But are you going to remember that great plan as a wolf? How am I going to remember it?"

"I'll remind you," I said, low enough for it to be taken as a growl. That and a quick glance in the rearview mirror made him settle down. He actually cringed a bit.

A girl could get a big head over that kind of power. Not now, though. I had a job to do.

"Shaun, if you're not sure about this, you don't have to do it. I'll let you out, take you back, whatever."

"No, I'm sure. I'm just nervous. That's all."

He might have said scared and it would have been as true.

"I know. Just keep thinking about the big picture. This is supposed to make everything better in the long run. This is supposed to keep people like Jenny from getting killed."