“Wait, what?” Robyn frowned, picking at the edge of the thick bandage on her thigh. “I didn’t follow much of that.” But I could tell which part she had understood from the way she looked from me to Jace with a sly grin. “I thought you said he was unattainable.”

Jace glanced at me in surprise, and my flush deepened.

“Okay, we can talk about me and Jace later.” But we almost certainly would not. “Right now, though, we need to have another talk.” I sat at the breakfast bar and pushed a stool out for her with my foot. “Come sit down.”

“Well, that can’t be good.” Melody dug a glob of grape jelly from an open jar and dropped it onto her biscuit. “The last time someone told me to ‘come sit down,’ I found out my father was dead.” She turned to Robyn with one brow raised. “Has your dad instigated any intra-species civil wars recently?”

“Mel…” Jace growled, and Carver stood from his seat at the table.

“Melody, why don’t we go find Isaac so the three of us can talk about what’s going to be happening to your body over the next few months.” The doctor handed Patricia his gravy-smeared plate. “This is a very important phase in your life, and I’m sure you want to be prepared.”

Melody’s brown eyes lit up at the thought of a discussion about herself and how important her pregnancy was. “Can I take my biscuit?”

“Of course.” Always the gentleman, Dr. Carver picked up her plate. “If you’ll excuse us, we have some important things to discuss.” He led Melody from the room as if she were precious cargo, and she practically glowed.

“You know, if people keep coddling her, she’s never going to grow up,” Jace grumbled.

His mother laughed. “Oh, I think childbirth will take care of that.”

“So, what’s going on?” Robyn limped around the kitchen peninsula and sank onto the barstool, and Patricia turned back to her dishes, giving us the illusion of privacy without sacrificing her ability to eavesdrop. Not that she needed to be in the same room for that.

Jace leaned against the counter on the other side of the breakfast bar, facing us both. “Robyn, I’m assuming you’ve noticed that our household is larger than most?”

She nodded. “I met your sister and your brothers this morning, and several guys from those cabins out back came in to eat too. They’re your employees and your tenants?” Her frown said she knew that wasn’t quite right but lacked the vocabulary to accurately describe a relationship she didn’t understand.

“Not in the typical sense. Room and board are part of their salary, but not because they work construction with me. I don’t own the construction company, and they don’t all work there. The guys who live in the cabins—all seven of them—are my enforcers.”

“Enforcers.” Robin swiveled on her stool to face me. “Is this a joke, or are you dating some kind of gangster kingpin?” She was smiling, trying to make light of it, but I could smell the anxiety seeping from her pores. “Is there a shifter mafia?”

“Robyn, I haven’t been completely candid with you about my family. Or about shifters in general.”

She stood and limped backward, eyes wide, hands out. “Wait, there really is a shifter mafia?”

“It’s not a mafia,” I insisted, but she was already glancing around the room, as if she might escape, if she could only find her purse. “It’s a Pride—a group of allied werecats who belong to a specific territory and swear loyalty to the same Alpha. Jace is our Alpha.” Though he wasn’t mine anymore, technically. “It’s his responsibility to protect, defend, and organize the Pride members against outside threats.”

“Outside threats?”

I shrugged. “We had a bad patch a few years ago, but lately, there haven’t been many outside threats.” Well, until the human hunters started targeting Pride cats and Robyn started killing them. “There are ten Alphas in the US—one for each territory—and if you want to visit another territory, for business or vacation, or whatever, you have to get that Alpha’s permission first, because trespassing is considered an act of aggression.”

Robyn’s frown deepened and I could practically see her repeating what I’d just said in her head, trying to understand. “So, how is that not a mafia?”

“We’re not criminals,” I explained. But then I had to backtrack. “Okay, sometimes we have to do things that are technically illegal, according to human laws, but we don’t profit from crime.”

“The laws we have to break include disposing of the man who tried to kill you last night,” Jace said, his voice deep but soft. “Protecting you is my job now. I’m your Alpha.”

“My Alpha?” Robyn picked at the edge of her bandage again, exposed beneath her borrowed shorts. “As in my…first?”

“As in your dominant,” I said, and Robyn’s wide-eyed gaze swung back to me. “Jace is the fastest, strongest, and the best equipped to lead, so he’s the Alpha of this Pride. The Appalachian Pride. Which you belong to, because this is where you were infected.”

Technically, any stray infected in a US territory belonged to that territory, but the vast majority of strays were infected in one of the free zones by strays who didn’t realize—or care—that they were committing a crime. Those few who were infected in one of the recognized territories were almost always rejected by the local Alpha and exiled to the free zone after a brief explanation of the rules.

Marc was a notable exception—he was infected as a young teenager—and Robyn would be too. In fact, the council would probably insist on keeping her, both to protect her and to study the rare infection of a human female.

And in the desperate hope that she would be willing to help propagate the species she now belonged to.

“What if I don’t want an Alpha?” Robyn lowered her hands and shifted her weight onto her good leg but looked no closer to reclaiming her seat. The sweat gathering on her upper lip smelled like fear, and I could tell from Jace’s forcibly relaxed stance that he could feel her anxiety.

“It doesn’t really work like that,” he said. “Our laws say that you can’t live in my territory unless you belong to my Pride. But beyond that, you need an Alpha, maybe more than any other tabby ever has.”