“This is a job for enforcers, Kaci. You’re not old enough, and you don’t have any training.”

“Can I be an enforcer someday?” she asked, as I dropped my bag on the carpet near the door.

I couldn’t resist a grin. “Absolutely. You can do anything you want. But first, you have to get healthy. And enforcers do a lot of their work in cat form, so you have to get used to Shifting. We’ll work on that when I get back, ‘kay?”

This time when she nodded, she didn’t look quite as hesitant, and I took that as a very good sign.

“Okay, I have to go, but I hear my mom messing around in the kitchen.” Pots clanged together at the front of the house, as if to punctuate my claim. “Why don’t you go see what she’s making for lunch.”

Kaci went reluctantly, and I changed quickly into a fresh pair of jeans and a dark green sweater with a cowl neck and too-long sleeves, then hurried outside to throw my bag in the backseat of Parker’s car. When I came back in, Kaci sat at the bar in the kitchen, sipping the broth from my mother’s homemade chicken soup. I ignored the rumble of my own stomach and headed into my father’s office to tell him Parker and I were ready to go.

The office door was closed, but I barely noticed in my hurry to get on the road. I twisted the knob and walked in. My father stood in front of his desk, facing the glass display case against the wall. He clutched the phone to his ear, face flaming in rage so consuming he hadn’t even noticed my entrance. Which he probably hadn’t heard over his own shouting.

“…a child, and I will not hand her over just to satisfy some scheming, underhanded Alpha’s selfish political ambitions!”

Whoa…

My hand tightened on the doorknob in surprise, and my father heard the creak. He whirled to face me fully, one hand on the edge of his desk, and slammed the cordless phone onto the receiver. “Didn’t I ever teach you to knock?” he demanded, eyes flashing in fury.

I should have apologized and meekly backed out of the room. But the sick feeling twisting my stomach wouldn’t let me. “What was that about?” I asked from the doorway, not daring to come any farther into the office.

If my father had taken his phone call in any other room of the house, we all would have heard his side of the conversation, and likely most of the other side. But the office was a special room, designed for privacy in a house whose occupants all had supernatural hearing. The walls were solid concrete, without so much as a window for sound to leak through. The door was a panel of solid oak, and while not as soundproof as the walls themselves, it held a definite advantage over the hollow interior doors in the rest of the house.

My father sighed, and in that moment he looked a decade past his fifty-six years. “Come in and close the door.” He propped one hip on the corner of his desk next to the phone and waved me inside, lowering his voice to a weary whisper. “I’m going to tell you what happened, before your imagination kicks into overdrive. But you will not tell anyone else. I’ll make the announcement myself, when the time is right.”

Nodding, I hesitated a moment—I really needed to go after Marc—then stepped into the office and pushed the door shut, twisting the lock to keep someone else from walking in, like I had. I had no doubt that if my father had been expecting the call he’d just fielded, the door would have been locked before.

The flimsy twist-lock wouldn’t stop a werecat who really wanted in, but it wasn’t supposed to. It was merely a signal that my father required a little privacy, and the lock would be respected for its intent rather than its strength.

“Who was that?” I sank onto the edge of the couch nearest the desk, acutely aware that every passing second was another one-second delay in getting to Marc. But I had to know…

My father gripped the edge of the desk he sat on. “That was Milo Mitchell.” Kevin Mitchell’s father, who was currently in Georgia for Manx’s trial. Kevin had been expelled from the south-central Pride for accepting bribes to sneak a stray into New Orleans. “Milo claims he represents a ‘concerned faction’ of the Territorial Council, but I have no doubt he’s working with Calvin Malone.”

“And they want Kaci?” That sick feeling in my stomach grew to encompass most of the rest of me, and I was suddenly sure I would be violently ill right there on my father’s Oriental rug.

“Yes. Mitchell says several of the Alphas are worried, in light of Malone’s claims, that I’m acting against the best interest of the council. They want me to relinquish custody of Kaci to the council at large, which will then appoint a guardian for her. But you know exactly where she’ll wind up.”

“With Malone.” I scowled so hard my face hurt. The bastard was scheming to get control of both Kaci and Manx, just like we’d feared he would.

My father nodded solemnly and rose from the desk to sink into his armchair on my left.

“So, what are you going to do?” Even if I hadn’t just heard him refuse to give up Kaci, I knew my dad would never bow to threats from another Alpha. Much less hand over a mostly innocent child to be used as a political pawn.

Malone wanted control of Kaci for the same reason he’d tried to strong-arm me into marrying one of his sons—to put more territory under his misogynistic, bigoted, politically ambitious metaphorical thumb.

My father shrugged. “At this point it’s a simple request, and I’m within my rights to refuse. But they’ll come back with a formal demand, and our response at that time will have to be much more…civil.”