phase of my life, there was some tiny part of me that leaned toward panic at the knowledge that I couldn’t go back now even if I wanted to.
I stared into the mirror, trying to see myself as she would see me. Tangled hair, scarred cheek, skinned knuckles. My face was too thin, my arms and shoulders too well-defined. And there was a hardness behind my eyes now, difficult to describe, but impossible to miss.
I’d seen and done things that would have put most women my age in a padded room. I’d fought for my life, my freedom, and my family. I’d been kidnapped, beaten, broken, clawed, and stabbed. I’d caught rogues, and killed killers, and I’d watched my brother die. It was hard to believe that less than a year ago, I’d been a student like Angela.
Minus the whole faulty-condom-turned-miracle thing.
My mother appeared in the bathroom doorway, nervously twisting her wedding ring as I tried to fingercomb my hair. “She’s here.”
“So I heard.” I turned away from my identity crisis and smiled, almost amused to see her so flustered. My mom hadn’t blinked an eye when she’d faced down a jungle stray in her own basement, but now she looked ready to lose her breakfast. “It’ll be fine,” I insisted, while doubt rang in my head, soft but insistent. There was no way we’d come off like the average American household. The Addams Family had a better shot.
What if Angela knew something was scary-different about us, and she took off with Ethan’s baby? What if she decided not to have it?
“Maybe we shouldn’t do this.” My mother straightened her freshly pressed blouse, and the high arch of her brows managed to convey both eagerness and dread. “I mean, obviously we should help her financially, but maybe we should…keep our distance. It’s not really a good time, with you all leaving tomorrow…”
After months of waiting, lobbying, and fighting on the sidelines, our big day had finally come. Marc, Jace, and I would accompany my father to a meeting of the full Territorial Council, ostensibly for the vote that could reinstate him as council chair—or put Jace’s megalomaniac stepfather, Calvin Malone, in power. But our real reason for going was to present hard-won evidence against Malone as a traitor to our species and hopefully put him out of the running. And completely out of power.
I shoved aside my own doubts and linked my arm through hers to keep her from twisting her own fingers off. “The timing is out of our hands,” I said, and she could only nod. “Let’s just try not to overwhelm her.”
I stepped into the hall, half tugging my mother, and rolled my eyes when I saw Brian, Parker, and Vic peering through the sidelight windows. “Guys. Come on. We’re trying not to overwhelm her.”
Brian shrugged, looking younger than ever, and Vic just frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. “You really think there’s any chance of that?”
“If you guys lay off the stares and turn on the charm, yeah.” Though privately I had my doubts. “Remember, you’re normal, nonfurry ranch hands and good friends of the family.” That was close enough to the truth to be believable—if the Lazy S had been a functioning ranch. And if ranch hands were trained to protect their Alpha, patrol their territory, and take down bad guys with badass paw-to-paw combat.
“Brian, go tell my dad she’s here,” I said, and he took off dutifully toward the office, which was virtually soundproof with the door closed, thanks to solid concrete walls.
“This is so weird.” Parker ran one hand through straight salt-and-pepper hair. “Ethan would have been a dad. I can’t picture it.”
“I can.” I steered him away from the door, hoping Angela wouldn’t smell the whiskey on his breath. At one o’clock in the afternoon.
My mother ducked into the living room to tweak an arrangement of snacks, and I squeezed in next to Vic to peek out the window. Our guest still sat in her car with the driver’s-side door open, digging in her purse for something. But I had the distinct impression that she was stalling.
I couldn’t decide who was more nervous—Angela or my mom. Or me.
“Scoot over,” Kaci said, and I turned to find the young tabby standing behind me, hazel eyes wide, long brown hair pulled into a thick wavy ponytail at the base of her neck. Kaci didn’t look nervous. She looked curious. And skeptical.
Ethan’s death had hit her very hard, and she now seemed both fascinated to meet his only remaining link to the world and ambivalent to the woman who’d known a very different side of him. “She looks…normal.”
Jace laughed. “You were expecting two heads?”
Kaci only frowned. “How come she’s just sitting in her car?”
Marc spoke up from the dining room doorway, making no attempt to look through the window. “I’m sure she’s nervous.”
And she hadn’t even met our brood yet. “Okay, why don’t you guys all go sit, so we don’t overwhelm her the moment she walks in the door.”
Marc’s frown mirrored Kaci’s, but he herded the thirteen-year-old tabby toward the living room and shot one last irritated glance at me and Jace before stepping through the doorway and out of sight. I’d been nominated for the welcoming committee because I was the only tabby near her age—at least, the only one with flawless English—and Jace got to play because he’d set up the meeting with Angela. He’d dated her twin for a few weeks, back when Ethan and Angela first started going out.
Yes, Jace and Ethan dated twins. Seriously.
Jace stepped closer to me in the deserted hallway, ostensibly to look through the window, and the warmth from his chest leached through the back of my shirt. “You ready?” he asked, but the question felt loaded, like Angela was the last thing on his mind.
Mom was right; the timing could not have been worse.
I sighed. “Not even kind of.”
He turned me by both shoulders and grinned down at me. “She won’t bite. And she’s probably the only person within a square mile who can swear to that right now.”
“That’s part of the problem.”
I opened the door, and Angela looked up when we stepped onto the porch. Then she took a deep breath and got out of the car.
She’s so young, I thought, taking in her slim form and freckled cheeks. But she was only a year younger than I was, and twenty-two really wasn’t that young to be a first-time mother. Even today, most tabbies already had a son or two by Angela’s age.
I smiled, and her mouth turned up in a nervous reflection of my own expression. Then she noticed the tom behind me, and her whole face brightened.
“Jace!” She sounded so familiar I had to fight a sharp jolt of jealousy, though I knew she and Jace had never been involved. But I was suddenly irritated by the realization that she knew more about some part of his life than I did. And even more about Ethan’s. “I wasn’t sure you’d be here.”
“Like I’d let you walk into the lion’s den all alone,” he teased, and that streak of jealousy in me grew stronger as her smile widened. Though Jace and Ethan had rarely ever sat at home on the weekends, I couldn’t remember ever actually seeing him interact with someone outside the sphere of our secret existence.
