“What’s wrong?” Naveen slid into the vacated chair on my left. “You look like you were personally betrayed by that waffle.”

“I…” I shook my head and stabbed a chunk of pecan with my fork. “It’s nothing.” My complaints would sound like spoiled whining to men who wanted nothing more in the world than to gain official standing in the council’s eyes. To truly belong in a world that’s held them at arm’s length for generations.

A smile lingered at the corner of his beautiful, full mouth. “You’re a really bad liar, Ms. Sheffield.”

“I don’t get much practice,” I admitted. “My thoughts typically pour forth like Niagara Falls.”

Naveen laughed. “What’s holding you back today?”

We’d just established how bad a liar I was, so… “I’m afraid you’ll all hate me if you knew what I was thinking.”

“Unless you’re about to say you’re a UNC fan, I don’t think you have much to worry about.” When his eyes went wide, I realized he’d misinterpreted my silent confusion. “Oh shit, you are a North Carolina fan!” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Loch bleeds Duke blue and white, so let’s keep this between the two of us.”

Finally, I understood. He was talking about a college sports rivalry.

Naveen laughed again at my expression. “Not much of a basketball fan, huh? So then what’s the big secret?”

“There’s no secret. I just…” I stabbed at another pecan and broke it into three chunks. Then I dropped my fork and looked him straight in the eye. “I don’t understand why you guys are trying so hard to turn yourselves into something you’re not, when what you are right now is awesome!”

Naveen gave me a baffled frown. “What we are right now?”

“Free,” I said. “Independent, and of no real interest to the council. They don’t care what you do, as long as you’re not killing or infecting people, so you could do whatever you want out here. Why form a Pride and pay dues, and conform to their rules and archaic social conventions if you don’t have to?”

For a moment, my soft outburst met with surprised silence. Then Naveen smiled. “First of all, we don’t pay dues. Titus is a billionaire. He doesn’t need to tax Pride members to pay his enforcers, like the other Alphas do.”

“Oh. Well, that’s…”

Billions? My cheeks felt like they were on fire.

Naveen studied my face. “You didn’t know?”

“I knew he ran some big corporation, but no. I didn’t know that.” And I wished he hadn’t told me.

His frown deepened as he studied me. “Knowing about the money makes you uncomfortable?”

I shrugged. “In my experience, money gets in the way. People who have it think everyone and everything is for sale.”

Naveen chuckled softly as he cut another bite from his waffle.

“What’s funny?”

His fork paused on the way to his mouth. “You’ll understand once you get to know Titus.”

“I know what I need to know. Wealthy or not, Alphas are all cut from the same cloth. They have a pathological need to issue orders and to…procreate.”

Naveen leaned back in his chair, studying me with a new intensity, as if he suddenly understood…something. “You think Titus wants to, what? Father your kids?” He laughed again, as if the concept were truly ridiculous. “You have a very robust self-esteem.”

“That’s not—” My face was on fire. “It’s not that I think Titus can’t resist me. It’s that Alphas are driven to reproduce—I learned that, if nothing else at the Di Carlos—and I’m the only eligible tabby around.”

“Sorry.” Now Naveen looked embarrassed. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. You’re totally hot, and if Titus—if any of us—were looking to start a family, you’d be at the top of the spousal wish list. But that’s not something many of us think about, out here in the free zone.”

“But this won’t be the free zone for long. And that’s what all Alphas want,” I insisted, as my cheeks continued to burn. “They’re biologically driven.”

His smile returned, and somehow, despite the mortifying turn our conversation had taken, there was no patronization or teasing in his expression. “Robyn, I don’t think you fully understand the goal. We may be modeling our Pride after the others, but we have no desire to replicate their system exactly. With a few exceptions, Pride cats have always held themselves above us. The last thing any of us wants is a gaggle of natural-born princes and princess running around, looking at us as if we’re subjects sent to serve them in the family castle.”

“But if Titus doesn’t have a daughter…?” Shifter society was patriarchal, but matrilineal. The men were in charge, but control of a territory was passed from the Alpha to his daughter’s husband. At least, until Faythe. And Abby.

Which was why the loss of Sara Di Carlo—and now Abby—was devastating for the US Prides. Their territories now had no dam to give birth to the next generation.

Naveen seemed to understand what I hadn’t managed to voice. “We don’t need shifter babies, because our population is not in decline. Citizenship in our Pride isn’t limited to natural-born shifters. We’re bursting at the seams.”

I thought about that for a second, and the tension building inside me began to ease. This is what Jace and Abby were trying to tell me. “So, Titus doesn’t need to claim me for his Pride?”

Naveen shook his head. “Nope. Out here, you are worth no more than any of the rest of us. Except perhaps as an initial curiosity.”

I should have been relieved. So why did that thought suddenly feel like a slap in the face?

EIGHT

Titus

“Okay, now breathe deeply and try to relax all your muscles,” I said as Corey Morris collapsed to the concrete floor on his knees. His flesh looked pale and oddly lumpy from the transformation of muscles going on beneath his skin. “I know that sounds impossible, but the tenser you are, the more this will hurt and the longer it will take.”

Morris rolled his eyes at me, and if he’d been capable of speech with a mouth caught somewhere between a cat’s muzzle and the human arrangement of teeth, I’m sure he would have been sharing quite a repertoire of expletives. Which would have been considered an insult to any other Alpha.