“So can you tell who infected him?”

“Not yet. But soon, hopefully. His scent will begin to develop, now that he’s shifted.”

“Like an old Polaroid?” she asked, and I laughed.

“Kind of. It’ll happen once he’s recovered from the shift, and that’ll be faster if we can get him to eat something and drink more water.”

She glanced at the rabbit meat on a paper plate in his cell, then marched forward with clear purpose.

“Wait!” I reached for her arm as she passed, but she dodged my grasp. “He might not—”

“Corey?” Robyn dropped onto her heels in front of the new stray, and I followed her into the cell, prepared to get between them if Morris had a bad reaction to being approached for the first time in cat form. “You need to eat something. Trust me, you’ll feel one hundred percent better once you do.” She reached for him as if she’d stroke his head, but I darted forward and pulled her away.

“Don’t touch him yet. Let him get used to—”

Robyn pulled her arm from my grasp and scowled at me. “He won’t hurt me.”

“You don’t know that. He’s not himself yet. Don’t you remember how confused and terrified you were right after your first shift? His instinct will be to snap or swipe at anyone who comes close, and if he hurts you before he knows what he’s doing—” I will never forgive myself. “—the guilt could color his perception of his feline half forever.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Morris needs a positive outlook on his new form. He needs to understand from the very beginning that this new part of himself is powerful and sometimes dangerous, but not inherently bad in any way. If he hurts you before he’s had a chance to come to terms with what’s happening to him, his initial impression of this new form could be that it’s monstrous or somehow wrong. Or worse—uncontrollable.”

Her frown faded. “You’re not trying to protect me from him. You’re trying to protect him from himself.”

“I’m doing both,” I said as I watched Morris breathe heavily on the floor. “That’s my job.”

“You really care about him. About all of them.” She sounded surprised by the realization, and I tried not to be offended by that.

“Why would I be here, if I didn’t?”

“I don’t…” Her frown became a slow smile. “You’re not what I expected from an Alpha.”

I couldn’t resist the opportunity to throw her own words at her. “Maybe you should stop expecting me to be like all the other Alphas. We’re breaking new ground here, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I have noticed,” she said. “And I want to help.” Robyn turned and squatted to put herself closer to Morris’s height. But she preserved the distance I’d put between them. “Corey? I want you to nod if you understand me. Titus needs to know that even though you look like a cat, you’re thinking like a human. That’s something I didn’t even know was possible at your stage in the game. So can you give us a nod?”

Morris lifted his head and pushed himself onto his haunches. He blinked slowly. Sluggishly. Then he nodded.

Robyn’s smile looked young and excited, as if she’d just seen her first rainbow. “Good. Now we need you to eat something. The faster you recover, the faster we can get a good whiff of your scent and find out who did this to you. That way we can—” She stood in a single graceful motion, frowning at me. “What will happen to whoever infected him? That’s a crime, right?”

“Yes. But the consequence depends on the circumstances. If he was infected by a new stray who didn’t know any better—who didn’t intend to hurt him or infect him—we’ll focus our efforts on rehabilitation. On teaching him how to be a productive and safe member of the Pride.”

“And if he can’t be rehabilitated?” There was something fragile in her voice, as if she had some personal stake in my answer. And of course, she did.

Robyn was in the midst of that very rehabilitation process. The council considered her sentence to be training and rehabilitation rather than punishment, but I could see in her eyes, and in the sudden, defeated slump of her posture, that she wasn’t sure it would work. That she wasn’t sure she could truly learn to control her feline self, which had been acting on an unchecked instinct telling her that bad men deserved to pay.

“Robyn, you’re going to be fine,” I whispered, to keep the conversation as close to confidential as I could.

“Yeah. I know.” She blinked, and that glimpse of vulnerability was gone, buried beneath the very bravado that had steeled her spine when I’d caught her in my car. “I’m talking about whoever infected Corey.”

“With any luck, he’ll be okay too.”

A gristly sound caught our attention, and we turned to see that Morris was finally gnawing on the hunk of rabbit meat, not yet sure how to separate flesh from bone in his first cat-form meal.

Robyn smiled. “It helps if you use your paw…”

This time I didn’t try to stop her when she knelt and crawled closer to Morris, but I did follow her. I had to be close enough to pull her out of harm’s way if the new stray decided his meal was being threatened. Because as Faythe and Marc were determined to remind me, her safety was entirely in my hands.

NINE

Robyn

I closed the guesthouse front door, and finally, I could exhale.

Robyn’s well-being is foremost in my mind. And you have my word that I have no plans to seduce her.

Titus’s words echoed in my head, and a bitter taste filled the back of my mouth.

He didn’t seem to know I’d overheard his phone call. And I hadn’t, really. All I’d been able to make out was the last few seconds of the conversation.

Why would he give Faythe his word that he had no plans to seduce me, unless she’d made him promise not to?

Where the hell did she get off, deciding who I could and couldn’t sleep with? After Abby’s stories, I’d expected that from the rest of the council, but coming from Faythe? After she nearly tore the council apart over her right to marry—or not—as she chose?

I had no plans to seduce Titus either. But a girl has the right to change her mind, and that hungry way he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t watching made me want to find out whether he tasted as good as he smelled…