A smile snuck up on me. No wonder Abby liked her.

Bert snorted. “Better not let Paul Blackwell hear you talk like that.”

“If Paul Blackwell could hear anything, I might be worried,” Faythe shot back, and several of the others laughed.

“My question stands,” the first, unidentifiable voice said. “There are bigger issues at hand than the ‘needs and wants’ of one girl.”

Spoken like a man in a position of power. I had to bite my tongue to keep a growl from rumbling up my throat.

“What are your thoughts on the matter, Bert?” a distinctive, deep voice asked, and that one I recognized. Abby’s father, Rick Wade. The chairman of the territorial council. Maybe he would pass along a message to Abby, if I asked nicely…

Or maybe not. I wasn’t even sure he was still in touch with his daughter since she’d defected to follow Jace into the free zone.

“Donna and I are hoping she takes to Teddy,” Bert said. “They’d make a good match. He’s interested, and since she arrived, he’s developed a lot of potential.”

“He’s too young,” the gruff voice insisted. “Teddy has too little experience.”

“The circumstance makes the Alpha,” a new voice countered, and a chorus of male voices seconded the platitude.

Alpha. Teddy isn’t an Alpha.

All at once, I understood. If Teodoro Di Carlo displayed Alpha potential and I married him, he would become an Alpha. He would take over his father’s Pride. I would become the daughter Bert and Donna had lost.

How neat and logical. My life was being planned out for me by a bunch of men, most of whom I’d hardly even met.

“Does she like him?” Faythe asked, her voice soft but strong, and my shocked inhalation tasted bitter. Abby described Faythe as an arrow piercing the shield of testosterone. Faythe had made her own rules and her own decisions from the day she was born, even when they conflicted with the wishes of the council. Especially when they conflicted with the wishes of the council. So why would she help them run my life?

Shouldn’t she at least be bound by a sense of loyalty to a fellow member of the “girls’ names containing extraneous Ys” club? We were as few as we were awesome.

“I can’t tell that she likes anyone or anything.” Bert cleared his throat while a lump formed in mine. “Time and trust will help some of that. Eventually, she has to understand that we have her best interests in mind.”

“Do we, though?” Faythe asked. “At least Ed was honest; there are bigger issues at stake.”

“Which is why we’re prepared with an alternative,” the first voice said, and now that I’d heard the name, I recognized its owner. Ed Taylor. “Abigail’s defection had nothing to do with my son’s ability to lead. Brian is still a perfectly viable option, and he’d like the chance to develop a connection. If Faythe thinks she can spare him for a while.”

Brian Taylor. Abby’s ex.

Brian was one of Faythe’s enforcers in the South-Central territory. Did they really think they could just plug me into the gap Abby had left in everyone’s lives? In their misplaced hopes?

My temper spiked along with my pulse, and my jaw began to ache.

The familiar sensation—the beginning of a shift—triggered an instant fear in me. If I couldn’t control the impulse, they would never let me out of the Di Carlos’ house. They would never stop running my life, “for my own good.”

“Yes,” Faythe said. “Brian came to me with the idea, but I’m not sure—”

“He’s a good candidate,” Ed Taylor snapped cutting her off in mid-sentence. “And if procreation proves possible with a female stray, he’d make an excellent sire.”

Sire. As if Brian were a bull kept for breeding. As if I were a cow, good for nothing else.

The ache in my jaw became a sharp pain, and I shoved myself away from the wall. I shook my head over and over, but couldn’t dislodge what I’d heard. What they were planning.

No wonder Abby ran. Not just into the free zone, but to college before that. No wonder she’d never talked about her family or her fiancé, even after I’d been infected. I hadn’t truly understood what she was trying to shield me from until that very moment, listening outside my Alpha’s office door.

Furious, I took off down the hall, moving silently, grinding my teeth to keep them from shifting. Rubbing my arms, as if that would keep fur from sprouting through my flesh. Dimly, I realized that the council’s discussion had devolved into an argument—over whose son would get to father my kittens???—but little of it sank in. All I could think about was the future slipping through my fingers. The life I’d lost.

The door standing right in front of me.

Teddy was supposed to be guarding the front door, but he’d escorted Titus Alexander to the bathroom, to keep an eye on him. To make sure he didn’t get “distracted” again.

No one expected me to sneak out of the house while the grounds were crawling with Alphas and their enforcer envoys. But the enforcers were all out by the pool house, drinking and cavorting with friends they hadn’t seen since the last meeting. They were under orders to give me space, because no one thought I was cured yet.

They had no idea how right they were.

The door stood three feet away. Beyond it lay a driveway full of vehicles. Maybe someone had left keys in an ignition. Maybe…

I pushed the door open, then froze in my tracks.

The visiting Alphas and their entourages had all been picked up at the airport by Southeast Pride enforcers—Teddy Di Carlo and his coworkers. None of them drove anything more expensive than a Toyota Highlander. Which meant that the sleek, shiny black Mercedes SUV with Mississippi plates could only belong to…

Titus Alexander.

TWO

Titus

“Mr. Alexander, we’ve spent the past half hour listening to your statistics and your plans for this ‘Pride,’ should we grant your request.” Milo Mitchell’s use of air quotes told me exactly how seriously the majority of the council wasn’t taking my presentation. I probably shouldn’t have bothered with the spreadsheet. “So maybe now you could stop wasting our time and get to the point. Why, exactly, should we allow you to start your own Pride?”

“Respectfully, sir, I’m not asking for your permission.” I closed my laptop and leaned against the folding table provided to me for my pitch—a decidedly less opulent setup than typically rolled out for my corporate boardroom meetings. But then, I wasn’t there as a CEO, and my audience of Alphas couldn’t have cared less about my day job. “I’ve already started my own Pride. In the former free zone now known as the Mississippi Valley Territory. I’m already an Alpha, and I already employ twelve full-time enforcers. That’s a larger force than any of your Prides can sustain, even though my physical territory is smaller than any of yours. I’m just asking for official recognition from the council. For some legitimacy to support my position.”