“My point stands.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Don’t tell me anything you don’t want reported to your Alphas.”

She clucked her tongue in mock disgust. “You’ve gone over to the dark side.”

“Join me. I hear we have cookies.”

Kaci pushed a flattened couch pillow onto the floor and patted the cushion next to her. “Don’t worry. I won’t bite.” Her bitter undertone hinted that she didn’t find her own joke funny.

Unlike most tabbies, my sister included, Kaci wasn’t overwhelmed with attention from toms, because of her reputation as a man-eater, of the literal variety. A genetic anomaly, Kaci was born to two human parents who carried recessive shifter genes. During her completely unexpected first shift, traumatized and in shock, she’d killed her human mother and sister. In spite of four peaceful years, she still hadn’t managed to shake the label.

“Ha! I’m more worried about your bark than your bite, kid.”

“I hate it when you call me that. So does Abby.”

“She told you that?” I sank onto the left-hand couch cushion, facing her.

Kaci snorted. “She hasn’t told anyone a damn thing since she got here. But you don’t always need words to say something.” Her brows rose, daring me to argue. “For instance, I can smell Abby on you. Which would explain why she came straight in and brushed her teeth.”

I groaned. “It’s not what it looks like.”

Kaci’s brows rose. “Oh, I’m sure you just slipped and fell, and your tongue landed in her mouth. Right? Happens to the best of us.”

“It better not happen.” I ran both hands over my face, then through my hair. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

“That’s your problem, Jace.” She stood, her pillow tucked under one arm. “You still see children where none exist. I grew up when you weren’t looking. So did Abby.”

“She’s marrying Brian.”

Kaci snorted. “She will if you let her.”

If I let her? When was the last time anyone let Abby do anything? And if I even thought about coming between her and Brian Taylor, the consequences wouldn’t just be personal—they’d be political. Ed Taylor and Rick Wade would want my head. Alliances had been severed for less, and if I was voted out of the council, someone else would have to take over the Appalachian Territory until Melody got married and her husband was ready to protect and defend it.

Goodness knows, Melody couldn’t protect and defend her own opinion.

“It’s complicated, Kace.” I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees, trying to figure out how I wound up taking advice from a seventeen-year-old.

“No, it isn’t. Abby knows what she wants.”

“No, Abby has wedding jitters, manifesting as a crush on both me and my job. But if I let her act on those, she’ll regret it later and hate me for the rest of her life. Because I derailed her future.”

“That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said.” She hit me square in the face with a couch pillow.

I snatched the pillow and smacked her in the shoulder with it. “I’m an Alpha, you know!”

Kaci shrugged with an evil little smile. “If you treat me like a child, I’ll act like one. So will Abby.”

“When are you going to put this thing out to pasture?” Abby slid into the passenger seat of my Pathfinder, wearing another skirt evidently chosen entirely because of how inappropriate it was, both for the season and for a drive alone with her Alpha. And possibly because of how incredibly hard it was to look away from her bare, smooth thighs displayed against my dark leather upholstery.

Had she packed nothing else?

I twisted my key in the ignition and made myself focus on the gas gauge as the engine rumbled to life. “What are you talking about? This vehicle is in its prime.”

“You’re living in the sad, sad past,” she said, and the previous night’s conversation with Kaci came back to haunt me. “It’s time to join the rest of us in the here and now, and you better hurry up, because in six months, I’ll be good and mired in my inevitable future.”

The flat note running through her typically upbeat chatter betrayed the cheerful facade she’d been putting forth all day. As if nothing had happened between us in the woods. But every time I met her gaze, I found it a little harder to look away. We might not be talking about what had happened, but neither of us had forgotten.

“So, how far are we from the murder house?” Abby flipped the visor down and used the mirror to apply pink-tinted lip balm while I backed out of the airport short term parking spot. With the scent of strawberries came a twelve-hour-old memory of what that lip balm tasted like smeared across my own mouth.

My hands clenched around the steering wheel. Focus, Jace.

“It doesn’t matter how far we are from the scene of the crime.” I was not going to call it “the murder house.” “Because you’re not going. I’m dropping you at the lodge when I pick up Teo and Chase.”

Abby dropped the lip balm into her purse and flipped the visor back up. “I can help. You should take me.”

“FYI, becoming an enforcer makes you even more obliged to follow orders, not less.” Especially since she’d been sworn in that very morning, in the presence of five other Alphas. Everything was official.

I was stuck with her, and that was like staring at a bag of candy I would never, ever be allowed to taste.

“I’m just trying to help. Why hire me, if you’re not going to use me?”

Take me. Use me.

She had to be doing that on purpose.

“You know damn well why I hired you.” I’d had no choice. “And you can’t go to the crime scene, because you haven’t even started training yet. You, rookie enforcer, are going to spend most of your holiday break sweating through drills with Lucas and Isaac at the lodge.”

Abby twisted in her bucket seat to face me, her full lips pressed together. “Okay, I get that I have work to do and dues to pay, and putting me under the supervision of my own brothers is a great way to remind me that you’re still mad. So, bonus points for that. But isn’t this crime scene actually on the way to the lodge? I mean, we’re practically going to pass right by it.”

I glanced at her as I changed lanes and found her typing furiously on her phone, shielding the screen from the glare of the sun with her own body. “How did you know that?”