“And let me guess,” I said, my words slurred with the left half of my mouth pressed into the upholstery. “If I play nice, you’ll let me go, but if I don’t, you’ll kill me.”

“No.” Kevin shook his head firmly and hauled me upright by one arm, so fast my vision swam. “You’re going to die either way. I can’t see any way around that, considering how much you know about all this.” His open arms took in the whole room, indicating their little conspiracy.

“Kevin…” Dan began, and my gaze found him slouched in a chair across the room. “You said she’d get to go home….”

“Yeah, well that’s before she wound up in the middle of all this! If you’d kept her out of the way like you were supposed to—if you hadn’t blown your fucking cover—she’d get to go back to Texas with you tonight. But you fucked up, so she has to die along with her collection of adoring tomcats.”

Dan flinched and avoided my eyes.

“It’s a shame,” Kevin continued. “Considering how badly we need tabbies. But when Dan brings the bodies of Greg’s Pride cats—including his precious kitten—back home, the Alpha will be so grateful for your compassion and so impressed by your loyalty that he’ll accept you into the Pride. Hell, he’ll need you. Which will put you in the perfect position to extract both of the other tabbies, when their guard is down and you’ve gathered enough intel…”

Shit. Kaci and Manx. Were they the point of this whole operation?

No, they couldn’t be. The microchips were implanted long before the council decided to remove Kaci. So maybe they were just part of it.

The lines in Dan’s forehead deepened, and for a moment, determination flickered behind his dark brown eyes. “Kaci’s just a kid, Kevin….”

“Exactly.” Kevin whirled on him, legs spread wide to take up as much room as possible in imitation of an aggressive Alpha stance. “And kids need proper care, which she is not getting in the south-central Pride. The council’s already ruled to remove her, and you have the chance to succeed all on your own, where Calvin Malone’s highly trained team of enforcers failed.”

“And Manx?” I asked, curious to know how he could possibly put a positive spin on her forcible removal.

Kevin twisted to glare at me over his shoulder, then turned back to Dan. “Manx has paid for her crimes. She lost her claws. Do you really think it’s fair for her to be stuck in the middle of a war zone—once the fighting starts—when she can’t defend herself anymore? Or her baby?”

Damn. I was almost impressed. If Kevin had shown so much potential as an orator while he was a member of our Pride, my father might actually have found some use for him.

Or not. We weren’t big on moral ambiguity in the south-central Pride, and that included propaganda. But it was the propaganda itself that caught my attention.

“Fighting?” I tried to keep my voice calm and steady.

“Oh, come on, Faythe!” Kevin stepped back so he could see both me and Dan. “We all know the war is coming, but I don’t think even Calvin Malone could have foreseen your father throwing the first punch.”

“Malone started this!” I shouted, straining desperately against my bonds. I felt helpless, worthless, without the use of my hands. “His tom killed Ethan in cold blood!”

“Ethan died because he stood in the way of an authorized mission. The official first strike will be when your father invades the Appalachian territory. And thanks to Dan, we know that’s exactly what he’s planning.”

Dan had the grace to look guilty as hell while judiciously avoiding my eyes.

“And when your father makes his move—an illegal breach of another Pride’s territorial boundary—the entire council will unite against him.”

I shook my head with feigned confidence, while my aching heart withered in my chest. “Uncle Rick will never go along with that. Neither will Bert Di Carlo.”

Kevin shrugged smugly. “If they side with your father—supporting his treachery rather than the council’s authority—they’ll be removed from power just like he will, and their territories will be redistributed once the council membership is settled.”

“That’s not going to happen!” I spat, glowering at Kevin in the most frustratingly impotent moment of my life. “No one but your dad and Calvin Malone will support this war once they hear how Ethan really died. He was pounced on from above—murdered in cold blood. My father and I saw it with our own eyes.”

“Unfortunately, you won’t be there to testify, and after the council hears the intelligence we’ve gathered against your father, the Alphas won’t believe a word he has to say.”

My pulse jumped, in spite of my best effort to steady it. “What intelligence?”

Kevin’s gaze narrowed on me. “That’s where you come in.”

“Oh, the whole Q and A bit?” I rolled my eyes, trying to look calm and fearless, while my heart raced like a scared rabbit’s. “What’s my motivation to play along, if you’re just going to kill me anyway?”

On the edge of my vision, Dan went stiff, and I took heart from his reaction. He was clearly uncomfortable with the thought my murder—as was I, for the record—which definitely gave me something to work with. But should I appeal to his sympathy, or his faltering sense of honor?

“Pain,” Kevin said, and I blinked at him in confusion, trying to haul myself back from thoughts of escape long enough to make sense of that one word.