I couldn’t believe the change in her. Hours earlier she’d been walking—okay, she was mostly carried—through the woods, and now she looked like she might vomit again, if she had the energy.

Mom was right. She had to Shift. Immediately.

“Kaci, how do you feel?” The answer seemed obvious, but I needed to know if she could handle Shifting on her own, or if we were going to have to let Dr. Carver force her Shift.

“I feel like crap. How ‘bout you?” She smiled weakly, and that one little upturn of her lips did more than her words to convince me that she could handle what was coming. “What happened?” she asked, and it was all I could do to keep her from seeing the truth in my face. “Who were those other cats?”

I inhaled deeply and met her eyes, willing myself to tell her the truth. Some of it, anyway. “They were enforcers who work for another Alpha. Do you remember Calvin Malone? You met him in Montana.”

Kaci nodded, and her eyes grew huge and worried. “Jace’s stepdad? They were his cats?”

“Yes.” I saw the next question coming and answered it before she could even ask. “Calvin thinks you might be better off living with him and his family.”

“You’re sending me away?” She sat straight up in bed, and what little color remained in her face drained from her like water from a sponge. For a minute I thought she might pass out again.

“No, of course not!” I propped her pillow against the headboard and gently pushed her back to lean against it. “We’re not sending you anywhere. Malone can ask all he wants, but the answer will always be no.”

She smiled then and seemed to relax, but her pulse still tripped unevenly, which scared me so badly I struggled to blank my face. “I don’t want you to worry about Malone anymore. But you know what you need to do now, right, hon?” I asked, and Kaci nodded solemnly. “Are you ready?”

“No,” she said. I started to argue, but she lifted one pale hand to stop me. “But I can do this. I have to, don’t I?”

I nodded. And though my mother stood twelve feet away in the doorway, next to Jace, I could almost feel her relief. It echoed my own.

Kaci’s eyes bored into me, studying me more intently than I would have thought possible considering her weakened state. “I’ll be all better when I Shift into cat form? Stronger?” I nodded again, and frown lines appeared in her forehead. “You won’t let me… hurt anyone?”

“Of course not.” My heart was breaking, and in that moment I was so close to tears my eyes burned. Tears for Kaci, and for Ethan. For Manx and the loss of her independence. For Marc, and me, and Jace. Everything had gone so very wrong, but if Kaci could Shift and reclaim her health—if just that one thing could be fixed—I thought I could make it through everything else. And so could she. “You’re too weak to hurt anyone right now, and even if you weren’t, we can protect ourselves. Even my mom knows how to lay down the claws when she needs to.”

I smiled at my mother, remembering how she’d come to my rescue in cat form several months earlier. She smiled back, but only with her mouth. She was too worried for anything more than that.

“I know.” Kaci shifted on her bed, trying to sit up, so I put one arm behind her and gently pushed her forward. “But I want you to Shift with me.” She stopped to catch her breath, winded by mere speech. “Alone. Just in case. I can’t hurt you if you’re in cat form, and I can’t get out if the door’s closed, right?”

“Probably not…” I hesitated to admit. The doorknob was the plain round kind, which cat paws can’t manipulate easily. “But, Kaci, that’s really not necessary. You’re not going to hurt anyone. You’re probably going to be so exhausted you’ll fall right back to sleep for several more hours.” Though she’d need a good meal as soon as she woke.

But she was standing firm on this one. I could see that in the hard line of her jaw, a strange sight alongside the exhaustion evident in her posture, and the breathless way she spoke. “You Shift, too, or I won’t.”

There was no more time for arguments, so I nodded decisively. “Okay, let’s do this.” I stood and peeled off my outer shirt on my way to the door.

“I don’t like this, Faythe,” my mother whispered, and for a minute, I thought she’d refuse to leave the room. Over her shoulder, Jace looked equally unconvinced.

“I know.” I reached down to pull my shoes off one at a time, dropping them just to the left of the thresh-old. “But she needs to know she’s not going to hurt anyone, and right now she trusts a closed door more than she trusts herself.” I stepped into the doorway, forcing my mother back slightly by sheer proximity, as Jace scooted to make more room.

“But what if she can’t Shift on her own?” She took another hesitant step into the hall, but only because I was pulling my tank top off and she had to either back up or get hit.

I lowered my voice until I wasn’t sure there was actually any sound coming out of my mouth. “I won’t completely Shift until she’s gone too far to back out. If anything goes wrong, I’ll call you. But don’t come in unless I do call. In either form.”

We can’t vocalize specific thoughts in cat form, but my mother would recognize distress in my voice, no matter what shape I took.

“Okay,” she said finally, and I smiled to reassure them both as I closed the door.