When she nodded in thanks, he let her go—she still didn’t like to be touched—and turned to hand me the baby. But suddenly my mother was there, carefully lifting Des from Michael’s arm and cradling him gently.

“Come inside before we all freeze,” she said, her voice high and tense, as if she had to force the words out through an unwilling throat.

I followed them all in, staring at Manx in shock. They’d really done it. They’d taken her claws. She’d never be able to fend for herself again, and until she’d fully healed, she wouldn’t be able to feed, clothe, or bathe herself, much less her child. She was at the mercy of people she hadn’t even known four months ago, and she would have to endure our touch just to survive.

And the dull, hopeless glaze of her eyes said she damn well knew it.

They had killed her spirit. And my inner Alpha-bitch wanted someone to pay for that.

I pulled the front door closed behind me and followed everyone into the living room, where Manx sank carefully onto the couch, Michael’s hand on her elbow to steady her. My mom sat beside her, to keep the baby as close to his mother as possible. But Manx looked miserable, being so near her child yet unable to touch him. Her eyes never left the infant’s face, calm and relaxed in sleep.

I paused in the doorway, watching Michael. I’d never considered his resemblance to our youngest brother before, mostly because while Ethan and I had our father’s green eyes and dark hair, our other three brothers had our mother’s blue eyes and the light brown waves she’d had in her youth. But now, watching my oldest brother hover over the injured tabby, waiting to see if she’d need any more help, I realized that though their coloring was different, behind the glasses and beneath the perfectly styled lawyer haircut, Michael’s face was shaped just like Ethan’s, from his strong jaw to his high, smooth forehead and faint, sparse sprinkling of freckles, lending them both the perpetual look of youth.

Tears blurred my vision, and when I reached up to wipe them away, the movement caught Michael’s eyes. An instant later I was in his arms, surrounded and supported by his quiet strength, squeezed so tight I thought my ribs might snap. My head found his shoulder, and the tears came faster when I realized how well it fit there; he and Ethan had been the same height, and I’d never even noticed.

“Shh…” he whispered into my ear. “Don’t upset Mom.”

Nodding, I clenched my jaws and squeezed my eyes shut, denying my grief an outlet one more time. There would be time for tears later, when Marc was there to mourn with me. I could wait that long.

I straightened, and Michael looked at me through his own damp eyes, wiping my tears with his bare fingers. “You did everything you could,” he whispered.

But that wasn’t true. If I’d remembered the fourth tom sooner, I could have warned Ethan. And if I’d insisted on taking Kaci myself, Malone’s men would never have resorted to violence in the first place. They would have been more careful with the life of a tabby than they were with just one of the many toms we had to spare. Either way, Ethan might have lived.

However, there wasn’t time to indulge my self-pity, so I nodded and squeezed his hand briefly before following him to the main grouping of furniture, where everyone else had gathered.

“How do you feel?” my mother whispered to Manx, rocking side to side on the couch with a motion so natural it must have been a reawakened maternal habit. Had she rocked us like that when we were babies? Did we sleep so peacefully in her arms, secure in the inarticulate certainty that nothing could hurt us?

“I feel like this will never be over,” Manx mumbled, her accent thickened with pain and grief as she watched her son comforted in another woman’s arms. She held up her heavily bandaged hands for all to see. “Des and I will never live peacefully on our own.”

“Probably not.” My father settled into his armchair and met her tortured gaze. “But you are both welcome here for as long as you want to stay. Forever, if you like. You are under my protection.”

For what little good it does, I thought, the fracture in my heart widening with the private admission that my father was no longer invincible, his protection no longer a venerated guarantee. After all, Kaci was under my father’s protection, too, and look what had almost happened to her. And the price Ethan had paid to protect her.

My mother dared a small, comforting smile. “And you’re not without choices. Umberto Di Carlo called this afternoon to extend that same offer from the southeast Pride.”

He had? I must have slept through that.

“No strings attached,” Michael added, making it clear that he’d already known the offer was coming.

Manx’s beautiful features twisted into a frown at his idiom. “Strings?”

“It means he won’t expect anything from you in return,” I explained, impressed by Di Carlo’s generous offer. “You don’t have to marry one of his sons. Or even sleep with any of them.”

Michael scowled at my coarse phrasing, but since Manx’s comprehension of English didn’t extend very far into colloquialism, I thought it best to speak plainly. And when she nodded in understanding, I shot my brother a mild look of triumph, the most I could muster in the face of so much tragedy.

“I must thank him.” Manx placed her bandaged hands awkwardly in her lap and stared at them. “His Pride was very kind to me and to my son. We will accept his offer, after the service.” For Ethan.