LITMIR.BIZ

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sign of trust and friendship. A werecat won’t touch someone he or she doesn’t trust. Not without bared claws, anyway.

      But touching Marc was never a good idea. Not since we’d broken up. Touching him reminded me of what we’d had. What we’d been. What was gone.

      “What do you want me to say? ‘Hey, Marc, it turns out you were right. If I’d married you instead of going to school, they’d think I was worth what it costs to feed me. But since I’m only as valuable as my uterus—which is currently unoc-cupied—this time next week, I’ll probably have gone the way of the dodo bird.’”

      His frown deepened. “This is because you’re single?”

      “No, this is because I infected Andrew and opted to defend myself when he tried to kill me. But when they find me guilty, being single will mean the difference between losing my claws and losing my life. Peachy, huh?”

      Marc shook his head slowly, his hand clenching around the back of the couch. “They won’t do it. Your father won’t let them.”

      “What about you?” I shouldn’t have said it. I had no right to ask that of him.

      But he answered anyway, staring at me with eyes full of hurt. “I won’t, either. Did you really have to ask?”

      “No. I’m sorry.”

      We sat in awkward silence for the next ten minutes, me chewing and him…watching. I’d just swallowed the last bite of my sandwich when a silver sedan pulled into the gravel driveway. Danny Carver sat behind the wheel, his short, neat brown beard adding a bit of softness to sharp cheekbones and an angular nose.

      “Daddy, Dr. Carver’s here. I’m going to walk him in.” Without waiting for a reply, I jogged out the front door and down the steps, eager for any excuse to breathe fresh air, even if only for a minute. “Hey, Doc.”

      Danny Carver pushed open his car door and stood, stretching short, thick arms and legs after the long drive from the airport. “Faythe, you’re in fine spirits for someone facing a disciplinary board.” He opened the rear door and pulled out a small, hard-shell suitcase.

      “Eh, what can I say?” I crossed both arms beneath my breasts, shrugging as if I weren’t in the middle of the most stressful week of my life. “I’m seething on the inside.”

      Dr. Carver laughed. “Attagirl. What’s the worst they can do? Execute you?” He winked in jest.

      Marc was right. It wasn’t funny.

      “What, they didn’t tell you, either?” I arched one brow and took the suitcase from him. “Malone’s shooting for capital punishment. Apparently I don’t contribute enough to the werecat community to justify the expense of my upkeep.”

      “What?” Carver frowned, walking alongside me toward the lodge. “It won’t come to that. There’s no way he’ll get a majority vote of guilty.”

      I wanted to believe him. I really did. Uncle Rick was definitely on my side, and Malone definitely was not. Blackwell was the swing vote. My life depended on convincing the stubborn old crow that I had value as something other than a walking incubator.

      Inside, I set Carver’s bag by the door, and Uncle Rick stepped forward with a glass of sweet tea for the doctor, who didn’t drink coffee. “Good to see you, Danny.”

      Dr. Carver returned the greeting, and several more, as everyone was reacquainted with the south-central Pride’s resident physician.

      By profession, Dr. Carver was chief medical examiner for the state of Oklahoma, which led to all the usual jokes about him “carving” up dead bodies. As always, the doc laughed the remarks off, then he looked around for Malone. “My flight leaves tomorrow afternoon, gentlemen. So, shall we get started?”

      Malone cleared his throat and glanced at me, anger flickering across his expression before his gaze settled again on the doctor. “First, I wonder if you’d take a look at my boy. And Paul’s new enforcer, too.”

      “Oh?” Carver’s brow rose in interest. “You’ve had some excitement?”

      “Brett met with a stray in cat form,” Malone held out one arm to indicate the open front bedroom. “And Colin met with Faythe’s fist.”

      I flinched as Dr. Carver’s head swiveled in my direction. “He was trying to stop me from going after Brett.”

      Carver’s mouth curved into a grin, and my own smile answered his. “Okay, let’s see what we have.”

      The doc started with Brett, pulling back first the blankets, then the huge bandages covering the young tom’s stomach wounds. Air hissed as I inhaled through clenched teeth. Somehow, the wounds looked worse clean and bare than they had hidden by blood.

      Brett had four deep, curved gouges across his stomach, tapering to an end below his navel, just above the waistband of his ruined jeans. Someone had cut his shirt off, but left his pants, so the entire room reeked of the blood saturating them.

      After carefully examining Brett’s injury, Dr. Carver asked Jace to fetch his medical supplies from the backseat of the rented car. While Jace was gone, the doctor knelt to examine the purple swelling on the right side of Colin’s jaw. Then he gently turned Colin’s head to get a look at the massively swollen lump on the back, where he’d hit the counter. Colin moaned, and settled back into silence.

      Dr. Carver glanced up at me. “What happened?”

      “I hit him with a left hook, and he fell back and hit the counter.” I crossed my arms over my chest in an unconscious defensive posture.

      The doctor turned for a second look at Colin as Jace slipped into the room carrying a large vinyl first-aid kit. “Well, he definitely has a concussion, but it looks like Colin could wake up anytime. When he does, he’ll have a hell of a headache. Give him an ice pack and some Tylenol.” Carver smiled at me, and his eye twitched, like he wanted to wink.

      I barely resisted a smile.

      Tylenol wouldn’t do a thing for a werecat’s pain. We me tabolize it too fast. But the good doctor wasn’t going to give Colin anything stronger because the Nordic asshole didn’t deserve it.

      “That’s it?” Blackwell frowned.

      Carver’s smile broadened. “Time is the best medicine for a wound like this. And if you ask me, you should all be thanking Faythe.” His eyes settled on Malone, who only scowled.

      “Why is that?”

      “Because Colin’s going to wake up wishing he were dead. But if he’d stopped her from killing that stray, your son would never wake up at all. Now, let’s clear the room so I can sew this poor kid up.”

      As we filed out of the bedroom, Michael stepped through the front door, carrying a yellow legal pad covered in notes. “Well?” My father asked as I snagged a leftover piece of ham from the plate I’d left on the coffee table.

      Michael sighed and glanced at his tablet. “The hikers are Bob and Amanda Tindale—newlyweds on some kind of back-to-nature honeymoon. They reserved a campsite about eight miles from here for an entire week. They should have come down two days ago, and when they didn’t show up, her parents called the forest rangers. The searchers have been walking an organized grid for two straight days, from dawn to dusk. No sign of them so far.”

      Uncle Rick scratched his chin in thought. “Anyone here think there’s any chance they weren’t killed by the strays?”

      Heads shook all over the room, and Michael held up his notebook. “Not one in a thousand. She’s an inexperienced hiker. He goes out for a week every fall, as some kind of confidence boost—because he lost his left leg in an accident five years ago.”

       Five

      An hour later, I sat in the dining room again, staring out the window. But this time, the setting sun cast a deep reddish

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