LITMIR.BIZ

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felt about it. I desperately didn’t want to hurt Marc, and I couldn’t stand it if I lost him. I wasn’t sure I could actually force another breath out of my body if I thought I’d ever lost him for good. But I didn’t want to lose Jace, either.

      And I wasn’t even sure what that meant.

      I didn’t have Jace. But we’d connected after Ethan’s death, and it hadn’t been a simple grief-stricken moment of comfort. Though, it was certainly that, too. But the truth was that grief had crumbled my resistance to a bond we’d formed earlier. One I’d been denying, because of what I had with Marc.

      But I wasn’t ready to understand what that meant. And I sure as hell wasn’t ready to try to explain it to Marc. So Jace and I had agreed to stay…apart. Completely hands-off. But if he wasn’t more careful than he’d been today, we’d soon be explaining ourselves to more than just Marc.

      “You have to watch yourself,” I whispered, glancing at my hands in my lap.

      “I know.” He stood, heading for the door, but I shot up and jogged ahead of him.

      “Wait, let me check.” I grabbed the knob, but before I could turn it, Jace was in front of me, so close I could feel the heat of his cheek on mine. But he wasn’t touching me. He held his body so close, a sheet of paper would have wrinkled between us, but he didn’t make contact.

      “Jace…”

      “I know,” he whispered again, this time against my cheek. “It’s not the time. But that time will come, Faythe. I’m not asking you to choose. You know that. But I am asking you to be honest with yourself. You owe us both that.”

      With that, while I stood breathing so hard my vision started to darken, he pulled the door open a crack—pushing me forward a step—and peered around me into the hall. When he was sure it was clear, he stepped out and closed the door.

      Leaving me alone in my room, haunted by possibilities too dangerous to even contemplate.

       Three

      “What did I miss?” I sank onto the couch between Marc and my uncle Rick and glanced around the office full of Alphas. Ed Taylor and Bert Di Carlo sat across the rug from me, on opposite ends of the love seat. Blackwell was in the chair my mother had previously occupied, which someone had moved to the corner of the rug nearest the couch. And my dad sat in his wing chair at the end of the rug and the head of the room, where he could see everyone all at once.

      “Very little, unfortunately.” My father sighed and folded his hands over the arms of his chair. “It turns out that we know almost nothing about thunderbirds, other than what you and Owen just learned.”

      I shrugged and folded one leg beneath me on the center cushion. “How much is ‘almost nothing’?”

      Marc huffed. “They fly, and they’re shy.”

      Umberto Di Carlo—Vic and Mateo’s father—leaned forward on the love seat. “Other than today’s incident, we’ve found no record of any thunderbird sighting since your dad saw one, had to be, what?” He glanced at my father. “Thirty years ago?”

      My dad nodded, both hands templed beneath his chin. “At least.”

      Di Carlo turned back to me and continued. “We don’t know where they live, how many of them there are, or even how their groups are organized. And we don’t know anyone else who knows any of that.”

      “None of the other Alphas?”

      “Who would you suggest we ask?” Marc turned to half grin at me.

      Good point. All the Alphas who weren’t with us at that moment were allied against us. Even if they knew something and were willing to help, how could we trust anything they told us?

      “I’ll make some calls,” Blackwell began. “But I’m sure that if anyone else had had recent contact with thunderbirds, we’d all have heard about it.”

      Heads all around the room nodded. This was big news. Huge.

      “Okay, so what are the facts?” My father glanced around his office like a teacher at the front of his classroom.

      “They evidently Shift in motion.” Ed Taylor ran one hand over dark, close-cropped hair. He looked like a retired marine, and maintained the best physical shape of any of the Alphas, most of whom were beyond the enforcing age.

      Di Carlo nodded. “They know where we live.”

      “They can carry human passengers,” Uncle Rick added.

      “Yeah, but they can’t fly very high or fast under the burden. Or very far.” Based on the fact that they’d had a car and driver waiting. I pulled my other leg beneath me and sat yoga-style on the couch, barefoot. “In fact, I’m not sure they could carry anyone much heavier than Kaci. Not without doubling their efforts, anyway.”

      “Do you think they’re gone?” Marc glanced around the room for opinions, but only Blackwell seemed to have one.

      “I doubt it, considering we have one of theirs.”

      “And hopefully we’ll know a lot more about this once he wakes.” Something shuffled on the floor behind me, and my father glanced over my head. “Yes?”

      I twisted to see Brian Taylor—Ed Taylor’s youngest son and our newest enforcer—standing in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. “Sorry to interrupt, but, Dad, have you seen Jake?”

      Each of the visiting Alphas had brought a son and one other enforcer, as both bodyguards and requisite entourage, so the house was practically bursting with testosterone. Jake had come with his father; my uncle had brought my cousin Lucas, the largest tom I’d ever personally met; and Di Carlo had brought Mateo, his second born.

      “Not lately. Why?” Taylor frowned at his son.

      “He went out on patrol about an hour ago and didn’t come back when the whole air raid went down. I kinda got a bad feeling.…”

      Taylor’s frown deepened, and my father stood, instantly on alert. “Everyone in the office!”

      Toms filed in from the kitchen, and my mother stepped in after the last one, with Kaci peeking around her shoulder.

      “You’re going out in pairs,” my father began, as the other Alphas stood. “Spread out, but stay with your partners.”

      “We’re looking for Jake?” Jace asked. He hadn’t looked at me since he’d entered the room, and that very fact told me he wanted to. If we hadn’t connected, he wouldn’t go to such obvious trouble to avoid me.

      Better decide what to tell Marc soon… Because if Jace couldn’t get it together, someone was going to notice him acting weird around me. And Marc.

      “Yes. It doesn’t make much sense to Shift, in case the birds are still in the area. You can’t slash overhead without exposing your underbelly. And hopefully you’ll see them coming from a way off.”

       Now that we knew to look for them…

      “You’ll hear them, too, once they get close,” I added. “Those wings are strong, but not exactly stealthy.”

      My father nodded. “What can we scrounge up in the way of weapons?” Because in human form, even with that swing-overhead advantage, we were pretty defenseless against talons.

      “Tools,” Marc said. “Hammers, crowbars, tire irons, a couple of big wrenches.” All of which had gotten plenty of use two weeks before, when we’d fought a huge mob of strays trying to kill Marc in front of us to send a message.

      “Knives,” my mother added softly. “I have three sets of butcher knives and several boning knives, all of which should work just as well on live birds as on dead ones.” The only person who looked more surprised than I felt was Paul Blackwell, who surely realized by then that his appeal

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