Werecats #3
MIRA
February 2009
On Sale: February 1, 2009
Featuring: Faythe Sanders; Marc Ramos
400 pages ISBN: 0778326497 EAN: 9780778326496 Mass Market Paperback Add to Wish List
"Miss Sanders, tell us why you killed your boyfriend." Fresh
irritation swelled in my chest like heartburn, bringing with
it the first twinges of a migraine behind my right eye. I
turned away from the fall-color panorama visible through
windows spanning the south wall of the dining room to stare
down the long mahogany table at a much less pleasant sight:
Calvin Malone, Alpha of the Appalachian territory. As I
watched, the left corner of his mouth began to twitch above
his thin, trim beard, a sure sign that he was having fun.
The pompous bastard loved pushing my buttons. He'd just
found the one labeled Use with Caution, then poked it
anyway.
" Ex-boyfriend." I spoke through
gritted teeth, my hands clenched on my black cotton slacks.
"And it was self-defense. Which you'd know if you'd listened
the last time I answered that exact same
question."
Michael cleared his throat from the
chair on my right. Dark brows rose over the rim of his
glasses, urging me to be good. Since he was acting as my
adviser, the werecat version of a defense attorney, rather
than as my oldest brother, I took his advice without
argument. Possibly for the first time ever.
Sighing,
I forced my attention back to the tribunal—three Alphas
chosen by the highly regarded "short straw" method to sit in
judgment of me. Officially, the hearing was to determine my
guilt or innocence on two capital charges. However, the
grudge Malone held against me was old long before each of my
crimes took place. Allegedly.
But that
wasn't right, either. Unlike the human justice system, in
the werecat world, the accused was considered guilty until
proven innocent. And the burden of proof was on the
defendant—me.
I was charged with infecting Andrew
Wallace, my human ex-boyfriend, which I'd already confessed
to doing—acci-dently. I also stood accused of
murdering him to cover up my crime, which I'd vehemently
denied. I'd killed Andrew in self-defense, and while I felt
guiltier about that than any of my judges could possibly
understand, I'd had no choice. It was either kill or be
killed, and my stubborn sense of self-preservation insisted
on the former.
If the tribunal found me guilty, in
addition to a lengthy stay in the cage, I'd be facing some
kind of corporal punishment. Possibly the loss of my claws,
which was motivation enough to keep me on my best
behavior.
"But you do admit to biting him?" Malone
prompted, his mouth twitching again as he tapped a thin
stack of papers lying on the table in front of
him.
"Yes," I said through clenched jaws, gripping
the lacquered arms of my chair to anchor myself to the seat.
"I did bite him, but the infection was an accident. I didn't
know my teeth had Shifted."
"So you still claim to
have experienced this…" Malone paused, glancing at his notes
for effect. "'Partial Shift?'"
His patronizing smile
made my stomach churn, but in light of the circumstances, I
was trying very, very hard to be good. "Yes."
Malone
huffed in disbelief, glancing around the room to make sure
everyone else shared his skepticism. On his right, Paul
Blackwell placed one wrinkled hand on the table. He scowled,
scraggly gray eyebrows drawing low over small, dark eyes.
"Why is it, then, that you can't show us this 'partial
Shift'?"
Because I'm not quite ready to give in
to murderous rage. Fortunately I was getting pretty
good at not saying the first thing that popped into my head.
Mostly. "I can't do it on command. Not yet anyway. I have to
be in a certain mood—excited, in one sense or another—to
make it happen."
"Well, isn't that convenient?"
Malone said with a conspiratorial glance at
Blackwell.
"Quite the opposite, actually," I snapped,
and Michael kicked my shin under the table.
Malone's
fist clenched around his notes and his mouth opened. But
before he could speak, the Alpha on his left cleared his
throat conspicuously, drawing all eyes his
way.
"Calvin, I assume you have a legitimate question
for Faythe?" By some miracle, my uncle Rick Wade—my cousin
Abby's father—had been selected for the tribunal, and in my
father's honor, he'd made his allegiance to my family
well-known. If not for him, I'd have already been convicted
and sentenced.
"Of course." Malone shot an annoyed
glance at my uncle, then adopted a professional pose. But
when he faced me, I saw that same gleam of animosity in his
eyes. "So you were in an…excited state when you bit
Mr. Wallace?"
A mischievous grin lurked behind my
solemn courtroom face, and it took all my self-control to
stifle it. As well as a hard, self-inflicted pinch on my
arm, through the white blouse my father had chosen to make
me look innocent. And to cover the new belly-button ring he
didn't think projected the right image during my
hearing.
"You might say that. We were at school, on
our lunch break. Neither of us had a class for a couple of
hours, so we wound up at his apartment."
"In bed?"
Paul Blackwell leaned forward from Malone's right side,
gripping the curve of his cane hard enough to make his
withered fingers creak.
Blackwell was the senior
member of the tribunal, as well as the Territorial Council,
and had been clinging tenaciously to his position as Alpha
of the southwest territory for years, in spite of urgings
from his family and several other Alphas to turn the reins
over to his son-in-law. He was mulish, outspoken, and
hopelessly old-fashioned, stubbornly adhering to outdated
ideas about premarital sex and a woman's place in the world.
In fact, he seemed as scandalized by my "indecent"
relationship with Andrew as by the thought that I'd infected
and murdered him.
But according to my father,
Blackwell was both honest and honorable. He would vote based
on his conscience, rather than on any political alliance or
previously held grudge. So I'd just have to make sure his
conscience knew I was innocent. Mostly. And that I respected
myself enough not to apologize for something I hadn't
deliberately done.
I met his eyes boldly, to show I
wasn't ashamed. "Yes. In bed. We were having sex, and I
just… nibbled his ear a little too hard."
"And your
sworn testimony is that you never actually Shifted during
this…occasion?" Malone asked, as if to confirm facts he'd
already heard half a dozen times.
I nodded, then
turned my head from side to side to ease the stiffness that
had settled into my neck from sitting in the same position
for hours at a time. "Only my teeth Shifted, like I told you
last time. And the time before that. And the time before
that—"
"Faythe…" Michael warned, and wood creaked
behind him as our father moved in his seat.
In spite
of his position as head of the council, my father hadn't
been allowed to serve on the tribunal overseeing my trial
because of his relationship to the accused—me. But he'd
insisted on being present the entire time, though he wasn't
permitted to actually speak during the proceedings. He sat
directly behind Michael in a straight-backed chair against
the wall, as he had for the last three hours, one ankle
crossed over his opposite knee, hands resting on the chair
arms. By all appearances he was relaxed and confident, but I
knew by the firm line of his mouth that he was every bit as
irritated as I was. And a lot more nervous, which made me
wonder if there was something he wasn't telling
me.
Frowning, I crossed my arms over my chest and
leaned back in my chair, awaiting the next question. Which
would no doubt be something I'd already
answered.
Malone looked up from the slanted scrawl on
his legal pad. "Did Mr. Wallace notice that your teeth had
Shifted?"
"No. I didn't either."
Malone's head
jerked up and his eyes found mine, his brows high in
surprise. Evidently I'd said something new. "If you didn't
know your teeth had Shifted at the time, how can you
possibly be sure that's what happened?"
Shit.
I sat back in my chair, going for calm confidence.
"Because that's the only logical conclusion. I infected
Andrew somehow—" we knew that for a fact based on his scent
"—and I never intentionally Shifted in front of him. So it
stands to reason that I did it by accident. And the day I
bit him was the last time I saw him until the day he died.
It must have happened then."
Blackwell appeared
unconvinced, and Malone looked downright dubious. "Since you
brought it up, let's talk about the day Mr. Wallace died,"
he said, shuffling though his papers again.
My head
throbbed as I massaged my temples. Whatever amusement I'd
felt over the proceedings drained from me, replaced by dread
and a horrible, hollow ache. "I've already told you
everything."
"Tell us again." Malone didn't look up
from his pages.
We'd been over every single aspect of
their accusations and Andrew's death in the past thirty-six
hours, only taking short breaks for food and rest. There was
nothing to be gained from repeating any of it, except
possibly to wear me down, which had to be their goal. They
were trying to trip me up. Catch me in a lie. But that
wasn't going to happen; I was telling the truth, whether
they believed it or not.
My eyes closed, and the
memory rolled over me, rendered no less horrible by the
number of times they'd made me relive it. I flinched as
Andrew's face came into focus in my head. I couldn't help
it. Watching him die was one of the most difficult things
I'd ever endured, and knowing I'd been the cause, however
unwillingly, was the biggest regret of my life.
"What
do you want to know?" I couldn't keep weariness from my
voice, but I made myself meet their eyes, knowing they'd see
guilt rather than grief if I didn't.
Malone scanned
his notes. "Where did you get the spike?"
The
railroad spike. That horrid, seven-inch iron spear,
which had gone right through Andrew's neck, spilling his
life along with his blood. "They were all over the floor…" I
trailed into blessed silence when I couldn't purge the image
from my mind.
"Why did you stab him with
it?"
My hands clenched into fists again, this time on
top of the table, where everyone could see them. "I was
trying to knock him off me. He was going to crush my
head!"
Malone leaned back in his chair, narrowing his
eyes at me. "Or maybe he was threatening to tell everyone
what you did. That you infected him. I imagine that would
seem reason enough to kill him."
I took a deep,
calming breath. "Look, I didn't mean to kill him, and I
certainly wasn't trying to cover anything up. There were
five other people with us minutes earlier, and even if I
hadn't already told them I'd infected Andrew—and I'm sure
any one of them will swear I had—they could smell
my scent in his blood. It wasn't a cover-up. It was
self-defense."
Malone's eyes narrowed, his mouth
already opening to argue, but Uncle Rick beat him to the
punch. "We've heard all of this before," he said, and I
glanced at him in gratitude. "Let's move on."
"Fine."
Malone scowled, leafing through his papers until he found
whatever he was looking for. His eyes settled on me again,
and I didn't like the eager look in them. "Is it true that
you've turned down multiple proposals of marriage
over the past six years?"
What? My face
blazed in anger. "What the f—" I paused for a quick
rephrase, because cursing at a panel of Alphas was a very,
very bad idea. "What does that have to do with
anything? Andrew never asked me to marry
him."
"Answer the question please, Miss Sanders,"
Blackwell ordered, clearly irritated by my near
slip.
Michael didn't look any happier than I was
about this new line of questioning, but he nodded for me to
answer.
"Yes."
"How many proposals have you
turned down, total?" Malone continued.
I closed my
eyes, pretending to think, though I was actually trying to
get a grip on my temper before my mouth dug a hole too big
for the rest of me to crawl out of. "That's hard to
quantify," I said finally, opening my eyes to meet Malone's
gleeful stare.
"Why is that?" he
asked.
"Because I received multiple proposals from
the same person." Marc, of course.
"I see." Malone
nodded, as if he understood. And he probably did. Rumor had
it he'd been after his wife for years and years before she
finally agreed to marry him. My private theory was that he
wore away at her defenses. But I knew better than to say
that to his face.
"How many toms proposed to you,
then? Surely that can't be hard to quantify."
Malone said as my uncle scratched something I couldn't read
on the notebook in front of him.
I sighed.
"Four."
"And you weren't tempted by any of these
proposals?"
Sudden understanding clicked into place
in my head, but instead of calming me, it made me angrier.
One of the marriage offers had come several years earlier
from a young man two years my junior, whom I'd barely known.
Brett Malone. Calvin Malone's firstborn son. The petty son
of a bitch was mad because I'd opted not to give birth to
his descendants. That wasn't the reason for the hearing, of
course. But it was surely the source of his malicious,
twitching smile.
"Of course I was tempted." It took
most of my remaining self-control not to roll my eyes over
such a petty grudge. "But I had reasons for turning them
down."
"What were those reas—"
"Calvin, I
think you've gotten your answer." Uncle Rick cut Malone off
in midword, having obviously come to the same conclusion I
had.
Malone frowned. "Fine." He consulted his notes
again. "I understand that you are no longer involved in a
relationship of any kind. Is this also true?"
Fuming,
I glanced at Michael, but he only nodded, telling me to
answer.
"Yes."
"And is it also true that you
have no plans to marry, or to ever have
children?"
Fury singed through my veins, lighting
tiny fires throughout my body. No longer satisfied by my
brother's passive nodding, I whirled on Michael again, my
long black hair swinging out behind me. "Why are they asking
me this crap?
It's none of their business, nor is it
even vaguely related to what happened to Andrew.
Shouldn't you… object, or something?"
"This
isn't a court of law, Faythe," Michael reminded me for at
least the hundredth time. "They can ask you anything they
want. The best way to help yourself right now is to answer
their questions." With as little information as
possible.
Excerpt from Pride by Rachel Vincent All rights reserved by publisher and author