Robyn’s smile looked young and excited, as if she’d just seen her first rainbow. “Good. Now we need you to eat something. The faster you recover, the faster we can get a good whiff of your scent and find out who did this to you. That way we can—” She stood in a single graceful motion, frowning at me. “What will happen to whoever infected him? That’s a crime, right?”
“Yes. But the consequence depends on the circumstances. If he was infected by a new stray who didn’t know any better—who didn’t intend to hurt him or infect him—we’ll focus our efforts on rehabilitation. On teaching him how to be a productive and safe member of the Pride.”
“And if he can’t be rehabilitated?” There was something fragile in her voice, as if she had some personal stake in my answer. And of course, she did.
Robyn was in the midst of that very rehabilitation process. The council considered her sentence to be training and rehabilitation rather than punishment, but I could see in her eyes, and in the sudden, defeated slump of her posture, that she wasn’t sure it would work. That she wasn’t sure she could truly learn to control her feline self, which had been acting on an unchecked instinct telling her that bad men deserved to pay.
“Robyn, you’re going to be fine,” I whispered, to keep the conversation as close to confidential as I could.
“Yeah. I know.” She blinked, and that glimpse of vulnerability was gone, buried beneath the very bravado that had steeled her spine when I’d caught her in my car. “I’m talking about whoever infected Corey.”
“With any luck, he’ll be okay too.”
A gristly sound caught our attention, and we turned to see that Morris was finally gnawing on the hunk of rabbit meat, not yet sure how to separate flesh from bone in his first cat-form meal.
Robyn smiled. “It helps if you use your paw…”
This time I didn’t try to stop her when she knelt and crawled closer to Morris, but I did follow her. I had to be close enough to pull her out of harm’s way if the new stray decided his meal was being threatened. Because as Faythe and Marc were determined to remind me, her safety was entirely in my hands.
NINE
Robyn
I closed the guesthouse front door, and finally, I could exhale.
Robyn’s well-being is foremost in my mind. And you have my word that I have no plans to seduce her.
Titus’s words echoed in my head, and a bitter taste filled the back of my mouth.
He didn’t seem to know I’d overheard his phone call. And I hadn’t, really. All I’d been able to make out was the last few seconds of the conversation.
Why would he give Faythe his word that he had no plans to seduce me, unless she’d made him promise not to?
Where the hell did she get off, deciding who I could and couldn’t sleep with? After Abby’s stories, I’d expected that from the rest of the council, but coming from Faythe? After she nearly tore the council apart over her right to marry—or not—as she chose?
I had no plans to seduce Titus either. But a girl has the right to change her mind, and that hungry way he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t watching made me want to find out whether he tasted as good as he smelled…
If he truly wasn’t using me to provide a dam for his Pride, then I would damn well decide for myself whether or not to reciprocate any hypothetical interest from the world’s first stray Alpha.
I wouldnotlet my private life be scheduled or restricted by committee.
“Whoa, those aren’t paper plates!” I stopped in the entryway to the dining room, stunned by the display laid out before me.
Titus’s dining room table—a massive slab of wood shaped like a vaguely oval leaf, with copper veins running through it—was set for eight. Each place setting included a bowl nested inside a broader, shallower bowl, set on top of a large matching plate with fancy scalloped edges. There were four forks, two spoons, two knives—one laid across a small plate set to the left—and stemmed, gold-rimmed glasses for three kinds of wine, as well as a water goblet.
“It’s Titus’s mother’s china,” Brandt said as he rounded the table, setting the smallest wine glasses in place. “He said he’d skin me alive if I dropped anything.”
I ventured closer, studying the beautiful, complex scrolling pattern on the edge of the shallower bowls. “What’s the occasion?”
“I believe you’re the occasion,” Lochlan said from behind me, and I jumped, startled by his sudden appearance. Evidently, I wouldneverget used to how quietly shifters moved around.
“Me?” My heart thudded harder, and when he smiled, I realized he could hear it.
“Don’t take it personally. He’s been looking for an excuse to use them. His mom broke them out for every holiday before she died.”
“Oh.” Yet my pulse remained elevated. The pendulum swing from paper plates to heirloom china was extreme, no matter what Loch said.
“It’s a lot of dishes, huh?” Brandt ran one finger over the gold-rimmed plate on the bottom of the nearest place setting. “This one’s called the service plate. You don’t put food on it. It stays there because there isn’t supposed to be an empty place on the table until dessert is served. So all your other plates and bowls sit on top of the service plate.”
