The Territorial Council was the shifter equivalent of the United Nations—except thatourleaders could rip each other’s throats out with the flick of one wrist.
“Ms. Sheffield, would you please tell the council how and when you were infected?” Rick Wade followed up, from Taylor’s right.
Abby’s dad had appointed Ed Taylor as the acting council chairman for the duration of his daughter’s trial to avoid any appearance of nepotism, so for the first time in more than four years, he was not sitting at the head of the table. The chair to Taylor’s left was occupied by Paul Blackwell, who’d made a rare trip to the ranch in spite of his advanced age and failing health.
The entire council had shown up to meet the first female stray ever confirmed to exist in the US. Robyn was a miracle. A violent, largely feral—in feline form, anyway—miracle.
And since I wasn’t allowed to participate in the hearing, due to both my involvement with Abby and my responsibility for what had gone down in my territory two weeks before, the council sat at nine members, which meant a tie was impossible. Abby’s fate would be decided by the end of the day.
Abby sat several feet from me in another folding chair, but I couldn’t see much of her because Michael Sanders—Faythe’s oldest brother and an attorney—sat between us. I hadn’t seen or spoken to her since her father had taken her from my house twelve days before, and every hour that had passed without her felt like an hour without oxygen. She’d left a hairband and a tube of lip balm on my nightstand, and I stared at them every night as the minutes ticked past on my alarm clock.
Her father had insisted that the council could view any private contact between me and Abby as an attempt at collusion. As if we were getting our blatantly false stories straight. Even worse—Michael and Rick had decided that I should not testify on her behalf, because the truths I’d be forced to tell would only make things worse for her.
She actuallywasguilty, so their strategy was to elicit sympathy for her and for her motives, rather than falsely claim that she hadn’t done anything wrong. Which was where Robyn came in. Our new stray’s testimony was supposed to establish the extenuating circumstance that had prompted Abby’s actions.
As spectators, Abby and I weren’t allowed to speak during the hearing lest we influence the testimony, but Michael, as her advisor, could offer Robyn any help she needed.
“Tell you how I was infected. Sure.” Robyn took another sip of her water, and that time, her hand was shaking. Physically, she’d held up well over the past twelve days, though the council had forbidden her to shift except under the supervision of an attending Alpha. But the trial was a source of stress all on its own. “In October, I was abducted from a campsite by three human men who’d come to hunt Abby. Though I didn’t know that at the time.”
Faythe and Michael had gone over and over Robyn’s testimony with her. Her story hadn’t changed, but we’d needed to be sure she could tell it under pressure, without forgetting anything.
“Then what happened, Ms. Sheffield?” Bert Di Carlo asked.
“They took me to a cabin in the woods.” Robyn paused for another sip, and again her hand shook. “They kind ofdraggedme there. To this horrible room where there was a big black cat dead on a table, being skinned. I didn’t know it was a shifter. I didn’t know therewereshifters. Abby had never told me any of that, because she was following your rules. Even though that meant keeping secrets from her best friend.”
Faythe smiled encouragingly from her seat on the left side of the table. As the junior-ranking Alpha—since I’d been excluded—she sat closest to Robyn and farthest from the council chair position. “Please go on.”
“There was another cat—a live one—in a cage, and when I got too close to it, he sort of swiped at me with one paw. With his claws out, you know? I think he was scared and just lashing out at anyone who came close. He was already dying from a wound to his stomach. I think he was shot.”
Ed Taylor nodded. “And it is your testimony that this scratch from a dying stray is what infected you, triggering your transformation and later your first shift into feline form?”
Robyn shrugged nervously. “I guess. I didn’t know any of that at the time, though. I just… Someone knocked me out, and when I woke up, Abby said that the police had come for the men who took me. I was in shock, and I felt sick, so I didn’t really question any of it. We stayed in that awful cabin because I didn’t feel well enough to travel.
“That night, I got a really high fever and I started hallucinating. Abby took care of me. She explained what was happening, but I wasn’t really processing much of anything. Then I started hurting all over, like my body was ripping itself apart. It was excruciating. She stayed with me through that first shift, and she talked me through shifting back into human form.”
Paul Blackwell leaned forward with his cane propped on the floor between his knees, both gnarled hands gripping the knob at the top. “And she never told you anything about us? About the council, or her Alpha, or about the rest of our society?”
His skepticism made Robyn bristle. “No. I mean, she told me there were others, but she said I didn’t need to meet any of them yet. That I wasn’t ready.”
“And do you know what she meant by that?”
“Objection!” Michael Sanders stood from his chair against the dining room wall, and I got a peek at Abby behind his back. Her hair was pulled back and she wore a soft green dress, but her hands were clenched so tightly in her lap, she looked like she might snap her own fingers off. “Ms. Sheffield cannot be expected to know what Ms. Wade was thinking,” Michael elaborated.
Blackwell scowled. “Mr. Sanders, this isn’t a trial.”
“But his point is valid,” Ed Taylor declared. “We’ll ask Ms. Wade about her motivation whenshesits in that chair.” Blackwell frowned again, but remained silent. “Ms. Sheffield,” Taylor continued, “why did you kill Joe Mathews and the other human hunters?”
“Objection!” Michael stood again. “Ms. Sheffield has already been pardoned for her crimes, as part of an agreement she made with the council in advance of today’s hearing.”
“We areaware, Mr. Sanders,” Taylor said. “I’m trying to establish her frame of mind as it pertains to Ms. Wade’s motivation.” He tossed a glance at Abby, then his gaze slid my way, and it was less than friendly. Brian’s father blamed me for ending his son’s engagement. He wasn’t the only one.
Michael nodded curtly. “Withdrawn.” He sat, gesturing for Robyn to go ahead, now that he was sure the council wasn’t going to revoke its promise.
Robyn’s leg began to jiggle beneath the table. “I don’t know. It wasn’t a conscious decision. I never reallydecidedto kill anyone.” She frowned. “Dr. Carver said my cat half was in charge of my brain when those things happened, which means they weren’t my fault. I was dissociated from my conscience and my human decision-making process. Didn’t you guys talk to him?”
“We did.” Blackwell trained his habitually skeptical focus on her. “Why did you go looking for those men in the first place, Ms. Sheffield? I assumethatpart was done while you had full use of your human faculties?”
Robyn nodded hesitantly. “Well, the first of those men foundme. Abby had taken me to the woods so we could run in cat form, and I picked up a scent I hadn’t even realized I’d smelled at that cabin the day I got scratched. It belonged to a man those hunters worked with who hadn’t been there that day. He was following us, and when I smelled him, I just sort of…lost control. My teethneededto break through flesh. Ineededto taste his blood. I couldn’t think about anything else.”
