Alpha. Rachel Vincent

      “This is so weird.” Parker ran one hand through straight salt-and-pepper hair. “Ethan would have been a dad. I can’t picture it.”

      “I can.” I steered him away from the door, hoping Angela wouldn’t smell the whiskey on his breath. At one o’clock in the afternoon.

      My mother ducked into the living room to tweak an arrangement of snacks, and I squeezed in next to Vic to peek out the window. Our guest still sat in her car with the driver’s-side door open, digging in her purse for something. But I had the distinct impression that she was stalling.

      I couldn’t decide who was more nervous—Angela or my mom. Or me.

      “Scoot over,” Kaci said, and I turned to find the young tabby standing behind me, hazel eyes wide, long brown hair pulled into a thick wavy ponytail at the base of her neck. Kaci didn’t look nervous. She looked curious. And skeptical.

      Ethan’s death had hit her very hard, and she now seemed both fascinated to meet his only remaining link to the world and ambivalent to the woman who’d known a very different side of him. “She looks…normal.”

      Jace laughed. “You were expecting two heads?”

      Kaci only frowned. “How come she’s just sitting in her car?”

      Marc spoke up from the dining room doorway, making no attempt to look through the window. “I’m sure she’s nervous.”

      And she hadn’t even met our brood yet. “Okay, why don’t you guys all go sit, so we don’t overwhelm her the moment she walks in the door.”

      Marc’s frown mirrored Kaci’s, but he herded the thirteen-year-old tabby toward the living room and shot one last irritated glance at me and Jace before stepping through the doorway and out of sight. I’d been nominated for the welcoming committee because I was the only tabby near her age—at least, the only one with flawless English—and Jace got to play because he’d set up the meeting with Angela. He’d dated her twin for a few weeks, back when Ethan and Angela first started going out.

      Yes, Jace and Ethan dated twins. Seriously.

      Jace stepped closer to me in the deserted hallway, ostensibly to look through the window, and the warmth from his chest leached through the back of my shirt. “You ready?” he asked, but the question felt loaded, like Angela was the last thing on his mind.

      Mom was right; the timing could not have been worse.

      I sighed. “Not even kind of.”

      He turned me by both shoulders and grinned down at me. “She won’t bite. And she’s probably the only person within a square mile who can swear to that right now.”

      “That’s part of the problem.”

      I opened the door, and Angela looked up when we stepped onto the porch. Then she took a deep breath and got out of the car.

      She’s so young, I thought, taking in her slim form and freckled cheeks. But she was only a year younger than I was, and twenty-two really wasn’t that young to be a first-time mother. Even today, most tabbies already had a son or two by Angela’s age.

      I smiled, and her mouth turned up in a nervous reflection of my own expression. Then she noticed the tom behind me, and her whole face brightened.

      “Jace!” She sounded so familiar I had to fight a sharp jolt of jealousy, though I knew she and Jace had never been involved. But I was suddenly irritated by the realization that she knew more about some part of his life than I did. And even more about Ethan’s. “I wasn’t sure you’d be here.”

      “Like I’d let you walk into the lion’s den all alone,” he teased, and that streak of jealousy in me grew stronger as her smile widened. Though Jace and Ethan had rarely ever sat at home on the weekends, I couldn’t remember ever actually seeing him interact with someone outside the sphere of our secret existence. He was…different. Relaxed and confident, showing no sign of the power struggle with Marc or the bloodlust we’d all been battling for weeks now.

      I was amazed that he could turn all that off and set her at ease. And beneath my jealousy, I was grateful, because none of the rest of us knew Angela well enough to play Virgil, guiding her through the hell our world had become since Ethan’s death.

      “Don’t worry, they’re all eager to meet you,” Jace said, and I followed him down the steps, hanging back when she hugged him, clinging to him like a life raft in a storm.

      “Andrea still asks about you,” she said, when he finally pulled away.

      Jace stiffened, like he wanted to glance back at me, and pulled one hand through his hair. “How is she?”

      “Fine. Surprised.” She grinned and ran one hand over her flat stomach, and some vague tension in me eased. She was happy to be pregnant. She didn’t resent Ethan’s baby, and that made me like her, in spite of her familiar manner with Jace. “She’s excited to be an aunt.”

      So was I.

      I’d never expected to be related by blood to a child who wasn’t mine. Few toms ever had children, and though Ethan was a great fighter, he wasn’t a leader. He would never have been an Alpha, nor would he have settled in a childless human marriage like Michael. So if not for Angela and her baby, we would have nothing left of him but memories.

      My eyes watered at the thought of a baby with Ethan’s green eyes, and a shock of his black hair.

      “Is that her?” Angela asked, and I glanced up, surprised.

      “Yeah.” Jace waved me forward, and I took the last two steps slowly. “Faythe, this is Angela Raymond. Angie, this is Faythe, Ethan’s sister.”

      “It’s so great to meet you.” She threw her arms around my neck, and I stumbled back in surprise. But Angela was unfazed, so I patted her back awkwardly. “The guys talked about you all the time,” she said, when she finally let go, and her blue-eyed gaze met mine frankly, after a brief, puzzled glance at my scarred left cheek. Obviously they hadn’t mentioned that. “I feel like I already know you.”

       Oh, I doubt that…

      But she was so wide-eyed—so earnest, in spite of her nerves—that it was impossible not to smile back at her. Not to like her.

      Ethan had considered himself a player. He’d had no trouble lovin’ ‘n’ leavin’ girl after girl. Until Angela. And now, seeing her, hearing her, I understood why she’d outlasted the others, and I wondered if, given time, she might have actually won a place in his heart, instead of just his bed.

      “Everyone’s excited to meet you,” Jace said, gesturing toward the front door.

      “Everyone?” Her forehead furrowed and she looked at the house as if it might swallow her whole.

      “Don’t worry.” Jace put one hand at her back to guide her forward. “Meeting them is the easy part.” He glanced back at me and winked. “Remembering the names might be a bit of a challenge.”

      I closed Angela’s car door, then followed them inside.

      The house was silent, but for the whispered breaths and excited heartbeats coming from the living room, which Angela probably couldn’t hear. Everyone was listening. Waiting. Eager for the first up-close glimpse.

      This was unprecedented. We’d only recently learned that humans and werecats could sire children, and while strays were proof that that had happened—to be “infected,” a human must already carry a recessive gene donated by a werecat somewhere in the family tree—there were very few cases of toms actually claiming their illegitimate children. And all of those cases were very recent because, before, such pregnancies had been considered impossible.

      Ethan’s baby would be born human, and the difference between his blood and his mother’s would be small enough to avoid detection in the basic newborn tests, as had been happening for decades with potential strays.