Stray. Rachel Vincent

be damned. Daddy wasn’t teaching me to be independent. After all, how would that benefit the Pride? He was teaching me to be responsible.

      Still staring at Marc, I sat down on the bed—not because I wanted to, but because my legs refused to support me any longer. Numb with shock, I let my gaze drift down from his face to the Berber carpet. I studied the familiar design, tracing the overlapping diamonds one at a time, as if the answers to every question floating around in my head must lie hidden somewhere within the pattern. But if they did, I couldn’t find them.

      “All this time, I thought you understood,” Marc whispered. I glanced up to find him staring at me with wide eyes, the surprise in his expression bordering on disbelief. “I thought you knew what he wanted and were refusing on general principle. I can’t believe you never realized.”

      “Yeah. Me neither.” I barely recognized my own voice. I sounded dazed, or maybe drugged. But then a deeper understanding hit me like a slap in the face. Everything he’d said was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth. Not by a long shot.

      My eyes returned to him slowly. “You have all the same qualifications, Marc.” The stunned quality in my voice had been replaced by an unsettling calm, and as I watched, his face flushed. “You know everything I know, and you already have the experience.”

      Yet without me, he would never be Alpha. And we both knew it.

      Marc studied the collection of CDs lined up next to my stereo. “My training as an enforcer was very thorough, and my areas of study often overlapped yours.” He was hedging, covering up the truth with a thick layer of bullshit.

      “How long?”

      He met my eyes, his own carefully blank. “How long what?”

      “How long has Daddy been grooming you? How old was I when he chose you for me? Eight? Ten?”

      He had the decency to blush. “He didn’t choose me, Faythe. You did.”

      I considered reminding him about a woman’s prerogative to change her mind, but didn’t think it would help. “I’m not an idiot, Marc. Daddy picked my boyfriend to be his top enforcer, and I’m supposed to believe that’s just a coincidence?” I heard my voice rise in pitch but couldn’t seem to stop it. “He wasn’t training you to defend the boundaries. He was preparing you to take over for him as Alpha.”

      “No.” His denial was earnest and simple. “I’ve been trained to help and support you. To be your top enforcer, like I am for Greg.”

      But I couldn’t believe it. Of course, that’s what Marc would say. He’d say anything to get us back together, and so would my father, but he had an ulterior motive.

      I’d always known my father wanted me to marry Marc, but I’d assumed he was trying to make me happy, misguided though his efforts were. It had never occurred to me that because I was his daughter, Daddy was stuck with me. But he’d chosen Marc. My father wanted Marc as his heir, and the only way to accomplish that was through me.

      Marc saw my thoughts on my face and shook his head at me slowly, as if I should have known better. “It wasn’t like that. You can’t train someone to be an Alpha. You know that.”

      Of course I knew. You couldn’t teach a cat to utilize strengths and instincts he didn’t possess. But inherent talents could be molded if they were caught early enough, and that was exactly what Daddy had done with Marc.

      An Alpha had to be fast, strong, and very good under pressure. He had to be able to make critical decisions quickly, with little information to go on. And most important, he had to have that indefinable something—akin to charisma, but infinitely stronger—which drew loyal tomcats to him and kept them true under even the worst circumstances.

      Marc had all of that and more. He was decisive and evenhanded, but ruthless when he had to be. He’d been born to lead, and Daddy had guaranteed that his talents would never go unnoticed, especially by me. He’d made sure that the man closest to me—the only eligible man in the house during my formative years—was one he approved of and had, in fact, handpicked.

      Staring into those gold-flecked eyes, I realized that my father had steered me toward Marc not to make either of us happy, but for the good of the Pride. Because everything Daddy did was for the good of the Pride, even if it wasn’t good for any one individual. Including me.

      “You know he set us up,” I whispered, anger lending a bitter taste to my words. “You know neither of us ever really had a choice.”

      Marc frowned, never taking his eyes from mine. “I had a choice, Faythe, and I made it years ago. I told you I’d never change my mind, and I haven’t. You’re the one who left.”

      He had that right. I’d left, and spoiled all of my father’s careful planning. After all, even the best Alpha male was no good without a mate.

      Unable to hold his gaze anymore, I let my eyes wander. They fell on a framed photograph on my dresser: Marc and me at my senior prom. My mother must have put it there, because I certainly hadn’t. That was the night he’d asked me to marry him. It was also the night I’d run away for the first time, terrified not by anything that went bump in the night but of growing up to be just like my mother.

      Centuries ago, according to legend, our ancestors lived like true cats, with the biggest, strongest toms fighting for the right to mate the available tabbies. Unfortunately, there were very few tabbies. As I understood it, the problem lay not with the women but with the men. As with humans, the gender of our offspring is determined by the sex chromosome donated by the father. But in tomcats, the gametes carrying the Y chromosome are more motile than those containing the X chromosome. Simply put, the sperm cells that would produce male fetuses swim much faster than those that would produce females. This results in an average of five toms born for every one tabby.

      To say that the competition for mating rights was fierce and bloody would be like saying the universe is pretty big. There are no words to describe an understatement of such magnitude.

      Fortunately, in order to maintain the secret of our existence, most Prides were long ago forced to abandon instinct for the civilization of human society. In our modern Prides, each tabby chose her own husband. And almost invariably—whether through instinct, or deep-rooted social conditioning—she chose someone capable of leading her Pride.

      However, even with civilized customs in place and a support system of enforcers, the Alpha had to be a strong leader in order to keep the respect and loyalty of his Pride. A weak Alpha wasn’t Alpha for long, even in the modern world. By contrast, like my father, Marc would have been a great Alpha.

      Marc-in-the-picture looked so young, so happy. He was a triple threat: strong, charismatic and beautiful. Helen’s face may have launched a thousand ships, but Marc’s had sunk at least as many hearts, one of them mine.

      When I’d asked him to choose, he’d picked the Pride over me. He wouldn’t get a chance to do it twice.

      As he’d pointed out, I’d left, and just because he’d dragged me home didn’t mean I would stay there.

      I turned from the photograph to the live version, for the first time noticing tiny age lines in the outside corners of his eyes. “I’m sorry, Marc,” I said, suddenly compelled to apologize, in spite of refusing to do so earlier. “I’m sorry about the way I left. And I’m sorry about your leg. But nothing’s changed, so please don’t make this any harder by refusing to believe me.”

      He stared at me for almost a minute, as if waiting for me to break down and admit I was lying. Then, finally, he nodded, his face hardening with resolve. “Fine.” His eyes glazed over with the unreadable expression he wore at work, the one that reflected my own feelings but revealed none of his own. He’d cast me out and put up his defenses.

      It was about time.

      Marc pushed my chair back up to the desk. “You’ve always been stubborn, and I don’t know why I thought that might have changed.”

      I