I gaped at Melody, still clutching her broken doorknob. She loved him? She could not be serious. Melody was as self-centered as a tabby could get—which was saying a lot, considering that most of us were treated like precious cargo from birth—and she’d thrived on attention from tomcats since she was fourteen years old. From all the toms.
She’d claimed she was only trying to find the right match, which her father had told her was her one and only duty to the world, but her kiss-a-hundred-frogs approach had left more than one of the guys with a broken heart and a chip on his shoulder. Jace had traded two miffed enforcers for two of my brothers a couple of years before, just to patch the rift Melody had carved in his carefully bonded brotherhood. Now she was doing it again.
Or was she?
Tears stood in her eyes. Every muscle in her body was tense. And she wasn’t trying to defend herself; she was trying to protect Isaac.
“You love—” Jace shook his head, and I realized he couldn’t see the change in her. Or he wouldn’t, anyway. “You were in love with Chase this past summer, and Nate Blackwell back in the spring. You don’t know what you want yet, because no matter what year is stamped on your birth certificate, you’re still just a kid. I’m trying to give you time to figure out what you want.”
He’d been encouraging her to get to know herself before she threw herself at the next tom. Or to at least get to know the next tom before she threw herself at him. But she couldn’t be the only one who’d noticed he was preaching one thing but practicing something else entirely, with his endless string of human women.
At least, until me.
“Things are different now,” he insisted. “You don’t have to get married at nineteen and have six kids by thirty. You could go to school. You could get a job. You could even travel—”
“I don’t want any of that!” Melody shouted. “Not all girls are like Faythe and Abby, you know, and just because you want a woman who’d rather throw a roundhouse than a dinner party doesn’t mean every tom wants that. I just want a pretty wedding and a bunch of redheaded babies, and you obviously want the same thing,” she said with another pointed glance at me. “So, stop being a hypocrite.”
“Wait, what?” Isaac looked past Jace to me. “You and Jace? Since when?”
“It’s new,” I said, trying to avoid his gaze.
“What about Brian?” Luke demanded from my right.
“We broke up.”
“Oh. Well…good for you!” Isaac said, though I got the distinct impression he was only saying that because he knew he was currently in no position to criticize his Alpha’s private life. “I hope you’re happy together.” Isaac turned back to Jace. “The least you can do is wish us the same.”
“She’s nineteen years old and she doesn’t know what she wants!” Jace shouted. “You’re taking advantage of her!”
“No, he isn’t!” Tears rolled down Melody’s face, but she stood her ground, still pressed against my brother’s bare chest. “Being an Alpha doesn’t mean you know everything. We’re going to get married, and I’m going to have this baby, and you can’t—” Melody slapped one hand over her mouth, shocked by what she obviously hadn’t meant to say, and astonished silence descended over the now-crowded bedroom.
“Baby? You—!” Jace lunged for Isaac, but I grabbed his arm again as Melody burst into sobs.
“Wait! Let’s talk about this calmly,” I insisted, though I was as stunned as everyone else.
“Well, so much for letting me break the news to him gently,” Patricia Malone said, and I turned to find her standing in Melody’s bedroom doorway, both arms crossed over her long, gray robe, dark brown hair perfectly straight and in place, as if she slept sitting up on a shelf. She glanced around at the gathering of shocked shifters and sighed.
“You knew about this?” Jace pulled free from my grip.
“Of course I knew. She’s my daughter.”
“How could you let this happen?”
“Let it happen?” Patricia bristled—that was new. When I’d joined the Pride, she’d been a quiet, almost cowed woman accustomed to doing what was asked of her and mollifying her husband to keep the peace. “I didn’t let anything happen, and I’m no happier about it than you are, but I do know that killing your nephew’s father”—because the baby would almost certainly be male—“won’t help.”
“He’s not going to kill Isaac,” I insisted, and when Jace didn’t immediately agree, I elbowed him. “Right?”
“No, I’m not going to kill him.”
“You’re not even going to touch him!” Melody shouted. “Get the hell out of my room. This is none of your business.”
“I’m your Alpha, and he’s my employee. And this is my house. This is most certainly my business.”
Melody’s eyes narrowed, and I saw the verbal bullet coming before she fired it. “You’re only my Alpha because you killed my father!”
Jace recoiled, and I could see how much that hurt him, even if she couldn’t. The truth was that Calvin Malone had only been the Alpha because he’d killed Jace’s real father—according to the rumor mill, anyway—but Jace would never say that to her, even in his own defense.