Encouraged by the curiosity obvious in her eyes, I edged forward cautiously. “Do you have a Pride?” She shook her head again, so I forged on. “Okay, they probably call it something different. But you live with a group of other werecats, right? Your dad’s the boss—the Alpha—and your mom’s the dam? And you probably have several big brothers? I only have four, but most tabbies have five or six…” My voice faded into silence. She’d been shaking her head steadily through my last few questions.

A weird, antsy feeling sizzled in my stomach, surging upward like acid reflux as I watched the tabby stare at me steadily. She didn’t live with a Pride? How was that possible? Surely I was misunderstanding…something.

“You…” I wasn’t even sure how to approach the swarm of questions swirling in my head. There were too many to grasp. “Your father’s not an Alpha?” She shook her head again, once, and I exhaled slowly. That was rare, but by no means unheard of. Jace’s father wasn’t an Alpha; he was dead. And I’d once heard about an Alpha who was deposed for failure to act in the best interest of his Pride, which was basically what Malone was accusing my father of. Though that charge was completely unfounded.

Okay, so her father wasn’t an Alpha. “Your mother’s a dam, though, right?” There was really no way around that one—once a tabby had children, she was a dam by definition. Yet the tabby shook her head, again, and I steeled myself to ask what was possibly the most difficult question I’d ever had to pose to anyone. “Did your mother die?”

The tabby blinked at me slowly and lowered her chin to rest on one paw. After a moment, she lifted her head and nodded, then set it back down.

Damn. She was an orphan. The only other orphaned tabby I’d ever met was Manx—who was fully grown—and thinking about Manx made me wonder if this tabby’s mother had died in whatever incident removed her father from their Pride. Still, orphan or not, she was born into a Pride somewhere, and no Pride would give up its tabby, even if they’d lost—or over-thrown—her parents.

She’s a runaway. I should have realized it earlier. I’d done enough running myself to recognize the signs, and she had obviously been on her own for quite some time. But the immediate question, at least as I saw it, was whether we had any right to turn her over to a Pride she clearly wanted no part of.

“Honey…” Damn, I wish I knew her name! “I’m not going to let anyone hurt you. We won’t send you anywhere you don’t want to go. I swear on my own life. You’re safe here. Do you understand?”