“Step outside with me for a moment,” our Alpha ordered. Then, before Marc could answer, my father turned to me again, and his eyes had gone soft, which irritated me because it meant he was treating me like a daughter instead of like an enforcer. Smiling, he planted a soft kiss on my forehead, which I couldn’t remember him doing since the morning of my tenth birthday. “Good night, kitten. We’ll be here when you wake up.”

“I’m not a kitten!” I snapped, but no one was listening. My father ushered Marc into the living room and shut the door behind them, as if that would block out their conversation. But I could still hear them arguing about me, and surprise registered even through the thick sleeping-pill fog rapidly enveloping my brain. I couldn’t recall Marc ever arguing with his Alpha before. But then I understood: My father wasn’t acting like an Alpha. He was acting like a father, and Marc was calling him on it.

“…could you leave her unsupervised? She could have been killed!”

“Yes, she could have.” Marc’s voice was calm, with an undercurrent of quiet confidence, which sent a silent thrill through me. He sounded like an Alpha. “Any one of us could be killed on any given day of the year, Greg. We’re enforcers. Risk comes with the job.”

“And that’s why you work in pairs. To watch each other’s backs.”

“In a perfect world, yes,” Marc admitted. “But our world is far from perfect, and sometimes things come up. Opportunities present themselves, and that’s what happened here. Faythe saw an opportunity, and she took it. The whole thing was her idea. She said she’d make better bait than either one of us, and she was right. He would never have shown himself with me and Jace hanging around.”

“No rogue is worth her life.”

“I agree. But if you really expect her to take over for you, you have to let her learn how. And you have to let her know you trust her. Especially now, when no one else seems to. This was her idea, and it was a good one. She’s stubborn as hell, and if we hadn’t played along, she would have taken off on her own, anyway. We both know that. I did what I thought was best at the time, and so did she. But no one feels worse about her getting hurt than I do.”

“I know.”

I swallowed thickly, discomforted by my father’s acknowledgment of Marc’s feelings for me, in spite of the pain and frustration my presence put him through on a daily basis. Privacy was nonexistent in our world, and most of us saw no reason to pretend not to know something everyone else knew anyway. The only person I pretended with was Jace, and that was only because he seemed to prefer it that way.