Did Jace feel the same? He must. He’d wanted me to tell Marc all along—had been waiting on me to find the right time and place.

But there was no right time, and certainly no right place. As badly as it hurt to keep quiet, I was starting to believe that we could never tell Marc what had happened. Not because he might leave me. Not because he’d probably hate me. Not even because of what it would do to the Pride.

If I told Marc, he and Jace would fight, and one of them would die.

My mind refused to move beyond that certainty. I couldn’t entertain the idea of an “after,” and wasn’t even sure there would be one. So the Confession remained a hulking, dark cloud on my mind’s horizon, a distant goal I was afraid I might never actually meet.

When we turned onto the old country road we’d traveled the night before, Marc turned on the radio rather than speak to me. I shrugged out of my jacket and took off my brace, then stared out the window while I concentrated on Shifting just my right arm.

In the motel, I’d Shifted into and out of human form four times, for a total of eight transformations. The first four were the most physically painful experiences I’d ever had in my life, but after that, the pain began to ebb until—with the last one—Shifting almost felt normal again.

The gash in my left arm was completely healed, and the long, jagged ridge of a scar could easily have been a month old. There was no more pain, and I had regained all muscle control, except for an annoying—and hopefully inconsequential—weakness in my pinkie finger. It stuck out just a bit now, when I formed a fist, but didn’t seem to hinder normal activity. That had been my biggest fear—the possible loss of function or flexibility in my left hand—and that had seemed likely in the beginning, when I couldn’t make my fingers obey orders from my brain. But in the end, I was both grateful and relieved to have avoided catastrophe. No pun intended.

My right arm was another story. After eight Shifts, it no longer hurt to move my hand and I had regained most of the flexibility in my wrist. But the injury still felt very tender, and I was afraid that overuse—or even short-term stringent use—could lead to further, and possibly permanent, damage.

“What are you doing?” Marc glanced at my arm, and his question broke into my concentration. My palm shortened and my fingers lengthened. Fur never got the chance to sprout.

“Just trying to be ready.” I couldn’t shake the feeling that something would go wrong on Jace’s end, and if that happened, we all needed to be able to fight.

Marc sighed, and I had the overwhelming urge to touch his jaw. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and the stubble on his face had bypassed the painful, scratchy phase and slid right into soft-and-sexy. “Let’s just forget about it for now, okay?” he said, and I realized we were talking about Jace again. About our little problem, and the desperate need for some kind of a resolution. Of the sort that wouldn’t get anybody killed. Or even dumped, preferably.