For an instant, relief was plain on Parker’s face. No one was dead. No one related to him, anyway. Then the ramifications sank in, and relief melted slowly from his features. He blinked, and I could almost hear the gears turning in his head. “So Malone was protecting him by blaming us?”

My father nodded, and Jace leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, anger flaming behind his bright blue eyes. “Yes, but I can guarantee that your brother’s safety was not foremost on Calvin’s mind. He was saving his own tail, and framing ours.”

“We have a choice now, and I’d like to get your input before I make a decision,” my dad said. “Once we get in contact with them, we can tell Kai’s Flight the truth and try to clear our name, but in doing that, we’d be implicating your brother. Or we can keep quiet about it, in which case we have to find a way to either fight these thunderbirds or convince them to stop fighting us.”

Parker stared at the floor, straight strands of salt-and-pepper hair hanging over his face. “You want me to decide whether or not to turn my brother over to the thunderbirds?”

“No.” My father shook his head firmly. “That’s my call. But I am interested in your opinion.”

Parker sat up then, his face lined in pain and bitter conflict. “Okay, if we turn him over, they’ll kill him. Right?” he asked, and the rest of us nodded. Even my mother, who sat with her ankles crossed primly beneath her chair, her expression just as guarded as my dad’s. “But if we don’t, they’ll keep killing us.”

“Yes. But it’s a bit more complicated than that,” my father said.

“Because of my dad?”

Again our Alpha nodded. “I’m assuming that if we turn your brother in, our chances of gaining your father’s support drop dramatically.”

“You might say that.” Parker raked one hand through his hair, and in that moment he looked much older than his thirty-two years.

“Maybe there are choices we’re not seeing…” I ventured, and both of them turned to me expectantly. “Maybe we could offer Lance sanctuary, too, in exchange for his testimony to the birds.” My father started to object, but I rushed on before he could. “Via video, or something. I don’t know. I don’t have the details worked out yet, but there has to be some way to fix this without handing him over to be slaughtered.”

But before anyone could argue—or agree—an electronic version of an old-fashioned telephone ring cut into the air, and I glanced down to see that I still had Jace’s cell phone in my lap. I picked it up and glanced at the display, hoping to see Brett’s name.

Patricia Malone. I reached across the rug to hand Jace his phone. “It’s your mother.”

Jace raised one brow at our Alpha, asking permission to take the call. My father nodded, and a sick feeling unfurled deep inside my stomach. Jace flipped open the phone. “Hello?”