In fact, the only cat I’d ever even seen with a gun was…

“Here.” I stepped away from Marc and nudged Kaci closer to him, for comfort. “I’ll be right back.” I could feel everyone watching me as I marched down the hall, and Jace’s gaze in particular seemed to burn.

“What are you doing?” he whispered, falling into step with me.

“I have an idea.” I stopped at the office door and gave three sharp knocks to announce my entrance; I wouldn’t have been able to hear permission, anyway.

The door was unlocked, so I pushed it open to find all four Alphas watching me. “Sorry to interrupt, but I have an idea, and I need something from your desk. If that’s okay.”

My father raised a brow at my formality, and one corner of his mouth twitched as if he wanted to smile. He knew I was about to ask for something crazy; why else would I grease the wheels with manners?

He waved one thick hand toward his desk in a be-my-guest motion, and I marched across the room. Jace stopped in the doorway, and an intimately familiar breathing pattern told me Marc had joined him.

Eager now, I upended the marble jar on one corner of the desk. Pens and mechanical pencils tumbled onto the spotless blotter like pick-up sticks, and I pawed through them until I found a small, thin key ring, holding two identical shiny keys.

My father stood when I dropped into a squat behind his desk. “Faythe…” he warned, but I already had the bottom drawer open. And there it was: a blocky black pistol. Handheld death. According to the box of bullets next to it, the gun was a 9 mm, which was more than I’d known about it a second before.

I held it flat in my palm, getting a feel for the weight. It was heavier than I’d expected.

Across the room, Jace flinched, and I caught the motion in my peripheral vision. Manx had accidentally shot him with that gun five months earlier, and his recovery had been less than pleasant. And more than memorable. “Faythe…” he began, and I was surprised to realize that his tone almost exactly matched my father’s.

My dad cleared his throat, and I looked up to see that all the Alphas were standing now. My uncle watched me in equal parts caution and curiosity. Taylor looked like he thought I’d lost my mind. And if I wasn’t mistaken, Bert Di Carlo looked…almost impressed. “You don’t know how to use that,” my father said.

“They don’t know that.”

Jace flinched again when I flipped the gun over, looking for the safety. Most cats I knew had an innate fear of guns, which went hand in hand with our fear of hunters. Thanks to our fantastic hearing and reflexes, there really wasn’t much danger of us getting shot, but the chances of dying from a bullet wound were greater than the chances of dying from the average mauling. To which our scar-riddled bodies could attest.