“It’s his scent.” Titus no longer looked confused. His voice was low and steady. He sounded…resigned to some inevitability I couldn’t yet understand.

Drew stepped into the cage and approached the new stray carefully. He inhaled deeply through his nose, then he coughed, practically choking on the scent in shock. “Titus…” he turned to face his Alpha, eyes wide. “What the hell happened? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s not what it looks like. Er…what it smells like,” I said, and Drew turned to me with one brow raised. “Titus didn’t do this.”

“It’s exactly what it looks like.” The Alpha sank into a chair at the table and poured whiskey into his coffee mug from a half-full bottle he’d evidently found while I’d fetched Drew. “I have a decision to make, and I need your advice.”

“Wait, what are you talking about?” I asked as Drew sat next to Titus at the table, but neither of them seemed to hear me.

“The council will find out, and they’ll never recognize our Pride with me as Alpha. Not now.” Titus tried to screw the lid on the whiskey, but Drew took it from him and gulped straight from the bottle. “We need to do some serious damage control.”

“This doesn’t even make sense.” I slid into a chair across the table from him. “Cory was infected on Thursday night. Where were you on Thursday?” Maybe his alibi would at least contradict the evidence.

“I took a patrol. Alone. I needed time to think before the meeting in Atlanta.”

Okay, no luck there. “But I saw your face when you caught Corey’s scent. You were shocked. What’s going on, Titus?”

Finally, Drew looked at me. Then he turned to his Alpha. “What’s she talking about?”

“Nothing.” Titus leveled a serious gaze at me. “I’m not going to ask you to leave, because the others would try to interrogate you about this meeting. But this is none of your business, Robyn.” His tone was polite, but firm.

I had clench my jaw against an argument. Because he was right. Still…

“Maybe if we explain the circumstances,” Drew said, already back on topic. “It was self-defense, right? Or an accident? We all know you’d never infect someone on purpose. The Pride will stand behind you.”

I stared at Drew, puzzled by their DEFCON 1 reaction. I knew better than most how strong the council’s responses could be, but they wouldn’t act without a trial. Titus would get a chance to tell his side of the story.

“The circumstances won’t matter,” Titus insisted. “An Alpha has to be above reproach. Especially the first stray Alpha.”

“Okay. Well, we still have options.” Drew shrugged. “The council doesn’t have to know. Even if they decide to do an inspection or official tour of the territory, they don’t ever have to meet Corey Morris. We can send him home with Spencer, to recuperate in private.”

Titus took a long drink from his mug. “Even if I wanted to start my official relationship with the council off with a lie, that won’t work. This is a long-term problem. Anyone who ever smells Morris’s scent will link him to me, and eventually, that information will make it to the council. And that would be worse than owning up to it in the first place.”

“You’re right.” Drew’s frown deepened. “We need something more permanent.”

“Whoa, wait a minute.” I stared from one to the other as chills blossomed the full length of my arm. “You can’t just kill him!” I whispered, well aware that if Corey knew enough to use his feline hearing, he’d hear me anyway.

Finally, they both turned to look at me, wearing identical scowls. “We don’t kill people, Robyn,” Titus said. “He’s talking about a more permanent solution to the Alpha problem. Not the Corey Morris problem.”

Oh. Wait. “What does that even mean?”

Titus exhaled heavily. “I have to step down.” He met my gaze with an iron determination. “That’s what’s best for the Pride.”

“What’s best for the Pride is you as its leader.” A few hours ago, I couldn’t understand why Titus would want to turn the free zone into another Pride-controlled territory, but now the thought of him losing something he’d worked so hard for—something intended to help strays abandoned by the existing system—was breaking my heart. And pissing me off. “This is your Pride!”

Titus shook his head. “It’ll never be recognized as a Pride at all with me as the Alpha.”

“He’s right,” Drew said. “We need to face the reality of the situation, which is that the odds are already stacked against us. We have to work harder and hold ourselves to a higher standard than natural-born cats just to get a seat at the table. We can’t ask for recognition with this hanging over our heads. They already think most of us are savages.”

“You’re wrong!” I insisted. “Faythe and Marc know better. Abby’s dad knows better.”

“They’re a minority of the council,” Titus pointed out. “They can’t outvote the others.”

“Look, I know this is none of my business. And I know we only met a couple of days ago. But I also know that whatever happened, you couldn’t have intended to infect Corey Morris.” I was more certain of that than of anything else I’d learned since sneaking out of the Di Carlos’ territory. “So tell them what happened and let the facts stand on their own. Tell us what happened.”

“We’re beyond that. What matters now is getting in front of this before it can hurt the Pride.” Titus stood and dumped the rest of his mug into the sink. “Drew, call a meeting.”

I stared at them both, frustration pounding in my head like a migraine. Why are Alphas so stubborn?

Drew stood. “Should I call in the patrols?”

“No, just the toms currently in residence. I’ll draft a letter to everyone else. We’ll meet in the study in twenty minutes.”

Drew gave him a sharp nod, then disappeared up the steps. Titus sank into a chair at the table again and crossed his arms over his chest while he stared at Morris, who lay on his bed, facing the wall. The Alpha was clearly lost in his own thoughts until I pushed my chair closer to the table and it scraped against the concrete floor.