“Robyn.” He seemed surprised to see me still there. “I could use time alone.”

“Tough. What’s going on, Titus?”

“The world is crumbling beneath my feet. Is that not obvious?” His scowl felt like clouds rolling in front of the sun, an effect that even Bert Di Carlo’s disapproval hadn’t had on me. With a brief beat of panic, I realized what that meant—my shifter half had come to recognize Titus’s strength and authority. To feel it in my bones, like some incontrovertible truth.

This is how it happens. How shifters come to follow men like Titus and women like Faythe—people willing to put the good of those they lead over their own well-being. And the natural-born probably never even felt it. Or rather, they were born feeling it, thus likely never noticed.

Bert Di Carlo was not my Alpha—that much was suddenly perfectly clear. But Titus Alexander could be.

Assuming he would ever be anyone’s Alpha.

“I saw your face.” I leaned across the table and took his hand, refusing to let go when he tried to pull away. “You didn’t infect Corey Morris. Not on purpose, anyway. You had no idea you were going to find your own scent when you tested his.”

His eyes narrowed. “You don’t know me well enough to know that.”

“Bullshit.” I tried to pretend that didn’t hurt. “Surprise looks much the same on any face. And if you had infected him, you wouldn’t have kept him here, waiting for your own guilt to emerge. So what’s going on?”

Titus exhaled, then firmly removed his hand from my grip. “Robyn, go upstairs and wait with the others in the study. Now.”

He hadn’t made a request. He’d given me an order.

I stood to follow that order, even though my human half wanted to protest, but then the guesthouse door opened overhead. Footsteps thumped down the stairs, and Brandt appeared on the landing, then jogged the rest of the way down. “What’s going on, Titus? Drew’s calling a meeting, but he won’t say…” Brandt’s words faded into nothing as his gaze fell on Corey Morris. “Is this about the infector? Are we going to bring him in?”

Titus’s jaw clenched, but Brandt hardly noticed as he crossed the concrete floor toward the open cell at the end. He took a dramatic whiff at the threshold, and his entire body tensed.

“What the fuck, man?” Brandt spun faster than any human could have without losing his balance. “All I’ve heard from you since I got here is how we’re never, ever supposed to do to someone else what was done to us. The guys lost their jobs. They got kicked out of their homes when they got infected. They can’t get married or ever have kids because we’re not allowed to tell anyone else what we are. How could you preach one thing, then do the opposite?”

“This is a little more complicated than it looks,” Titus growled, staring at the hands he held clasped tightly on the table, and my pulse leaped with hope at the first acknowledgment I’d heard from him that all was not as it seemed.

“Bullshit!” Brandt growled.

I stood so fast my chair scraped the floor behind me. “Do not curse at your Alpha!”

Titus’s head swiveled toward me, his brows almost comically high.

Brandt looked at me through eyes haunted by betrayal and shiny with unshed tears. I understood how he felt, having obviously lost an idol. But that didn’t excuse his behavior.

The young tom tore his pained gaze away from me and aimed it at Titus. “Sack up, man. Take responsibility, like you’re always saying. Did you infect that poor guy?”

Titus stood slowly, as if the motion actually hurt. “Yes. I infected him,” he said, and the words seem to drain the steel from his spine. The strength from his soul. They seemed to break him, like nothing ever thrown at him, including his own infection, ever had. “I’m sorry I let you down.”

Brandt blinked tears from his eyes and stood straighter. He’d obviously expected Titus to deny it. To somehow explain away the evidence we could both smell clearly. When that didn’t happen, he turned and ran back up the stairs. A second later, he slammed the guest house door.

Hands clenched into fists at his sides, Titus unleashed a roar so visceral and deep that his vocal cords must have shifted, though no visible part of him had.

In his cell, Corey Morris whined, and I wondered for the first time how much he’d understood of what he’d heard.

According to his own narrative, Corey hadn’t attacked the cat who’d infected him, and I had no reason based on his scent or body language to believe he’d been lying about that. And since he hadn’t gotten a good look at his attacker, there probably wasn’t much he could reveal about Titus’s involvement, one way or another.

“I’m sorry,” Titus said through clenched teeth, and it took me a second to realize he was apologizing for losing his temper.

“If you’re going to be sorry about something, be sorry about lying to Brandt.”

His gaze narrowed on me. “I didn’t lie.”

“Yes, you did. And now you’re doing it again. I know what a man looks like when he lies to my face.”

Titus exhaled and sank into his chair again. “The facts and details aren’t as important as the greater truth; which is that the only thing I can do for Brandt and the others now is step down. Shifters live and die by their senses, Robyn, and what our senses are telling us is that I infected Corey Morris. Whether you like it or not, I’m a liability to the Pride.”

I sat in the chair next to him and ducked to catch his gaze. “But there has to be some—”

“Robyn.” He took my hand and looked right into my eyes. “I appreciate your trust, and on some level, I even appreciate your indomitable spirit, as infuriating as I find it in this moment. But for the next half hour, I’m still the Alpha here, and you are not allowed to argue with the Alpha.”

That was the first thing he’d said in the past few minutes that made sense.

“Fine. So, who will replace you? How does that work, anyway? You appoint someone?”

“Yes. I think. Though technically anyone can challenge the Alpha to a fight, at any time, and if the challenger wins, he’s the new Alpha.”

“Or she.”

That drew a smile from him. “Yes. Or she.”

“So it doesn’t really matter who you appoint?”