Warner shrugged. “With everything she’s been through, I guess the real surprise is that she hasn’t flipped out before.”

In theory, that was a rational explanation, but in Abby’s case, it didn’t make sense. She’d definitely been threatened when the hunters had killed her friends in the woods, but she’d held it together in order to track the bad guys, eliminate them, then explain to me exactly what had happened, and how going against my orders was really the right thing to do.

Yet with Hargrove, even though he was restrained and unarmed, she’d freaked out, lashed out, then checked out. We were missing something.

“Abby,” I said as Warner started opening kitchen drawers in search of rags and towels. She still stared at the wall above the gun rack, but now a maelstrom of conflicting emotions flitted over her features. Terror, and desperation, and…caution.

What part of what she’d just done could be considered cautious?

“Abby!” I called again, and finally, she blinked. “Look at me.”

She complied, and I saw raw instinct battling shock behind her eyes. She was still mired in the trauma of what she’d done, yet something inside her demanded that she follow her Alpha’s orders. Hell, she might actually be easier to deal with as an enforcer without her human stubborn streak getting in the way.

Not that what she’d just done could possibly be easy to deal with. Her father and his allies had gone out on a limb to support my leadership of the Appalachian Pride, and so far, all I had to show for it was a serial killer stray and group of human psychos hanging dead shifters on walls. When the council found out I’d let a key informant die—at the hands of an unstable rookie enforcer I never should have hired—they’d have my head stuffed and mounted.

It wouldn’t matter how much I cared about Abby, or that I’d brought her on the mission in an effort to protect her. An Alpha is responsible for everything that happens in his territory, which meant that if she didn’t have a damn good reason for what she’d just done, we were both in serious trouble.

“Here.” Warner shoved a handful of kitchen towels at me. “Let’s get the blood off her. Maybe that’ll help.”

Lucas turned her by her shoulders so that she couldn’t see the body on the floor, then unzipped her ruined jacket and helped her shrug out of it. She was shaking all over.

“Abby.” I used one of the towels to wipe a spray of blood on her cheek, but that only smeared it. “Abby, wake up. I need you to tell me what happened.”

She blinked again, struggling to focus on my face. Then she threw her arms around me and I became the third shifter smeared with Hargrove’s blood. But I didn’t give a damn. I held her as tightly as I could without hurting her.

“I’m so sorry, Jace” she said through chattering teeth, her face buried in the shoulder of my coat.

“It’s okay.” One way or another, I would make it okay, so that I’d never have to let her go. “Just tell me what happened, and we’ll deal with it.”

Abby stood on her toes and kissed me, and something deep in my chest began to ache. That was a hungry kiss. That was the greedy kiss of a woman who knows she’ll soon be going without for a very long time. “I am so, so sorry for this,” she whispered against my ear, her arms wrapped around my neck to hold me close. “I wish there’d been another way.”

“Another way?” I held her at arms length, studying the startling change in her as it happened. Her jaw tightened and an emotional veil dropped over her eyes, shielding her thoughts from me. “Another way for what, Abby?” Had she done it on purpose? “Why did you kill him?”

But I already knew that whatever she said wouldn’t be true. Not the whole truth, anyway. She’d locked me out. Hell, she’d practically said good-bye, and that realization sent a terrifying bolt of panic through me.

I couldn’t lose her. Not because of this. Not because of anything.

“I killed him because he deserved to die.” She crossed her arms over her chest, and her gaze narrowed. “He needed to die, and you obviously weren’t going to step up, so I did what had to be done.”

A growl rose from deep inside me. Tension filled the room, expanding to occupy the widening gap between us as the guys—even Lucas—stepped back, instinctively distancing themselves from the challenger.

From the five-foot-nothing, one-hundred-pound female challenger, whose strongest muscle by far was that dagger of a tongue.

Abby’s words were a deliberate provocation. Her tone, and her stance, and her steady, bold eye contact—they were all intended to provoke me. To elicit a reaction.

They worked.

“That wasn’t your call,” I growled, struggling to remain calm even knowing she was manipulating my instincts. “Hargrove would have been able to give us names and addresses. He could have told us how far-reaching a problem these hunters are!”

“We can get all that from his records. From his computer,” she insisted. “I couldn’t recite the phone number of a single person in my contact list, because no one memorizes that stuff anymore. We store the data on devices, which means that Hargrove’s cell and laptop are way more valuable than he is.”

“You better hope you’re right,” I said. “But that’s not the point. You violated a mandate from the council and disobeyed a direct order from me!”

“It was a stupid order.” She snatched the towel from me with her bloody left hand and scrubbed at her cheek. “I feel no obligation to follow orders that don’t make sense.”

Yet I heard a quiver in her voice—more evidence that she didn’t believe what she was saying. She was playing a part. Putting on a show.

“Abby!” Lucas whispered fiercely, warning her to shut the hell up. To stop making everything worse, but she knew exactly what she was doing, and so did I.

I just didn’t know why.

What I did know was that she wouldn’t be doing whatever she was doing if she thought she had any other choice. She needed an out.

If she told the right lie, I could give her one.

“You need to think carefully about the next words you say.” How she answered my question would dictate what happened to her in the immediate future. Her insistence on being treated like any other enforcer meant she would be punished like any other enforcer. Even if I took the lion’s share of the blame, she could lose her claws, her canines, or her freedom.