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said, and forced his smile. That was the standard enforcer reply, but in his case, it wasn’t true. Owen had seen less action than Ethan or our oldest brother, Michael, or even me. Not because he couldn’t fight, but because he was just as happy tending the farm while the others patrolled and went on assignment. Only Ryan, the second born, had done less fighting, and we all considered that a very good thing; he was still officially on the run after having broken out of the cage two weeks earlier.
    But I nodded. Owen had stepped up in Ethan’s absence and likely saved Kaci’s life. He’d earned his scars, and like the rest of us, he would wear them with pride.
    When I bowed out of the room several minutes later, I found Jace waiting for me in the hall. Suddenly irritated, I glanced around to make sure no one was watching. Fortunately, most of the toms were in the kitchen devouring leftovers from my mother’s Mexican lunch buffet, and Marc, Vic, and the Alphas had disappeared into the office, already looking for information on thunderbirds. So I grabbed Jace by the arm and hauled him into my room without a word.
    “Wow, I haven’t been in here in a while.” He grinned the moment the door closed behind us. “But I feel at home already.”
    Anger flooded me, tingling in my nerves as if my whole body was losing circulation. “This isn’t funny!” I hissed. “What the hell are you doing?”
    Jace’s flirtatious facade crumbled to reveal the weathered pain, anger, and grief that had fueled his every action since the day Ethan died. “I don’t know.” He pulled out my desk chair and sat backward in it, crossing his arms over the top. “I just…for a minute out there, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bend to him.”
    “It’s not bending, Jace. It’s working. Marc gives the orders in Dad’s absence, and we follow them.”
    “I know,” he said, and I breathed a silent sigh of relief that he hadn’t called me on Marc’s lack of an official position. I couldn’t have handled that without losing my temper. “But it felt different this time, and I couldn’t do it.”
    “Jace…” I sank onto the end of my bed wearily, brushing long black hair from my forehead. I didn’t want to get into this so soon. I wasn’t ready to talk about what had happened between us. Not so soon after Ethan’s death. Not with everything else going on.
    “It has nothing to do with you,” he said before I could find a good finish to my hasty start. “I can’t explain it. But I’m over it. I can play my part until you’re ready to tell him.”
    But what the hell would I tell him? That I’d slept with Jace? That was true, but incredibly—miserably—that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I desperately didn’t want to hurt Marc, and I couldn’t stand it if I lost him. I wasn’t sure I could actually force another breath out of my body if I thought I’d ever lost him for good. But I didn’t want to lose Jace, either.
    And I wasn’t even sure what that meant.
    I didn’t have Jace. But we’d connected after Ethan’s death, and it hadn’t been a simple grief-stricken moment of comfort. Though, it was certainly that, too. But the truth was that grief had crumbled my resistance to a bond we’d formed earlier. One I’d been denying, because of what I had with Marc.
    But I wasn’t ready to understand what that meant. And I sure as hell wasn’t ready to try to explain it to Marc. So Jace and I had agreed to stay…apart. Completely hands-off. But if he wasn’t more careful than he’d been today, we’d soon be explaining ourselves to more than just Marc.
    “You have to watch yourself,” I whispered, glancing at my hands in my lap.
    “I know.” He stood, heading for the door, but I shot up and jogged ahead of him.
    “Wait, let me check.” I grabbed the knob, but before I could turn it, Jace was in front of me, so close I could feel the heat of his cheek on mine.