Liam shrugged. “It’s a nice butt.”

He was flying to Romania in a matter of hours and now he wants to get all cute and flirty? That was so not fair.

Once I was settled with all my nearly naked parts tucked away, Liam climbed up next to me. There was no awkward shifting or limb organizing. After half a year of sleeping side-by-side, we knew how our bodies fit together.

“You doing okay?”

I took a cue from him and thought before I responded. “It had to be done.”

“That doesn’t answer my question, Scout.”

No, it didn’t, but it answered the more important one.

“I’m going to miss you,” I said, oh-so-cleverly switching topics.

“You could come with me. You're the Alpha Female now. Your place is at the Den.”

“No, my place is with my family.” He already knew my answer just as well as I knew his argument. This wasn’t a new discussion. “I miss them so much it hurts.”

“You could be putting them in danger if you stay.”

“And I could be leaving them to face the danger alone if I don't.” Not everyone was onboard with our little regime change, and I wasn’t naive enough to believe those who wanted retribution would play by the rules. “I’ve not been very fair to my parents this past year. I need to make it up to them.”

This is where our discussion ended. It always did, because there was nothing Liam could say to refute that. It didn’t mean we wouldn’t say the exact same things two or three more times before he left.

“I want you to relinquish your position as Alpha Female.”

Then again, maybe we wouldn’t.

“Excuse me?”

“I had Rachel do a little research, and it’s possible. All you have to do--”

“You want me to relinquish my position as Alpha Female?” It was a good thing I wasn’t hooked up to any monitors. Every freaking alarm would have been blaring. “The position I just got by ripping the throats out of anyone who would oppose me? The position you’ve been training me to take for months? You want me to just… relinquish it?”

“You don’t want to go to the Den--”

“Because it’s in Romania. Do you know how far Romania is from Kentucky? Fifty-five hundred miles. That’s nearly 9000 kilometers, in case your Canadian brain can’t do the math.”

Liam had been reclined alongside me, but now he was sitting up, his scowl back where it belonged. “Scout, calm down.”

“Calm down? You’re asking me to give up after everything I’ve been through. What was the point?” A horrible, sickening thought occurred to me. “Was this your plan all along? Was I really nothing more than a pawn to you?” I was shaking with fury. “Did I do a good job, Liam? Did I kill them all dead enough for you? Did I save your hands from enough blood that you’ll be able to live with yourself?”

“You’re not being fair.”

“I’m not being fair?!?!”

One of the Shifters/FBI agents outside the door discreetly coughed, pointing out that even people without super-senses could hear us.

When Liam spoke again, his voice was decidedly quieter. “I thought this is what you would want.”

“You thought wrong.”

“Obviously.”

He didn’t elaborate, so I did. “I made a commitment, and I’m going to stick to it. This is important. I might not believe in destiny or fate or any of that other crap, but I do believe I’m supposed to do this.”

Liam picked up one of my hands. The knuckles were covered with scrapes and bruises from an encounter with one of the Odom Pack. More bruises stretched down the right side of my body, and if I wasn’t mistaken, my wrist was broken. Again. I could have healed everything by Changing, but the bruised and battered look added more credibility to the “held hostage by terrorists” story. One of my first acts as Alpha Female had been to make sure the United States government recognized Toby Hagan for dying during the rescue mission.

“I can’t protect you if you’re Alpha,” he said, his fingers gently tracing the damage on my hand. “This isn’t going to stop any time soon. The entire Shifter world is in chaos, and you’re at the center. You’ll be safer if you just disappear.”

“And what message would that send?” I shook my head. “No, I can’t run and hide anymore. I’m going to stand up for what I believe in, even if it means I have to take a few hits every now and then.”

A kiss against a knuckle missing all of its skin. “I don’t like seeing you hit.”

“Well, to be quite honest, I don’t like being hit unless it’s by you.” As soon as it was out of my mouth, I realized what I had said. “That sounded all sorts of wrong.”

“Insanely so, actually.”

“To be clear,” I said to any overhearing ears, “I hit him back--”

“Hard.”

“It’s a very give-and-take, non-abuse type hitting situation…”

The sides of Liam’s mouth folded up like an accordion. “You should probably stop now.”

“I’m trying. My mouth keeps moving of its own accord.”

I felt the vibrations of Liam’s laugh as he pulled me once again into his arms. “Go with me,” he whispered against the top of my head.

“Stay,” I countered.

“I can’t.”

Tears threatened, but I blinked them back. “Neither can I.”

Chapter 31

“Banana splits are too health food. It’s dairy and fruit and nuts. Dairy and fruit and nuts are good for you.” Angel spooned up more sugary goodness from the bowl that was as big as she was. “Tell him, Scout.”

“The kid is right. Dairy, fruits, and nuts are indeed good for you. We know. Our mom is a nurse.”

The Strip was crowded, which was pretty much standard operating procedure for the summer. Tourists and locals swarmed to the only place in Lake County with anything that could pass as entertainment. I liked it well enough on rainy days and at the end of the season when the temperature dropped and everyone else had grown weary of its charm, but being there on a sun-shiny July Saturday was akin to torture, especially after the complete circus of the last three months. We had only been there for fifteen minutes and already three people had come over to either ask if I was that Scout (like there are five or six of us running around) or express their sympathies over those long months I had spent as a hostage of God’s Army of Defenders. It was the same every single time I went out in public. For some reason people thought I would want to tell them all about “my personal tragedy” (CNN’s wording) when I refused to grant an interview to every single media outlet in the world.