“He isn’t,” she said. “Don’t worry.”
He rounded on her with a snarl. “He made you like her. Like us. Then brought you here. Why would he do that? He’s lost his mind. He’s lost his balls. He isn’t fit to lead.”
Alex didn’t like the sound of that. Not fit to lead usually led to some kind of coup. And in werewolf land, that meant a challenge. Although why worry? She didn’t think Ca
de could kill Julian.
Then again, she hadn’t thought Cade could kill anyone.
There was a lot more to Cade than any of them had been aware of. She needed to discourage a coup—along with hatred of Julian. If she had a snowball’s chance, she’d even have tried to convince him she wasn’t evil incarnate—but she knew better.
“He wanted me to suffer,” she blurted. “Killing me was too easy.” His eyes narrowed, and she hurried to add, “Not that he won’t eventually.”
“I don’t see you suffering. In fact, you fit right in with no trouble at all. And now you’re his mate. He’ll never kill you.” He took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “So I have to.”
Cade had planned this well. She was naked—or near enough. She didn’t have a gun, a knife, a silver anything. And she’d returned to human form, where she was only a slightly faster, stronger woman, and from the speed with which he’d smacked her, not as fast or as strong as him. Shifting into a wolf would take too long, especially when he could do so in an instant.
Alex glanced at the windows; she couldn’t help it. But they were shuttered and—
“No one knows where we are.”
Her gaze met his, and she caught a trace of the madness he’d kept so well hidden lurking behind the eyes of a man she’d begun to think of as her friend.
“If they come to my place they’ll think we went running together. They’ll wait until tomorrow to worry.” He smiled, and the madness blossomed. “By then it’ll be too late.”
“Julian will know. He’ll figure it out.”
“He hasn’t figured anything out so far. I have my brother as convinced of my peaceful nature as anyone.”
“Love is blind,” she said.
“And pretty damn dumb.”
She had to keep him talking. If he was talking to her he wasn’t killing her.
“You murdered my father.”
Alex hadn’t meant to say that. Bringing up death at all was probably a bad idea. But she’d opened her mouth, and out it had come.
Cade had been staring at a montage of Alana in a sky-blue dress, hair piled on top of her head and messily hanging about her ears. Kind of like Cade’s.
She’d never gotten a look at his ears in this form but—
Alex frowned. She had seen his wolf ears, and they’d been as intact as hers.
“Charlie?” Cade turned away from the wall. “Never met the man.”
Could Cade have found a way to heal silver? Who the hell knew?
“Why would you think that I’d killed Charlie?” he mused.
“If you didn’t kill him, then how do you know who he is?”
“Julian has a dossier on you.” His head cocked. “From your lack of surprise, you knew that.” He lifted his gaze to the ceiling, tapped his finger against his lip. “You’re searching for your father’s killer. You think that he’s here. Why would you think that?”
His head lowered, his eyes falsely wide, his mouth in a sarcastic o. “This has Edward written all over it.”
Alex didn’t comment, because it did.