I didn’t know why I decided to announce that I’d tried to sleep with Nick, but after we were all in the car and an awkward silence took over as Owen drove, I figured it was probably so I wouldn’t let myself get invested in the relationship. If everyone knew about it, or at least that part of it, then I didn’t have to take Nick seriously. It would become a joke, and then I wouldn’t have to face the possibility that I actually liked him.

Nick didn’t let the silence stretch too long, though. He leaned forward to talk to his sister. “No one else knows, right?”

“No,” she said. She had the same self-possession that her brother flaunted, though Kara had had a rough go of things when she first escaped from BadCreek. I made a mental note to ask Nick was the fuck he was thinking when he brought her into the compound. Regardless of his mission, he shouldn’t have risked his family. But Kara seemed happy enough, holding Owen’s hand as the bear drove. “We didn’t tell anyone about Lacey. Or you losing your mind and apparently behaving like a gentleman for the first time ever in history.”

“You’re my little sister, and it’s none of your business who I screw or don’t screw.” Nick looked a little irritated as he leaned back in the seat, legs akimbo until his knee almost bumped mine. “So get your mind out of the gutter, kid.”

Kara turned in the seat to look at him, faking a shocked look. “What? I’m proud of you for not behaving like a drunken frat boy. It shows personal development and some real character, Nick. I feel like we should throw you a party or something. Like a bar mitzvah—you’ve finally become a man.”

“I could get the cake,” Owen said. “I think Sasha could be ready with the piñata. Is this the kind of party that would have piñatas?”

“I think it’s a great idea,” Kara said.

Nick’s ears turned red. “You’re being assholes.”

I loved it. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing, and maintaining my composure as Nick’s expression grew more and more wounded probably took a year off my life. It felt easy—relaxed and familiar, like real friends would tease each other without worrying about offending someone’s sensibilities or bruising an ego. There wouldn’t be a rank challenge at the end of a poorly-timed joke. No one was using the downtime to search for weaknesses or solicit more information to use against them later. I could breathe around them, and it was a real gift.

Kara gave Nick a dark look. “If you’d stopped being a man-whore a few years ago, we wouldn’t have any reason to be so surprised that you didn’t sleep with a beautiful woman like Lacey.”

“Well, thanks,” I said, ignoring Nick’s spluttered objection to being called a man-whore. “So he gets around, is what you’re saying?”

“Not lately,” Owen said. The attempt at male solidarity was a good effort, but Kara patted her mate’s knee and shook her head.

“Maybe not lately, but he needed a break after the previous ten years.”

Nick frowned. “I wasn’t that bad, Kara. You’re giving the wrong impression.”

“You were trying to fill an emptiness inside you,” she said, absently. As if the observation wouldn’t take my breath away with how close to home it struck. “You did it with work and women. Neither seemed to get the job done, so you did more of both. And more and more and more, until finally you landed here. Something’s working to fill that void now, but I don’t know what that is yet. Food? Beating on Sasha? Glaring holes in the back of Owen’s head every time he looks at my ass? I don’t know. I like you better this way. I don’t have to worry about bleaching everything you touch.”

I focused on breathing. Filling an emptiness with work and women. I wondered what kind of emptiness he had to deal with, though the scars on his body were some indication. Ending up working a secret mission against BadCreek filled in some of the rest. But her description felt familiar for more than just Nick. Since Cal’s death, I’d had an emptiness inside me, and I’d tried filling it with work as the hyena queen. And Kara was right—it didn’t help. There was never enough work, never enough distractions, never enough liquor to fill the void. To make the silence less mocking, the nights less lonely. The emptiness was always there.

Nick grumbled and kicked the back of her seat. “Stop making me sound so gross. And before you argue with me, did you get the phone I asked you for?”

She handed a prepaid phone back to him. “Of course I did. And there’s water and snacks in the cooler by your feet, by the way. We’ll have to restock the cabin, since you probably put a good dent in the supplies.”

“Bet your ass we did,” Nick said. He fussed with the crappy phone, checking the card and powering it on, then handed it to me. “You can call Eloise from this phone. I don’t know what happened to your old one, but at least the hyenas can’t trace this one.”

“Why would I be worried about them tracing my phone?” I took it, though I couldn’t for the life of me remember Eloise’s phone number. Who the hell memorized numbers anymore? I hardly knew my own.

Nick fished in the cooler for a bottle of water. “In case it wasn’t an accident and someone set you up.”

Kara’s eyebrows rose as she leaned around to look at me again. “Wow. Someone set you up?”

“We don’t know that,” I said. A sinking feeling in my stomach grew at just the possibility. Cassidy wasn’t that power hungry. I thought she’d only aspired to be the security chief and no more. She said often enough that she didn’t want to deal with the administrative bullshit of being queen and she was glad that was my problem and not hers. “I’m not particularly concerned that—”

“If it was a setup and you survived,” Nick said, handing me a piece of paper, “then she won’t want you alive to challenge her again. I’m sure she’d rather find out you lived before the rest of the pack so she can dispose of you quietly. That won’t happen, obviously, but we’ve got enough to worry about without dealing with assassination attempts. And that’s Eloise’s phone number.”

“Thanks.” Assassination attempts. Luckily most of the challenges and attempts to kill me had been relatively straightforward since I’d become queen, though I’d become cautious about who I accepted food from. Traditionally one became queen by defeating the previous queen in combat, but poisoning the queen or assassinating her would probably have been accepted, too. Nausea unsettled my stomach, although it could have been the godawful coffee Nick made coming back to haunt me. “I’m not sure I’m ready to call Eloise just yet.”

And not in front of an audience, that was for sure.

Nick nodded, handing me another bottle of water. “We’ll know more soon. Do you think we can get in contact with your beta discreetly, or will that cause too many problems?”

There really wasn’t any way to know without calling her. And if Cassidy set me up, it could have been a plot hatched by both of them together. Or Cass acted alone and might have killed Savannah to eliminate anyone still loyal to me.

I stared out the window as we entered the city and all the green disappeared into gray concrete. All things considered, it was damn impressive there were any hyenas around at all. We killed each other off so rapidly we probably should have died out generations ago. I’d intended to put a stop to the violence when I became queen, but it was far easier said than done.

I took a deep breath. “I don’t know that, either. We can try to call, or send someone over there to try and see what’s going on if no one answers the phone. Cass won’t be letting a lot of people inside the den right now anyway, so she can consolidate power.”

The silence stretched as I debated what to do next. I really needed a shower, a good breakfast, real coffee, and a bit of space to think. Making the wrong call or telling the wrong person could blow everything up, and I still didn’t know if I wanted to go back as queen or just walk away. I never considered abdicating, but if Cass did a good enough job and intended to continue what I’d started—and she hadn’t tried to kill me, of course—then maybe I could walk away on good terms.

And I needed Nick to figure out how the hell we would free Smith and the djinn. I rubbed my temples as the headache from the day before reignited. As much as I didn’t want the wolf involved in too much of my business, at least until I sorted out how I felt about him, he would be able to call Savannah without arousing too much suspicion in Cassidy. “You could call my beta and ask about something you gave me or wanting to be at the funeral or something. That would tell us a great deal about how they’re treating my death.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Nick said. “Once we know that, we can start planning the rest.”

I should have asked the djinn for a deadline. There was a hell of a lot more to get done than I’d anticipated, and already it felt like I was running out of time.