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getting help or training or something?”
    Carmen frowned at the toes of her sneakers. “Alec said she had. Callum Tyler, the hotshot English empath, took on her case.”
    Both of Franklin’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “Alec Jacobson stopped to chat? Did you have to tranq him?”
    “Come on, Franklin. Give me a little credit.” She fixed him with her best stern glare. “That reminds me, why were you talking to him about me?”
    “Because working with him helps me keep the clinic neutral. I can’t do it by ignoring all of the politics, no matter how much I want to.”
    It was such a sensible reason that Carmen felt terrible for overreacting. “Sorry. I just got the feeling he thought I shouldn’t be there.”
    “It’s not entirely personal. We had a little scuffle a few months ago when some lions immigrated here and brought a mercenary hit squad with them. The Conclave’s feeling defensive, and… Well, trust me when I say that’s not a good thing for anyone.”
    “Because of my family.” And the empty Conclave seat.
    “Because of your family,” Franklin agreed. “But that doesn’t mean Jake’s got a problem with you. He knows a little something about having family members trying to claw their way into power.”
    The name made her sit straighter. “Jake? Alec Jacobson is the army buddy you talk about?”
    “I never told you that?”
    “No.” Though there was no reason he should have. Carmen wasn’t interested in wolf politics, and she wouldn’t be interested in Alec if they’d met under more mundane circumstances.
    Yeah, tell yourself that, honey. She’d be interested, if only because he was attractive and commanding. It was a deadly combination, one that had never failed to ignite an intense, primal reaction inside her, no matter how much she tried to deny it.
    Lily walked out of the kitchen with a plate of pizza and an open bottle of beer. She put both on the coffee table in front of Carmen and stared at her.
    Carmen took a gulp of her beer, then another. Finally, she sighed. “What?”
    “Nothing.” Lily’s gaze shifted to Franklin in a barely perceptible glance. “Is the girl all right? What happened to her attacker?”
    “Kat will be okay. And I guess Jacobson was going after the guy who did it.”
    Franklin hooked his arm over Lily’s shoulders and tugged her against his side. “Jake’ll take care of it, but we should follow up with Katherine. Just to make sure she’s doing okay mentally and physically.”
    It was community medicine at its finest, and exactly why she’d chosen to work with him. Carmen nodded. “I’ve got it covered, unless you’d rather take it.”
    “Better if you do. There’s a lot she might not tell me.” Franklin hesitated, and tense pain spiked strongly enough for Carmen to sense it from across the room as he continued in a quieter voice. “Kat and Sera were close.”
    Carmen ached for him. His daughter was barely twenty-one, right around Miguel’s age, but she’d dropped out of high school and run off just before her eighteenth birthday to marry another coyote, an older man. Franklin had to physically restrain himself from hauling her back home, maintaining a fragile sort of peace, but at least this garnered him monthly phone calls about her well-being.
    The pain rolling off Franklin didn’t subside, and Carmen closed her eyes against it, drawing slow, even breaths as she blocked it. “Kat was comfortable with me. She seems like a nice kid.”
    “Kid,” Franklin agreed quietly. “She used to be a nice kid. Even though she was older than Sera, she was always…young. But shit, she grew up fast this year. Life made her grow up.”
    He still missed Sera. Lily closed her hand around Franklin’s in quiet comfort, and Carmen looked away.
    After a minute of silence, Lily spoke. “Your dad called again, Carmen. From a local number, not his cell. Is he in town?”
    “He and Uncle Cesar both,” she confirmed. “That’s why I skipped