Feral Sins

CHAPTER SEVEN

Just as she had each morning over the past week, Taryn was perched on the kitchen counter sipping her coffee while engaged in a staring contest with dear old Greta. It was practically ritualistic for them to partake in a battle of wills whenever they were in the same room. Each and every time, Taryn would leave the room smiling while Greta was purple in the face and growling. Once Greta had realized that she wasn’t going to scare Taryn off, she had taken to simply insulting her and generally being difficult. In truth, Taryn found the whole thing just as entertaining as everyone else did. As usual, they were all eating quietly as they waited for the verbal spar to begin.

“What are you looking at, hussy?” Greta finally spat.

“I haven’t figured that out yet.”

Huffing, Greta drank down more of her weird green herbal tea. “I hope you’re not getting comfortable, you won’t be here for much longer.”

“So you’ve said. Repeatedly.”

“You might have some of the others fooled, but I see you for what you are.”

“Is that right?”

“I warned my boys all about females like you.”

“Oh come on, your imagination was never this good.”

Hand over her heart, she said with fake misery, “My daughter is probably turning in her grave now. You’ve got tattoos for God’s sake!” A cruel smirk suddenly curved her lips. “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected much better, what with your wolf basically being disabled. What does it feel like to be latent? To know your wolf will forever be trapped?”

“I don’t know. What does it feel like to be so old that your birth certificate is in Roman numerals?” The smirk quickly fell from the crone’s face and Taryn smiled.

Entering the kitchen, Trey wasn’t surprised to find his mate and grandmother glaring at each other. Neither even spared him a glance. Given that Taryn seemed cheery while Greta looked like she was chewing a wasp, Trey could guess who was on top of the situation. His grandmother was doing her best to intimidate Taryn, however his little mate was holding her own, making it clear that she didn’t take any shit from anyone, especially one who was ‘old and senile’.

His wolf didn’t like that Taryn’s attention hadn’t immediately shot to him and, before Trey knew it, he’d yanked gently on her hair to make her look at him. Restraining himself from nipping her lower lip, he simply gave her a nod. A growl of approval built in his chest as he saw that she was wearing a black tight fitting t-shirt that showed off some of his marks – marks that were fading, he then noticed. His wolf growled angrily inside his head.

“Morning son, come sit down and get something to eat.” Greta’s voice was now sugary-sweet.

“How long before your friends get here?” he asked Taryn as he took his seat.

“They should be here any minute now. Remember what you promised.”

“I’ll give you some time to talk with them alone,” he assured her, though it would nettle his wolf to know there was a strange male wolf around her. He told himself it wouldn’t bother Trey the man so much, and if his wolf could have snorted, he would have. “At some point I’ll come over there so we can act the mated couple, totally devoted to one another and completely smitten and all that.”

Again Taryn was struck by the feeling of how unfair it was that she would never have that, especially that she would never have it with Joey. And now here she was again about to commit the ultimate blasphemy and claim that the one person created for her had never been her true mate at all. God, this sucked big time.

At least she and Trey were exchanging a few words. Occasionally he wouldn’t speak to her at all. Or there were the times when she would enter a room and he would immediately leave it. He spent most of his time cooped up in his office. She knew he had to keep an eye on his investments – he actually had a pretty good head for business – but surely he didn’t need to spend that much time in there. Making the whole thing even more annoying was that Selma had picked up on the huge divide between them and tried clinging onto him as much as she could – just as she was doing right now at the table. The only thing preventing Taryn from reacting was that Trey was growling, warning the female away from him. Still, it pissed her off to no end, but damn if she would let either of them know that.

“Morning,” drawled Tao as he strolled into the room. He play-punched her shoulder before joining the others at the table.

“Ass,” she snapped, smiling.

Trey knew he shouldn’t have the urge to growl at his ex-Head Enforcer. It was just a play punch – it wasn’t sexual, it hadn’t hurt her, and it had only been the briefest touch. But Trey was honestly considering stabbing the wolf with his fork. It might not have annoyed him so much if Tao wasn’t always touching her. The guy had taken his role as ‘bodyguard’ a little too literally. Trey couldn’t understand how he hadn’t noticed before the way Tao looked at her. Mixed in with admiration and respect was a deep longing. And Trey didn’t like it one bit.

His wolf was urging him to take a swipe at his enforcer and warn him off. Perversely, Trey the man liked that others wanted what was his, and that gave him strength against his wolf’s drive to separate her from the other male. Also, Trey knew that no matter how much Tao might want Taryn, he would never encroach – he was too good a guy for that. Nonetheless, his wolf wasn’t particularly interested in whether or not Tao was a good guy, he didn’t want him around Taryn so much.

Trey inhaled deeply, reminding himself that he was in control – not his wolf, not those primal instincts. The smile on Dante’s face said he knew what inner struggle Trey had been going through. The ringing of his cell phone distracted him from thoughts of flicking scrambled egg at his Beta. “That was Kirk,” he announced on ending the call. “They’re here. He just let them through the gate. Should only be a minute before their SUV pulls up outside.”

Taryn hopped down from the counter and stretched. “Time for Scene One: The Alpha Pair’s Welcome. Make it good, Flinstone. These guys won’t be easy to convince.”

“I noticed that at the club.”

“They won’t be trying to separate the two of you like they did that night,” stated Dante.

Hearing the fierceness in his tone and watching the way his body language became confrontational, Taryn pointed hard at him. “You are not going to spend the next few hours trying to intimidate them. They’re already scared half to death by Trey.”

“Are you going to tell me they won’t try to convince you to leave with them?”

“Of course they will.”

“Let’s hope our luck stretches that far,” muttered Selma. Hope and Kirk chuckled. Everyone else ignored them.

“They won’t dare ask you to leave if a few of us are sitting with you,” said Dante.

Taryn shook her head. “Not a chance, Barney Rubble. You all stay the hell away and give us some privacy.”

“It’ll only be until Trey comes over.”

“No, I’m not having any of you hovering around us like parental supervisors. Not even Tao.”

Tao frowned. “But I’m your bodyguard.”

“They’re not a threat to me.” As all three males opened their mouths to say something she held up her hand. “I don’t want to hear it. Now let’s do this.”

Seeing the resolve in her expression, Trey sighed and took her soft hand in his large calloused one as they walked together to the main door. Marcus was holding it open, watching with his usual grin as their visitors hesitantly exited the SUV and, with a slow nervous stride, made their way up the stairs.

Trey locked his arms around Taryn’s waist, keeping her back against his chest, and allowed himself the luxury of burying his face in her neck to drown in that scent that could so easily make his cock hard. He shouldn’t have been surprised when he woke up that morning and found himself curled around her with his face nestled in the crook of her neck, taking comfort in the exotic smell of his mate as he slept. At some point in his sleep he had covered that huge space between them and fed the hunger that he had ignored for the past week. Then he had snuck out of bed before she realized. Had she not been such a deep sleeper, he would never have gotten away with it.

As Shaya and Caleb finally came to stand in front of them, shuffling from foot to foot and completely avoiding eye contact with Trey, Taryn had to refrain from groaning. She knew he had an intimidating presence, but she didn’t think he was that bad. Okay, maybe he was. “Thanks for coming.”

“It’s been weird not seeing you every day,” said Shaya.

Taryn discreetly pinched Trey’s arm, urging him to do his part.

Flinching a little, he said, “Welcome. I have a few things to do, but Taryn will take you down to the lake, won’t you, baby?”

“Yep.”

Four days ago Greta had come to him complaining that Taryn had taken their deckchairs and barbeque from storage and set them up near the lake as an area where she could go and relax. Well, she hadn’t taken the items personally – more like she had turned into Captain Von Trapp and had his enforcers virtually marching as they followed her every command. He had to admit it was a nice little set up and he was surprised no one had thought to do it before.

“Great, thanks,” said Caleb, his eyes still lowered.

A few minutes later Taryn was sitting by the lake at the patio table trying her best not to laugh at the way Shaya and Caleb were glancing around nervously as if they were expecting Trey to jump out and pounce on them.

“They’re all very protective,” noted Caleb, referring to the pack.

And wasn’t that an understatement. It was laughable the way the males were hanging around trying to look as though they weren’t in fact there to keep an eye on her and ensure she wasn’t kidnapped. Like that would ever happen. Marcus and Trick were lazing in the lake as if it wasn’t a chilly day, Tao sat against a nearby tree reading a book that was upside down, and Dante and Ryan were cleaning a barbeque that was already spick and span. All were occasionally sneaking covert looks at Taryn and her friends, or at least they thought they were being subtle anyway. Apparently she should have better defined ‘the hell away’ because they didn’t appear to have gotten the idea.

“Yeah,” she agreed.

“Which means you must have proven your worth as an Alpha Female, so I’m guessing that tale about you calming a feral Trey was true.”

The emphasis on the word ‘feral’ irritated Taryn. “He hasn’t hurt me and he’s not going to.”

“Taryn, have you seen yourself in a mirror? You’re covered in marks.” Most of which were fading, thankfully. “Someone that possessive isn’t balanced.”

“I know Trey’s a few fries short of a happy meal, but it doesn’t mean he’ll hurt me.”

“How can you be sure of that? His wolf goes feral for God’s sake.”

“But even feral he doesn’t hurt me.”

“And you expect us to believe that’s because he’s your true mate, right?” Caleb snickered. “There’s no way I can believe that.”

Shaya appealed to her with a look. “Taryn, we watched you, at nine years old, slip into a state of depression. It was like being around a zombie. You existed but you didn’t live. It was all just mechanical. And we understood why – you had just lost the other half of your soul. It was a shock that you even survived it, no one thought you would. I mean, I know you two hadn’t mated but you had still formed a connection and you were so young.”

“It hasn’t occurred to you that maybe the reason I lived was because that connection – solid and true though it was – just wasn’t the connection between true mates? That maybe the reason I reacted so badly was because I’d just lost my best friend and my mom in the same accident?”

Caleb lowered his voice as he spoke. “Look, if your dad’s right and you did this to get away from Roscoe…well he’s dead now. You don’t have to keep this up. God, you could have come to me, I’d have mated you. I still will if it’s what you want.”

Taryn smiled. “Caleb, that’s sweet and all, but do you really think I’d ask you to enter a permanent mating with someone you thought of as nothing but a friend – an annoying friend at that – ending any chance of you having a life with your true mate?”

He shrugged, suddenly seeming uncomfortable. His voice was even quieter when he spoke again. “Who says I see you as nothing but a friend? Maybe I just hadn’t acted on what I felt because it would have felt like I was betraying Joey.”

Taryn rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Right.”

“So you hadn’t wanted to mate with Roscoe?” asked Shaya.

“Not particularly, no. I thought he was kind of vain and overly flirtatious – you know how stuff like that annoys me. I don’t know how my dad or anyone else can claim that me mating with Trey – someone who had been a stranger to me before that day – has anything to do with that. Maybe if I had the power of mind control and could hypnotise him to believe and claim that I was his true mate, then yeah sure.”

“Obviously you guys believe you’re true mates, I saw for myself what happened,” said Shaya. “But isn’t it possible that it was just a really strong case of lust at first sight? ’Cause, you know, I’ve been there – it’s powerful.”

A loud, sharp, metallic ‘tock’ sound had Taryn looking up. She smiled at her relatively new friend who was perched on a branch high in the tree to her left. “Hey, big guy. Come on down here.”

“Oh no, Taryn please don’t,” whined Shaya. But it was too late. The huge glossy black raven was already on the table.

Caleb frowned. “What is it with you and birds? Why do they always like you?”

Taryn shrugged one shoulder. “Isn’t he gorgeous?”

“I don’t like crows,” whined Shaya, leaning back in her seat.

“It’s a raven.”

“Well then I don’t like ravens.”

“How can you not like them? They’re so intelligent and beautiful. Look at the way his feathers shine a kind of metallic violet in the light.” He made a series of guttural croaks that had Shaya flinching.

“Aren’t ravens an omen of death and disease?”

Taryn rolled her eyes at the nervousness in her friend’s voice. “For God’s sake, Shaya, it’s only a bird.”

“And a scavenger, did you forget that part? Wait, does it only have one leg? And hang on, did it just bark?”

Taryn chuckled. “Ravens can imitate a whole variety sounds, even a human voice.” As if to back her up, he made a series of gurgling and croaking noises followed by another bark. “See, LJ’s cool.”

Caleb made a choking noise. “LJ?”

“Yeah, as in Long John…Long John Silver, the sailor cook with the one leg?”

“Oh. Right.”

“Ravens only have one mate too, you know,” she said as she watched him return to the tree.

Caleb sighed. “I don’t care what you say, Taryn, there’s no way I’ll believe Joey wasn’t your true mate.”

Of course he wouldn’t, the opinionated SOB. “Just because I’m mated now doesn’t mean Joey means anything less to me than he did before. That bond we had doesn’t mean any less because he once filled a place inside me. It’s not that Trey’s replaced him, because Trey has his own place.” Not one word of that had been a lie. Now that she’d mated with Trey, he did have his own place. He just wasn’t filling it.

Shaya ran her hand through her hair, sighing. “I want you to have this, Taryn, I really do want you to have this. I’m just worried that somewhere along the way you’ll think, ‘Hey, I was wrong, he’s not my true mate at all’. Then you’ll have lost two mates. Where would that leave you? I don’t want to ever again see you in that state. And, well…For God’s sake, Taryn, how can you not be petrified of him?”

“He’s a walking time bomb, Taryn, he’s -”

Taryn held up her hand. “Look, Caleb, if you’re here to try to turn me against my own mate then you might as well save your breath to blow up your doll.”

Grinning, he shook his head and took the hand that Taryn had held up. “I want to say I’m happy for you but…well I’d be lying. I don’t want you mated to a psycho. Just swear to me that you’re happy here. At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters.”

In some ways, Taryn was happy. These people – with the exception of Greta, Kirk, Brock, Selma and Hope – didn’t treat her like she was inferior just because she was latent. She didn’t feel like an outsider or someone who needed to be constantly on the defensive. The atmosphere here was the total opposite of the one she had grown up in and she found it refreshing.

She had become close friends with Lydia as she spent a lot of her time helping her with her graphic design business. She was a great person to be around as she entertained Taryn non-stop with her little eccentricities and her habit of saying whatever the hell she thought. Taryn wouldn’t have thought that someone like that could be so suited to the very sensitive Cam, and yet Lydia was.

When she wasn’t with Lydia she was often with Grace who was helping her improve her cooking skills, or sometimes Rhett who was teaching her how to hack. Tao was of course often there, but as her friend just as much as her bodyguard. He was very easy to be around, he wasn’t complicated, he didn’t brood, and he didn’t blow hot and cold. Trey could learn a few things from him.

She also found that she got along pretty well with Marcus, which kind of surprised her because ordinarily she tired of flirtatious people. And Marcus was extremely flirtatious. When he turned the full force of his huge impish grin on you there was no holding back a blush. Maybe it was because he gave some fantastic shoulder massages that the flirtatiousness didn’t bother her…? Very possible.

She hadn’t realized that he and Trick scratched each other’s itch from time to time until she stumbled upon them having some fun at the lake. Damn that had been hot and it had taken all her self-control to leave rather than stay and watch. Apparently they had known she was there as Trick later teased her about it and still continued to do so on occasion. Trick was a tease in general. He seemed to get his kicks from making people blush or feel uncomfortable, but as he targeted Selma and Kirk a lot, Taryn was totally fine with it.

Although Ryan didn’t talk much and mostly communicated through grunts, Taryn rather liked him. Unlike everyone else, she spoke to him as though she actually expected him to respond until eventually he began to talk to her a little. She wasn’t surprised to find that Ryan was quite intelligent, even more so than Rhett. He was very big brotherly with her, as opposed to Dominic who often asked her what color her underwear was and tried to look down her shirt a lot. He was the worst perv ever and constantly hit her with dirty chat up lines which he didn’t need to use – just one look at him had females drooling. He seemed to just enjoy being a perv, and yet it was impossible not to like him. Dante was another person who was impossible to dislike, but behind his laidback ‘I don’t take life seriously attitude’ was an astute, diplomatic, extremely observant person.

Trey’s withdrawal from her, however, tainted her otherwise happy state. She knew it was a good thing that they didn’t spend much time together. She knew it was best that she didn’t find herself happy here when she had every intention of leaving. Still, it stung because she got the feeling that Trey’s withdrawal had nothing to do with that and everything to do with the simple fact that he didn’t desire her.

Seriously, who would want to be lying in the same bed each night with someone who purposely left enough room between them to fit an elephant? Worse, she couldn’t argue with the fact that she did still belong to him in a sense. Who would want to belong to someone who didn’t want them?

She was considering moving into one of the guest rooms, but she suspected that if she increased the distance between them it would only make her wolf worse. Her wolf was restless and miserable enough after going a week with only minimum contact with her mate. What Taryn was thankful for was that she and her wolf were in perfect accord on one thing – there would be no begging her mate for more no matter how bad things were.

Taryn consoled herself with the reminder that this would all be over in just over ten weeks and then, with any luck, she might be able to switch to the pack her uncle belonged to. She had been delighted when she discovered that her uncle’s pack was signed up to the USA Pack Webs. She had sent him a nice friendly message, asking how he was doing and stuff – of course not mentioning that she and Trey weren’t true mates. Only when Darryl’s challenge was over would she let the information loose. Her hope was that she might first be able to sort an alliance between Trey and her uncle’s Alpha. Not only would this benefit Trey, but it might increase her chances of the Alpha agreeing to let her join his pack at a later date.

Taryn was snapped out of her thoughts as Caleb abruptly dropped her hand and his gaze was drawn to something over her shoulder. She turned to see Trey strolling toward her looking as sexy and intimidating as always. Time for Scene Two: Looking Lovey-Dovey. She hadn’t expected that it would be so hard emotionally to fake intimacy with a person, but it felt so weird and uncomfortable because it wasn’t real. On the plus side, some physical contact with him would calm her wolf a little.

Trey grabbed the chair beside Taryn, turned it to face her and then sat before lifting her from her own seat and placing her on his lap, straddling him. He couldn’t help marvelling over how well she fit there and at the same time being annoyed about it. His cock wasn’t annoyed, it was quickly rising to attention – especially as she was wearing those ‘bend me over and fuck me now’ knee boots. “Hey.” After skimming his nose along the crook of her neck to again take her scent deep into him, he gave her a lingering kiss. He’d missed her taste. “How’s my girl doing?”

“Fine.” She almost purred as he ran his hands up and down her back. Her wolf was lazing, content, within her. It didn’t matter to her wolf that the entire thing was an act. All that mattered was that she was having physical contact with her mate.

Unable to resist, Trey licked over his mark and smiled as she quivered. “I know you wanted some time with your friends, but I don’t like it when you’re out of my sight for too long.” It was a pain in the ass that that was the truth. Although he spent little time with her, he would still seek her out several times a day – usually every few hours – just to check on her.

“That’s okay, I missed you.” She brushed her lips against his and then gestured to her edgy looking friends. “And Shaya and Caleb don’t mind.”

He gave them a simple nod of acknowledgement which they returned with shaky smiles. His attention quickly returned to Taryn as he drank in the sight of her in a way that he usually only did when no one was watching.

“Have you noticed my surveillance team?”

Trey smiled. “I noticed. I approve.”

“I’ll bet you do,” she grumbled.

He shrugged unrepentantly as he spoke against those luscious lips. “I like knowing you’re safe.”

“And yet you haven’t thrown out your inherently evil grandmother.”

Chuckling, he shaped her waist with his hands. “I know she’s being a little difficult right now, but she’s one of those people who grow on you.”

“No, she’s one of those people who are like Slinkies.”

“Slinkies?”

“Yeah. Basically useless, but they make you smile when you push them down the stairs.”

He laughed before nibbling and sucking on her earlobe. “She’ll come round.”

A shiver wracked Taryn’s body as he grazed his teeth over his mark. “Trey, you can’t do that in public. It has an embarrassing effect.” His totally wicked laugh made her nervous. Of course the bastard nipped at her mark. Deciding some retaliation wouldn’t be such a bad thing, she very slightly grinded against his very hard cock – he might not particularly desire her, but his body would still react to his mate’s scent. He groaned against her neck.

Trey knew he could leave now. They had done enough touchy-feely stuff and she probably still had things to talk about with her friends. In fact, he should leave – her friends were anxious and uncomfortable when he was around as though they expected him to lunge at them or something. But he couldn’t bring himself to break the contact with Taryn. Instead, he lazed back into his seat and pulled her forward so that she was draped across his chest. “Don’t mind me, you carry on talking. I won’t even be listening, I’m too distracted by your scent.” Another truth.

As he looked over her shoulder he saw that Tao was looking at them with envy in his expression, envy that he wasn’t bothering to conceal. Holding Tao’s gaze, Trey knotted a hand in Taryn’s hair – a gesture of possessiveness, a reminder that she was his. Tao lowered his eyes and continuing staring at his book. Did he know it was upside down?

“How’s my dad?” Taryn asked Shaya, groaning as Trey began gently massaging her back.

“Feel good, baby?” he asked. She nodded against his chest.

“Alternating from being angry with you to wondering if just maybe this mating could be more beneficial than the one with Roscoe would have been,” Shaya replied to Taryn’s question, her expression studious as she observed Taryn and Trey together.

“Thought as much,” grumbled Taryn before then groaning again. “Trey, your hands are magical.”

“You already knew that.” He groaned again as her body shook against his chest as she laughed, sending all kinds of interesting vibrations through him and his very hard cock. He combed his fingers through her hair. “I love the way it has all those different shades of blonde in it and even a little bit of red.” Another truth.

“It annoys me. It can’t seem to decide what color it wants to be.”

“It has me curious.”

She lifted her head, resting her chin on his chest. “About?”

In a voice too low for anyone else to hear, he said, “Well as much as I like you bald down there, I wouldn’t mind knowing if the color of the carpet matches the curtains.”

She slapped his chest. “Trey!”

“Oh look,” snickered a familiar, annoying, witchy voice. Greta. “Not only is she lounging all over you like a slut, but she’s flashing her underwear to all and sundry.”

Glancing back, Taryn saw that the top of her red lacy thong had ridden above her jeans. “Do you like it? I quite like your blouse, Greta. Wouldn’t you like to slip into something more comfortable, though? Perhaps a coma?”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you sarcasm’s the lowest form of wit?” Greta turned to Shaya and Caleb. “Do us all a favor and take this hussy with you when you leave.”

Taryn sighed. “How about we play fetch with a twist, Greta – I’ll throw the ball for you, but just don’t come back. What do you think?”

Huffing, the old woman marched off. Taryn smiled at a chuckling Trey before laying her head back on his chest, facing Shaya and Caleb. She wondered what their odd expressions meant. She finally found out an hour later as she walked them to Shaya’s SUV.

“I told you that what really matters is that you’re happy,” said Caleb. “And it seems like you are.”

“Is that your way of saying that I have your blessing?”

“I’m still having trouble getting my head around him being your true mate but…well you act like true mates and he obviously adores you. That’s enough for me. I have to admit I’m kind of jealous that everyone around us seems to have mated.”

She patted his arm. “Don’t worry, I’m sure your own true mate is somewhere just waiting for you to find her, and I’m sure she’s the next model up from the inflatable one you already have.”

“Bitch,” he said affectionately.

Shaya had her palm pressed against her forehead, looking stressed and confused. “I don’t know how anyone can not be terrified of that wolf…but his true mate wouldn’t be, mates never fear each other. And clearly you don’t so...Look, just promise me that if you suddenly think you’ve made a mistake or he ever hurts you, you call me and you get out of here.”

Taryn smiled. “Aw, Shaya, if he ever hurt me he’d be dead before I made that call.”

A grin spread across Shaya’s elfin face. “That’s my girl.”

It hadn’t been a surprise to discover that Trey had disappeared into his office before the car had even moved out of sight – acting time was over. She turned to Tao who had been waiting a few feet behind her. “Hey, fancy going out somewhere?”

“Where?” He sounded a little suspicious.

“I’ve gone twelve whole days without pizza and that’s just not right.”

He grinned. “Pizza definitely sounds good. Let me just tell Dante we’ll be out for a while.”

She hadn’t realized just how much she had missed her Hyundai until she was driving it en-route to town five minutes later. Tao, apparently not content enough with being her bodyguard, had wanted to play chauffeur too, but she easily got her way because he was smart enough to know that she wouldn’t give in.

“Did your friends buy the act?” asked Tao about fifteen minutes into the journey.

She shrugged. “They’ve accepted it, but I don’t think anything will ever completely convince them.”

“They don’t think you and Trey fit?”

“It’s not so much that. They saw how close Joey and I were, and then they watched me deal with his death pretty badly. For me to suddenly claim that Joey was nothing but my best friend…” She let the sentence trail, knowing he’d see her point. “I think if it had been anyone other than Trey, I might have had more luck with getting them to accept it.”

“Trey’s not your type?”

“I meant because he’s psychotic. Although it’s true that I’ve never been with a guy built like a highlander before, but I don’t really have a type. I either like someone or I don’t.”

“And you like Trey.”

“To an extent,” she said with a smile. “Selma made it clear that I’m not his type.”

“Trey’s always gone for, what do you females call them, hourglass figures or something like that?”

Noticing he hadn’t sounded so fond of them, she prodded, “You’re not such a fan?”

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t say no to one. Plenty of times Trey and I have shared one of his women -”

“Really?”

“- but I prefer my women to be more…athletic, I guess. And I have a thing for blondes.”

“Ooh, please don’t say that line – that was the first thing Roscoe ever said to me. Makes me shiver even now.”

His words were both consoling and sympathetic. “It has to have pissed you off that you had two guys wanting to mate with you but neither really wanted you for you.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think I’ll make a good mate anyway.”

“Why?”

“My natural reaction is to hold back from people, especially guys. It’s something I honestly can’t control. When Joey and my mom died, I had this big hole and it’s as if when I taped it up, I did it too tight. I don’t know if I could ever really make myself completely vulnerable to another person again. And when you mate with someone, really mate with someone, there can’t be protective walls.”

Tao’s smile was a little sad. “The right wolf will hammer them down.”

“It might take more than a hammer. Anyway, let’s talk about something more interesting. What’s this thing about you and Trey sharing women?” Ménages weren’t exactly unusual among shifters, but she wouldn’t have had Trey down for someone who shared.

“Before you, Trey’s never been possessive with women. Plenty of times we’ve shared. The invite was always open to Dante, but he just likes to watch with Marcus, Trick, Ryan, and Dominic.”

“They watch?” she chuckled, not finding it difficult to believe, especially since many shifters had voyeuristic tendencies.

“Oh yeah, if Trey’s feeling in a good mood he doesn’t mind. You ever participated in a ménage?”

She snorted. It was hard enough making things work out with one guy, let alone two. “Having a sex life isn’t as easy for an alpha female as you might think.”

“In what way?”

“Guys say they like a woman who’ll take charge in the bedroom but most of the time they’re talking out of their ass.” Finally they pulled up in the parking lot of the pizza place and Taryn couldn’t stop a joyous smile from taking over her face. She really had missed the taste of pepperoni pizza.

“But most alpha males would be hard at just the thought of battling an alpha female for dominance in the bedroom.”

“Yeah but that erection often disappears when the male realizes that it’s not as easy as they thought to win that battle. Most of the time they’ve originally thought that if they just chase us around and tire us out we’ll surrender or something. Then there are the males who confuse dominance with bullying. When it comes to alpha females, submission has to be earned, not taken. You’ve never been with an alpha female?”

“Not yet.” Most likely in response to her baffled expression, he said, “What’s wrong?”

She gestured to the pizza delivery guy who was exiting the restaurant with a pile of boxes. “I’ve just never worked out why they put pizza in a square box.”

Intending to seem as though he was only leaving his office to refill his coffee mug, Trey left the room and began walking toward the kitchen, wanting to discreetly check on Taryn. Two things quickly became apparent. One, it was a lot quieter than usual. Two, although Taryn’s scent was everywhere he turned, it was faint…as if it was simply what lingered in the air.

In the kitchen Dante, Greta, Marcus, Trick, Grace, Lydia, Selma and Hope sat at the table, laughing and joking. It looked as though Selma and Hope were having a separate conversation, unsurprisingly. They had made themselves pretty unpopular with their refusal to accept Taryn. After refilling his mug Trey asked, ensuring his voice was casual, “Where’s Taryn?”

“Out,” replied Dante.

“On another run with Tao?” Although she was latent, she was just as fast as any shifter.

“No, she went into town.”

Trey had to have heard wrong. “What was that?”

“She went into town.”

Dumping his mug on the counter, uncaring of the scolding hot coffee that had splashed onto his fingers, he demanded, “Where? With who?”

“She and Tao went for pizza,” said Greta, her voice full of implications.

Selma dived on that. “He’s a very attentive bodyguard, isn’t he? You have to admit, they look real cute together. Right, Hope?”

“Oh yeah, real cute.”

“Shut it,” snapped Trey, surprising most people in the room.

“She didn’t tell you she was going out?” asked Marcus.

“No, she didn’t,” Trey managed to grit out, pissed off that she had ventured out without a word and jealous that she had asked Tao to go with her rather than him. He switched his attention back to Dante. “Why didn’t you stop her from going?”

“Why would I have stopped my Alpha female from leaving pack territory? And how exactly would you have expected me to stop Taryn from doing that or anything else?”

“When did she leave?”

“Calm down, Trey, what’s the problem?” But Dante knew exactly what the problem was – he always saw too much.

As the sound of laughing coming from outside the caves met their ears, Marcus nodded. “That’s probably them now.”

Trey stalked toward the main door, clenching his fists. Almost yanking the damn thing off, he opened it to find Taryn and Tao practically stumbling up the stairs as they laughed so hard at something they were keeled over. The sight of them looking so happy and comfortable with each other sent another surge of jealousy rushing through him.

Eventually they looked up and saw him. He could guess that his expression was thunderous because Tao immediately lowered his eyes. Taryn, on the other hand, presented him with a smile.

“Well hello,” said Taryn brightly as she went right on past the ass she had mated with and strode into Bedrock.

“What the hell did you think you were doing leaving pack territory without telling me!” he bellowed as he followed behind her. Slowly she turned and appraised him from head to toe. Not with fear or even apprehension, but like someone would scrutinise a bug.

“Did you forget to take your pills again?”

“I’ve been in my office believing you’re safe, and you’ve been in town hanging out with Tao!”

“Yes and we had a lovely time, thanks.”

“If you’d have said you wanted to go somewhere I’d have taken you! Why sneak off?” When instead of answering him she just stared blankly, he persisted, “Taryn?”

“Oh sorry, I was just busy picturing a gag in your mouth.”

“This is serious! The new Alpha of Roscoe’s pack hasn’t been here to finalise an alliance which means there’s still a possibility of retaliation over his death. Then there’s the fact that although your dad might not come here and challenge me, you can bet your little ass he’ll take you given half the chance.”

“Did the UFOs tell you that when you removed your foil hat?”

“I’m not being paranoid!”

Taryn snickered. “What you’re being is an overprotective asshole who didn’t like it that his mate didn’t say ‘pretty, pretty please, Master’ before leaving pack territory.” Fed up with him, she retreated to the living area and, sighing, plonked herself onto the reclining corner of the sectional sofa. “I am so stuffed.”

“You won’t want a coffee then?” said Grace with a smile.

“I’m not that stuffed.”

One by one, people began to pile in. Other than Trey who stood near the door, arms folded, snarling. “I’m think I prefer him in Cujo mode,” she muttered to Tao who was beside her on the sofa.

“Been out all afternoon with another male,” drawled Greta. “Didn’t I tell you she was a hussy, Trey?”

“Hey there, Mistress of the Dark Arts, how are you?”

“If I’d known you guys were going for pizza I’d have asked to go along,” said Cam.

Taryn smiled. “Not to tease you or anything, but it was absolutely gorgeous. Deep Pan base, extra cheese, pepperoni -”

“Now that’s not fair.”

“You know,” began Dominic, wearing that impish smile that meant he was about to deliver another of his cheesy lines, “I’m a lot like Domino’s Pizza, if you don’t come in thirty minutes, the next one’s free.” Everyone groaned, trying to hold back smiles.

“Here you go,” said Grace as she handed Taryn a mug of coffee.

“Oh you’re a gem.” She sighed dreamily as Marcus leaned over the back of the sofa and began massaging her shoulders.

“I take it this is what everyone means about it being uncomfortable when newly made mates are separated for a while?” prodded Trick.

Taryn sighed inwardly when she saw that Trey hadn’t moved from the doorway or dropped his scowl. He looked unbelievably pissed, but he also looked a little lonely. As much as he had annoyed the hell out of her, Taryn had the urge to soothe him. Extending her hand, she said, “Come on, Flinstone.”

He looked at her hand, looked at her face and then stormed off. With a sigh, she dropped her hand and shrugged. But she wasn’t as aloof about it as she appeared to be. Would it really have been that horrible to sit with her for a while, to spend a teeny weeny amount of time with her and his pack? Apparently yes it would have. And apparently she hadn’t played the aloof female as well as she thought.

“How many times in your head have you killed him?” asked Grace when they were alone in the kitchen preparing dinner.

Taryn sighed. “Honestly? Too many to count. I’ve even dug the grave and hid the body.”

“You know, I can’t understand why he’s acting so shitty. I know he was never overly attentive or anything, but it was obvious he liked having you around and then all of a sudden he turned indifferent. At first I thought you guys had just had a fight or something.”

“No. It was after I calmed his wolf. In fact, no, he was okay right up until I had that nap after healing him. When I woke up he was all weird and he’s been that way ever since.”

“Do you think maybe he just doesn’t want to look weak in front of the others by being all affectionate and shit? You know guys can be weird like that, and he’s the Alpha, so there’s that pressure there to look as though he has no weaknesses.”

“But if it was that, he’d be okay when other people aren’t around.”

“You guys aren’t fucking?”

Taryn shook her head. “Not since the morning before Roscoe’s visit and subsequent demise. If it was just sex he was being weird about, I’d have thought he might be getting it elsewhere. Selma isn’t exactly shy about her eagerness to have him. But he barely speaks to me, even when we’re alone, so there’s a bigger issue at play here. I just don’t know what it is.”

“It’s not that he doesn’t want you,” Grace insisted. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you. It’s not just with lust either. That’s what makes this shit all the more confusing.”

“If he wanted me he wouldn’t hold back. It’s not in Trey’s nature to hold back when he wants something.”

“Don’t worry, honey, we’ll find out what’s going on in that weird head of his eventually.”

“I’ll have killed and buried him for real by then.” She frowned as the sudden sounds of cursing and raised voices drifted into the room. Both females immediately stopped what they were doing and headed through the tunnels to find out what the fuss was all about. Arriving at the main junction, Taryn saw many of the pack had gathered and were looking as defensive as they were confused while Marcus and Trick appeared to be interrogating them. Seeing her there, everyone fell silent and a chill ran down her spine. “What is it?”

Marcus went to speak but then swallowed hard and looked at Trick as if hoping he would answer.

“What’s going on?”

“Follow us,” said Marcus as he and Trick made their way out the main door and down the flights of stairs. On reaching the bottom, they led her into the concealed parking lot where she stopped dead. She couldn’t see what the problem was, but she knew what Trey, Dante, Tao, Ryan and Dominic were gathered around. She shrugged her way through them and gasped. The doors and windows of her Hyundai were covered in red spray paint. Worse, the red paint very clearly said ‘Go Home Warner Slut’.

“Who. Did. This?” Her voice was dead, toneless.

“We don’t know,” replied Trey, his own voice thick with anger. His mate’s car. Someone had dared to do this to his mate’s property. His wolf wanted to surface so that he could hunt them down. “Almost every pack member’s scent is in this lot because everyone uses it. If we had gotten to it when the paint was still wet then maybe the culprit’s scent would be heavier in the air than the rest but…”

An arm curled supportively around her and she turned her head to see Tao looking down at her wearing a sympathetic expression. “It’s okay,” Tao assured her. “We will find out who did it somehow. In the meantime, someone will clean it.”

She shook her head. “I’ll do it.”

“No,” they all objected at once.

“It’s my car.” Hers, it was her baby…and someone had vandalized it. Sure it was only a little paint, but dammit that wasn’t the point. Her shifter territorial nature made it even harder for her to keep calm. Rage was coursing through her, making her grind her teeth and ball her hands into tight little fists. “I’m going to kill them.”

“Get in line,” said Ryan.

Tao took one of her fists and uncurled it. “Come on, come inside.”

“Go,” said Trey, “we’ll take care of this. Go inside.” He knew he’d probably sounded a little sharp with her, but he didn’t like seeing another male’s arm around her. In fact, he wanted to snap it off.

She sighed. “I -”

“No.”

Her wolf calmed a little when he came close, but he didn’t touch her just like Taryn knew he wouldn’t even though she needed it, even though he would feel that she needed it. “It’s my car,” she repeated, knowing that it didn’t really have any bearing on the matter of who cleaned it. She was simply pissed off to think right.

“You don’t need to see this. Whoever did this did it to upset you, don’t give them what they want.”

“Says the world’s worst brooder,” she couldn’t help muttering through clenched teeth.

“Taryn, we’ll take care of it.” He raised his hand to touch her face, but then he dropped it again. More than anything he wanted to comfort and calm her with his touch, and that was exactly why he didn’t. “Go,” he urged softly.

Relenting, she allowed Tao to lead her inside, but she didn’t go into the living area to relax the way everybody was advising her to. No, she went straight back to the kitchen and over to the onions to continue dicing them. Grace opened her mouth as though to object, but a warning look from Taryn kept her quiet. Taryn didn’t want to relax, didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts and her anger, she just wanted a distraction.

The entire time that she and Grace had been working on the evening meal, Marcus and Trick had been speaking to every member of the pack trying to establish each person’s whereabouts over the past few hours. Cam, Rhett and Brock were the only ones who didn’t have alibis for their story, Marcus informed her as they ate the evening meal. Of course everyone was straining to listen to their conversation and she got the feeling that that was the whole idea, that the guys were closely monitoring the expressions of the others as Marcus told her everything they knew. Taryn still wasn’t convinced that Selma didn’t have something to do with it, but apparently Kirk and Hope stated that she had been with them the whole time. She wouldn’t put it past Kirk and Hope to lie for her though.

It wasn’t a surprise that in spite of how Trey had to sense how much her wolf was craving comfort from her mate, he barely spoke to her through the evening meal, let alone touched her. Nor was it a surprise that she went to bed alone or that he didn’t lay beside her when he finally did join her. But it still burned. Not just in a physical sense, but in an emotional sense. She hated herself for that. Her and him, in fact.

Instead of the burning easing over the next few days as she resigned herself to the way her mating with Trey was going to be, it only worsened. It wasn’t just because of her wolf’s hunger for contact with her mate. Taryn the woman wanted Trey the man which made absolutely no sense given that they barely interacted or touched. But when they did interact and they did touch…Ah, hell.

None of this was good. Not a damn thing about this mating – other than her having escaped Roscoe – was good, but she wouldn’t back out on a deal. That wasn’t who Taryn was. It wasn’t like she had anywhere to go even if she did leave. Her uncle still hadn’t gotten back to her, if he even intended to.

And so the burning stayed and worsened as more days and nights passed with absolutely no change. Sure there had been moments where she had been tempted to just jump on him and be done with it, but she didn’t want scraps and neither did her wolf.

It was extremely annoying that Trey didn’t appear to be going through the same struggle but she ignored that annoyance, she ignored her urges, she ignored her wolf’s pining and she continued on as usual. But then one really shitty day came a few weeks later and she was seriously at risk of exploding with it all…the anniversary of her deceased mother’s birthday.