She sighed. “It feels like I’ve accepted it under false pretences. Hell, I have.”

“Not exactly. Your mom may have intended to give it to you and your true mate, but I don’t think she’d begrudge you having it just because you’d mated with someone else.”

“Of course she wouldn’t have…if the mating had been real.”

“This is real, Taryn,” he growled.

“Yeah I know. I mean if we’d mated with the intention of actually staying together, if we had feelings for each other. Now that’s something she would have understood because she was all about love and romance and all that stuff. Not this, though. She wouldn’t have understood this. She would have mated with Roscoe before renouncing her true mate.”

“The fact that you didn’t doesn’t make you a coward, Taryn,” he firmly stated, knowing that was where her thoughts had taken her. “Like you said, she was one of those romantic people. You’re more of a practical thinker, like me. Practical thinkers aren’t so much into self-sacrifices, they prefer solutions. And you’re not someone who’s prepared to wait around with the belief that life will hand you a solution, you go looking for one.” She smiled a little, but still looked troubled. “You don’t have to spend it. You don’t even have to open the bag. Put it away with your shoebox. She’d be happy enough about that, right?” Her smile widened then and he felt a pang in his chest. Nodding, she finally relaxed into him, pleasing both him and his wolf. As with all those other chest pangs he’d been feeling recently around her, he automatically ignored it.

“Ah come on, Taryn, don’t get all glum on us,” pleaded Dominic. “I tell you what, why don’t you come here and let me give you a great big hug, you can sit on my lap, and we’ll talk about the first thing that pops up.” Ignoring Trey’s growl, the gorgeous blonde pervert added, “I’ll even let you rub my lucky scrotum. Ow!” He still had the nerve to chuckle when Trey smacked him over the head.

When they returned to pack territory they found everyone waiting in the living area for news of how the meeting went. “Well?” prodded Trick.

“We got the alliance.” Trey winced at the loud celebratory noises.

“I checked the pack web earlier,” said Rhett. “You’ve got more Alphas requesting basic alliances. It really was a great idea to set up a pack web.”

“Yep, which means if it wasn’t for Taryn, we probably wouldn’t have any of those alliances,” said Marcus. He grinned as she flopped into the recliner and wiggled her shoulders, hinting for him to give her the usual massage. As always, he obliged her.

Greta snorted. “I still say you don’t need them. Or the hussy.”

Taryn looked at her with mock pity. “Isn’t it time for your nap yet, Old Mother Hubbard?”

“Listen to her. She’s never shown me any respect from day one. All common and no manners.”

“I just thought it was important that you felt comfortable around me.”

“Trey, you’re going to be the laughing stock of all the other packs having a latent as an Alpha female. Can’t you see that? I’ll bet she can, but she’s got it good here so she’ll drag this out as long as she can. Won’t you?”

Taryn simply smiled. “I’d tell you to stop having a hissy fit and act your age, but then you’d die so…Actually maybe I should just -”

“Oh yes make your smart remarks now, but it won’t be long until it’s time for you to go and then Trey will mate with a real Alpha female. One who’s not common and sarcastic, or disrespectful and slutty.”

“Come on, you have to admit I keep life interesting.” Taryn thought she had hidden pretty well just how Greta’s last statement had stung. It was only the truth, though. Taryn would leave, Trey probably would mate again, and the female he mated with for real would most likely be better suited to be an Alpha female. And what would Taryn be doing? Trying her hardest to find a pack who would take in a common, disrespectful, sarcastic, latent female.

Hoping against hope that her uncle might have replied to her message, she excused herself and went up to Rhett’s room to check her messages on the pack web. Apparently her hoping paid off. Smiling, she skipped down the stairs and re-entered the living room. “Hey, guess what, my uncle’s been in touch through the pack web.”

Trey frowned. “Uncle?”

“The one whose pack I was planning to seek refuge at if all else failed.”

“Oh. Right.”

“He’s invited us to a mating ceremony that’s taking place for someone in his pack a few weeks from now.” That was a hell of a lot more than Taryn had hoped for. She’d thought it might take a few web conversations before her uncle would be interested in them meeting up. An invite to a mating ceremony had definitely been unexpected.

“Wait, start again, how does he know about us? Had he just noticed you on the pack web?”

“Oh no I got in touch with him.”

Trey did a double take. “What was that?”

“It seemed like a good idea to get to know him before I ask his Alpha to take me in when our deal’s over. Maybe if my uncle and I somehow bond I’ll have more of a chance.” The way Trey’s eyes had seemed to ice-over and his face had darkened to a purplish shade had her frowning. “Why are you looking at me like I strolled into your house on your birthday and shit on all the gifts?”

“Oh I don’t know maybe because no one’s supposed to know that we’re not true mates.”

Taryn’s mouth dropped open. “You think I told him? You think I went back on our deal and told him all about it?” A deathly silence filled the room because everyone knew that questioning Taryn’s integrity was a very bad thing.

“Awkward,” muttered Dominic.

“Seriously, you think I would actually do that?”

No, actually, Trey didn’t think she’d do something like that, but he tended to say stupid shit when he was pissed off, and hearing that she had been in touch with her uncle when he knew she was hoping to join the guy’s pack had made his blood boil.

It shouldn’t have made his blood boil because it shouldn’t bother him that she would soon be leaving his pack, yet it did. “It just seemed unlikely that you’d try to fool him if you’re planning to later ask him for a place in his pack. You think he’ll actually take you in when he realizes you lied to him right to his face about us?”

“No Doofus,” she spat in a goofy voice. “That’s why I’m planning to say to him what I’ll say to everyone else – that I was wrong about us and that Joey had actually been my true mate after all. Sure it’s going to make me seem a little nutty that I could mix up something like that, but it’s a better fate than a life with Roscoe ever would have been. I figured that this might be good for you too, that maybe you could get an alliance with my uncle’s Alpha out of this. He must be at least willing to consider it or he wouldn’t have given my uncle permission to invite us to this mating ceremony. I’ve told him to expect us.”

Everything in Trey rebelled against the idea of Taryn going to that ceremony, of her building a bond with her uncle so she could leave. He knew she needed to leave his pack eventually. Logic even told him that the sooner she left the better because their separation would become harder the longer that they were in the mating. But logic wasn’t ruling just then. It was being overshadowed by a tangle of intense emotions that Trey didn’t understand, but all of which drove him to do one thing; try to stop her from going to meet the other pack.

“Look, Taryn, I’m going to have a lot of stuff going on in the next couple of weeks. I can’t shove it all aside just to go to some mating ceremony of people I don’t even know.”

She stared at him for a minute. “Fine. I’ll take Dante or Marcus with me.”

“You don’t think it would look both weird and disrespectful that I didn’t go with you?”

“Of course it would. I’m still going.”

“Taryn, listen -”

She took a step toward him. “No you listen, Flinstone. We made a deal and I will live up to my part of it. At the end of this, you’ll walk away with tons of alliances. Me? I’ll have nothing because I walked away from everything for this deal we made. I need to have somewhere to go because I’m not going to live the lone wolf lifestyle. My best bet is to get a place in my uncle’s pack – even if it’s only temporary, at least it’ll be something. If you don’t want to come with me to this ceremony and maybe try and get yourself an alliance out of this then fine. But I will be going in the hope of increasing my odds of getting a place in that pack because the alternative is taking a chance being out there on my own and that’s not acceptable to me.”

He could tell her the truth of why he didn’t want her to go to the ceremony, he could, but now wasn’t the time or the place. Alright that was in fact an excuse but it was an excuse he was sticking to. Rather than piss her off any further, he went to her and tugged her to him. “I didn’t think of it that way. If you want us to go, we’ll go.”

“Really?” she drawled, suspicion dripping from the word.

“Really.”

A nod. “Okay.” She squealed as he suddenly scooped her up and began strolling out of the room. “What the hell are you doing?”

“No more talking. Really need to f**k.”

And he really did need it. He needed to be buried deep inside her body, needed to be swimming in her scent, and he needed the taste of her in his mouth. Only then would he be able to calm himself and his wolf.

The thought of being separated from his mate had sent his wolf pacing and growling, fighting for supremacy. It had nettled Trey’s mating instincts, playing on his protectiveness and possessiveness until all he wanted was to pin her down and bite her, remind her that she belonged to him.

As for Trey the man…equal measures of infuriation and angst had shot through his blood, making anxiety curdle in his stomach. He told himself that if he hadn’t mated with her, there would be no such anxiety whatsoever, that the separation wouldn’t particularly bother him. In truth, he wasn’t so sure that the man in him was still detached from the mating, or even if he ever had been.

Now this was one of the things Taryn would really miss about Bedrock, she thought with a smile as she sank into the luxurious bath. There was a brief stinging sensation as the hot water made contact with the fresh scratches and bites now coating her body, but it passed pretty quickly. Damn the bastard for branding her so thoroughly! How in the hell was she supposed to move on after this mating when his marks were all over her, serving as constant reminders of him? Maybe that was what he wanted – to make sure that she wouldn’t be able to forget him. He might not particularly care about her, but the possessiveness that came with the mating was probably messing with his mind.

She had no intention of telling him that he didn’t need to brand her so completely to ensure that she remembered him. As much as it pissed her off, she couldn’t change that she sort of, well…she really liked him. A voice in her mind insisted that was an understatement, but Taryn ignored it. She didn’t understand how she could like him so much. The guy could be so tactless and impatient, so remote and unapproachable. He was unbalanced. He had shitty communication skills. He thought apologies went in the form of oral sex, and he could brood with the best of them.

And yet, she truly liked the guy. Naturally, her wolf was very pleased about that.

Well enough thinking about him. All she wanted to do right now was relax and soothe those aches that always came with the rough f**kings he gave her. She had a strong feeling that her manly mate wasn’t going to be too happy about the smell of jasmine that now filled his bathroom thanks to the soap Lydia had given her. Just the thought of that made her smile – simply pleasures and all that stuff.

So relaxed that she was beginning to wonder if she had entered subspace, the little tapping sounds were just background noise to her at first. Soon, though, they penetrated her daze, pissing her off. The noises reminded her of when Shaya used to throw stones at her window at night when they were teenagers, hoping to get her attention. She tried real hard to ignore the incessant tapping. After a short while, though, they began to grate on her nerves.

“Trey?” she called out, hoping to have him check out the noise. “Anyone?” Nothing, which meant she was going to have to see what the f**k it was herself. Fabulous.

Muttering curses, she stepped out of the bath, wrapped a white fluffy towel around her, and made her way into the bedroom. As she had suspected, something seemed to be tapping against the window. Still muttering curses, she stalked over to the window and pulled aside the curtain. And jerked back. “What the f**k?!” Oh no, that wasn’t what she thought it was. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be.

Having sensed her alarm and anxiety through the pack link, Trey came dashing into the room. “What is it? What’s wrong?” And then he saw it. Slowly he went to her. “Is that…is that the raven you always talk to?”

Grinding her jaw, she nodded, close to tears at the sight of the beautiful bird now dead. Not just dead, but hanging upside down by some kind of string as his beak repeatedly tapped against the window as his body blew with the wind. “I heard the tapping.”

“Baby, come here.” Not giving her a choice, he pulled her to him and enfolded her in his arms.

“Somebody did that,” she said through her teeth as shock and rage flooded her veins.